Category: Federal Politics 2010-2013

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.

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.