Category: Western Australian Election 2021

Update: 8/4

The preference distributions are available from the WAEC here. Of note:

Agricultural. The final seat in Agricultural ended with second Nationals candidate, Martin Aldridge, elected with 13,310 and Stuart Ostle of Shooters Fishers and Farmers defeated on 11,329.

East Metropolitan. Brian Walker of Legalise Cannabis prevailed because their candidate remained in the count at what the ABC calculator identifies as Count 19 by a margin of 12,403 to 11,712 over the Western Australia Party — a margin of 691, a fair bit more comfortable than the 212 projected by the ABC.

Mining and Pastoral. The decisive point in the count here was where, in the race for the last two seats, Wilson Tucker of the Daylight Savings Party had 6007 votes, Neil Thomson of the Liberals had 5304, Jacqui Boydell of the Nationals had 5211 and Matt Priest of Shooters Fishers and Farmers had 4473. Because it was Shooters that fell out at this point, their own preferences boosted Daylight Savings Party and Australian Christians and One Nation preferences flowed on to the Liberals over the Nationals. If the Nationals had dropped out, the last two seats would have gone to the Liberals and Shooters; if the Liberals had done so, they would have gone to the Nationals and the Shooters.

North Metropolitan. The second elected Liberal, Tjorn Sibma, had 52,748 votes at the final count, with defeated Greens member Alison Xamon finishing on 41,512.

South Metropolitan. This came down to which out of the elected Greens candidate, Brad Pettit, or the fifth Labor candidate, Samantha Helps, survived the second last exclusion, at which Pettit held out by 27,942 votes to 27,032, a margin of 910. With its assumption that all votes behaved as above-the-line, the ABC projection had him 60 votes behind.

South West. When Rick Mazza of Shooters Fishers and Farmers was excluded, Sophia Moermond of Legalise Cannabis, James Hayward of the Nationals and fourth Labor candidate John Mondy were the three remaining candidates in the race for the last two seats. The distribution of Mazza’s preferences pushed Moermond and Hayward just clear of the 29,300 vote quota with 30,724 and 29,307 votes respectively, with Mondy just missing out on 27,590.

Update: 6/4

The results for the three metropolitan regions have been finalised, and related on Twitter by Antony Green. Both the close races went against Labor, who were thus denied extraordinary fifth wins in East Metropolitan and South Metropolitan. This meant in the former case a second seat for Legalise Cannabis, and a result of four Labor (Alanna Clohesy, Samantha Rowe, Matthew Swinbourn and Lorna Harper), one Liberal (Donna Faragher) and one Legalise Cannabis (Brian Walker).

South Metropolitan has narrowly returned the Greens’ only member, leaving the party with fewer seats than Legalise Cannabis. The result there is Labor four (Sue Ellery, Kate Doust, Klara Andric and Stephen Pratt), one Liberal (Nick Goiran) and one Greens (Brad Pettit). North Metropolitan played out as anticipated, with four for Labor (Pierre Yang, Martin Pritchard, Ayor Makur Chuot and Daniel Caddy) and two for Liberal (Peter Collier and Tjorn Sibma).

Final result: Labor 22, Liberal seven, Nationals three, Legalise Cannabis two, Greens one, Daylight Saving Party one. The WAEC will hopefully publish preference distributions for all six regions shortly.

Original post

Buttons are being pressed on the three non-metropolitan regions for the Western Australian Legislative Council this afternoon, with the metropolitan regions having to hold out until Tuesday. If I’m reading the WAEC website correctly, none of the preference distributions will be published until all of them are, which means next week. Hopefully though they will be informally doing the rounds sooner than that.

Note that you can view my Legislative Council election results display here, which features party vote totals broken down by lower house electorate, together with my Legislative Assembly results here. These are up to date with the WAEC website and media feed, but presumably aren’t final based on what Antony Green is saying about the Daylight Saving Party’s winning vote tally.

