Live coverage of the count for South Australia’s Bragg by-election.
Click here for full Bragg by-election results updated live.
Monday
4.50pm. A large batch of 4356 formal declaration votes just got unloaded into the count, and it’s caused my Liberal win probability to go from a shade under 95% to 100%. As compared with the total declaration votes from March, these have actually recorded a 0.6% swing to the Liberals. However, that might well be because these are largely or entirely postals rather than pre-polls, and that the declaration vote swing will move around quite substantially as different types of vote are added to the count.
End of Saturday
Liberal candidate Jack Batty ends the night with a lead of 6531 (50.9%) to 6289 (49.1%), which should be enough — it amounts to a 6.0% swing to Labor on the election day vote, whereas the overall margin is 8.2%. Rechecking will be conducted tomorrow, with the counting of the declaration votes — 5377 pre-polls and what will eventually be about 3500 postals — to begin on Monday. Declaration votes at the March state election favoured the Liberals by 60.1-39.9, compared with 57.0-43.0 for polling booth votes. This included absent votes, which are not a factor at a by-election, but their exclusion isn’t likely to make them any more favourable to Labor. South Australia uniquely does not report different types of declaration vote separately, one of many ways in which its electoral arrangements are badly in need of an overhaul. Another is that pre-polls are still counted as declaration rather than ordinary votes, which is why none of them could be counted this evening.
Election night
8.53pm. All booth results are now in. The swing to Labor is now up to 6.1%, but the Liberals have a raw lead of 0.9%, which will almost certainly increase on postals.
8.09pm. A sixth TCP booth result, not sure which, has nudged the raw Liberal vote up to 51.1%, a little closer to my projection.
8.03pm. All eight booths are in on the primary vote, with three more to come on two-party, which should be all we get for the evening.
7.57pm. Now the projection is behaving as it should be, but a flurry of new results has meant the Liberal scare has passed, at least so far as my projection is concerned. They have their nose in front on the raw count, and postals should increase it.
7.55pm. My projection is still stuck, but the raw TCP result has the Liberal margin down to 0.7%, where is about where it should be.
7.48pm. I believe I’ve worked out the problem, and it should fix the next time I get a results update. For the time being, whereas my projection has the Liberals ahead by 3.2%, it should have them ahead by just 0.4%.
7.45pm. There’s now a TCP result in from Burnside, and whereas I was projecting Labor to get 69% of all preferences, here they have landed 77%, such that Labor has very narrowly won the booth. Unfortunately, my projection is still working off my estimates for some reason. I’ll look into this.
7.30pm. Rose Park now in on the primary vote, making it six out of eight, with the situation otherwise unchanged. The Liberal win probability is creeping up towards 90% as the vote count increases, without the projection of a 3.2% winning margin changing.
7.24pm. Linden Park is the fifth of eight booths in on the primary vote, and it hasn’t changed my projection. Still waiting for a two-party result to give some indication of how accurate my preference estimates are.
7.14pm. Burnside and Glen Osmond primary vote results moderate my projected swing to 5.0%. This is still based on preference estimates though, which are giving the Liberals 20% from the Greens, 70% from Family First, 75% from the Liberal Democrats and 50% from an independent who I don’t know anything about. These will continue to be used until one of the booths reports at two-party preferred result.
7.06pm. Second primary booth result in from Tusmore, and it’s a bit better for the Liberals, with their primary vote down 6.8%.
7.03pm. The Wattle Park booth is in on the primary vote, and the result is big enough to make things interesting: I have the Liberals down 10.5% on the primary vote, which translates to a 7.0% swing to Labor off an 8.2% margin assuming my preference estimates are correct. The Greens are well up on the primary vote, and the other candidates are barely registering.
6pm. Polls have closed for South Australia’s Bragg by-election. Results will appear as they come in on the page linked to above, which features neat and tidy tables and charts, exclusive booth-level swings and a booth results map. There were only eight polling booths in operation today, with three from the March election that were split booths with neighbouring elections out of commission. Since these are all suburban booths that will have traded in large numbers of votes, it will probably be an hour or so before we start to see results. I also have a guide to the by-election profiling the electorate and main candidates and outlining how the by-election came about.