Miscellany: Bradfield challenge, Queensland and AUKUS polling (open thread)

A legal challenge to the result in Bradfield confirmed, plus a poll finding federal Labor in a still stronger position post-election in Queensland.

In addition to new posts on Saturday’s Tasmanian election and state polling numbers for Queensland, there is the following:

• Gisele Kapterian, the Liberal candidate who fell 26 votes short against independent Nicolette Boele in Bradfield, has announced she will launch a Court of Disputed Returns appeal against the result. The accompanying media statement indicates that Kapterian will seek revisions to formality rulings for ballot papers that were reserved for the adjudication of the returning officer, as was done after the 2007 election by Labor’s Rob Mitchell following his 12-vote defeat at the hands of Liberal member Fran Bailey in McEwen. On that occasion, the court re-examined 643 ballot papers and admitted 76 votes for Bailey and 66 for Mitchell that had originally been deemed informal, while excluding seven votes for Mitchell and two for Bailey, with the effect that Bailey’s winning margin in fact increased to 27. The court’s determinations were used as the basis for revised AEC guidelines on formality, which should in theory have meant future court rulings producing fewer changes. Should the court make enough revisions in Kapterian’s favour, it could either declare her the winner (though it seems few expect this) or void the result and send the voters of Bradfield back to the polls. Climate 200 has been spruiking polling suggesting a clearer win for Boele should that transpire.

• DemosAU has published results on federal and state voting intention in Queensland, the latter of which are covered in an earlier post. The federal results have Labor leading 53-47, compared with an election result of 50.6-49.4 in favour of the Coalition. The primary votes are Labor 35% (31.0% at the election), Coalition 31% (34.9%), Greens 12% (11.8%) and One Nation 13% (7.8%). The poll was conducted July 4 to 9 from a sample of 1027.

• The Australia Institute has a YouGov poll finding 49% saying the AUKUS agreement makes Australia more safe and 20% less so, but that 66% favour a parliamentary inquiry into the matter (it was first put to respondent that “reviews” had been announced by the US and UK, with only 12% opposed. The poll was conducted June 27 to July 3 from a sample of 1522.

Federal politics: Roy Morgan poll and preference flow data (open thread)

Roy Morgan’s second federal poll of the time records essentially no change on the first. Also: a look under the bonnet at preference flows courtesy of the AEC.

Roy Morgan has its (and anybody’s) second federal poll since the election, showing Labor’s two-party lead unchanged from the first such poll three weeks ago at 58-42. The primary votes are Labor 37.5% (up half), Coalition 31% (steady), Greens 12% (up half) and One Nation 6%. The poll was conducted June 2 to 22 from a sample of 3957.

Also of note was the Australian Electoral Commission’s publication of preference flow data from the election, including aggregated measures of how each minor party’s preferences split between Labor and the Coalition. A large component of the pollsters’ failure to credit the 55.2% two-party vote share Labor ended up recording lay in an expectation, fuelled by recent state elections, that preference flows to Labor would not match those of 2022. In aggregate, Labor’s share of all minor party and independent preferences ended up being all but identical to 2022, vindicating the determination of RedBridge Group (together with late newcomer DemosAU) in their persistence with 2022 election flows in determining their two-party preferred headlines.

However, the preference flow by party data shows that beneath the surface stability was a continuation of an apparent polarisation in minor party preferences, reflected in record highs for both the Greens flow to Labor and One Nation flow to the Coalition. Pollsters were thus vindicated in revising upwards the flow of One Nation preferences to the Coalition – but none correctly apprehended that Greens preferences would continue to trend the other way, and at least one did the opposite.

Morgan: 58.5-41.5 to Labor (open thread)

A large sample post-election poll confirms the obvious fact of Labor’s federal dominance.

The first federal poll since the election is what will presumably be the resumption of the regular weekly Roy Morgan series. This accumulates poling conducted over the month since the election, encompassing 5128 respondents from May 5 to June 1. The result is strong for Labor even by the standards of post-election honeymoons, with a two-party preferred reading of 58.5-41.5, presumably based on respondent-allocated preferences. This compares with what looks like being an election result of 55.3-44.7, based on the almost complete determination of the AEC. The primary votes from the poll are Labor 37% (34.6% at the election), Coalition 31% (31.8%), Greens 11.5% (12.2%) and One Nation 6% (6.4%). With its large sample, the accompanying release features breakdowns by state and age cohort.

Late counting: week five

The Bradfield recount remains as close as close gets, plus an upset One Nation win in the last Senate result.

Click here for full display of House of Representatives election results.

Wednesday

The Bradfield recount has been completed with Nicolette Boele 26 votes ahead. Importantly, the AEC reports that its investigation into cases of multiple marks against names on the electoral roll found that only two voters were “likely to have had a second vote admitted to the count”. Should the Liberals (or, in theory, any voter in Bradfield) wish to pursue a legal challenge, they will have to persuade the court that at least 23 errors were made, either to their disadvantage with respect to adjudication of ballot papers or with voters having been wrongly allowed or refused votes.

Tuesday

Nicolette Boele ended the day 27 votes ahead in Bradfield, one down on yesterday. A good result for Boele from the St Ives Chase booth at the start of the day, with six votes knocked out for Gisele Kapterian, was cancelled out later on when Kapterian gained six votes from the Warrawee booth, the first revision in her favour affecting more than one or two votes. That just leaves a handful of votes to be accounted for, which will assuredly be wrapped up at some point today. The largest booth outstanding is Wahroonga with 693 votes – I am told that this is in fact mostly done, with no indication that the result will be substantially revised. There are also the very small Ultimo and Wynyard booths, with 51 votes between them, along with around 185 postals, 160 provisionals and 150 absents.