To be updated as more information becomes available:

South West

Antony Green tweets that South West has gone three for Labor (Sally Talbot, Alannah MacTiernan and Jackie Jarvis) and one each for Liberal (Steve Thomas), Nationals (James Hayward) and Legalise Cannabis (Sophia Moermond). There was some doubt as to whether Legalise Cannabis would jump through the required hoops and win a seat off 2.11% of the vote, as per the ABC projection, but it’s happened, with knock-on effects that gave the last seat to the Nationals rather than a second Liberal.

Mining and Pastoral

As expected, this has produced the group voting ticket system’s most perverse result yet, with four for Labor (Stephen Dawson, Kyle McGinn, Peter Foster and Rosetta Sahanna), one for Liberal (Neil Thomson) and one for the Daylight Saving Party (Wilson Tucker), the latter elected off a base of 98 votes, or 0.2% of the total.

Agricultural

The pressing of the button was in this case a formality, confirming a clear result of three Labor (Darren West, Shelley Payne and Sandra Carr), two Nationals (Colin de Grussa and Martin Aldridge) and one Liberal (Steve Martin).

Click here for full results for the Legislative Assembly and here for the Legislative Council.

Monday evening update

I’m told buttons will be pressed on the Legislative Council counts today and/or tomorrow. The WAEC’s electorate results pages now have preference distributions for, I believe, all seats, and are headlined with two-candidate preferred totals, although these remain absent from the media feed and hence from my own results pages (for now at least).

Original post

As you can see above, I am now publishing results for the Legislative Council as well as the Legislative Assembly, although not a great deal remains to be counted in either case. The former exclusively features tables in which the ordinary votes are grouped by lower house electorate, which I hope someone out there finds useful. I have also restored to the Legislative Assembly display the two-candidate preferred counts that the WAEC removed from the system last week, which they did for all but a handful of seats (still excluded are eight other seats whose two-candidate preferred counts got pulled at an earlier time). Among other things, this means my statewide two-party preferred projection is now nearer to what should be the final result.

I’m not sure if there are any votes at all remaining to be added to the count for the Legislative Assembly, or if there are a few handfuls of postals still to come, but in no case is the result in doubt. There are 1,410,357 formal votes in the count for the Assembly, compared with 1,386,398 for the Council, suggesting there are only around 24,000 votes still to be added to the tallies for the latter.

With the few outstanding votes unlikely to change the party vote tallies, the greater point of interest is whether the 5% or so of ballot papers with below-the-line preferences end up overturning the ABC’s projections, which assume all votes to be above-the-line with preferences duly following the parties’ group voting tickets. That will not be known until the WAEC completes its data entry and presses the button on the preference distribution, which will be at the end of the week at the earliest.

The ABC’s projections will assuredly not be overturned in Agricultural region (three seats to Labor, two to the Nationals and one to the Liberals), Mining and Pastoral (four Labor, one Daylight Saving Party, one Liberal) and North Metropolitan (four Labor and two Liberal). That leaves some doubt over the following:

East Metropolitan. The ABC projection is five Labor and one Liberal, due to Legalise Cannabis dropping out at Count 19 with 3.16% to the Western Australia Party’s 3.22%. The question is whether Legalise Cannabis can close the gap through the below-the-line preferences of everyone other than Labor, Liberal, the Greens and Australian Christians: fifteen minor parties and independent groups who between them account for 8.48% of the vote, reducing to maybe about 0.7% when reduced to the below-the-line votes. If so, Labor’s fifth seat goes to Legalise Cannabis instead. Antony Green thinks this more likely than not, since preferences inflate the Western Australia Party from a primary vote of 0.80% to 3.22% at Count 19, whereas Legalise Cannabis goes from only 2.49% to 3.16%. This means there is a lot more potential for the projected WAP vote to leak away through below-the-line votes behaving differently from group voting tickets.

