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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.
Meanwhile, in Victoria, the former Premier who not only lost an election but scuppered, the Seat he represented then being lost to Labor at a by election, is calling for the Liberal Party to merge with One Nation to defeat Labor
Anything to beat Labor
Kennett should look at the reasons he lost government because those reasons remain
Noting that the daughter of one of his cohorts has been made Leader to do what she is told by her father, Kennet and the rest of the bitter old men
The Liberals just keep sinking lower and lower into irrelevance, now a splinter group of Hanson
Spence
It’s the top story on AdelaideNow combined with complaints about lack of electoral staff. Evidently a lot didn’t turn up. 80 year olds waiting 90 minutes in the sun. They could have postal voted but I suppose that’s not the point.
Kennett wants one nation & the liberals to join up to defeat Labor?! No real surprise, politics in Australia is about keeping the ALP out of office.
G. Hardly anyone knows the provision exists. Even here on PB plenty of SA contributors are surprised to hear about.
Pretty much no one who is well informed would use it – these voters want to exercise their preferences.
So the people who benefit from it are not aware of it. But it is not an unexpected result. The voter has expressed a deliberate preference for a candidate and the party whose name accompanies the candidate.
Australia has a very bad level of informal voting. Only maybe 2% are just up yours with blank paper and straight out the door.
But have seen we informals up to 17% in electorates with a high level of overseas born voters and long lists of candidates.
We can do a fair bit with education but having a voting system that is well constructed helps as well.
The ticket savings provision was introduced in 1985 when SA became the first state to copy the Senate’s ATL/BTL ballot paper.
At the December 1984 Federal election, the first use the new Senate ballot paper, there was confusion and a huge increase in informal voting as a huge number of voters read the Senate instructions and just voted ‘1’ in the House
To avoid this problem SA introduced this lodged ticket savings provision. Let’s be clear though. Most of the saved votes have nothing to do with preferences. 80% of the ballot papers saved are for candidates whose preferences are never distributed. As will be the case for ONP ballots in more than 30 seats.
As I always say, what’s the point of invalidating a ballot paper for lack of preferences if those preferences will never be counted out.
In 2018 there were 3.1% votes of votes saved by this provision.
Noting the AG comment, one simple instruction to voters that they put a number in every box needs to be the solution
Otherwise your vote is not valid and will not be counted
Once you introduce complexities there is a problem
KISS
The fact that there are multiple candidates is nothing new
And if anyone eligible to vote (so they register) can not understand that they need to put a number in every box, then that is their problem
Diogenes says:
Monday, March 23, 2026 at 9:03 pm
Spence
It’s the top story on AdelaideNow combined with complaints about lack of electoral staff. Evidently a lot didn’t turn up. 80 year olds waiting 90 minutes in the sun. They could have postal voted but I suppose that’s not the point.
———————————————————————————————————
Lack of staff was a big problem on Saturday due to a change regarding early voting procedures (those staff weren’t available for the booths on Saturday).
We had queues all day until about 5pm with people waiting up to an hour.
The AEC’s research consistently finds that half of informal votes are numbering errors. The Senate reform has reduced the number of ‘1’ only votes. Before then ‘1’ only votes were by far the largest category ands still remain high in the list.
The AEC’s 1987 informal vote research report found 85% of ‘1’ only ballot papers were for candidates whose preferences never needed to be counted. This research required the AEC to look at voting intention of informal votes. It has not been allowed to do that sort of research since. The 85% figure has probably slipped since but would still make up more than half of ‘1’ only votes.
Most attempts to reduce ‘1’ only votes have largely failed. People seem to read the instructions on the much larger and possibly more important giant Senate ballot paper first, and not the House ballot paper. The instructions “NUMBER ALL THE SQUARES” is clear but not always seen and different to the Senate.
I still find it ridiculous that we invalidate ballot papers for lacking preferences that don’t need to be counted. A classic case of the rules defining what can’t count rather than what can count.
I have nothing to say but just want to be on the same thread as the great Antony Green.
Actually, I’ll say this. I think Morphett is super close. Heysen looks a race between the Libs and Greens, can’t see Labor winning that one.
Luke,
Ditto. 🙂
I also want to say that my overarching impression of South Australians is that they are very polite, probably the most polite state in Australia. This thread has only reinforced that pov. 🙂
It might be better to have uniform eligibility and valid vote definitions across Federal and State elections.
And should council voting be mandatory as well?
It would certainly help if ECSA had some serious creative leadership. They seem ok at doing things like last time but not much good at getting ahead of the issues.
