Category: Federal Election 2013

The AEC reports the count in Fairfax has ended with Clive Palmer 36 votes in front of Liberal National Party candidate Ted O’Brien. The scrutiny progress table still lists 107 pre-polls and seven postals as awaiting processing, but I guess these are the ones that have been “disallowed” (the numbers are about right in each case). Admitted to the count today were 304 pre-polls, which broke 178-126 to O’Brien, and 147 postals, which broke 85-62, in each case in line with the general trend of the pre-poll and postal count. That was only sufficient to chip 75 votes away from Palmer’s 111-vote margin from last night.

Assuming that result is not overturned on a recount, I would say this definitively settles the line-up of the new House of Representatives: 90 seats to the Coalition (58 Liberal, 22 Liberal National, nine Nationals and one Country Liberal), 55 to Labor, one each for the Greens, Katter’s Australian Party and the Palmer United Party, and two independents.

The other half of my review of electorate results of interest, with numbers and swings cited for the sake of consistency on the basis of “ordinary” polling booth votes.

Victoria

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	42.6	+3.1	42.7	
Labor		35.3	-8.2	34.6		
Greens		10.5	-1.7	10.9
Palmer United	3.7
Others		7.9

Two-party preferred

Coalition	49.7	+5.4	50.1
Labor		50.3	-5.4	49.9

Bendigo. A 7.9% swing following the retirement of sitting member Steve Gibbons returned Bendigo to a marginal zone from which it had emerged with successive strong swings to Labor in 2007 and 2010.

Bruce. Alan Griffin’s eastern Melbourne seat is now marginal after a swing to the Liberals of 6.2% cut deep into his existing 7.7% margin.

Corangamite. Darren Cheeseman’s two-term hold on Corangamite was ended by a swing well in line with the statewide average, hitting him 8.0% on the primary vote and 4.4% on two-party preferred.

Gellibrand. It appears Nicola Roxon was well liked by her constituents, as the Labor primary vote in Gellibrand fell 12.6% upon her retirement, the second highest drop in the primary vote for Labor in Victoria. That translated into an ultimately harmless 7.6% swing on two-party preferred.

Indi. Support for Cathy McGowan has been slightly stronger in Wangaratta and Wodonga, which both broke about 54-46 her way, than in the rural centres, which were collectively at about 50-50.

Jagajaga. Jenny Macklin copped Labor’s second highest two-party swing in Melbourne, reducing her 11.1% margin by 8.3%.

La Trobe. Jason Wood returns to parliament after easily accounting for Labor member Laura Smyth’s 1.7% margin with a 5.8% swing, which was well in line with the Melbourne average.

Lalor. The loss of Julia Gillard was keenly felt in Lalor, an 18.6% drop in the primary vote being Labor’s worst in Victoria. Much of it spread across a crowded field of minor contenders, whose preferences limited the two-party swing to 10.0%.

Mallee. The Nationals comfortably retained a seat they might have feared losing to the Liberals with the retirement of veteran member John Forrest. Their candidate Andrew Broad had 39.5% of the ordinary vote to 27.0% for Liberal candidate Chris Crewther, and on present counting holds a lead of 9.9% after preferences. The only ordinary polling booths won by Crewther were the six in Mildura and the two in Stawell.

McEwen. The swing that is imperilling Rob Mitchell was notably fuelled by swings of around 12% in the Sunbury and Craigieburn booths, which were newly added to the electorate. Swings elsewhere were substantial, but generally well below the 9.2% margin.

McMillan. Russell Broadbent picked up an 8.0% swing, part of what looks an ongoing trend away from Labor in West Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley.

Melbourne. The Liberal preference switch bit deep into the Greens’ two-party preferred vote, with Adam Bandt’s overall preference share shriking from 77.2% in 2010 to 40.4%. Had that applied on the 2010 numbers, Bandt would have fallen 3.4% short. On that basis, the current 4.9% margin after preferences can be seen as an 8.3% swing, although Bandt’s margin has in fact been reduced by 1.0%. Bandt picked up 7.2% on the primary vote amid a crowded field, for which Labor made way by dropping 10.9%.

Western Australia

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	51.1	0.4	51.0
Labor		29.1	-2.5	28.7		
Greens		9.6	-3.2	10.0
Palmer United	5.4
Others		4.8

Two-party preferred

Coalition	57.1	+0.9	57.3
Labor		42.9	-0.9	42.7

Brand. Gary Gray held firm amid a status quo result for Labor in WA, his margin of 3.3% more than enough buffer for a 1.1% swing. Both Labor and Liberal were down fractionally on the primary vote, the big movers being the Greens, down more than half to 7.1%, and the Palmer United Party on 7.4%.

Canning. Canning was one of only two mainland seats to record a double-digit two-party swings against Labor, the other being Lalor. This is clearly a correction after Alannah MacTiernan outperformed the state result by 5% when she ran in 2010. This time the Labor vote was down 14.8%, with Liberal member Don Randall up 6.4%.