South Metropolitan. Brad Pettitt of the Greens has dropped out on the ABC projection, which has him excluded at Count 27 by the tiniest of margins: 6.67% to Labor’s 6.68%. That would produce a result of five Labor and one Liberal. However, the Greens typically outperforms projections that exclude consideration of below-the-line preferences, and Antony Green’s assessment is that Pettitt will more likely than not get up.

South West. I have been portraying this count as a game of musical chairs between Legalise Cannabis, the Nationals and Labor at Count 25 on the ABC projection, in which the loser will drop out and the last two seats will go to the other two. On that basis, Labor’s fourth candidate looks set to miss out, with the three parties’ vote shares at 14.72%, 14.29% and 13.76% respectively, producing a result of three Labor, one Liberal, one Legalise Cannabis and one Nationals. However, since the projection has Legalise Cannabis snowballing from a base primary vote of just 2.11%, there is considerable potential for the preference accumulation to dissipate through below-the-line votes. So much so indeed that Antony Green countenances not only the possibility of Legalise Cannabis dropping out at Count 25, in which case a fourth seat would go to Labor, but even for it to drop out at Count 23 behind Shooters Fishers and Farmers and the Greens. Should Legalise Cannabis go under at this point, the Nationals as well as Legalise Cannabis will miss out, and the result will be four Labor, one Liberal and one Shooters Fishers and Farmers.

Click here for full Western Australian election results updated live.

Friday evening

Both Antony Green and my system are now calling Churchlands for Labor, as late postals continue to slightly favour Labor, by 140-131 in the case of today’s batch. This increases Labor’s lead to 223, and there can only be a few dozen votes left to add. I’ve now set it so my results display says 100% counted for all seats, which isn’t exactly correct, but it’s less incorrect the guess-timates I had before now.

Upper house:

Agricultural. Yesterday I noted the last count was fairly close between the Nationals and the Shooters, at 14.79% to 13.78%, but today it’s widened to 14.94% to 13.63%.

East Metropolitan. The gap between the Western Australia Party (from 3.15% to 3.23%) and Legalise Cannabis (from 3.12% to 3.13%) at the ABC projection’s Count 19 widened today; Labor wins five seats if it stays open, otherwise one of them goes to Legalise Cannabis. I estimate that 82% of the count is in now, up from 77% yesterday.

Mining and Pastoral. Big progress in the count today, pushing my estimate of the count from 73% to 84%, and it’s looking increasingly like the Daylight Saving Party travesty will indeed play out. At the ABC projection’s Count 22, Shooters have faded from 9.56% to 9.22%, putting them behind both the Nationals on 10.63% and the Liberals on 10.87%. That means the preferences will unfold in such a way that the last two positions will go to the Daylight Saving Party and the Liberals, rather than Shooters and the Nationals. The other four seats go to Labor.

South Metropolitan. Only a little progress in the count today, from about 87% to 89% of my estimate of the final total. But it was slightly favourable to Brad Pettitt of the Greens, who is ahead of the fifth Labor candidate at Count 27 by 6.69% to 6.60%, out from 6.66% to 6.62% yesterday.

South West. With the count progressingly only slightly from around 89.5% to around 91.5%, Labor has fallen back in the game of musical chairs for the last two seats: Legalise Cannabis are on 14.34% (unchanged on yesterday), the Nationals are on 14.30% (up from 14.25%) and Labor are on 14.16% (down from 14.27%).

Thursday evening

If you thought Labor had done well enough for one week, think again — today they moved into the lead in what the Liberals might have hoped would be one of their three lower house seats; the ABC projection in the South West upper house region flipped to giving them a fourth seat at the expense of the Nationals in South West; they’re now breathing down the neck of what looked like being the only Greens seat in the upper house, potentially giving them two regions in which they win an unholy five seats out of six; and their aggregate primary vote in the lower house now tops 60%, reflecting their generally improving trend in late counting off what was, to put it mildly, a high base. Fifty-three seats out of 59 in the lower house now looks more likely than not, and their best case scenario in the upper house is 25 out 36.