In short, it seems likely that the present margin will undergo only minor change, in which case the AEC will shortly declare Boele the winner. The question will then arise as to whether the matter ends up in court. The AEC itself can refer the matter to the Court of Disputed Returns (meaning the High Court or the Federal Court if it chooses to delegate the matter), but a media briefing conducted yesterday suggested this was unlikely. The most obvious basis for it to do so involves the incidence of multiple voting being greater than the final margin. Typically the number per electorate has been around 15, but an AEC spokesperson suggested it would be lower than that due to the increased use of electronic certified voter lists, through which it can be determined in real time if a prospective voter has been marked off already.

If so, it will be a matter for the defeated candidate (or perhaps more to the point, their party) to determine if a challenge is worth pursuing. Doing so would almost certainly involve disputing formality rulings, as was done without success by Labor candidate Rob Mitchell in the seat of McEwen in 2007 (who went on to win the seat in 2010 and has held it ever since). After winning the initial count by six votes and losing the recount by 12 (seemingly the only time a recount has reversed the original result at a federal election), Mitchell argued there were 40 ballot papers ranking him higher than Liberal rival Fran Bailey that had been wrongly rejected, along with one where the opposite happened. After reaching its own conclusions concerning 643 ballot papers that had been reserved for the adjudication of the returning officer, the court revised Mitchell’s losing margin up to 27, and duly rejected his appeal.

The precedent of a court determining a declared result to have been out by 15 suggests the Liberal Party would be strongly tempted to pursue the matter further – although its Queensland equivalent chose not to do so after falling 37 votes short in Herbert in 2016. While the chances of a court declaring Kapterian the winner outright would seem rather slim, it might conclude the proper margin to be below than the number of observed irregularities, causing it to void the result and have the election held afresh.

Monday

Nicolette Boele had her best day yet in the Bradfield recount, the 12 vote lead she opened yesterday widening to 28. Rechecking of nine booths, four of them in the Liberal stronghold of St Ives (reflecting the fact that the recount has proceeded more-or-less alphabetically), knocked 14 votes from Gisele Kapterian’s tally and four from Boele’s, while batches of absents and postals cut five from Kapterian and added one for Boele. This leaves the recount nearly 80% done – the 12 booths remaining to be rechecked (only one of which is a pre-poll centre, and that a rather small one) account for 12,056 votes, on top of which I am told that about 3700 postals, 1500 declaration pre-polls and 500 absents are still outstanding.

Saturday

Good news and bad news for tealdom today, the former being a breakthrough for Nicolette Boele in the knife-edge Bradfield recount. After slowly slipping in counting through most of the day, her one-vote deficit at the start drifting out to seven, Boele’s situation was transformed by the Turramurra pre-poll centre, which knocked out 16 of Gisele Kapterian’s votes and none of her own, pushing her to a 12-vote lead. In total, the recount has cut 82 votes from Kapterian’s tally after preferences and 62 from Boele’s. Out of the grand total of 118,851 votes, still to be recounted are 20 out of 52 election day booths, accounting for 20,322 votes, and two out of 13 pre-poll booths, accounting for 975. It’s a lot harder to say where we are with non-ordinary vote types, except that all but the fairly insignificant provisionals category have been revised, postals apparently on six occasions (though I remain unclear if this encompasses the early and especially strong batches for Kapterian).

Proceedings in Goldstein are finally at an end after the partial recount ended with Tim Wilson 175 ahead, in from 270 at the start of the process, prompting Zoe Daniel to concede defeat. It turns out the 50-vote error alluded to yesterday related to a batch being double-counted (which wasn’t the only time such a thing was found to have happened in Goldstein), rather than the maximal scenario of votes for Daniel having been attributed to Wilson.

Friday

The resolution of the last Senate result today in New South Wales turned up the first genuine surprise, with One Nation’s Warwick Stacey winning a seat that I (and to my knowledge everyone else) had reckoned a sure thing for Labor’s third candidate, Emilija Beljic. After Labor (Tony Sheldon and Tim Ayres) and the Coalition (Andrew Bragg and Jessica Collins) elected their top two candidates with full quotas, the remainder of the pack was whittled away until Mehreen Faruqi of the Greens crossed the threshold to win the fifth seat leaving Stacey and Beljic competing for the sixth. At that point, Stacey led Beljic by 0.886 quotas to 0.823, which preferences from Faruqi’s 0.069 surplus were insufficient to close, Stacey winning at the last by 0.891 quotas to 0.867.

As this simplification of the distribution illustrates, Stacey passed Beljic with the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis one step before the election of the Greens (UPDATE: Kevin Bonham in comments notes it was actually two steps, the previous transfer from Family First’s exclusion having put him ahead), a transfer that included 0.2446 quotas worth of first preferences for Legalise Cannabis and 0.1510 in preferences picked up along the way. My model based on preference flows in 2022 had Labor, One Nation and the Greens gaining very similar shares of preferences with the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis: instead, One Nation gained 0.146 quotas, the Greens 0.123 and Labor only 0.066, the 0.0797 gap between the One Nation and Labor shares pushing One Nation to their 0.024 quota winning margin. However, that is only part of the story of how my model’s projection of a 0.112 quota winning margin for Labor proved out by 0.136 quotas: up to the point of Legalise Cannabis’s exclusion, Labor under-performed the model by 0.046 quotas and One Nation over-performed it by about the same amount. Further insights are available to be gleaned from the full ballot paper data that has already been published by the AEC, though this will have to wait for now.