Durack. It was a disappointing election for the WA Nationals, who among other things were unable to snare the northern regional seat of Durack which had been vacated by retiring Liberal member Barry Haase. The party’s candidate Shane van Styn was outpolled by Liberal candidate Melissa Price 37.8% to 23.6% on the primary vote, and has on current indications fallen 4.2% short after receiving 57.4% of preferences. In this he was inhibited by Labor’s decision to put the Nationals last, which the experience of O’Connor suggests cut the overall Nationals preference share by about 10%. That being so, the Labor preference decision would have exactly accounted for the final margin.

Hasluck. Amid what was only a slight statewide swing off a high base, Liberal sophomore Ken Wyatt landed a handy 4.3% buffer to what had been a precarious 0.6% margin.

O’Connor. Tony Crook’s retirement combined with Labor’s preference decision ended the toehold the WA Nationals gained in the House of Representatives, the election of Crook having ended a drought going back to 1974. The primary votes were not greatly changed on 2010, when Crook was outpolled by Wilson Tuckey 38.4% to 28.8% on the primary vote before emerging 3.6% ahead after preferences. The biggest changes were that the Nationals were down 3.3% to 25.6% and the Palmer United Party scored 4.4%. The decisive factor was a drop in the Nationals’ share of preferences from 75.3% to 66.0%, landing Nationals candidate Chub Witham 1.0% short of Liberal candidate Rick Wilson.

South Australia

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	44.8	+4.8	45.1
Labor		36.2	-5.1	35.6		
Greens		8.0	-3.8	8.2
Palmer United	3.8
Others		7.2

Two-party preferred

Coalition	52.2	+5.7	52.6
Labor		47.8	-5.7	47.4

Boothby. The run of five successive swings against Andrew Southcott at elections going back to 1996 came to an emphatic end as Labor directed its resources elsewhere. Southcott was up 5.9% on the primary vote and 7.3% on two-party preferred.

Hindmarsh. The South Australian swing hit Labor hardest where they needed it least, an 8.2% swing handily accounting for Steve Georganas’s 6.1% margin in the most marginal of their six seats. Labor’s fortunes in Hindmarsh have changed since Georganas won it for them at the 2004 election, at which time Kingston, Makin and Wakefield were Liberal seats on respective margins of 0.1%, 0.9% and 0.7%. Those seats have stayed with Labor since falling to them in 2007, currently being held by respective margins of 9.7%, 5.4% and 3.1%.

Wakefield. After talk that Nick Champion might be troubled as a result of job cuts at Holden’s Elizabeth plant, he retained a 3.1% margin in the face of a 7.1% swing, which was slightly higher than the statewide result of 5.8%.

Tasmania

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	40.2	+6.9	40.5
Labor		35.1	-9.3	34.7		
Greens		8.1	-8.5	8.3
Palmer United	6.2
Others		10.4

Two-party preferred

Coalition	51.6	+9.4	51.2
Labor		48.4	-9.4	48.8

Bass and Braddon moved very closely in tandem, with two-party swings of 10.9% and 10.3% that were both driven by Labor primary vote collapses at around the double-digit mark, and increases in the Liberal vote of around 8%. Lyons fell with a bigger swing off a lower base, the margin of 12.3% accounted for by a 14.0% swing with primary votes shifts well into double digits for both parties. However, it was a different story in the south of the state, with Julie Collins holding on to a 4.9% margin in Franklin after a relatively benign 5.9% swing. In Denison, Andrew Wilkie’s vote was up from 21.3% to 38.3%, with Labor (down 10.8% to 24.5%) and the Greens (down 11.3% to 7.7%) making way. The Liberals held steady, but nonetheless remained slightly below Labor and sure to remain in third place after distribution of Greens preferences.

Australian Capital Territory

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	34.5	-0.1	34.7
Labor		43.4	-2.1	42.9		
Greens		13.0	-5.8	13.4
Palmer United	2.8
Others		6.3

Two-party preferred

Coalition	40.0	+1.9	40.2
Labor		60.0	-1.9	59.8

With only a subdued swing against Labor, the outstanding feature of the result appears to be a slump in the Greens vote, down 6.0% in Canberra and 5.8% in Fraser. However, this can largely be put down to greater competition for the minor party vote. The 2010 election saw only three candidates nominate in Canberra and four in Fraser (the Secular Party together with the usual three), but this time there were six and eight seats respectively. A clearer picture is presented by the Senate, where the Greens vote was down 4.1% to 18.8% despite the high-profile candidacy of Simon Sheikh, while Labor fell 6.0% to 34.8%. Both major parties were just clear of a quota.

What follows is a brief overview of the results in electorates I felt worth commenting on for one reason or another, together with projections of state vote shares based on ordinary votes results (which are not quite fully accounted for in the count, but close enough to it) and the extent to which postals, pre-polls and absent votes shifted the totals in 2010. New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory are covered herein, with the others to follow.

New South Wales

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	47.3	+2.6	47.2
Labor		34.9	-2.8	34.5
Greens		7.7	-2.2	8.1
Palmer United	4.3
Others		5.8

Two-party preferred

Coalition	54.2	+3.2	54.3
Labor		45.8	-3.2	45.7

Banks. The 3.3% swing which ousted Daryl Melham was almost exactly equal to the state total, which followed an 8.9% swing in 2010. An increase in the number of candidates from four to nine restricted the Liberal primary vote gain to 1.7% and contributed to a halving of the Greens vote, down from 9.6% to 4.7%.