Lower house count developments:

Churchlands. Yet another bleak day of counting for the Liberals, whose 31 vote lead yesterday has turned into a 214 vote deficit today, with the trends running all one way. All of today’s batches broke to Labor: pre-polls by 787-679, absents by 241-131 and postals by 359-332. If there’s any hope for the Liberals from here, it’s that absents and pre-polls are now pretty much done and that today’s postals will prove an aberration: they have 54.3% out of 4357 postals overall. Labor candidate Christine Tonkin provided a detailed assessment of the situation on her Facebook page.

Nedlands. After a big day of counting, it’s time to stick a fork in this one: Labor’s lead is out from 574 to 1052, after pre-polls broke 1391-1085, absents broke 609-440 and postals broke 198-195.

North West Central. The Nationals lead fell from 244 to 233, but the flood of votes coming in has now reduced to a trickle, suggesting the lead is unlikely to be overturned. Today saw absents break 78-71 to Labor, pre-polls break 91-72 to Labor and postals break 35-20 to the Nationals.

Warren-Blackwood. Today’s postals broke 595-452 to the Nationals, but the diminishing flow of absents (189-119) and pre-polls (138-108) continued to favour Labor, such that their lead reduced only from 654 to 611.

In the upper house, five of the six regions counted around 7% to 9% of what I expect to be the total vote today, the exception being Mining and Pastoral where little progress was made. The situation has proved more fluid than I anticipated, mostly due to the general trend of improving fortunes for Labor, so I offer below reviews of all six regions:

South Metropolitan. The ABC projection’s current call of Labor four, Liberal one and Greens one depends on the Greens candidate, Brad Pettitt, surviving at Count 27, at which he currently leads Labor by just 6.66% to 6.62%. If he drops out here, the result becomes five Labor and one Liberal, matching the currently projected result in East Metropolitan (see below). Over the past two days, Labor’s vote here has risen from 63.1% to 63.8% while the Greens have fallen very slightly, from 6.6% to 6.5%.

East Metropolitan. The gap at the decisive point of the count (Count 19 on the ABC projection) narrowed again today, with Legalise Cannabis up from 3.09% to 3.12% and the Western Australia Party down from 3.16% to 3.15%. If the gap closes, what is currently projected as Labor’s fifth seat goes to Legalise Cannabis instead.

South West. The ABC projection has gone from three Labor, one Liberal, one Nationals and one Legalise Cannabis to four Labor, one Liberal and one Legalise Cannabis — but as was explained in the previous entry, the last two seats will go to any two out of Nationals, Legalise Cannabis and the fourth Labor, and there was and remains nothing in it. As of yesterday, the score at all-important Count 25 was Legalise Cannabis 14.46%, Nationals 14.25% and Labor 14.15%; today it’s Legalise Cannabis 14.34%, Labor 14.27% and Nationals 14.25%. The trend is Labor’s friend — two days ago they were at 13.65%.

Mining and Pastoral. There wasn’t much progress here today, with only 954 votes added. This went against the trend noted yesterday of a narrowing gap at the decisive Count 22, with Liberal up from 10.43% to 10.45% and Shooters down from 9.56% to 9.53%. If the gap stays open, the last two seats go to the Daylight Saving Party and the Liberals; otherwise they go to Shooters and the Nationals.

Agricultural. I’ve had my eye off the ball here, assuming Labor three, Nationals two and Liberal one, but the second Nationals candidate has only a 14.79% to 13.78% lead at the final count over Shooters, with a bit under a quarter of the vote still to be counted.

North Metropolitan. Only here has the situation appeared stable at four Labor and two Liberal.

Wednesday evening

In the lower house, Churchlands remains seriously in doubt, but the other three I’m still tracking are definitely leaning one way or another. If the latter go as expected, the final result is Labor 52, Nationals four and Liberal two, with one seat going either to Labor or Liberal. Either way, it’s hard seeing the Liberals holding as many seats as the Nationals, notwithstanding the latter’s apparent loss of Warren-Blackwood.