Closing a couple of booths in Whyalla because of lack of staff and staff shortages elsewhere is unacceptable. Having enough resources to deal with any glitches is essential.
Having a look at the reports that ECSA produce after each election show the lack of serious analysis or creative thinking needed to keep our electoral processes fit for purpose in the face of rogue social media, AI fakers etc.
I’ll defer to much greater authorities.
But were One Nation doing the wrong thing by encouraging voters to just put a 1 next to them with no preferences? Then they are themselves distributing prefs which is exactly what they said they wouldn’t do.
There’s a couple of seats where ticket savings might make a difference. One’s Light, where it’s that close between Labor and One Nation that a few extra ON votes getting saved from the informal pile might just flip it.
The second, funnier one is Heysen. If they’ve lodged a “fuck the uniparty” pair of tickets where they both have Libs and Labor in the last two spots, that could accidentally help the Greens (firstly to make the top two, then to win the seat vs the Libs). No idea whether they actually have or not, but they’ve got form for this: WA upper house in 2001 back when it had GVTs, where their surplus helped the Greens win a seat in Agricultural region instead of the Libs (which led to a Labor/Green majority which made life a bit easier for Geoff Gallop). The stakes aren’t as high here, but it’d still be hilarious.
Also re Heysen: the donkey vote there (1.5% for some random independent) favours ON and then the Greens, so the ON-Green flow might be a smidge higher than the average anyway.
Luke says:
Monday, March 23, 2026 at 9:40 pm
I have nothing to say but just want to be on the same thread as the great Antony Green.
__________________
Ditto.
Hi Antony!
Luke and MABWM – Best comment ever.
Back on topic. I might try and come back to this later but I have a pressing task to attend to elsewhere right now.
Just quickly for clarity. I absolutely want formality to be very high and for people to complete their ballot papers to the very best (ie. formal) of their ability, as per directions given. We should always be looking at ways to reduce informality.
I am not so comfortable with the idea of the ECSA assigning formality in the manner that it does with this process. I understand the outcome but the desire to increase the rate of formality should not come at the cost of the actual mark of the vote made. Ends justifiying means, etc. etc. I am not necessarily against a system of a single “1” being counted in some manner but there’s something about the ECSA interpretation that makes my “electoral sixth sense” tingle.
There’s probably an underlying discussion about savings provisions in here. I think there are nationally consistent ways that we could both “enforce” all boxes be filled in and have allowances for when the voter doesn’t quite get there.
Bird of Paradox. One of the few certainties about One Nation is that they think attacking the Greens is a good idea. Sometimes their actual prefencing has been out of whack with this but I’d be pretty sure that their lodged HTV saving documents will have Greens behind Liberal and Labor.
Someone will lodge an FOI and all will be revealed if ECSA doesn’t release it.
G. The saving provision is in the Electoral Act. The ECSA is just carrying out the rules set by Parliament.
I wonder if the problem is people getting HOR and Senate papers at the same time. If the instructions for HOR or any state imitating it, that the HOR MUST be numbered 1 to X, and only once that paper is safely in the box, get the Senate/Upper House paper and be told it is OK to number above the line (for the party to allocate)
Antony:
Yes indeed. This is the main thing that annoys me about compulsory preferential voting.
Check out Perth at the 2022 federal election (I’m picking on it because that’s where I voted). Eleven candidates. Three of them (Labor, Liberal, Green) got over 20%; the other eight couldn’t manage 12% between the lot of them and all lost their deposits. (The AEC could actually have bulk-excluded them and it wouldn’t have changed the 3cp.) The informal rate was 5.6% – plenty of that would’ve been people voting 1,2,3 for Labor, Liberal, Green in some order, then dropping the number 9 or something with the candidates that don’t matter. It frustrates me. I’m not sure whether the answer is OPV, savings provisions like in SA, or making it harder for no-chance candidates from cluttering the ballot like this, but something should be done about it.
In 2025, Perth only had four candidates (exactly the ones whose parties won a senate seat in WA), and the informal vote dropped to 2.4%. So there’s 3% down to irrelevant numbering errors – across 150-ish seats, that’s quite a few people who don’t need to have their vote thrown away for a legalistic reason.
8 exciting contests left in an otherwise landslide election year for Labor. Who knew populist cults of personality would make an otherwise boring election exciting to watch.
Given that the major parties garner the most number of voters just putting 1, so their preferences are of no consequence because they are not distributed that leaves the remainder (how many?)
