Category: Federal Politics 2022-2025

EMRS: Liberal 25, Labor 24, One Nation 19 and Greens 14 in Tasmania

A new poll offers an insight into what One Nation has in store for Tasmanian state politics.

The latest instalment in the occasional EMRS poll series on Tasmanian state voting intention is the second to include One Nation as a response option, and it records a five-point increase in their support to 19%, with Liberal down four to 25%, Labor up one to 24% and the Greens down one to 14%. This would seem to raise the prospect of future elections being contests between Liberal-One Nation and Labor-Greens blocs, with the present result being a moderate lead for the former.

Personal ratings for the three leaders are little changed, though Jeremy Rockliff’s 44-25 lead over Labor’s Josh Willie reverses a slump in the last poll, when it narrowed to 40-26 from 50-24 in the poll last August. Rockliff’s favourable rating is down one to 34% with unfavourable up two to 38%; Willie is down one to 21% and steady on 17%; and Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff is steady on 23% and down one to 28%. The poll was conducted last Monday to Wednesday from a sample of 1000.

This post also offers an occasion to do something I too often neglect to do, which is to follow up the results of the periodic upper house elections after election night, which produced two fairly close results. In Huon south of Hobart, independent challenger Clare Glade-Wright unseated independent incumbent Dean Harriss by a margin of 2.5%, chasing down a 30.8% to 27.4% deficit on preferences from Labor (16.7%), the Greens (15.0%) and two independents (5.4% to 4.7%). In the Launceston region seat of Rosevears, Liberal incumbent Jo Palmer’s 42.4% to 25.1% primary lead was enough to hold out against Labor’s Ben McKinnon: the 16.0% vote of independent Susan Monson appeared only moderately favourable to Labor while the Greens’ 16.4% split as Greens preferences typically do, giving Palmer enough leakage to prevail by a 2.8% margin.

Federal polls: Newspoll, Resolve Strategic and Spectre Strategy (open thread)

Two new polls with broadly similar primary vote numbers offer divergent views on Angus Taylor’s trajectory.

The Australian reports the latest Newspoll has Labor steady on 31%, the Coalition steady on 21%, One Nation down two to 24% and the Greens up one to 13%, with no two-party preferred provided. Anthony Albanese is up one on approval to 40% and steady on disapproval at 57%, while Angus Taylor is down two to 33% and up four to 46%. Albanese’s lead on preferred prime minister is out from 44-36 to 46-37. Respondents were asked which of various revenue-raising measures would be acceptable, with a higher petroleum resources rent tax leading on 42% and increased income tax on individuals a distant last on 5%. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1235.

The latest monthly Resolve Strategic poll for Nine Newspapers has Labor up three to 32%, the Coalition up one to 23%, One Nation down two to 22% and the Greens steady on 12%. The leader ratings are at odds with Newspoll in finding Angus Taylor up six on approval (or to be precise, very good or good performance in recent weeks), while keeping steady on 22% disapproval as respondents move out of the uncommitted column. Anthony Albanese is up one to 37% and steady on 52%, and retains a bare lead of 33-32 on preferred prime minister, in from 35-31. The poll was conducted Monday to Saturday from a sample of 1807.

Spectre Strategy, which has published two previous federal polls since the last election, has a result with Labor on 28%, the Coalition on 24%, One Nation on 26% and the Greens on 12%, with Labor leading the Coalition by 51-49 and One Nation by 52-48 on two-party preferred. Anthony Albanese is rated favourably by 31% and unfavourably by 52%; Angus Taylor favourably by 28% and unfavourably by 25%; Pauline Hanson favourably by 43% and unfavourably by 40%. Further questions explore voting intention by self-perceived social class and belief in the notion that “institutions and laws need to be completely rebuilt”, the latter taken to be a proxy for “populism”. The poll was conducted April 2 to 8 from a sample of 1002.

Resolve Strategic: Labor 32, Coalition 23, One Nation 23, Greens 11 (open thread)

The first poll to tackle the Angus Taylor leadership suggests a small Coalition gain from One Nation, but still finds them them well down on a month ago.