North West Central. A batch of absents broke 64-48 to Labor, cutting the Nationals margin from 260 to 244. There might be enough of them left to gouge a further 100 or so, but there should also be outstanding postals that are all but sure to favour the Nationals.

Churchlands. Today’s counting continued to chip away at the slender Liberal lead, with batches of absents breaking 116-90 and pre-polls breaking 82-88 in Labor’s favour, reducing the margin from 63 votes to 31. There were 2317 formal absent votes here in 2017 compared with only 520 counted so far — if that portends a significant amount of absents still outstanding, their 59-41 split to Labor obviously doesn’t bode well for the Liberals. However, absent voting, being like all election day voting, was down significantly across the board, and numbers can vary from one election to the next due to different polling booth arrangemnets. Furthermore, the Liberals should get a boost from last postals.

Nedlands. A batch of 574 absents were seriously unhelpful for the Liberals, breaking 287-140 and pushing the Labor lead from 427 to a probably insurmountable 574.

Warren-Blackwood. Today’s pre-polls were less bad for the Nationals than previous batches, but still bad enough, breaking 172-102 to Labor, and were compounded by absents breaking 172-102. This inflated the Labor lead from 522 to a probably decisive 654.

In the Legislative Council, around 10% of what is likely to be the final vote was counted today, pushing the progress from around 70% in the case of Agricultural and Mining & Pastoral to around 80% for the others. My in doubt list has grown since yesterday with the addition of South West.

South West. I no longer think a result of three Labor, one Liberal, one Legalise Cannabis and one Nationals “reasonably firm” here, as Labor is in contention for a fourth seat at the expense of one of the latter two. Today’s counting resulted in a surge in Labor’s vote share at the second last count (Count 25 on the ABC projection) from 13.65% to 14.15%, which is just a fraction shy of the 14.29% that would make for a fourth quota. There is almost nothing to separate Labor at this point count from Legalise Cannabis and the Nationals, making it an open question which of the two would miss out if Labor prevailed. Legalise Cannabis’s lead over the Nationals, which was 14.52% to 14.40% yesterday, widened slightly today, to 14.46% to 14.25%.

East Metropolitan. With the count progressing today from around 66% to around 79%, the gap at the decisive point in the count (Count 19 on the ABC projection) narrowed. Yesterday, Legalise Cannabis dropped out here with 3.03%, behind the Western Australia Party on 3.15% — today Legalise Cannabis is up to 3.09%, with the Western Australia Party up fractionally to 3.16%. If Legalise Cannabis stay alive here, they take a seat from Labor in what will otherwise be a result of Labor five, Liberal one.

Mining and Pastoral. The situation here is that the last two seats go to the Daylight Saving Party and the Liberals if, as per Count 22 at the current ABC projection, Shooters drop out behind the Liberals at Count 22, but they go to Shooters and Nationals if the Liberals drop out first. The margin here narrowed today — currently the Liberals are ahead 10.43% to 9.56%, whereas yesterday it was 10.70% to 8.84%. If the remainder goes exactly as today’s batch — and there are all sorts of reasons they might not — Shooters will gain make a net gain of about 800, where the currrent margin is 321.

Tuesday evening

It was a bad day all round for the conservatives in lower house counting:

Churchlands. The Liberal lead was cut from 206 to 63 as three types of vote broke in Labor’s favour: a batch of pre-polls broke 1633-1556 (the previous batch had split almost exactly 50-50); a batch of postals went 72-70; and the first absents went 189-125.

Nedlands. The latest batch of postals broke 1055-1022 to the Liberals, but less well than the first batch yesterday (50.8% compared to 53.1%), which I suggested at the time was unlikely to be enough. On top of that, the Liberals copped a small but unhelpful batch of pre-polls, which went 200-139 to Labor. Labor now leads by 427, out from 399.