Barton. The seat vacated by former Attorney-General Robert McClelland is going down to the wire, the 6.9% margin exactly matched by the swing on ordinary votes. This was the second biggest swing against Labor in Sydney after Macquarie. Barton was another seat that witnessed a dramatic proliferation of candidates, from three to eight, with the five minor party and independent newcomers collectively drawing 11.3%. The Liberals nonetheless increased their primary vote slightly, the balance coming off Labor and the Greens.

Blaxland. Reports on the eve of the election suggested Labor had grave fears for Jason Clare’s hold on Paul Keating’s old seat, despite its 12.2% margin. This proved entirely unfounded, with Labor up 5.4% on the primary vote and holding steady on two-party preferred.

Charlton. For some reason, the seat vacated by Greg Combet gave the Palmer United Party what was comfortably its highest vote in New South Wales at 11.3% (UPDATE: Frickeg in comments reminds me the belated disendorsement of the Liberal candidate probably had something to do with it). The party’s second best showing in the state was 7.8% in neighbouring Hunter. That aside, Combet’s departure did not cause any disturbance to Labor, the two-party swing being slightly below the state average.

Dobell. Craig Thomson managed 4.0%, which was at least better than Peter Slipper and contributed to a double-digit drop in the Labor primary vote, their worst such result in the state. Also contributing was former test cricketer Nathan Bracken, running as an independent with the backing of John Singleton, who managed 8.3%. The Liberal primary vote was up slightly, and its 5.9% swing on two-party preferred adequate to account for the 5.5% margin.

Eden-Monaro. Mike Kelly appeared to be well placed early in the count, but the larger and later reporting booths, including those in Queanbeyan, tended to swing more heavily. Kelly is presently sitting on a swing of 4.8%, enough to account for his 4.4% margin barring late count peculiarities and maintain Eden-Monaro’s cherished bellwether record. This was higher than the state average, part of a pattern in which swings in the state’s regions were actually slightly higher than in Sydney, contrary to all expectations.

Fowler. After all the hype about Labor’s looming collapse in western Sydney, a seat in that very area produced the most anomalous swing of the election in Labor’s favour. The 9.0% swing to Chris Hayes was 12.2% above the statewide par for Labor, and was fuelled by an 11.2% drop in the Liberal primary vote and swings approaching 20% in Cabramatta, the very area the Liberals had hoped to target by picking a Vietnamese candidate in Andrew Nguyen. However, look at the seat’s behaviour over longer range suggests this to have been a correction after an anomalous result in 2010, when Liberal candidate Thomas Dang slashed the Labor margin by 13.8% and picked up swings ranging from 16.5% to 23.1% in the Cambramatta booths.

Gilmore. The south coast seat was one of three in New South Wales to swing to Labor, presumably on account of the retirement of long-serving Liberal member Joanna Gash. Her successor, Ann Sudmalis, has emerged with 2.6% remaining of a 5.3% margin.

Grayndler. The Greens vote fell only modestly, by 1.2% to 22.8%, but it looks enough to have cost them a second place they attained for the first time in 2010. With primary votes generally fairly static, the change in Liberal preferencing policy would presumably have inflicted a hefty two-party swing if they had made the final count.

Hunter. Joel Fitzgibbon was down 10.1% on the primary vote, and while this was partly on account of the Palmer United Party’s second best performance in the state, he also suffered Labor’s biggest two-party swing in the state at 8.9%.

Kingsford Smith. One of a number of pieces of saved furniture for Labor in Sydney, Kingsford Smith turned in a largely status quo result in Peter Garrett’s absence, outgoing Senator Matt Thistlethwaite easily defending a 5.2% margin against a swing of 1.9%.

Lindsay. The swing that unseated David Bradbury was slightly on the high side for Sydney at 3.5%, more than accounting for a margin of 1.1% without meeting the more fevered expectations of a western Sydney disaster.

Macarthur. Liberal sophomore Russell Matheson picked up the second biggest two-party Coalition swing in New South Wales, up 6.8% on the primary vote and 8.4% on two-party preferred.

Page. The expectation that Labor would perform better in regional New South Wales than in Sydney was most strikingly defied in Page, where Janelle Saffin unexpectedly fell victim to a 7.2% swing.

Parramatta. Julie Owens’ seat produced a fairly typical result for Sydney in swinging 3.4% to the Liberals, which hasn’t been enough to account for the 4.4% margin. (UPDATE: I speak too soon. In keeping with a general trend of late counting away from Labor, postal votes are flowing heavily to the Liberals and putting Owens at very serious risk.)

Robertson. As expected, the seat Deborah O’Neill did well to retain in 2010 with a margin of 1.0% was an early election night casualty for Labor, the swing of 4.0% being perfectly typical for non-metropolitan New South Wales.

Throsby. Gary “Angry” Anderson managed 10.5% as candidate of the Nationals, nearly doubling the party’s vote from 2010 despite the number of candidates being up from five to 11. The Greens conversely were well down, by 6.5% to 5.3%.

Werriwa. Frequently written off during the campaign, Laurie Ferguson is set to retain about 2.2% of his 6.8% margin from 2010.

