South Australian election: late counting

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Saturday night

A batch of postals in Narungga broke 21-18 in favour of One Nation over Liberal, putting their lead at 47 – which is significant because it may well conclude the count (notwithstanding that a solitary vote at the Moonta booth got shifted from One Nation to Labor, for one reason or another). The deadline for late arrival of postals was the close of business yesterday, and full preference distributions will apparently begin in some cases on Monday. SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: The Kadina EVC tally has been revised to remove 21 votes from One Nation, reducing their lead to 26, which together with the Moonta change suggests we may not be done with rechecking. Heysen’s small number of Electoral Visitor/Mobile Declaration Votes increased the Liberal lead over Labor from 264 to 288, but there remain uncounted vote categories in that case. Nothing worth noting changed in Morphett, and we’re closing in on a week since a new vote got added to the count in MacKillop.

Friday night

ECSA’s preference throw between One Nation and Labor finally swung into action in Hammond today, and it can now be confirmed as One Nation’s second seat, with the two parties evenly placed on the primary vote and One Nation getting about 60% of preferences. Yesterday I registered surprise that the number of “polling day declaration votes” was as high as 1698 – I’m not told this was very likely a data entry error and these votes belong in a different category (polling day absent ordinary votes would be my guess).

With all sorts of new vote types added to the count, One Nation’s lead over Liberal in Narungga today was cut from 147 to 46, almost entirely as a result of a 159-57 break in electoral visitor/mobile declaration votes. I imagine that doesn’t leave much: probably only one last batch of postals. Each of the three batches of these has slightly favoured the Liberals, in slightly dimishing degree: 512-457 on Wednesday, 598-572 on Thursday and 220-214 today.

Similarly, various categories of vote were added in Morphett, suggesting that loose ends are now being tied up and we are near a final result, leaving the trailing candidate hoping for some sort of anomaly turning up in the full preference distribution. In this case it’s Liberal member Stephen Patterson, whose deficit against Labor candidate Toby Priest narrowed today from 293 to 259.

The Liberal lead over Labor in Heysen is out from 156 to 254 after they got the better of a 1054-1010 split in early voting absents broke 1054-1010 and 250-186 from a second batch of postals. That probably sees off any chance of a Labor win, and my system is the only thing extant that’s allowing for the possibility of preferences allowing the Greens to overhaul first Labor and then Liberal.

A curiosity of the past week has been the lack of any progress in the count for MacKillop, which my system rates an almost but not quite certain One Nation win over the Liberals. Nothing has been added since the polling booths and early voting centre counts were completed, which was probably on Sunday or Monday.

My system has uncalled Light, where Labor’s win probability fell fractionally below the 99% threshold after postals 1016-939 in favour of One Nation. Labor leads by 538 votes though, and by this stage of the cuont my system is allowing for more outstanding votes than we are actually likely to get.

Thursday night

Disappointingly, there is still no sign of the Labor-versus-One Nation count that could settle the issue as to which of the two will win Hammond. There were around 3000 postals and “polling day declaration votes” (which turn out not to be what I thought they were, since otherwise there would not have been 1698 of them) and they leave the two almost dead level on first preferences. It can thus be inferred that whoever gets the most preferences will very likely win the seat. The only other regional seat with a Labor-versus-One Nation two-candidate count is Ngadjuri, and in that case One Nation is getting about 60% of them. The main difference between the two is that 10.0% of the vote in Hammond has gone to Airlie Keen, whose how-to-vote card had Liberal second, One Nation sixth and Labor second last. So it seems unlikely that the preference flow here will be radically different from Ngadjuri, which makes me confident in my system’s assessment that One Nation will very likely win the seat.

The Liberal lead over Labor on the two-candidate count in Heysen increased from 54 to 156 after the first batch of postals broke 911-576 to Liberal and the first batch of absents broke 928-704 to Labor. The Greens did poorly on postals, as always, and causing their deficit against Labor on first preferences to increase from 0.9% to 1.6%, which they will need to close on preferences, three quarters of which will be from One Nation, to make the final count against the Liberals. The most proximate useful example I can find from the federal election is the seat of Adelaide, where the Greens got 20.2% of preferences when One Nation was excluded (this included One Nation’s 4.02% primary vote and another 1.76% they picked up on preferences) and Labor got 17.64%. It is for this sort of reason that my three-candidate estimates are giving the Greens an even money chance of closing the gap, but things may be very different in the context of a greatly increased One Nation vote. Whether they would be better placed than Labor to defeat the Liberals at the final count is another open question. I would also reiterate my point about ECSA persisting with a Liberal-Labor two-candidate count and the likelihood that they have made an informed decision in doing so.