Warren-Blackwood. A remarkably bad day at the office for Nationals member Terry Redman, who went into it with a 270 vote lead and came out with a 522 vote deficit. This resulted from a 1604-812 savaging on the pre-polls, or 66.8% to Labor, compared with 59.3% in the first batch. The first absents also broke 132-81 to Labor.

North West Central.. Labor lead grew by five to 260 as absents broke 82-41 their way, countering a 96-77 advantage to the Nationals on today’s pre-polls and 256-251 on the postals.

In the Legislative Council, I’m not seeing anything to disturb the conclusions I reached about four out of the six regions. In the two that remain in doubt, the odds have shortened on the scenario where the Daylight Savings Party and the Liberals win the last two seats in Mining and Pastoral region, rather than Shooters Fishers and Farmers and the Nationals. But the last seat in East Metropolitan remains hard to call between Legalise Cannabis and Labor. Assuming the former proves accurate, Labor wins 22 seats and perhaps 23 if East Metropolitan goes their way; the Liberals win seven; the Nationals win three; Legalise Cannabis wins one, or two if East Metropolitan goes their way; and the Greens and the Daylight Saving Party get one each.

Mining and Pastoral. There was a flurry of media interest today in the race as the ABC flipped from projecting the Nationals and the Shooters to win the last two seats to the Daylight Saving Party and the Liberals, despite the former having all of 57 votes to their name (I’m quoted on this in this report on The West Australian’s site). Indeed, the odds on this outcome shortened considerably as the vote count progressed from (I estimate) from 47% of what will be the final total to 63%, which as noted in the previous entry depends on whether Liberal or the Shooters drop out at what the ABC calculator identifies as Count 22. Yesterday it was the Liberals who did so, by a margin of 10.0% to 9.6%, but now it’s Shooters by a margin of 10.70% to 8.84%.

East Metropolitan. With the count progressing from 51% to 66%, the crucible of the count as projected by the ABC remains Count 19, where Legalise Cannabis is projected to drop out with 3.03% versus 3.15% for the Western Australia Party. If this gap remains, the final result will be five Labor and one Liberal. But if Legalise Cannabis remains in the hunt, its preference snowball will continue and it will ultimately win a seat at the expense of Labor’s fifth.

Monday evening

My live counting facility had the day off today (by which I mean Monday), but it’s back on now. Rather considerable progress was made, with the total primary vote going from around 650,000 at the close on Saturday to 934,605. The two-party count advanced still further, since many booth results remained unreported on Saturday night – although the WAEC has removed the two-party results for all but the five in-doubt seats from the systems. This means the statewide projected two-party vote on my entry page now means very little, as the only numbers it’s working off are for those five seats.

To summarise the day’s progress in the five in-doubt seats:

North West Central. My call on this has flipped from Labor gain to Nationals retain, because a) 1860 pre-polls were added today and favoured the Nationals 1098-762, converting an 81 vote lead for Labor into a 255 vote lead for the Nationals, and b) there were issues with my earlier projection which no longer apply because I have switched off booth-matching and am going off raw results. The issues were an error in my historic data that was causing the projected Labor swing to be exaggerated, and a failure to account for the fact that a bigger share of the late vote will be postals this time and a smaller share will be absents, the latter having been strong for Labor in this seat in 2017.

Carine. Labor looks to have closed the deal here, with a lead of 2.3% or 941 votes. This follows the addition today of the outstanding two-party booth votes; 5017 pre-polls, which broke 2661-2356 to Labor, giving them 53.0% compared with 51.1% out of the 3625 that were counted on election night; and the first batch of 1529 postals which failed to do the Liberals any good, breaking 768-761 to Labor.

Churchlands. The Liberals have opened up a 206 vote lead here after trailing by 54 votes on election night. The booth two-party vote was already complete; today’s additions were 1602 postals, which broke 927-675 to the Liberals, or 57.9% compared with 53.9% out of the 1922 counted on election night; and the first 2363 pre-polls, which broke 1187-1176 to Liberal.