In the Bradfield recount, Nicolette Boele hit the lead today – but not for long, her one-vote advantage being reversed in the last updates for the day. Debate rages as to whether there is any underlying pattern within changes that have collectively reduced her deficit so far from eight votes to one, with what I would guess to be about 40% of the recount remaining to be done, continuing into today. Updates that looked promising for Boele based on the theory that large numbers of first preferences for Gisele Kapterian meant opportunities for them to be knocked out as informal have in some cases failed to deliver, notably today’s revision for the St Ives pre-poll centre, which reduced both candidates’ totals by one. Thirty-seven of 66 ordinary booths have been recounted, plus I assume all of the absent votes and an unknowable but obviously significant share of the 14,666 postals, but none of the 3405 declaration pre-polls.

The theory of high primary vote disadvantage in recounts has looked good in other contexts, including the Bradfield preference distribution where it played to Boele’s disadvantage by harming her main sources of preferences – and also in the partial recount in Goldstein, which seems to be almost finsihed. Tim Wilson has lost a net 63 votes since the start of the recount to Zoe Daniel’s 36, reducing his lead to 233. The AEC advises we can expect a correction tomorrow involving, among other things, a “change of 50” in favour of Daniel – which could mean a reduction in her deficit to around 183, or a transfer from Wilson to Daniel that would get it all the way to 133. Neither would get her as far as the 100 vote threshold she would need for the AEC to determine if it will keep the ball in play by proceeding to a full recount, though the latter might just about get her within striking range if the tide kept flowing in her favour.

Late counting: week four

Latest developments in the final stages of the election count, specifically the resolution of the Senate counts and recounts in Bradfield and Goldstein.

Click here for full display of House of Representatives election results.

Thursday

As suggested here yesterday, today’s Queensland and Western Australian Senate distributions both produced results of two Labor, two Coalition, one Greens and one One Nation – predictably in Queensland’s case, less so in Western Australia’s. It was noted that my model based on 2022 election preference flows got the One Nation candidate in WA to a winning margin over the third Labor candidate of 0.013 quotas, and that the party had over-performed this in similar circumstances by 0.046 quotas in South Australia and 0.032 in Victoria. In the case of WA the improvement was 0.023 quotas, the margin at the final count being 0.895 to 0.859. That just leaves the New South Wales count to be finalised, which is scheduled for 9:30am tomorrow, and looks like a clear-cut result of three Labor, two Coalition and one Greens.

In the Bradfield recount, Nicolette Boele’s momentum yesterday failed to carry over to today: she began proceedings two votes behind and ended three votes behind, with a net 22 votes being knocked out for Kapterian and 23 for Boele. Much of today’s effort was seemingly spent on the 9589 votes of the Willoughby pre-poll centre, which disappointed for Boele in yielding only a net gain of one vote, despite the high Liberal vote there. Another part of today’s recounting was postals, which I presume wasn’t all of them given the modest scale of the changes, with two primary votes knocked out for both leading candidates. This unknown factor means it’s no longer possible to precisely calculate how much of the recount has been completed: ordinary votes amounting 41.1% have been accounted for, together with however many of the 12.3% of the total that were postals have been accounted for. The Liberal favourability deficit out of what’s been counted will also have narrowed, though not closed (remembering that the relative Liberal strength out of what’s been counted will likely be to their disadvantage, since it means more opportunities for their votes to be knocked out).

It seems clear now that the Goldstein recount will not pull any rabbits out of the hat for Zoe Daniel: Tim Wilson’s lead remains unchanged from yesterday at 263.

Wednesday

The Victorian Senate result was finalised today, producing the anticipated result of Labor three, Liberal two and Greens one: in order, Raff Ciccone (Labor), James Paterson (Liberal), Jess Walsh (Labor), Jane Hume (Liberal), Steph Hodgins-May (Greens) and Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Labor). Ananda-Rajah won at the final count with 0.869 quotas to the One Nation candidate’s 0.814, which was 0.032 quotas narrower than anticipated by my model based on preference flows from 2022. Something similar was observed in South Australia, where the final count likewise pitted One Nation against Labor’s successful third candidate, the final result being 0.046 quotas narrower than anticipated by my model.

This is encouraging for Tyron Whitten, One Nation’s candidate in Western Australia, where the count will be finalised tomorrow at 3pm eastern time. My earlier modelling of the result gave the third Labor candidate a narrow win over Whitten of 0.869 quotas to 0.852, but this was before Labor’s vote share fell back on late counting – re-running it with the final results, I get Whitten winning by 0.862 to 0.849. Half an hour later, the Queensland result will be finalised – here a result of two Labor, two Liberal National, one Greens and one One Nation looks assured.

Gisele Kapterian’s lead in Bradfield was slashed today from 14 to two, as proceedings went more as I expected them to go initially: votes for both candidates knocked out as informal, but the process favouring Nicolette Boele by virtue of the recount mostly affecting first preference votes for the two leading candidates, of which Kapterian has more to lose. On Monday and Tuesday, when as many previously informal votes were being deemed formal as vice-versa, Kapterian’s lead climbed from eight to 14 – today, Kapterian had a net loss of 29 votes compared with 17 for Boele.

