Final for Saturday. Some better results for Labor on pre-polls have brought the swing inside 10%. My own accounting of the results and swings can be found here.
8.24pm. Two booths are outstanding on the two-party vote, and with the writing well and truly on the wall, I won’t be waiting up for them. I’ve got the Liberal swing at 10.1%, which is a little down on where it was before, but still handsomely sufficient to account for the 5.8% margin. Other than Labor, the other losers are pollsters – ReachTEL was way off, and apparently there was a report this morning of Labor internal polling crediting Labor with 38% of the primary vote, which is 7% north of where they seem to have ended up.
7.57pm. All polling day booth results now in on the primary vote, Byford and Kwinana South doing nothing to disturb the overall picture. Still only eight booths in on two-party.
7.49pm. The biggest booth yet, Kelmscott Primary School, is round about par for the course.
7.47pm. Finally some two-party votes to play with: from seven booths, with an overall Liberal swing of 12.8%.
7.40pm. West Byford booth is consistent with the overall picture. We’ve also got a bunch of pre-polls and postals now, which are very slightly better for Labor than the polling booth votes.
7.34pm. Not sure where the numbers are, but Antony Green reports a 12.7% swing on two-party preferred from six booths counted out of 14, which is bigger than I’d figured.
7.27pm. Bedfordale and Mundijong booths maintain the overall picture of a double-digit drop in the Labor primary vote and only a slight improvement for the Liberals, with minor parties (not including One Nation and the Greens, who are static) soaking up the rest. The minor party vote is about evenly split between candidates of the left and the right, so presumably the primary vote will be a pretty good guide to the final outcome, and I’m projecting the Liberals will end up 4% in front (it’s 8% on the raw vote, but that’s because smaller rural booths have come in earlier than larger metropolitan ones). I’m not sure what’s going on with the two-party vote – I would certainly have expected to see quite a bit of it reported by now. There are four booths outstanding on the primary vote.
7.24pm. Roleystone Hall added, a slightly better result for Labor, but not enough to change the overall picture.
7.16pm. Mundaring Hall and Oakford are in, and Labor are still on track for a double-digit drop on the primary vote that could roughly be projected to give the Liberals a winning margin of maybe about 4%. Still no two-party results though, oddly.
7.12pm. Serpentine Primary and Picking Brook both in; the latter not bad for Labor, but the former has another double-digit swing on the primary vote and twice as big.
7.08pm. Big swing to Liberals at Marri Grove booth, so not looking good for Labor.
7.05pm. The non-major party vote is heavily right-of-centre, so Labor would want to be ahead on the primary vote, and I’m projecting that they won’t be.
7.04pm. Serpentine-Jarrahdale booth added, with nearly 1000 votes, and the primary swing vote against Labor is looking big enough now to be alarming for them. Still nothing on two-party preferred though.
6.59pm. I’m having trouble finding the error I thought I must be making, so it may just be a case of me and Antony doing things differently, and it generally being too early to tell.
6.53pm. It seems my projections are going awry, as Antony Green calculates a 7.6% primary vote swing to Liberal and minus 14.6% from Labor.
6.50pm. Another two smallish booths in: Armadale Primary and Bruno Gianetti Hall. Still looking close, but with a high combined non-major party vote, a lot will depend on preference flows we don’t know anything about yet.
6.42pm. Karragullen District Hall’s 234 votes in: Liberals up 3.3% on the primary vote, Labor down 7.2%. This suggests a very close result, but it is of course an extremely small booth.
6.32pm. I can’t quite get the formatting right, but my projections of the results can be found here. Unusually, we have 68 pre-poll votes in before anything else, which are impossible to booth-match. For what it’s worth, 28 of them are for Liberal and 19 for Labor.
6pm. Polls have closed. I will hopefully have tables presenting booth projected results by the time the first results are, which I’m guessing should be in about an hour, but I have a great many kinks to iron out before that can happen.
From all the texts and phonecalls and emails I got there must be about 50000 labor people there today, hopefully there are a few who send you a note or post to this thread before they are 8 standard drinks plus to the wind.
Write up from the ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-23/plenty-riding-on-darling-range-by-election-for-mcgowan-and-nahan/9899094
Tonight might be an indication of whether the Libs are still on the nose in WA, federal implications too maybe for the seats of Swan and Hasluck and Pearce
Evan
We should run a sweep on who will be first to declare the poll in Darling Range has no federal implications.
” have a great many kinks to iron out”
But William, its them that makes you special to us……. 🙂
Looks like Reachtel ess wrong. As originally expected Libs will likely win.
Hmmm 5.5% swing to Labor federally in WA? Maybe not on tonight’s figures.
Hmmm,
Maybe there is a difference between state and federal issues.