Noting there are scrutineers with the EC the arbitrator pending any Court action
Another point is, across elections, how many Seats are won by a vote or a handful of votes in the overall scheme of things?
And by-elections can be Ordered by the Court in extraordinary cases
There is the catalyst of reducing the informal vote, but what if that omitted vote represents the wish of the voter because, simply, no one will ever know intent (and you are fined if you do not vote)
It is a secret vote
These are just some of the considerations
Then there is perceived advantage, so a Party thinking something or other will be of advantage to THEM
I would put that the number of formal votes counted delivers the result citizens vote for – or is the debate that the number of informal votes not counted, if counted would change the result of the election, so who is on the government benches
Maybe in a Seat, but where are the examples?
Then we get to money spent on campaigns plus media bias – so influencing
And we see Kennett at 9 Entertainment putting that the Liberals should work with Hanson and have her in the Party Room (and with Cabinet positions no doubt)
And 9 Entertainment promoting such an outcome because Labor are “corrupt”
So influencing?
By promoting the views of Kennett
Where does it start and where does it stop?
Noting media were once obliged to give equal time, now it seems Hanson, the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Greens versus Labor
And they all get their say in our splintered World
Before you get to the Senate being the States House – but now just another Party House (so when do States vote as a block?)
Then there are Wars!!!
Putting us all at risk
Having been gently corrected by William in an earlier thread and now commenting to agree with Antony Green on the preferability of not discarding genuine votes for a final two candidate choice, I now only need Kevin Bonham to make a disparaging remark about the Tasmanian city I was born in in an otherwise unrelated post about the Liberal Party’s Senate ticket selection election to hit the Australian psephologist trifecta.
I’m not going to make it easy for you though Kevin! You’ll have to guess.
Dio,
One Nation’s HTVs said to fill in all the boxes. But even if they didn’t, or if other messaging encouraged just a 1 for ON, they lodged a split ticket so neither of Labor or Liberal got an advantage over the other. It was a secret LACK of a preference deal. The result is the same as what would happen if it were federal or any other state.
The only aggrieved people are the Liberals (or anyone hoping for a smaller Labor seat count), who wished ON had written a ticket in their favour, and other people misunderstanding the story, thinking ON have done something dodgy to gain an advantage.
(Not sure how it affected seats with Ind in the final two)
Off subject but of significance
So Trump calls off the strikes on Iran for now
And look at the Futures
So Hanson says we do not preference so just put 1 alongside my name
So no preferences to distribute because there is no one to distribute the preference to
Sorry to mention Hanson and Trump in the same contribution!!
And another War lost by the Yanks
An impressive list, hey?
I’ll restate my view I’m in favour of saving incomplete votes, but that they should exhaust.
It’s a happy medium between the SA system and that of other jurisdictions. As such, SA and those other jurisdictions should all adopt it!
No automatic preferencing, secret or otherwise, and fewer informal votes.
The funny thing is, considering how few seats actually ended up as ALP vs Lib (a dozen or so?), One Nation’s split-ticket game is mostly meaningless anyway.
And just to add, off subject, but Hanson’s mate in America referred to negotiations
Except Iran say there have been no negotiations
Who is surprised?
And the premium on the Futures reverses
Imagine Hanson at the imaginary negotiating table with Trump – with Kennett in tow!!!
Ninety nine change hands
And note Trump’s spelling in his media release
Fixed.
Thanks William. Your system seems to have performed very well, including when let loose on Saturday night.
Holdenhillbilly at 8.44 pm and David at 9 pm
The point about the Hanson cult doing well in Adelaide was made clearly by Casey Briggs on the TV.
Labor will attack the Libs and Nats relentlessly for sucking up to the racist Hanson cult, because that will diminish Lib support in Teal areas. Sen Wong began the attack today.
In the article linked Antony Green says the Hanson cult will win the Farrer by-election. He should follow the betting of B.S. Fairman, who backs the independent Milthorpe.
In the comments to his article Green says the Libs and Nats might still preference the Hanson cult in Farrer. That’s why he thinks the cult from up yours might win.
Yet it’s more complicated. Milthorpe got 20% in 2025. She should gain at least 5% from those who voted for Ley, and probably more. She should get most of the 15% Labor vote. So that gets her around 40%, depending on the size of the field. Another few percent and she’d be very hard to beat.
Kennett might as well propose the amalgamation of Victoria and Tassie. The Lobster mob marrying the Hanson cult in Victoria would be seen as uncouth by the Melbourne club.