Queensland

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	45.3	-1.9	45.5
Labor		30.1	-3.9	29.7
Greens		6.1	-4.7	6.2
Palmer United	11.3
Others		7.2

Two-party preferred

Coalition	56.0	+1.1	56.3
Labor		44.0	-1.1	43.7

Blair. One Labor MP with good cause to feel glad about Kevin Rudd’s return was Shayne Neumann, who picked up a 1.4% two-party swing and held firm on the primary vote in the face of 12.8% vote for the Palmer United Party. Here as elsewhere in Queensland, the Greens crashed in the absence of the Kevin Rudd protest vote in 2010, dropping 6.9% to 4.2%.

Brisbane. While Labor had much to be relieved about in Queensland, its high hopes for recovering Brisbane were not realised, with Liberal National Party member Teresa Gamabaro up 1.8% on the primary vote, Labor steady. A 6.9% drop in the Greens vote to 14.3%, coming off Andrew Bartlett’s high-profile campaign in 2010, produced a significantly weaker flow of preferences to Labor.

Capricornia. The central Queensland seat vacated by Kirsten Livermore is going down to the wire after a heavy 8.9% drop in the Labor primary vote. This was mostly down to the competition from the Palmer and Katter parties, the former outscoring the latter 7.9% to 5.3%. With the Liberal National Party vote little changed, Labor suffered a 4.4% swing on ordinary votes off a margin of 4.6%.

Fairfax. Clive Palmer seems to be fighting to hold on to a 1411 against a strong trend in late counting towards Liberal National Party candidate Ted O’Brien. However, O’Brien’s current vote count looks to have been inflated by a discrepancy you can read about here. As things stand, the key to Palmer’s potential victory is his clear success in outpolling Labor 27.3% to 18.1% on ordinary votes, with LNP candidate Ted O’Brien’s 41.0% below the safety zone with Labor and Greens preferences flowing strongly against him.

Fisher. With Palmer United Party candidate Bill Schoch apparently primed to overtake Labor on preferences, despite trailing them 21.0% to 18.3% on the primary vote, Mal Brough’s 43.8% share of the vote was an uncomfortably long distance from the 50% mark. Nonetheless, Brough appears to be gaining about a quarter of the overall preferences on offer, enough to get him over the line with a few per cent to spare.

Griffith. Kevin Rudd suffered Labor’s equal biggest swing in Queensland of 5.2%, with Bill Glasson’s 5.9% lift on the primary vote the second highest achieved by an LNP candidate.

Kennedy. Bob Katter emerged a big loser of election night with a 17.1% slump in his primary vote, reducing him to 29.5%. Liberal National Party candidate Noeline Ikin was the beneficiary of a 14.0% spike that put her well in front on the primary vote count with 40.6%, but preferences are flowing solidly enough to Katter to leave him with a margin slightly below 3%.

Leichhardt. There was strong movement to Labor in Aboriginal communities, doubtless reflecting the background of Labor candidate Billy Gordon. This briefly created the illusion of a potential Labor victory as the first booth-matched results came through on election night, but that was negated by a strong performance by LNP member Warren Entsch in Cairns and the electorate’s rural areas.

Lilley. The 1.6% swing against Wayne Swan was well in line with the statewide norm, and if anything a little above it. Given the pre-election publicity though, Swan’s success in retaining almost all of his 2010 primary vote was among the results that lifted Labor’s spirits on an otherwise grim evening.

Petrie. Kevin Rudd’s election night boast of having defended all of Labor’s Queensland seats to the contrary, it appears that Yvette d’Ath has been unseated by a swing of 3.0% on the ordinary votes, compared with her pre-election margin of 2.5%.

Northern Territory

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	41.2	+0.8	41.6
Labor		38.3	-0.2	37.7
Greens		7.7	-5.0	7.9
Palmer United	4.6
Others		8.2

Two-party preferred

Coalition	49.7	+0.9	50.1
Labor		50.3	-0.9	49.9

Lingiari. As usual, swings in the extra-Darwin Northern Territory electorate were all over the shop, the general picture being of a slight swing to Labor in remote communities blunting the swing against Labor to 2.7%, short of Warren Snowdon’s 3.7% margin. This followed a 2010 result which delivered huge swings to the Country Liberal Party in remote communities but partly balanced them out with strong swings to Labor in the major centre, specifically Alice Springs.

Solomon. Natasha Griggs, who unseated Labor’s Damien Hale in 2010, notably failed to enjoy a sophomore surge, Solomon delivering a rare 0.7% swing to Labor to reduce the CLP margin to 0.9%.

Time for a new thread, so here’s some very scattered thoughts that it occurs to me to share at this late hour:

• I had a piece on the Senate result in Crikey yesterday, and have been keeping a low profile on Poll Bludger in part because I’ve been busy fielding inquiries from media outlets eager to hear an election wonk’s take on the whole affair. If you’d like to comment on the progress of late counting in the Senate I’d encourage you to do so on the dedicated thread, or at least re-paste your comments there after leaving them on this one.

• I’d also like to encourage those with particular insights to offer on late counting in close lower house seats to share the love in the relevant comments threads, which can serve as useful clearing houses for information for those of us trying to keep up. Note that these posts can be accessed through links near the top of the sidebar.