The process has now resulted in the recounting of 30,357 votes out of 118,856, or 25.5%, encompassing 16 out of 52 election day booths and four out of 14 pre-poll voting centres. Non-ordinary vote types, including over 14,500 postals, are yet to be examined. Out of the votes examined so far, 33.5% were first preferences for Kapterian and 28.2% for Boele, compared with 38.1% and 27.0% out of the total count, with the two-candidate count being 53.9-46.1 in Boele’s favour compared with 50.0-50.0 overall. For reasons noted in yesterday’s update, this indicates the votes to be rechecked lean to Kapterian.

If today’s dynamic holds, with votes being knocked out as informal providing most of the changes, it seems very likely that Boele will soon pull ahead and stay there. However, I have no reason to be sure that we won’t see a re-emergence of the earlier dynamic of as many votes doing the reverse, in which case Kapterian may still be a show. Either way, the margin looks like being fine enough to raise the strong possibility of a legal challenge. Ben Raue of The Tally Room has done us all a fine service in attending the count as a scrutineer and recording his observations.

The partial recount in Goldstein began today, and got about 15% through without bringing any joy for Zoe Daniel, whose deficit against Tim Wilson is out from 260 to 263.

Finally, the AEC is now well into finalising two-party Labor-versus-Coalition counts for “non-classic” contests, which will ultimately allow for a national two-party preferred result. This will settle somewhere between 55-45 and 55.4-44.5, indicating that pollsters who were revising preference models based on the 2022 result to make them less favourable to Labor would have done better to have let them be. This under-estimation of Labor extends to the estimates I was using for non-classic contests to produce the national two-party preferred on my results page – I have revised these upwards, though probably not far enough.

Tuesday

End of day update: In the second day of the Bradfield recount, Gisele Kapterian again widened her lead over Nicolette Boele, which has gone from eight to ten to fourteen. Substantial revisions have been made in the Artarmon Central (17 informal votes reclassified as formal) and Gorton (14 votes going the other way) without appreciably advantaging one candidate or the other – the changes arise from another 13 booths that have been rechecked, five producing revisions in favour of Kapterian against one for Boele. Boele can take at least some comfort in the fact that these booths recorded a relatively narrow 29.6% to 27.6% advantage for Kapterian on the primary vote, compared with 38.1% to 27.0% overall, on the principle that opportunities await for challenges to the formality of Kapterian votes. So far though, it seems that as many informal votes are being deemed formal as the other way round, contrary to the experience of the preference distribution.

Earlier: The Senate distribution for Tasmania produced a result of two Labor, two Liberal, one Greens and Jacqui Lambie, in the order of Carol Brown (Labor), Claire Chandler (Liberal), Nick McKim (Greens), Richard Dowling (Labor), Jacqui Lambie (Jacqui Lambie Network) and Richard Colbeck (Liberal). With four candidates chasing two seats at the second last exclusion, Lambie had 0.82 quotas, Colbeck 0.80, third Labor candidate Bailey Falls 0.73 and Lee Hanson 0.57. Hanson’s exclusion put both Lambie (1.05) and Colbeck (1.01) over the line for a full quota, leaving Falls holding the bag with 0.80. I should have had more faith in my model based on 2022 preference flows in last night’s update, as Lambie got more preferences this time from lower order and mostly right-wing candidates, outperforming my model’s projection of 1.00 quotas for her. Colbeck outperformed his projected 0.92, while Falls did weaker than the anticipated 0.87, again contrary to what I suggested might happen last night.

The distribution for the South Australian count was published today, showing that Labor’s third candidate, Charlotte Walker, recorded 1.00 quotas at the final count ahead of 0.80 for the One Nation candidate, against which my model’s projection of 1.00 to 0.75 stacks up quite well. Also finalised today was the Northern Territory Senate count, confirming the formality of Malarndirri McCarthy (Labor) and Jacinta Price (Country Liberal) winning the two seats. The button-press for the Victorian Senate count is scheduled for 9:30am tomorrow – the evidence so far offers no encouragement for One Nation that they will be able to close what my model projects as a deficit of 0.85 to 0.76 in the race for the final seat against the third Labor candidate. This will shortly be followed by the foregone conclusion of the Australian Capital Territory count.

The preference distribution has been finalised in Calwell, Labor’s Basem Abdo emerging a comfortable winner with 49,481 votes (55.1%) to independent Carly Moore’s 40,350 (44.9%).

Monday

Today’s developments:

• The preference distribution in Calwell has all but confirmed a win for Labor, who received more than two-thirds from the exclusion of Greens, putting Basem Abdo on 48.0%, independent Carly Moore on 29.7% and the Liberal candidate on 22.3%. This leaves Moore needing an all-but-impossible 91% share of the preferences with the imminent exclusion of the Liberal.

• The button was pressed on the South Australian election Senate count, confirming the anticipated result of Labor three (Marielle Smith, Karen Grogan and Charlotte Walker), Liberal two (Alex Antic and Anne Ruston) and Greens one (Sarah Hanson-Young). We must await publication of the preference distribution for further detail.

• The Australian Electoral Commission advises that we can expect the buttons to be pressed tomorrow morning for Tasmania and the Northern Territory. The latter is a foregone conclusion, but the former is likely to find a three-way battle for the last two seats between Jacqui Lambie, the third Labor candidate and the second Liberal candidate. My earlier modelling suggested Lambie was very likely to be re-elected, since substantially different preference flows from the last election would be needed for her to fall behind both Liberal and Labor. On reflection though, the former seems more plausible than I was allowing, given the observable impact of Lambie’s opposition to salmon farming on the geographic distribution of her primary vote, and the fact that most of the preferences being distributed are from right-wing parties. The latter might arise as a corollary of Labor’s stronger performance overall.