Nedlands. Labor’s lead here increased from 220 to 399 due to the addition of 4833 pre-poll votes which broke 2508-2325, about the same ratio as the election night batch (51.9% to Labor compared with 51.1%). Also added were the first batch of postals, which broke 590-521 to the Liberals (53.1%) — good, but not quite as much as they will probably need.

Warren-Blackwood. The Nationals hold a lead of 270, which outstanding postals are likely to widen, although Labor can hope to claw back around 200 on absents. However, Labor did extremely well on today’s pre-polls, which broke 1038-711 their way (59.3%) compared with a 1725-1589 split in the Nationals’ favour (52.1%) of those counted on election night. I imagine though that that’s the significant pre-poll vote accounted for.

About half the primary vote has been counted in four of the six Legislative Council regions, with North Metropolitan and South West a little more advanced at around 60%. Lord knows I may be missing something, but the results look reasonably firm to me in North Metropolitan (four Labor and two Liberal), South Metropolitan (four Labor, one Liberal, one Greens), South West (three Labor, one Liberal, one Legalise Cannabis and one Nationals) and Agricultural (three Labor, two Nationals and one Liberal, although Shooters might get a look in at the expense of a National or the Liberal if their collective vote crashes for some reason). That leaves question marks over:

East Metropolitan. In my Saturday night overview I noted the potential for Labor to win a scarecely believable five seats here, which is indeed what the ABC projection now shows. However, this comes down to a fine point at Count 19, at which Legalise Cannabis is projected to drop out with 3.26% behind the Western Australia Party on 3.30%. If this very narrow gap is closed, they get Greens preferences ahead of Labor and Legalise Cannabis win a seat; but if they don’t, Greens preferences elect Labor’s number five, one Robert Green.

Mining and Pastoral. The ABC projection has consistently said four Labor, one Nationals and one Shooters (and, yes, zero Liberals). However, if Shooters drop out after Count 22 rather than Liberal — and it’s currently a close run thing at 10.0% to 9.6% — the Nationals miss out too, because the unlocking of the Shooters’ accumulation would deliver the last two seats to the Daylight Saving Party (receiving preferences directly from the Shooters) and the Liberals (whom Australian Christians and One Nation have ahead of the Nationals). The perversity of a Daylight Saving win here, off a current primary vote total of 43 votes out of 24,235 so far counted, has been widely noted.

Taken together, that gives Labor 22 seats and potentially 23; the Liberals six and potentially seven; the Nationals three and potentially four; Legalise Cannabis one and potentially two; the Greens one; and Shooters potentially one.

Elsewhere, I had a paywalled piece in Crikey today that hunted for angles that hadn’t been done to death elsewhere, and found them in the persistence of micro-parties and the strong performance of YouGov, the only pollster that had published polling appear during the campaign. I would also note the observation of local journalist Gareth Parker on the ABC’s Insiders that Labor didn’t believe the strength of its internal polling, which proved in the event to be accurate.

YouGov achieved about the best thing any pollster can hope for, which was to publish seemingly unbelievable results that turned out to be right. Effectively a newcomer on the Australian polling scene, YouGov’s hands are clean of the 2019 federal election debacle, and its scorecard so far consists of an acceptable result in Queensland and an excellent one in Western Australia.

I also roused my self from post-election night exhaustion on Sunday to discuss the result with Ben Raue at The Tally Room, which you can listen to here:

Click here for full Western Australian election results updated live.

End of Saturday night

The two-party projection on the entry page to my live election results facility currently credits Labor with a 13.7% swing, which if uniform would have left the Liberals only with Cottesloe and Vasse, both on margins of less than 1%. Those are indeed the only two seats the Liberals have clearly won – that they’re ahead by a fair bit more than 1% there reflects a general tendency for the swing to be a little milder in their own seats, which may yet save them in Churchlands, Carine and Nedlands. It should be noted that a very great proportion of the vote remains uncounted, with last night’s proceedings only scratching the surface of the unprecedented postal and pre-poll count. A dynamic may yet emerge which favours the Liberals in the in-doubt seats, but there hasn’t been any evidence of it in the pre-polls and postals that have thus far been counted, which have actually been even worse for the Liberals than the election day votes.