• So what the hell happened in Fowler? There was, as we know, a much milder swing against Labor in western Sydney than media hype and certain local opinion polls had primed us for. However, that scarcely explains the thumping 8.8% swing enjoyed by Labor journeyman Chris Hayes. What presumably does explain it is Liberal candidate Andrew Nguyen, chosen by the party with a view to snaring the Vietnamese vote in Cabramatta, who suffered swings approaching 20% in that very area. As to what Vietnamese voters might have known about Nguyen that the Liberal Party did not, I cannot even speculate. However, it won’t be the only question the party has to ask itself about its candidate selection processes in New South Wales, for the second election in a row.

• It wasn’t a very good election for Bob Katter, who failed in his bid to bring new allies to Canberra and had his seemingly impregnable hold on Kennedy cut to the bone. One reason of course was that he was squeezed out by Clive Palmer (with due apologies for the unattractiveness of that image). However, another was very likely a preference deal he cut with Labor which in the event did neither party any good. I would also observe that this is not Katter’s first failed attempt at empire-building. At the 2004 Queensland state election, Katter organised an alliance of independents with a view to activating discontent over sugar industry policy, and the only one to poll a substantial share of the vote had done nearly as well without Katter’s help at the previous election. Even the much-touted successes of Katter’s Australian Party at last year’s Queensland election involved it a) absorbing probably transient protest votes which formed part of the huge swing against Labor, and b) electing two members who could just easily have won their seats as independents. Katter’s constituency would evidently prefer that he stick to being an independent local member, and limit his broader ambitious to bequeathing the family firm to his son.

• As well as witnessing an explosion in the micro-party vote, the election has at the very least seen the rate of informal voting maintain the peak scaled at the 2010 election. Limiting it to ordinary election day votes to ensure we’re comparing apples with apples (pre-poll and postal voters being generally more motivated and hence less prone to informal voting), the informal vote rate has progressed from 4.18% to 5.82% to 5.92%. Presumably the Australian Electoral Commission will be conducting a ballot paper study to let us know how much this is down to proliferating candidate numbers leading to inadvertent mistakes, and how much to disaffection leading to deliberate spoilage of ballot papers.

• If I do say so myself, my BludgerTrack poll aggregate performed rather well. The Coalition’s two-party preferred vote is at 53.15% on current counting, which is likely to edge up towards the projected 53.5% as the remaining votes come in. Better yet, there’s a good chance the state seat projections will prove to have been exactly correct, allowing for the fact that the model did not accommodate non-major party outcomes such as the possible wins for Clive Palmer in Fairfax and Cathy McGowan in Indi. No doubt this is partly down to luck. There was some imprecision on the primary vote, with the Coalition about a point too low and the Greens about a point too high (though the model in fact scaled down the latter from the pollsters’ published results), with the circle being squared by a preference allocation method that proved over-favourable to the Coalition, based as it was on the 2010 election result (although I’m pretty sure it still performed better than a method based on respondent allocation would have done).

Nonetheless, the model was certainly successful enough to confirm the wisdom of its basic premise that the best way to read the campaign horse race is to a) only pay attention to large-scale polling, i.e. national and state-level results, b) adjust pollsters for bias according to their past performance where sufficient observations are available from recent history, c) instead use the pollster’s deviation from the aggregated poll trend where sufficient observations are not available, and d) weight the results of each pollster according to how historically accurate/consistent with the trend they have been. As to the performance of the polls themselves, I’ll have a lot more to say about that when all the votes are in. In the meantime, here’s a broad brush overview from Matthew Knott at Crikey.

Friday 3pm. Absents have now been wrapped up: 298 were disallowed, and the last 105 counted have broken 59-46 to Palmer, increasing his lead from 98 to 111. Still to be processed are 415 pre-polls and 155 postals, of which Ted O’Brien would need nearly 60%. However, the comment from Julian T below suggests that a number of the pre-polls will likewise be disallowed, and have been left out of the count to this point pending a final determination on the matter. If that’s so, Palmer looks to have it wrapped up, pending what might show up on a recount.

Thursday 5pm. The race that’s stopping the nation has today seen the addition only of 201 provisionals, which were the biggest imponderable of the remaining count. It turns out that they have broken very handily to Clive Palmer, 148-53, boosting his lead from three to 98. Still outstanding: about 650 absents and as many pre-polls, and about 150 postals. If they break as such votes have until now, the LNP will only be able to carve about 50 votes out of Palmer’s lead. UPDATE: Julian T in comments observes that a number of the supposedly outstanding pre-polls and absents will not in fact make it into account by virtue of being “disallowed”, as they involve voters submitting votes for Fairfax when they actually turned out to be enrolled elsewhere in Queensland. Ballots from such voters can be admitted for the Senate, but not the House. That likely makes the hill very difficult for Ted O’Brien to climb.