• The AEC announced today responded to Zoe Daniel’s request for a recount in Goldstein by announcing a partial recount that would consider first preference votes only, which in fact account for about three-quarters of the total. Substantial revisions were made to the totals during the course of the preference distribution, a process which examined only the remaining one-quarter of the vote, ultimately with the effect of increasing Tim Wilson’s margin from 129 to 270. The recount will begin on Wednesday and is expected to take about four days.

• The first day of the Bradfield recount, which may take as long as two weeks, increased Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian’s lead over independent Nicolette Boele from eight votes to ten.

Half measures (open thread)

A look at the dramatically declining frequency of seats being won with with majorities on first preferences.

A correspondent wrote today to inquire about the decline in seats being won on first preferences, and having gone to the trouble of amassing the relevant data going back to 1993, I thought it worth a chart and a blog post. If it had gone back as far as 1975, we would have found 103 out of 127 seats “going to preferences”, which then served as shorthand to denote a close result, around half of them “three-cornered contests”, which persists as a term to describe seats contested by both the Nationals and the Liberals.

Within the period covered by the chart, we find an interruption in 1998 and 2001 from the first age of One Nation, notably hitting the Coalition a lot harder than Labor; then an apparent resumption of normal service followed by a steady decline through to 2022, by which time Labor’s decade-long reliance on Greens preferences in nearly all of its seats is supplemented by teal independents and a proliferation of predators upon Coalition vote share on the right, including but not exclusive to the return of One Nation.

The eleven seats won on first preferences at this month’s election were, for Labor, Chifley, Kingston, Grayndler, Greenway, Fenner, Sydney, Kingsford Smith and Oxley; for the Nationals, Maranoa, Gippsland and New England; and for the Liberals, bupkis. Interestingly, there are two among the Labor list that haven’t historically been reckoned safe seats: Greenway, which Michelle Rowland has held for Labor since a redistribution-assisted win from the Liberals in 2010, consolidating with consecutive swings of 8.7% in 2022 and 4.7% a fortnight ago; and Kingston, which Amanda Rishworth has turned into a safe seat since gaining it from the Liberals in 2007, despite redistributions in aggregate having done her more harm than good.

Please note the other posts since the last open thread:

• A guest post from Adrian Beaumont on elections in Romania, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Albania, Canada and South Korea.

• A post on Tasmania covering a new state poll and elections this weekend for three seats in the state’s Legislative Council.

• A progressively updated thread on late counting, mainly relevant now to Calwell and Bradfield.

• An analysis of the Senate result, which remains about a fortnight away from resolution.

Late counting: week three

Resolutions imminent for the remaining outstanding lower house seats, which likely just means Bradfield and Calwell.

Click here for full display of House of Representatives election results.

Saturday

Tim Wilson has finished the preference distribution in Goldstein 260 votes ahead of Zoe Daniel, after a series of late revisions that drove first drove his lead up yesterday from 129 to 444, before today cutting it back to 170 and then settling on the final margin. These convulsions presumably loom large in the request Daniel has submitted for a recount, but experience suggests the AEC will stand by the 100-vote threshold it set in place in 2008.

Friday

Yet another twist in the saga of Bradfield, which ended with Gisele Kapterian taking the lead at the last and finishing the scrutiny with an eight-vote lead over Nicolette Boele. The Australian Electoral Commission promptly confirmed that this would be subject to a recount, as it does automatically when the margin is inside 100 votes, which will begin on Monday and is “expected to take up to two weeks”. Twenty-two out of Kapterian’s 48-vote gain during the preference distribution came with a second correction from the St Ives pre-poll centre, which had put Kapterian in the hunt the Monday after the election with the addition of hitherto unreported votes to its tally, booting her by 440 votes. The issue this time was apparently a transpositional error in the record of preference flows, causing 11 votes to shift from Boele to Kapterian.

The rest of the movement largely resulted from ballots previously admitted to the count being deemed informal, a process that favoured Kapterian because only the third or so of the vote that was cast for excluded candidates was under consideration, around two-thirds of which went to Boele as preferences. Boele’s hope lies in the recount revisiting the two-thirds of the vote that was cast for the two leading candidates, where the same dynamic is likely to work against Kapterian, who has 38.1% of the primary vote to Boele’s 27.0%. If these votes are excluded in roughly the same proportions as those of the other candidates during the preference distribution (during which Labor lost 23 votes, the Greens 14, One Nation 8, independent Andy Yin 7 and the Libertarians 6), Kapterian will lose about 65 votes to Boele’s 45. The distinctions are fine enough that clearly nothing can be said with certainty – and even if Boele were to emerge with the slender lead implied, there would be a strong chance of a court finding enough routine irregularities to void the result and force a by-election.

In Calwell today, the preferences of independent Joseph Youhana were excluded, nearly 60% of them favouring independent Carly Moore, pushing her well clear of the Liberals into second place. Labor holds a lead of 36.6% to 25.6% that Moore needs to chase down with the successive exclusions of the Greens and the Liberals, on 16.7% and 21.2%, which scrutineers’ reports related through the media suggest is unlikely to happen. Also today, whatever lingering hope there may have been for Zoe Daniel in Goldstein was snuffed out by dramatic revisions that blew Tim Wilson’s lead out from 129 to 444.