In Morphett, Labor candidate Toby Priest’s lead over Liberal incumbent Stephen Patterson increased today from 34 to 293 after a second batch of polling day absents broke 592-459 and a first batch of early voting absents broke 553-427. To close the gap, Patterson will need outstanding two-thirds of postals to split about 57-43 in his favour, as compared with the 53-47 he got from the first batch, and to break even on whatever else remains oustanding.

A second batch of postals in Narungga behaved similarly to the first in breaking 598-572 in favour of Liberal over One Nation, reducing the latter’s lead from 173 to 147. However, the Liberals now have less runway in terms of postals, each of the two batches having accounted for about a third of what’s likely to be the total, and federal precedent suggests absents are more likely to favour One Nation.

Wednesday night

Counting today progressed for the first time (at least out of seats I’ve been watching closely) beyond election day and pre-poll voting. Antony Green relates that ECSA will shortly begin a Labor-versus-independent count in Kavel and a One Nation-versus-Labor count in Hammond “after testing how preferences are flowing from third and fourth placed candidates”, which in both cases is consistent with the conclusions of my system’s preference estimates. At some point tomorrow, my projections in these seats will flip from using these speculative estimates to ones based on the fresh two-candidate counts. As things stand, my system rates it likely but not certain that independent Matt Schultz will prevail in Kavel and Robert Rylance of One Nation will do so in Hammond. UPDATE: Having thought about that more carefully, ECSA is essentially telling us Matt Schultz is going to win in Kavel – his issue was whether he survived to the final count, which ECSA plainly thinks he will. The progress of late counting in these seats has not been of particular interest, as the flow of preferences is almost certainly the black box that holds the secret of the results.

After my system spent the days after the election calling Narungga for One Nation candidate Chantelle Thomas, it is now clear that the result will in fact be extremely close between Thomas and Liberal candidate Tania Stock, as per the consistent view of the ABC. The two-candidate count has caught up with the first preference count and Thomas leads 173. Stock made up 55 on the first batch of postals, which should account for about a third of them. In conventional contests, late-arriving postals tend to be better for Labor then earlier ones, but I cannot offer a view on what pattern they follow between Liberal and One Nation, if any. The biggest categories of vote that remain entirely uncounted are absents and out-of-district early votes, on which One Nation tends to do better than the Liberals, although this can vary according to local circumstance. So the best I can offer is the reliable stand-by that you’d rather be ahead than behind.

Today’s counting in Morphett turned a four-vote lead for Liberal member Stephen Patterson to a 34-vote lead for Labor candidate Toby Priest, with postals favouring Patterson 512-452, absents favouring Priest 225-158, and Priest gaining a net 29 votes on rechecking of pre-polls. The good news for Patterson is that there should be another 2000 or so postals to come, though as noted, the first batch is typically the best for Liberal candidates. Rechecking Heysen today cut the Liberal lead over Labor in the two-candidate count from 69 to 54, but there are as yet no non-ordinary vote types. So far as my results system is concerned, the bigger question is whether the Greens can overtake Labor and make the final count. The projection in my system giving the edge to the Greens is based on fairly careful observation of historic precedents, but it seems to be a minority view. It could be significant that there has been no suggestion from ECSA that they are considering pulling their Liberal-Labor count, as they may well know something about how preferences are actually flowing that I don’t.

Tuesday night

I’ve made two significant changes to my results system: widened its error margins so it will be more conservative in calling seats, and made estimated preference splits between Liberal and One Nation more favourable to the former, which no brings my estimates closer into line with the ABC’s. These factors have as much weight as the progress of today’s counting in the update that follows.