Wednesday 4pm. Clive Palmer lost the lead earlier today but at the time or writing has recovered it – by three votes. Troublingly for Palmer (assuming he does actually want to win), a batch of 395 absents were less good for him than those admitted previously, going 52.6-47.3 his way against a grand total of 56.6-43.4. By contrast, 474 pre-polls have maintained their trend of going 58-42 against him. Still to come: about 650 absents, on which he would hope to gain maybe 80; 550 pre-polls, on which he should lose them again; a trickle of postals (100, perhaps) that would then be likely to put him behind; and about 200 provisionals which will do who-knows-what.

Tuesday 6pm. From 502 on the weekend to 362 yesterday, Clive Palmer’s lead has now worn down to 65 after today’s counting of pre-polls went 830-588 against him and postals went 436-378. However, the postals were somewhat less bad for him than previous batches, and there’s now very few of them left. The bulk of the outstanding vote consists of about 1000 absents and pre-polls each, which appear likely to cancel each other out with the former going 57.0-43.0 for Palmer and the latter going 57.5-42.5 against. There are also likely to be about 200 provisional votes, which are an unknown quantity. Assuming the latter go 50-50, I’m currently projecting Palmer to win by 34 votes.

Monday 7:30pm. The AEC explains the Coolum Beach anomaly. Clive Palmer sought a Federal Court injunction today to have counting suspended, though to what end I’m not quite sure. As the AEC notes, the normal practice would be to petition the Court of Disputed Returns. The court has so far reserved its decision.

Monday 7pm. It appears the Coolum Beach PPVC mystery has finally been resolved. The votes for that booth had incorrectly been entered for the Buderim PPVC and vice-versa, and only now has the error been corrected. Since there are still no Senate votes recorded for Buderim PPVC, my earlier scatterplot did not show up a corresponding error for that booth. While it doesn’t look like there will be salvation for Clive Palmer in the form an uncovered vote count anomaly, he has gained ground with the addition of 1291 absent votes which continue to favour him quite strongly, in this case breaking 722-569 his way and giving his faltering lead a badly needed boost from 209 to 362.

Monday 4pm. Looks to be going right down to the wire, with another 1223 postal votes slashing Palmer’s lead by 293 to 209. There remain to come 2400 absents and a similar number of pre-polls, which have respectively been heavily favouring Palmer and O’Brien, along with maybe 500 postals which have been favouring O’Brien 62-38. My projection of where this is headed leaves nothing in it. In other news, Clive Palmer has today been raising the issue of the Coolum Beach PPVC discrepancy, though not in a way that might inspire the casual observer with confidence in his claims.

Saturday 8pm. Another 1306 pre-polls have gone badly for Clive Palmer, favouring Ted O’Brien 762-544 and cutting Palmer’s lead from 718 to 502. My projection of the share of the outstanding 7200 or so votes needed by O’Brien is down to 53.5% (assuming once again that nothing comes of this Coolum Beach PPVC anomaly).

Friday 3pm. Another 1792 postals have been just as favourable to Ted O’Brien as earlier batches, cutting 414 into a lead for Palmer that now stands at 718. There should be a bit over 2000 to come, which should further cut into Palmer’s lead by about 550. That leaves the result well and truly down to absents and pre-polls, the likely behaviour of which is a bit of a mystery at this stage. As to the apparent Coolum Beach anomaly, the commenter who raised the matter has received what to my mind is an unsatisfactory response from an AEC worker who appears not to have properly grasped the issue.

Thursday evening. Leaving aside the Coolum Beach PPVC issue, which is yet to acquire a life independent of this website, postals are flowing heavily enough to LNP to suggest an extremely close result. The addition of 2363 have cut 611 votes from Palmer’s lead, and could potentially take out a further 1000 of the remaining 1132 if there are indeed 4000 of them outstanding and they continue to behave like the previous batch. However, Palmer has done much better out of 855 absents, on which he has gained 79 votes and of which there are about 2000 more to come. There are also around 2000 pre-polls, which look likely to favour the LNP.

Wednesday evening. Michal Klaus in comments notes that the Coolum Beach pre-poll voting centre booth, the addition of which did so much to swing the count in Ted O’Brien’s favour, “could be one of the most extreme outliers anywhere in Australia”. He’s not wrong:

As the above chart clearly shows, the 55.87% primary vote recorded for Ted O’Brien at the booth is entirely out of whack with its 36.27% Senate vote for the Liberal National Party. There are also 575 more votes recorded there for the House than the Senate. Clearly there is an Indi-style error waiting to be uncovered here, either in relation to the House or the Senate vote. Given there are ballpark similarities between the Coolum booths for the Senate and a strong discrepancy with Coolum Beach PPVC on the House numbers, it seems safe to assume that the error is with the House results, and that Ted O’Brien’s tally is consequently higher than it should be. To shift the Coolum Beach PPVC data point to where it should be in the above chart, about 1000 votes need to be deducted from O’Brien’s total.

Wednesday 5pm. The count continues to trend away from Clive Palmer overall, who perhaps faces a further headache from the yet-to-report “BLV Fairfax” pre-poll voting centre in Maroochydore. If it’s anything like the other PPVCs in Maroochydore, it could cost Palmer as much as 1000 votes of a lead which currently sits at 1664 (UPDATE: LTEP notes in comments that the BLV booths in fact do very limited business). Other late counting has been a mixed bag, with absent votes favouring Palmer 827-565, but pre-polls going 381-328 the other way. The total number of such votes should perhaps be around 4500 and 2500, and there should further be about 5000 postals, none of which have been counted yet. So a fair bit of life in this one yet.