Hmmm,
Maybe having a member who faked his CV is a factor peculiar to this by-election.
Hmm,
Maybe I shouldn’t respond to trolls.
Looks like 58-42 in favour of LNP.
Predictable result – but disappointing considering the unexpected polling. I was hoping against hope that Labor would really be able to pull off what would have been a particularly memorable upset in the circumstances.
“The non-major party vote is heavily right-of-centre” Yes, but we know that some of the people who vote for those odd grumpy-right parties still give a preference to Labor ahead of the “Liberals”. Not that I’m expecting enough will for Labor to win, but the distributions will be interesting to watch. And ESJ, note Ross’s remark – “no federal implications”
There probably would have been federal implications if the Libs had a bad result.
This is a very bad result for WA Labor.
Thank you Barry.
SM
Bad result for Reachtel
Of no surprise Labor is getting a real kicking in Mundaring, something – due to the careless/incompetence/or what ever of Labor – for which the voters of Mundaring are entitled to belt Labor.
However, as at not so long ago, there is nothing in the Liberal vote for them to cheer in the street on any kind of recovery in their overall position. Sure, it looks at this point the Liberals might win the seat but to think this is any kind of endorsement of the good work the Liberals are doing should be matched by looking at how much Labor is bleeding to anyone but the Liberals. However, if this result makes the Federal Liberals sleep a little better in their beds, then more fool them.
It will be interesting to see the actual turn out tonight. In addition neither the Greens nor ON have much to cheer about.
So much for seat-only opinion polls and their ability to get anywhere near the mark……………………….
The Liberals have won the Darling Range by-election in Western Australia, regaining the seat vacated by former Labor-turned-independent MP Barry Urban, ABC election analyst Antony Green says.
After this result can’t trust any seat poll. Though before the seat poll this is the sort of result we would have expected. Lesson learned.
I wonder what the turnout will be like.
Anyone with knowledge in the matter care to clarify if lower by-election turnouts hurt ALP/Greens worse than Liberals due to demographics? (ie, old people rocking up to vote reliably)
I disagree about this being a “bad result for Labor”. It is one they should have anticipated and deserve. Quite baldly, they allowed a charlatan to stand as a representative for them at the main election. They then did not look at the credentials of the replacement candidate carefully enough and then, expect the electorate to just forget all this and vote for another Labor candidate. This is tantamount to endorsing stupidity. However, for those “over East” to suggest this means something important in the Federal sphere – forget it. This election is merely the locals sending a loud and clear message to the Premier that he has to be on top of this kind of stuff and it must not happen again.
I put in my time to help and am very happy for alyissa and the libs glen Hodda North Yunderup a member Pinjarra branch
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#darlingrange rest of the pre-poll vote is now in and the margin has narrowed but Liberals still win, preference count results are ALP 46.7%, LIB 53.3 – results at
Further evidence that seat-specific polls mean absolutely nothing in an Australian context – especially for state elections. Maybe one day the pollsters will figure out how to do this, but they haven’t yet. (I begin to suspect that the handful they’ve got right – Batman, for instance – are just broken clock situations. After this I would be deeply sceptical of all the federal by-election polls, even including Mayo.)
Tricot,
Well said. I wouldn’t vote for anyone but Labor, but it’s easy to see why a lot of people would in this by-election. Labor have been farcical. I don’t think a lot can be extrapolated from the result.
Having said that, I was tempted to vote for Russell Goodrick – because he told me so!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcyyG3Y3HIg
Any comment reading this result as a sign of support rising for the Federal Libs reads as desperately as those that were claiming that heavy swings against the Coalition in NSW by-elections back in 2012 were a sign that support was flooding back for Gillard.
The only state by-election in my recent memory that had deeper results was the 2014 Fisher SA by-election (and similarly the one in Davenport not long after) – as it (and the Davenport one) saw a swing towards the Labor Government, rather than the more-usual away from it. This was seen as an example of how toxic Abbott was at the time (although it might have just been a vote for stability as well.)
I can’t comment on the drama regarding the former MP or anything else because I don’t know enough about it and don’t really care because it’s a state by-election.
“Hmmm 5.5% swing to Labor federally in WA? Maybe not on tonight’s figures.”… A state by-election where the state Government always gets a swing against… and you are desperately drawing Federal conclusions?…. Ha, ha, ha!
SilentMajority @ #13 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 8:13 pm
How? It reduces their majority from 41 out of 59 seats to 40/59. I wouldn’t be too worried if I was Mark McGowan. Concerned perhaps, but not worried.
Tricot @ #18 Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 – 8:25 pm
Hear, hear. An own goal by Labor.
I am happy to wait for the apologies from those who claimed the LNP were going to lose and told me I didn’t know what I was talking about.