The fresh One Nation-versus-Liberal preference count in Narungga, which so far encompasses 10 of its 33 booths, had a lot to do with my decision to wind back my estimates of One Nation preference flows: I formerly had One Nation leading 55-45 based on estimates, but applying real-world preference data winds it back to 51.2-47.8. Unlike the ABC’s, my system is still calling the seat for One Nation, but I’m slightly nervous about this. One Nation has been downgraded from winner to strong favourite in MacKillop, which is due to the aforementioned changes to my system rather than the One Nation-Liberal two-candidate count, of which we are yet to see any results.

For the same reason, my One Nation win probability in Hammond, which was not quite being called before, has been dialled back slightly while remaining over 90%. This is one of four seats where there is no indication of a fresh two-candidate count: ECSA advised yesterday that in these seats it was “analysing where certain preferences may flow to be in a position to make a call”, though in the case of Hammond it’s difficult to say how the final count could be anything other than One Nation versus Labor.

The progress of today’s check count in the one conventional in-doubt seat, Morphett, offers a useful case study of the savings provision in action. Changes to the various candidate’s primary vote tallies were in no case greater than five, but on the two-candidate preferred count, Labor and Liberal were both up by about the same amount – 83 and 79 votes respectively. It would explain a lot if most of these were saved one-only One Nation votes, divided evenly between the two main contenders as per the party’s registered tickets.

Rechecking today in Heysen offered little insight into the key question of whether Labor or the Greens will make the final count against Liberal member Josh Teague, and what chance the Greens will have of prevailing if it’s them who make it. If they don’t, the two-candidate count tells us Teague holds a narrow lead over Labor that I would think likely to survive late counting. We are similarly none the wiser in Kavel, where the result depends on an order of candidate exclusion, such that minor changes in the various candidates’ first preference shares offer little insight into the like result.

The fresh Labor-versus-One Nation preference count in Light has removed that seat from the doubtful column, with Labor headed for a clear win with help from a strong flow of Liberal preferences. Casey Briggs of the ABC relates that ECSA has done “an indicative preference throw in the early voting centre in Finniss to identify if Lou Nicholson will be overtaken by Labor”. This found that she gained rather than lost votes relative to Labor on preferences, which eliminate any suggestion that Labor might thwart her. So I’ll be removing those two seats from my watch list.

Monday night

Since most of the doubtful seats are so for the want of an appropriate preference count rather than because we know for a fact that they are close, today’s rechecking and gap-filling did not tell us anything terribly momentous. The one case that might have been an exception is the conventional Labor-versus-Liberal contest of Morphett, but all we saw there today were minor changes to the existing count from rechecking.

ECSA has now scrubbed the results of 33 redundant two-candidate preferred counts as it moves into the check count phase, most or perhaps all of which it ceased updating after election night. As well as rechecked primary votes, we are now seeing fresh two-candidate counts with appropriate candidate pairings, only 14 of which are unchanged from those used on election night. Most importantly, this means we will soon be seeing Liberal-versus-One Nation results in Narungga and Light and an independent-versus-One Nation count in Stuart, though by my and the ABC’s system called the latter for Geoff Brock today after he received 59.2% of first preferences out of the 6134 added from the Port Pirie early voting centre. So far though, fresh TCP count figures have only appeared in a handful of booths in seats where the winner is not in doubt. There are four exceptions where new counts will not be conducted as it remains unclear as to who the two leading candidates will be, each involving in-doubt seats: Finniss, Hammond, Kavel and Ngadjuri (though my system is calling the first of these for the independent, a situation I explained at length in yesterday’s update).

I posted a fairly detailed comment in this post’s discussion thread on the question of savings provisions, which has generated some further commentary involving Antony Green among others. This will cause One Nation votes that numbered one only box to remain in the count with their preferences allocated as per a ticket pre-registered by the party. The provision is obviously not specific to One Nation, but is particularly salient in their case as quite a few of their voters apparently voted in this fashion after misinterpreting the how-to-vote card. This will result in votes that are currently being excluded from two-candidate counts to be admitted during the check counts, but as I explain in the comment, I don’t expect this to amount to much. Nor do I buy the idea that One Nation has perpetrated some great outrage by making use of the provision, as argued by both major parties and an editorial in The Advertiser this morning.

If you’re a Crikey subscriber, you might care to note my commentary piece in today’s edition.