12.30pm. My assessment of last evening was evidently too sanguine with respect to Nicolette Boele, whose margin is dropping fast – now down to five votes. Almost all of the correction so far today is down to the St Ives pre-poll centre – the same one whose result was dramatically revised in the Liberals’ favour in the early stages of the check count – where 11 votes have been shifted from Boele to Kapterian. The broader dynamic is that the distribution of Labor preferences and their strong flow to Boele means that votes successfully being contested on grounds of formality are mostly for her.

Thursday

The Calwell preference distribution turned up its first real surprise with the exclusion of independent Sam Moslih, with fully 61.3% of the distribution going to the Greens ahead of the other remaining contenders, namely Labor, Liberal and independents Carly Moore and Joseph Youhana. This pushes the Greens ahead of Youhana, who will be the next candidate excluded. Kevin Bonham suggests this reflects a strong influence of Moslih’s how-to-vote card and/or that of Muslim Votes Matter, which is good news for Labor because both favoured Basem Abdo over Moore. Moore presently holds a 17.5% to 15.3% lead over the Greens, which seems unlikely to be closed with the exclusion of Youhana, given he favoured Moore on his how-to-vote card and the general tendency of independent votes to favour other independents. Assuming that’s so, we are now likely to see Greens preferences push Moore ahead of the Liberals, whose preferences will then produce a final result between Labor and Moore. Moore will need around 67.5% of the preferences shortly to be distributed from Youhana, the Greens and the Liberals.

Proceedings today in Bradfield wore Nicolette Boele’s lead down from 41 votes to 28, with three added to Gisele Kapterian’s tally and ten subtracted from Boele’s. A source familiar with the matter in comments indicates we should now be a good way into the last phase, namely the distribution following the exclusion of Labor with only Boele and Kapterian left standing. If the apparent pattern of movement in favour of Kapterian looks unlikely to eliminate the margin altogether, it does remove whatever doubt there may have been that the it will fall inside the 100-vote threshold for an automatic recount.

Wednesday

Calwell proceeded today through to the eighth count, leaving a remaining field of Labor, Liberal, the Greens and three independents. Carly Moore’s lead over the other independents has widened, and seems likely to be maintained through the imminent exclusions of the Greens and two other independents, together with the elimination of the current 18.5% to 16.4% gap between the Liberal candidate and Moore. Between now and the final count, Moore would need two-thirds of the preferences to overtake Labor.

Today’s preference distributions added 15 to the informal counts in both Bradfield and Goldstein, respectively cutting Nicolette Boele’s lead by four to 41 and increasing Tim Wilson’s lead by one to 129.

Tuesday

End of counting. We’re now six counts into Calwell, with another six exclusions to come. Candidates accounting for 9.1% of the primary vote have now been excluded, with results that probably don’t tell us all that much. Next out will be Legalise Cannabis and One Nation, who will perhaps go relatively heavily to established parties rather than independents, followed by Sam Moslih, whose how-to-vote card had Labor higher than the remaining independents. Most likely, the issue will then be whether preferences from Joseph Youhana, the Greens and the Liberals favour Moore enough to get her ahead of Basem Abdo.

Revisions arising from the preference distribution in Bradfield today have added 11 to the informal vote tally, costing Gisele Kapterian eight votes and Nicolette Boele two, increasing the latter’s lead from 39 to 45.

5pm. The Goldstein count has ended with Tim Wilson up by 128 votes. The AEC relates that the votes still in the system as awaiting processing have Senate ballot papers only. The preference distribution will now proceed, to be followed only by an automatic recount if the margin comes in below 100, though the discretion remains to conduct one even if it doesn’t. Arguments have been made that the population has increased since the 100-vote threshold was established about 15 years ago.

2.30pm. The Australian Electoral Commission will helpfully be publishing updates from Calwell in the form of progress preference distribution results that will presumably be updated with each exclusion. These are a bit hard to read, so I offer the following summary below, showing us up to count four out of twelve. This looks promising for independent Carly Moore with respect to her prospects of making the final count, with 21.5% of the preferences from the first three exclusions having gone to her. However, the marginal nature of the candidates excluded so far is such that these figures are unlikely to offer much insight as to whether Labor will receive enough preferences to get from their 30.5% primary vote to 50% at the final count. If it is Moore who comes second, she will need about two-third of preferences (and Labor one-third) from all other candidates.

Monday

The last batches of votes in Bradfield kept true to the contest’s epic form, with independent Nicolette Boele taking the lead at the last to end the scrutiny 39 votes ahead. But it doesn’t end there: the formal distribution of preferences will proceed throughout this week, almost certainly to be followed by the recount that proceeds automatically when the margin is inside 100 votes, so Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian has at least some hope that proceedings turn up errors substantial enough to reverse the result. Kapterian began the day 43 votes ahead, then moved to 50 ahead when absents broke 29-22 her way. Boele’s breakthrough came when postals broke fully 125-56 her way, consolidated when declaration pre-polls favoured her 111-90.

A recent recount precedent missing from yesterday’s summary was Clive Palmer’s win in Fairfax in 2013: at 36, his margin on the indicative two-candidate count was very close to Boele’s, but it was reduced to seven during the preference distribution and then inflated to 53 on the recount. An informed source in comments notes that recounts have become less prone to produce changes since the initial recheck became a routine part of the procedure in 1984, and court rulings established legal precedents about formality, most notably in relation to the seat of McEwen in 2007.

In Goldstein, Tim Wilson’s lead is down from 254 to 206 after postals broke 94-60 and absents 76-62 to Zoe Daniel. The AEC records 332 envelopes awaiting processing, of which Daniel would need two-thirds to land in her column to get to automatic recount territory.