Election night. I don’t believe Antony’s projection of 50.9% to Clive Palmer is based on anything other than a guesstimate as to preferences. It’s still clearly the best thing available, but the 0.9% figure would be well within its margin of error. I’m guessing the AEC will conduct a preference throw in fairly short order that will put the issue beyond doubt one way or the other.

Wednesday 4pm. Another 69 absents, 56 provisionals, 87 pre-polls and 70 postals have trickled, making little difference to a Cathy McGowan lead that currently stands at 395. The bigger news is that Sophie Mirabella has conceded defeat.

Tuesday 6pm. A variety of additions to the count today – 132 absents, 116 pre-polls and even 132 provisionals – which have chipped 18 votes from McGowan’s lead, now at 387. Mirabella still needs the dwindling stock of outstanding votes, now at around 1750, to break 60-40 her way.

Monday 4pm. Another 1611 pre-polls have favoured Mirabella 899-712, but they’ve been partly negated by 577 absents which continue to favour McGowan, this time by 327-250. Mirabella’s net rate of gain is less than what she needs, putting her on course for defeat by about 400 votes.

Sunday 7pm. Pre-polls are continuing to heavily favour Mirabella, a batch of 1431 breaking 842-589 her way. This is a ratio of 59-41 in a situation where 57-43 should be sufficient to win her the seat. However, the remaining votes include at least 1000 absent as well as 2000 pre-poll votes, and those have been favouring McGowan. A further 971 of the dwindling stock of postal votes was slightly below par for Mirabella in breaking only 520-421 her way.

Saturday 8pm. Along with some rechecking, just 475 absents added to the count today and they’re continuing to favour McGowan, breaking 252-223 her way and putting her lead at 837. My projection of the share of the outstanding vote Mirabella will need is up from 56.3% to 57.1%.

Friday 6pm. The first 930 absent votes have been added and are good news for Cathy McGowan, adding 98 to her lead. Postals continue to flow solidly to Mirabella, a further 1918 boosting her by 290 votes, but there can’t be too many of those left. Her overall deficit is 897 and with about 7000 votes to come, she needs something of a miracle from here.

Friday 3pm. Another 1918 postals have been added and they’ve favoured Mirabella by 290, with McGowan’s lead down to 791. Yesterday’s projection that Mirabella needed about 55% of the outstanding basically still holds. She’s doing slightly better than that on postals, but absents and pre-polls might behave very differently and single one of either has been counted yet.

Thursday evening. The addition of 1930 postal votes has clawed back 318 for Sophie Mirabella after the identification of yesterday’s polling booth error blew out Cathy McGowan’s lead from a bit under 500 to 1471. Still to come are about 2750 postals, 4500 pre-polls, and 2500 absents, which will need to break at least 55-45 Sophie Mirabella’s way. Her share of postal votes so far is 57.6%, but absents and perhaps also pre-polls will presumably be less unlike ordinary votes.

Wednesday 4pm. A sensational development today with the emergence of a counting error at the Wangaratta pre-poll vote centre which was costing Cathy McGowan a bundle of 1000 votes. As David Barry notes in comments, McGowan had hitherto been doing 15% worse in the Wangaratta pre-poll booth than in the ordinary booth vote compared with a more typical 7% at other pre-poll centres, a discrepancy which disappears if 1000 votes are added to McGowan counts. Where McGowan’s lead had dramatically scaled back to 498 votes on latest counting, it can now be regarded as out to 1498, which almost certainly decides the result.

Monday 5pm. All the fixed polling both two-candidate counts are in, giving McGowan a solid looking lead of 24,840 to 23,086. Better modelling of my own in comments variously gives her 50.5% and 50.3% after pre-poll voting centres are added. However, there remains to come the very large number of postals, pre-polls and absents which seem likely to rein that in, the question being by how much. So a fair bit of entertainment left to come, it would appear.

Monday 3.30pm. The AEC is conducting a two-candidate preferred preference count between Mirabella and McGowan, going through the booths in alphabetical order. Since the largest centres in the electorate start with a “W” (Wangaratta and Wodonga), larger towns are unrepresented in the sample so far, which has Mirabella leading McGowan 14850 to 14569. I have attempted to model the relationship between the preference split and a given booth’s combined Labor and Greens preference flow, without a huge amount of success – the relationship is highly significant, but it only explains 24.4% of the variation. For what it’s worth though, the resulting model (preferences to McGowan equal 0.73*0.331x, where x equals the combined Labor and Greens vote) gives McGowan a 690 vote lead, remembering that this doesn’t include postals, pre-poll and absent votes.

Election night. Antony Green has Sophie Mirabella leading Cathy McGowan 29567 to 27880, which is presumably a projection because the AEC has no preference count and will presumably do one today or tomorrow. The primary votes are 44.4% for Mirabella to 32.2% for independent Cathy McGowan, which will be hard to overhaul with the available preferences from Labor (11.3%), the Greens (3.2%) and 9% others.