Sunday night

There are eight seats whose late counting I’ve identified as worth following, though it’s more possible that seats that are currently off the radar will be on it if fresh two-candidate counts and other quirks of late counting throw up surprises. In a lot of these cases the incremental back and forth of late counting will actually be beside the point: what are really needed are two-candidate counts for the appropriate candidate pairs, and the Electoral Commission is holding off making announcements on that score until the counting of early voting centres, of which four are still to report first preferences after counting on Sunday, are concluded. No new votes were added today in Heysen and Light, and only 46 remote mobile booth votes were added in Stuart, so there is nothing on those below.

Morphett. My system was calling this for Labor on the night (not sure about the ABC’s), but that changed today when the seat’s early voting centre, which added 6861 votes to the 8998 votes cast on election day, recorded only a 1.6% swing to Labor compared with 7.7% for the election day votes. I should stress here that the historic data for early voting centres that is used as the basis for such calculations is imprecise, because results for early voting centres were not actually published in 2022 – they were bundled together with postals, absente and everything else as “declaration votes”, and I and my ABC equivalent had to find a way to estimate how they all broke down. In any case, Liberal incumbent Stephen Patterson now leads Labor candidate Toby Priest by 12 votes. I would usually expect postals to cause late counting to favour the Liberals, but that’s by no means certain.

Narungga. My system is calling this for One Nation’s Chantelle Thomas, while the ABC’s projects a tight race between Thomas and Liberal candidate Tania Stock. As of a few minutes ago, this was because my system had Stock falling out of the preference count before independent incumbent Fraser Ellis, which I now recognise was mistaken because it failed to factor in that Labor had Ellis last on its how-to-vote cards. It now does so for a different reason, which is that the ABC’s estimate of how preference will split between Thomas and Stock are a lot more favourable to Stock than mine are. No doubt the ABC expects a higher adherence of Ellis voters to the how-to-vote card, which has Stock second. Only a fresh TCP count will tell.

Finniss. I’m reasonably comfortable with my system’s prediction of independent Lou Nicholson as the winner here, but it needs watching because the seat is something of a special case so far as my results system is concerned. This is because it’s a three-candidate model and here we have a result that may be decided by who finishes third and fourth. The leaders on the primary vote are Liberal incumbent David Basham on 27.0% and One Nation’s Greg Powell on 22.0%, followed by Nicholson on 19.3% and Labor on 17.3%. The latter gap narrowed today with the addition of the seat’s early voting centre, from 20.5% to 17.7% yesterday to 19.3% to 18.0%, and independents don’t usually do well on postals, none of which have been counted yet. However, the main factor here is likely to be preferences, notably from the Greens on 6.4% and independent Bron Lewis on 4.3%, and I still think it likely these will keep Nicholson ahead. The Greens’ how-to-vote card had Nicholson second, and she got more than twice as many preferences from the Greens as Labor did in 2022. Preferences from independents tend to favour each other, barring strong ideological differences that don’t appear to apply in this case. If she does remain ahead of Labor, she will surely get enough of their preferences to move to One Nation and make the final count against the Liberals. Having looked at this carefully for the first time, I now believe I’m short-changing Nicholson on One Nation preferences — I have splitting 60-40 in favour of Liberal, when they went 78-22 the other way in 2022, albeit that this was with One Nation running a how-to-vote card than favoured her rather than an open ticket as per this time. Even with the 60-40 flow, I’m still getting Nicholson defeating the Liberal by 53.8-46.2 at the final count.

Hammond. The addition of the seat’s early voting centre didn’t fundamentally change the situation here, which is One Nation will win at the final count over Labor unless my preference estimates are substantially awry, which we won’t know about without a fresh TCP count.

Ngadjuri. I’ve been calling this for One Nation’s David Paton all along, but the ABC only did so today after a weak result for Liberal member Penny Pratt from the Two Wells early voting centre caused her to fall behind Labor in its preference projection, which my system was doing because it was estimating weaker preference flows to Liberal. This has caused it to be the first seat projected by the ABC as a One Nation win, and I’ll be having no more to say about it unless late counting turns up some manner of surprise.

UPDATE: It’s been noted that I missed Kavel, where my system swung yesterday from favouring Labor to independent Matt Schultz, presumably because the latter had a strong result at the Mount Barker early voting centre. Ultimately though, this is one that’s going to require a full distribution of preferences before we can really be sure of anything. I’ll discuss the situation in greater detail in tonight’s update.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics. View all posts by William Bowe