Category: Federal Election 2013

Friday evening. Another 2878 postals have added 288 to Peter Hendy’s lead, which is not at 990. 1562 absent votes have been better for Mike Kelly, breaking 844-718 his way, but as Kelly acknowledged with today’s concession of defeat, it’s too little too late. Unless some late count surprise occurs, I’m going to stop following this one.

Thursday evening. 20 pre-polls have favoured Mike Kelly by 148, but 3653 postals have unfavoured him by 275. That means a net gain of 127 for Peter Hendy, who now leads by 633. There are likely to be a further 3000 pre-polls and 3000 postals to come, plus over 2000 absent votes of which none have yet been counted, with Kelly needing about 54% of them to break his way.

Wednesday 4pm. Still slow progress here, with the addition of 729 pre-polls being the only substantial new addition. These have favoured Mike Kelly by 407 to 322, reducing the margin to 506.

Monday 4pm. Cooma South, Jindabyne and Sunshine Bay booths finally added, together with one hospital booth, each have which has contributed to a widening of Peter Hendy’s lead from 246 to 569.

Sunday 6pm. There are another 1544 votes in the count, but there are still missing results from Cooma South and Jindabyne and a couple of pre-poll voting centres. The newly added votes have given Peter Hendy a lead of 246.

Election night. After initially looking promising for Mike Kelly, the count has steadily drifted away from him to the point where Liberal member Peter Hendy has overtaken him on two of three available measures. Antony Green’s booth matching has the swing at 4.4%, giving Hendy a lead at 0.2%. He also provides a raw preference count that gives Kelly the narrowest of leads at 36097 to 36093. The AEC for some reason has percentages but not the numbers they are derived from, and they have Hendy leading by 0.55%. However, they are based on fewer booths than the primary vote count, and the primary vote count total is equal to Antony’s two-party calculation, so either Antony’s figures are a projection of some kind or it’s his numbers that are more up to date. A half-dozen booths, both ordinary and pre-poll, are yet to report one or both of their counts.

Saturday 8pm. The LNP lead is now 1033 after a further 2269 pre-polls and 2068 absents. Unless something comes up, I’m no longer going to be following this one.

Friday 6pm. Just ordinary vote rechecking today, which has cost Labor 87 and putting the LNP lead at 711. Still no pre-polls counted, but they went against Labor in 2010 so there seems little chance of them winning from here.

Thursday evening. Labor copped a pasting on postal votes, 4839 of which have boosted the LNP by 935, turning a 141-vote lead into a 624-vote deficit. There are still about 3000 postals to come, which at this rate seem likely to put Labor out of business. Postals likewise went heavily against Labor in 2010, the difference this time being that the number of them looks set to increase from around 6000 to 8000. Labor can hope to do better from around 3000 absent votes, but 2000 oustanding pre-polls are likely to go against them.

Election night. The ABC computer has a 3.6% LNP swing against a Labor margin of 3.7%. Labor’s Peter Freeleagus leads 35485 to 35345, which aligns with the AEC’s result having him 0.1% ahead. One of the pre-poll voting centres has somehow reported two-party preferred but not the primary vote, but otherwise it looks like a completed election night count.

Friday 5pm. The Liberal lead is now at 878, so unless there’s some late count surprise I’m going to stop following this one.

Thursday evening. As in a number of counts today, the tide has gone out on Labor with 5358 postals boosting Nick Varvaris’s lead from 27 to 789. Still to come are about 4000 absent votes, which behaved similarly to ordinary votes in 2010; 3500 pre-polls, which favoured Labor enough in 2010 to suggest they should recover between 200 and 250 votes; and a little over 500 postals together with 300 provisionals, which are a mixed bag.

Wednesday 4pm. Slow going here, with just 570 absent votes so far added to the ordinary vote count. However, they have had a highly significant effect in breaking 242-136 to the Liberal candidate, which has put him into a 27-vote lead.

Election night. The ABC computer has a 6.8% Liberal swing against a 6.9% margin, and the two-party count of 33349 for Labor’s Steve McMahon to 33251 for Liberal candidate Nickolas Varvaris aligns with this precisely. All primary and pre-poll voting centre results are in.

Wednesday 4pm. Mal Brough has today claimed a victory that was put beyond doubt by the indicative preference count, which found Bill Schoch receiving slightly less than three-quarters of preferences and not the 85% or so he required. No further updates will be added to this thread.

Monday 4pm. They’re four booths into a two-candidate preference throw between Brough and Schoch, and whereas Kevin Bonham calculates that Schoch would need a very unlikely 85.9% of preferences to overhaul Brough, early indications are that it will be more like 75%.

Sunday 6pm. I wasn’t crediting this at the close of business yesterday, but Mal Brough is by no means safe in his bid for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher, which could join neighbouring Fairfax in going to the Palmer United Party. Palmer candidate Bill Schoch will first need to finish ahead of Labor, whom he trails 21.2% (13,519 votes) to 18.1% (11,535). The most significant of the remaining candidates whose preferences will decide the matter are the Greens (7.56%, or 4824), whose how-to-vote card directed preferences to Schoch, but whose voters are famously resistant to such guidance. There’s a further 9.3% scattered among six candidates, including Peter Slipper who polled a dismal 1.44%. It needs to be kept in mind that only preferences which favour Schoch over both Brough and Labor will help him close the gap.

Wednesday 5pm. The addition of 1337 postal votes suggests we can just about put this one to bed. They’ve favoured Craig Laundy over John Murphy by 845-492, extending the former’s lead out to 928.

Election night. Reid is one of a number of Sydney seats where Labor did better than expected, though in this case perhaps not quite enough. The ABC projects a 3.5% swing against a 3.1% margin, with all ordinary election night votes counted.

Election night. Kevin Rudd’s concession speech boast notwithstanding, Labor’s is slightly behind the eight-ball in two of its Queensland seats, with an ABC-projected swing of 3.0% against a margin of 2.5%. There is essentially a full election night’s complement of results, not counting those cast at the Brisbane town hall.

Nothing actually further to add at this stage, but the new day requires a new thread. Please observe the plethora of new posts below for those wishing to follow late counting, and especially the fairly detailed one attempting to review the Senate situation. These extend on to the second page; I’ll do something to make them more accessible in the morning.

You’ll be able to hear my own dulcet tones this evening on ABC Radio’s live coverage, along with those of Fran Kelly, Mark Colvin, Sandy Aloisi and Senators John Faulkner and Michael Ronaldson, which is being carried on all ABC local, regional and national stations and of course online. Below you’ll find embedded Crikey’s contribution to this evening’s festival of democracy, which I might find time to contribute to in a quiet moment. For those of you who like it both ways, an old-fashioned comments thread is open below. Moderation will inevitably be light to non-existent, so play nice everybody.

We’ve got exit polls, from which the only clear message to emerge is that exit polling still has a way to go, in this country at least. Morgan has been publishing results of SMS polling throughout the day which has consistently had the Coalition ahead 52-48, with primary vote figures at 4pm of 33.5% for Labor, 42.5% for the Coalition, 11.5% for the Greens and 5% for the Palmer United Party (hourly updates here. But Newspoll has results suggesting Labor will be very lucky to get off that lightly, with Labor to lose 14 seats in New South Wales, seven in Queensland, three in Victoria (with Labor to gain Melbourne and Sophie Mirabella to retain Indi), but a status quo result in South Australia and Tasmania apparently not covered. So at the very least, we have a credibility race on between Newspoll and Morgan this evening. For what it’s worth, Morgan’s exit polling wasn’t far off last time. Many thanks to the PB comments community for doing my research for me here.