Tuesday 4pm. If there was any lingering doubt here, it’s been resolved by 1452 pre-polls breaking 861-591 Owens’s way, pushing her lead out to 931. I’m not going to continue following this one.

Monday 4pm. Julie Owens has recovered her footing with the addition of 2340 absent votes which evidently came from a friendlier area than the first batch, breaking 1274-1066 her way and boosting her lead by 208 to 690. Martin Zaiter will need about 57% of roughly 4500 outstanding votes here, and appears unlikely to get them.

Friday 3pm. A better day’s counting so far for Julie Owens, with another 1588 postals biting into her lead by only 20 votes, leaving it at 403.

Thursday evening. As part of a general trend against Labor in late counting, Parramatta is well and truly back on the danger list after 6084 postals cut into Julie Owens’ lead by 642, reducing it to its present 389. Still to come are about 2000 postals, 2000 pre-polls (likely to be better for Labor) and 4500 absents.

Election night. With all ordinary election night results accounted for, the ABC has Labor member Julie Owens suffering a 3.6% swing to Liberal candidate Martin Zaiter, leaving her with a likely sufficient 0.7% margin.

Thursday 5pm. Rob Mitchell’s lead continues to edge slightly upwards, from 312 to 329, with absents continuing to favour him strongly (249-195 in the latest batch) and provisionals finally added (246-189 in his favour), cancelling out a 503-422 split to Petrovich on pre-polls and 129-116 from the latest postals.

Wednesday 4pm. Things continue to trend gently Rob Mitchell’s way, with 967 pre-polls favouring him 495-472 (in line with the overall pre-poll trend) and increasing his lead from 289 to 312. Most of the votes to come are absents and pre-polls (about 1800 and 1400 respectively), which have been slightly favouring him. There should also be maybe 800 postals, which have been going against him but not forcefully enough to suggest he should lose from here.

Tuesday 6pm. McEwen is firming up for Rob Mitchell as the early favourable trend on pre-polls has been maintained with the latest batch, with over half now counted (nearly 3000 with 2500 to spare). In breaking 998-900 Mitchell’s way, they have increased his lead from 192 to 289. Still to come: about 1800 absent votes, which on past form should boost Mitchell a further 200; about 400 or 500, which should give him maybe a few dozen extra votes; perhaps as many as 2500 pre-polls, which appear likely to be no worse than neutral for Mitchell; and maybe 800 postals, which will probably go slightly against him. By my count, the proportion of uncounted votes Donna Petrovich needs is up from 51.3% to 52.6%.

Monday 4pm. A further 932 absents have been just as favourable for Rob Mitchell as the first batch, going 513-419 his way, and he has had an encouraging start on the counting of pre-polls, which have favoured him 497-458. His overall lead has increased from 97 to 199. Projecting the uncounted votes (about 1800 absents, 4300 pre-polls and 800 postals, plus a handful of provisionals) suggests Mitchell should pull further ahead, but this is an unsafe assumption – with only 955 out of nearly 6000 pre-polls counted, it may be that those in so far are from areas favourable to Mitchell. Too close to call.

Sunday 7pm. Rob Mitchell hit the lead today on a strong performance on absent votes, which are presumably most concentrated across the boundary at suburban, Labor-voting Craigieburn and Mernda. As well as gaining 1016-846 on the absents, Mitchell also had a good batch of 968 postals, breaking 531-437 his way. All told, Mitchell has gained 250 votes to lead by 97, with about 2500 absents to go together with an entirely untouched complement of 5868 pre-polls, and an ongoing trickle of postals. Mitchell will be hoping the absents give him a sufficient buffer against a likely swinging back of the pendulum when pre-polls are finally counted.

Friday 3pm. The first 1887 absent votes have been good for Rob Mitchell, breaking 1070-817 his way and cutting the Liberal lead by 253. Another 2428 postals have been also been slightly less bad for Rob Mitchell than previous batches, adding only 58 to Donna Petrovich’s lead which now sits at 405. An improvement for Mitchell on absents is consistent with the 2010 result, and with 4000 of these to come together with a further 4000 pre-polls (which were worse for Labor than ordinary votes in 2010, but only slightly), this one isn’t over.

Thursday evening. The Liberal lead is up from 105 to 331 after 2449 postals improved their position by 165, with a further 61 gained on the ordinary vote count. Still to come are over 3000 postals, over 4000 pre-polls and 6000 absents. Absents at least were strong for Labor in 2010, albeit that the boundaries were different then, and will need to do so again this time.

Wednesday 5pm. The addition of 5859 postal votes have seen Donna Petrovich sneak to a 105-vote lead, but there are still no absents or pre-polls in the count. The substantial change to this electorate in the redistribution, which added the outer Melbourne of Sunbury, makes comparison with 2010 difficult.

Sunday 6pm. I’m not exactly sure where we’re at with the count, but the raw vote has soured quite markedly for Rob Mitchell, who now has a lead of just 73 votes, 38,884 to 38,811.

Election night. Liberal candidate Donna Petrovich, who gave up a seat in the state upper house to make her run, has given Labor member Rob Mitchell a fright, but will probably just fall short. The ABC calculates a swing of 8.6% off a margin of 9.2%, with a couple of pre-poll voting centres yet to report out of the ordinary election night count.