Sunday

With the deadline for the arrival of late postals having passed on Friday, there are two seats that can still be regarded as in doubt, barring extraordinary late developments. One is Bradfield, where today’s counting will account for 260 declaration pre-polls, 104 postals and 66 absents (UPDATE: Outstanding postals revised up to 191). Some of these will be deemed invalid and a handful will be informal, but as many as 380 will be added to a tally on which independent Nicolette Boele trails Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian by 43 votes.

The counting of these votes will be followed immediately by a full distribution of preferences. Should the margin land inside 100, as seems extremely likely, this will be followed by an automatic recount. A review conducted for the Australian Electoral Commission in 2014 helpfully reviews the history of recounts, which provides at least some level of information on how much the dial was moved by 11 recounts going back to 1958 (see pages 24 and the very last page). A recount for Bass in 1998 was something of an outlier in increasing Labor’s winning margin from 16 to 78. Including the one recount conducted since – for Herbert in 2016, which increased Labor’s margin from 8 to 35 – a typical recount seems to make about 20 votes’ difference to the final result.

A recount would seem to be the only remaining chance for Zoe Daniel in Goldstein, who trails Liberal candidate Tim Wilson by 206 votes with 332 remaining to be processed: 172 declaration pre-polls, 100 postals and 39 absents, plus 21 provisionals that may all be disallowed. Even getting to the 100-vote threshold requires stretching the arithmetic here, but the returning officer can use their discretion to require a recount even if the threshold isn’t reached.

The other unknown is the seat of Calwell, which I have not been making the effort to follow on a blow-by-blow basis, since the point at issue is that there’s no way of knowing which out of as many as four candidates will make the final count along with Labor. The only thing that can be said for sure is that Labor win the seat if it’s the Liberal candidate, but it’s quite a bit more likely to be an independent. Such questions can only be answered by a full distribution of preferences. With only 154 votes remaining to be processed, this will presumably begin later today.

Then there’s the Senate, where the pressing of the button on the final results is still as much as a fortnight away. I have a post below with my latest updated assessments on how that is likely to play out.

Senate counting: week three

A second attempt to model the Senate outcome, with some finer points concerning the composition of the cross-bench chiefly at issue.

I have conducted a repeat of the exercise from my previous post on the Senate results, which involved taking random samples of the ballot papers from the 2022 election, weighting them to match the various players’ shares of the first preference vote at this election, and simulating preference distributions in which flows behave as they did in 2022. This is a simplified approximation of the process, so what might be referred to below as “Count 72” would be a lot higher by the AEC’s reckoning, but more than adequate for current purposes.

There are two important differences from the first run, the most obvious being that it’s based off a more advanced stage of the count. The other is that I have factored in changes in how-to-vote cards at this election, at least for the major parties (minor party how-to-vote cards are rarely followed, and changes unlikely to amount to much when considered in aggregate). This was mainly deemed necessary because the Coalition was a lot more amenable to One Nation than in the past, although the (electoral) significance of this should not be overstated — impacts are trivial where Liberal candidates are elected with only small surpluses, as is invariably the case when they themselves are elected off the preferences of other parties, and non-existent when they remain to the final count. The former applies in New South Wales and South Australia, where the Coalition will respectively win two seats from a shade over and a shade under two quotas on first preferences, and the latter applies in Tasmania.

My overall assessment is unchanged, the modelled result being Labor 30, Coalition 27, Greens 11 and One Nation two, plus Ralph Babet, Jacqui Lambie, Tammy Tyrell, Lidia Thorpe, Fatima Payman and David Pocock. However, the already live possibility of One Nation taking Labor’s third seat in Western Australia now looks stronger. I don’t believe the boost to One Nation from Coalition preferences puts them in serious contention in Victoria, and it affects only the size of their winning margin in Queensland. Nor do I think it likely that Jacqui Lambie will lose her seat, notwithstanding The Australian’s contention yesterday that her “folly” in attacking Tasmania’s salmon farming industry “may cost her political career”.

New South Wales

Count 1 Quotas Swing Count 72 Count 73
ALP 37.77% 2.644 +7.34% 0.803 0.892
LNC 29.63% 2.074 -7.09%
GRN 11.16% 0.781 -0.30% 0.973 1.068
ON 6.03% 0.422 +1.91% 0.692 0.780
LC 3.39% 0.237 +0.78% 0.379

My earlier projection here of three Labor, two Coalition and one Greens doesn’t seem to be in doubt. Since the Coalition scrapes over the line for a second quota on primary votes, what happens with their preferences matters little — where previously I had Labor winning the last seat ahead of One Nation by 0.938 quotas to 0.771, I now have it at 0.892 to 0.780, and I expect most of the change is due to shifts in party vote shares over the past week.