Nine Newspapers reports a new Resolve Strategic poll which dealt with last week’s complications by asking respondents separate questions about voting intention in Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor leadership scenarios through to Thursday, at which point it stopped asking about Ley. The Taylor scenario results have been published as the headline, showing Labor on 32%, up two on last month’s poll and a point higher than in the Sussan Ley scenario; the Coalition on 23%, down five on last month but up three on the Ley scenario; One Nation on 23%, up five last month but down two on the Ley scenario; and the Greens on 11%, up one on last month but down one on the Ley scenario. No two-party preferred is provided, but I make this out to be 54-46 to Labor over the Coalition based on 2025 election preference flows. UPDATE: An accompanying report says the poll has Labor leading 55-45 on respondent-allocated preferences.

Anthony Albanese records a combined very good and good rating of 35%, unchanged on last time, and a combined poor and very poor of 55%, down one. A final result is provided for Sussan Ley showing her on 27% positive, down eight, and 50% negative, up eight, with Albanese leading 38-22 on preferred prime minister, out from 33-29. A question on preferred Liberal leader had Ley on 19%, Andrew Hastie on 13%, Angus Taylor on 10%, Tim Wilson on 4% and Ted O’Brien on 3%, with 52% uncommitted. We are further told of various leaders’ “net likeability” ratings: minus 12 for Albanese, minus 11 for Ley, plus four for Hastie, plus seven for Pauline Hanson, minus eight for David Littleproud and minus eight for Chris Bowen, though I consider such numbers of limited value in the absence of name recognition and uncommitted ratings. The overall survey period for the poll was Sunday to Saturday, with a sample of 1800.

Morgan: 56.5-43.5 to Labor (open thread)

Yet another poll result finding One Nation at new heights, as Labor ebbs to its lowest primary vote since the election.

The latest Roy Morgan poll, which is now reliably a monthly series with large samples accumulated from weekly surveying, has Labor’s two-party lead in from 57-43 to 56.5-43.5 on respondent-allocated preferences, though the primary vote movements are somewhat more unfavourable for Labor than this suggests: they are down two on last month to 33%, their weakest result since the election, with the Coalition steady on 27%, the Greens down half a point to 12.5% and One Nation up two to 14% (their best result from Morgan since 1998). Based on previous election flows, Labor’s lead is in from 57-43 to 55-45. Presumably to add more context to One Nation’s rise, the poll comes with breakdowns in unusual detail, including primary votes as well as two-party preferred results for all six states, together with gender and age breakdowns. The poll was conducted October 20 to November 16 from a sample of 5248.

UPDATE: Spectre Strategy, which published a poll late in the federal election that was in line with what other pollsters were showing, has emerged with a set of voting intention numbers showing Labor leading 53-47 on two-party preferred, on what appear to be respondent-allocated preferences, from primary votes of Labor 33%, Coalition 25%, One Nation 17.5% and Greens 12.5%. The poll was conducted November 4 to 17 from a sample of 1007.

Newspoll: 57-43 to Labor (open thread)

A collapse in Sussan Ley’s approval drives the Coalition’s worst primary vote in the history of Newspoll, as One Nation continues to surge.

The Australian reports the first Newspoll in four weeks finds no abatement in the Coalition’s loss of support to One Nation, with the former down four on the primary vote since the last poll to 24% and the latter up four to 15%. This smashes records at both ends: the Coalition’s 27% in the previous poll was already their worst ever, while One Nation’s previous record was 13%. Labor and the Greens are both down a point, to 36% and 11% respectively, with Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 57-43. Sussan Ley’s approval rating has tumbled seven points to 25%, while her disapproval is up nine to 58%. Anthony Albanese is at 46% approval and 51% disapproval, both up one from last time, and leads 54-27 on preferred prime minister, out from 51-31. The poll was conducted Monday to Thursday from a sample of 1265.

James Campbell of News Corp also reported yesterday on a poll from Freshwater Strategy, which had gone quiet since markedly overstating Coalition support in its polling before the May federal election. It found Labor leading 55-45 from primary votes of Labor 33%, Coalition 31% and One Nation 10%, with no result provided in the report for the Greens. The poll also found 35% holding that the country is headed in the right direction, compared with 52% for wrong direction; that 22% now rate immigration “one of the most important issues they want the federal government to focus on”, compared with 11% in February 2024.

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.

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.

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