I’m not sure whether the answer is OPV,
Bird of Paradox,
I am, and the answer is No! We have OPV in NSW state election voting and full preferential in the federal election and the number of Labor votes I’ve seen thrown onto the Informal pile as a scrutineer for Labor in the federal election because the voter is probably, though of course you can never read their minds, thinking it’s the same method in both elections, makes me want to cry on the night because all I can think is, what if it’s close and those votes could have made the difference?
This has to go down in history as one of the most divisive landslide elections in terms of the makeup of the opposition forces in the House of Assembly.
What are the scrutineers saying re One Nation preference flows?
70-30 to Liberals or what?
C@tmomma is right about OPV in NSW. One election the how-to-vote hander outers are saying ‘Just number 1’ and the next it’s ‘you must number all the squares’. However OPV is enshrined in the state constitution so not easy to change.
PaulTu
Voting is compulsory in NSW local govt elections.
I’m with Eric. The savings provisions should let votes exhaust, not go to someone the voter had no idea he or she was voting for. The number of votes affected may be tiny, but even so.
And as for C@tmomma’s point, probably nobody needs reminding that it was Labor that introduced optional preferential in NSW for selfish opportunistic reasons, only to have it bite them on the arse not long later.
We should all remember that lesson every time someone comes up with a cunning plan to fudge the rules in favour of his or her own side.
They have counted nothing in Morphett for the last 14 hours. What is going on? Are the poll workers feeling ok?
Only 65 percent counted overall. This is reminiscent of the 2014 Victorian election where they spent a week counting and re-counting the votes already counted on the night, while the pre-polls sat safely locked away in their boxes.
In the booth I scrutineered the ON preferences split 75% to Libs and 25% ALP.
That would mean that the leakage of preferences to Labor from One Nation is very much a real phenomenon.
The appeal of One Nation isn’t as narrow as some people believe. There are plenty of working class voters who should be rusted-on Labor but feel ignored and can’t bring themselves to defect to the ‘woke’ Greens.
And relentlessly branding them racists doesn’t help.
Seat count as of now:
ABC:
ALP: 32 seats
LIB: 4 seats
PHON: 1 seat
IND: 2 seats
Poll Bludger:
ALP: 32 seats
LIB: 4 seats
PHON: 3 seats
IND: 2 seats
The simplest and best reform is just to provide that votes don’t become informal until they reach a point on the ballot with an error (be it double numbering or missing numbers) while redoubling the prohibition against advocating “Just Vote 1”.
And give the AEC some money to test out some alternative ballot paper designs and messaging with focus groups of low information and inexperienced voters to see if you can solve the problem of people treating the House ballot paper like the Senate ballot paper through better design.
C@t, not just polite maybe most intelligent as well. I say that as a Queenslander whose state especially outside of Brisbane is the probably at the other end of the spectrum .
@Ante Meridian
Indeed.
It’s not a new problem. Arguably this kind of voter defected to Morrison in 2019 and helped cost Shorten the election. I think since then Albo has been much better than other post Hawke Labor leaders at reaching out to working class voters who are more socially conservative, more worried about immigration, more likely to feel that Labor pursuing “woke” social policy is wasting time that should be spent improving cost of living etc etc. And you will note Albo, Wong et al unlike foolish online commenters do not excoriate voters for being racist, just Pauline Hanson.
Labor’s position is to persuade these voters action is being taken on say migration, and that Labor is better for their jobs and wages than either the Coalition or ON. Ultimately you can’t win over everyone. The more viable parties exist, the more fragmented the primary vote. But the aim will be that whatever Labor primary voters do get lost to ON, Labor gets back (and then some) in either votes or preferences from the sort of Liberal voters who have no truck with ON.
I imagine many One Nation voters are racist and many are not, but the racism of the leader is clearly not a deal breaker for any of them.
Just as I imagine many Liberal and Labor voters are racist and many are not, and the *lack* of racism of the relevant leaders (to the degree appropriate for each) is not a deal breaker, either.
It seems foolish to assign single issue alignment between leader and voter except where the issue is their sole or primary policy – I doubt many Legalise Cannabis voters are holding their nose to a cloud of weed smoke – but perhaps the error is assuming that One Nation voters are as single issue focused on anti-non-white-immigration as the critics remember Hanson as being, which I don’t think holds true in 2026.
The ABC just took Newland away from its win column.
Primary votes in Newland:
Labor 47.2%
ONP 24.6%
Libs 12.6%
Greens 10.0%
Others 5.6%
(source: ABC)
Nevermind. Newland was put back in the win column.