Victoria

Count 1 Quotas Swing Count 73 Count 74 Count 75 Count 76 Count 77 Count 78
ALP 34.79% 2.435 +3.34% 0.506 0.515 0.572 0.606 0.692 0.850
LNC 31.77% 2.224 -0.52% 0.292 0.293 0.308 0.342
GRN 12.31% 0.862 -1.54% 1.019
ON 4.44% 0.311 +1.53% 0.412 0.412 0.426 0.558 0.683 0.763
LC 3.56% 0.249 +0.55% 0.319 0.320 0.370 0.399 0.453
ToP 2.52% 0.176 -1.49% 0.244 0.244 0.260
AJP 1.56% 0.109 +0.04% 0.174 0.179

After the election of two Labor, two Coalition and one Greens, I now have the third Labor candidate’s lead over One Nation at 0.850 to 0.763 with the amendment of Coalition votes that followed the card, as compared with 0.740 to 0.608 in the first run. One Nation now gains 0.125 when the Liberal is excluded, compared with 0.060 previously. However, Labor has gained nearly as much since last time, for one reason or another, and a One Nation win would have to be rated unlikely. It’s true that One Nation’s 4.44% on first preferences is higher than the 4.01% from which Ralph Babet scraped home for the United Australia Party in 2022, but the two major parties had between 2.2 and 2.3 quotas on that occasion – this time Labor is up to 2.435, reducing the chances of two seats going to minor parties.

Queensland

Count 1 Quotas Swing Count 78
ALP 30.67% 2.147 +4.01%
LNP 31.36% 2.195 -6.68%
GRN 10.29% 0.720 -3.09% 0.993
ON 7.05% 0.494 -0.94% 0.748
GRPF 4.63% 0.324 0.468

This appears clear cut, with both Labor and the Coalition a bit above two quotas and no chance of a amassing a third, leaving the other two seats to go to the Greens and One Nation. A joint ticket for Gerard Rennick and Katter’s Australian Party scored a solid 4.63%, which I dealt with by substituting it for the United Australia Party in the 2022 party data, such that it gave and received the same preferences flows. No doubt this is imprecise, but the margins involved are such that it doesn’t matter much.

Western Australia

Count 1 Quotas Swing Count 54 Count 55 Count 56 Count 57
ALP 36.49% 2.555 +1.94% 0.642 0.654 0.720 0.869
LNC 30.31% 2.122 -1.36%
GRN 12.78% 0.895 -1.47% 1.017
ON 5.87% 0.411 +2.38% 0.625 0.625 0.746 0.852
LC 3.94% 0.276 +0.56% 0.399 0.402 0.416
AUC 2.64% 0.185 +0.47% 0.253 0.253

I continue to project a result of Labor three, Liberal two and Greens one, but incorporating One Nation into the Liberal how-to-vote card order makes a close race even closer. The operative margin between the third Labor candidate and One Nation at the close is now 0.869 to 0.852, in from 0.872 to 0.825 the first time. I have factored in that Liberal how-to-vote cards varied from seat to seat in 2022 depending on how it was thought a recommendation for One Nation would play with local voters (a source of much thundering outrage from elements of the media when Labor did something similar with the Greens at this election), and am indebted to Kevin Bonham for recording the variants from 2022.

South Australia

Count 1 Quotas Swing Count 44 Count 45 Count 46 Count 47 Count 48 Count 49 Count 50
ALP 38.38% 2.687 +6.12% 0.704 0.706 0.723 0.730 0.852 0.944 0.995
LIB 27.77% 1.944 -6.16% 1.013
GRN 12.73% 0.891 +0.78% 0.996 0.998 1.011
ON 5.26% 0.368 +1.25% 0.415 0.420 0.470 0.470 0.504 0.551 0.749
ToP 2.80% 0.196 -0.23% 0.228 0.228 0.262 0.262 0.286 0.330
LC 2.77% 0.194 +0.45% 0.232 0.233 0.240 0.242 0.263
JLN 2.71% 0.189 +0.63% 0.219 0.220 0.233 0.233
FFP 1.99% 0.139 +1.56% 0.157 0.158

Here the Liberals scrape over the line to a quota at a late stage of the count, meaning their preferences for One Nation are of limited consequence. Previously I had the third Labor candidate’s winning margin over One Nation at the final count at 1.029 quotas to 0.743, now it’s 0.995 to 0.749. Here I used Bob Day’s independent candidacy in 2022 as a stand-in for Family First and the Rex Patrick Team for the Jacqui Lambie Network.

Tasmania

Count 1 Quotas Swing Count 36 Count 37
ALP 35.53% 2.487 +8.55% 0.761 0.874
LIB 23.67% 1.657 -8.28% 0.793 0.922
GRN 16.14% 1.130 +0.70%
JLN 7.25% 0.508 -1.37% 0.785 1.001
ON 5.08% 0.356 +1.21% 0.596

Beyond a clear two seats for Labor and one each for Liberal and the Greens, The Australian rates this a “tight, four-way preference contest” between Labor’s third, the Liberals’ second, Jacqui Lambie and Lee Hanson of One Nation. I consider this generous to Hanson, who does not stand to benefit from Liberal preferences as she will be excluded while the second Liberal remains in the count. I then have the third Labor candidate losing the game of musical chairs to the other two, but if the primary vote swings are reflected in preference flows stronger for Labor and weaker for Liberal, the modelled gap of 0.922 to 0.874 is narrow enough that Labor might win a third seat at the expense of the Liberals’ second (conversely, a weakening in support for Lambie among conservatives might mean stronger flows from One Nation to Liberal). The Australian makes some notable points about the pattern of Jacqui Lambie’s 7.3% vote, which is down from 8.9% when she last ran in 2019 and the 8.6% her party’s ticket scored in her absence in 2022. Support for Lambie went up in the city and down in the country, and slumped in salmon farming towns. However, my model has her on over a quota in the three-way race with 1.001 quotas, meaning she would have to fall behind both Liberal on 0.922 and Labor on 0.874 to lose. This doesn’t seem likely even allowing for the principle that a lower primary vote means weaker preferences, particularly considering such an effect would harm the Liberals at least as much.

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