Whether the Nationals will emerge with more seats than the Liberals remains to be established. They look to have lost North West Central to Labor, who get belated revenge for Vince Catania’s defection to the party way back when, although the Nationals wouldn’t be conceding yet. A loss here would bring to an end the regional empire the party built under Brendon Grylls. The South West region seat of Warren-Blackwood has swung 11.7% to Labor and has not definitely been retained, which could potentially reduce them to three.

Nonetheless, the Nationals’ performance in their traditional Wheatbelt heartland was the only bright spot for conservative politics last night. Happily for the Nationals, the four electorates here are accommodated by the boutique Agricultural upper house region, which has three-and-a-half times as much voting power as the metropolitan area, and in which they have retained their two seats. The party’s primary vote was up in all four of these seats (and was down only slightly in Warren-Blackwood), but a slump in support for the Liberals and One Nation powered two-party swings to Labor of roughly 10%. This gained them Geraldton, where former Liberal member Ian Blayney had defected to the Nationals since the last election.

Now to the upper house, where I don’t see Labor winning less than 21 seats out of 36, and could get another three besides; the Liberals will get five to seven; the Nationals four or five; the Greens one to three; Legalise Cannabis one to two; and Shooters should have one.

Agricultural. Looks like being Labor three, Nationals two and Liberal one.

East Metropolitan. The ABC computer has this as four Labor, one Liberal and one Legalise Cannabis, but with Labor on 64.7%, there could be a scarcely believable result of five Labor, one Liberal if the micro-party vote fades in late counting.

Mining and Pastoral. The ABC says four Labor, one Nationals and one Shooters, but depending on where the uncounted votes are from, the Liberals may take the Nationals seat. The Daylight Saving Party could potentially take the Shooters seat, though I would expect late counting will reduce the micro-party preference snowball.

North Metropolitan. Labor clearly has three and Liberal one, with the last two seats a game of musical chairs between Labor, Liberal and the Greens, with the Greens seemingly behind the eightball. However, there’s another scenario in which Australian Christians take the seat that might go to the second Liberal.

South Metropolitan. The ABC says four Labor, one Liberal and one Green, but the Greens have only a slight lead over the micro-party preference snowball which leaves an outside chance of another fluke another win for Aaron Stonehouse of the Liberal Democrats.

South West. Three Labor and one each for Liberal, Nationals and Legalise Cannabis, according to the ABC, but a bit of playing with the calculator suggests the situation to be a bit fluid: the Legalise Cannabis seat could go to the Greens or a fourth Labor, and I’ve managed to concoct a scenario where the Nationals vote goes to Australian Christians.

Election night commentary

Continue reading “Western Australian election live”

An election eve Newspoll in The Australian tips that the result in tomorrow’s Western Australian state election will be, unless I’m missing something big, the most lopsided in Australian history, with Labor leading 66-34 on two-party preferred, only slightly down from 68-32 a fortnight ago (compared with 64.2-35.8 at the New South Wales election in 2011, historically the biggest two-party blowout that comes to mind). The primary votes are Labor 57%, compared with 59% a fortnight ago and 42.2% at the 2017 election; Liberal 23%, unchanged on a fortnight ago and down from 31.2% in 2017; Nationals 3%, up one and down from 5.4%; Greens 9%, up one and essentially unchanged from 8.9%; and One Nation 2%, down one and down from 4.9% (with the usual qualification that they don’t contest every seat, which likewise applies to the Nationals).

Mark McGowan’s personal ratings are exactly unchanged on 88% approval and 10% disapproval, which I would be very surprised if they weren’t the best ratings ever recorded by a leader on the eve of an Australian election. The exposure of an election campaign has reduced Zak Kirkup’s uncommitted rating from 30% to 19%, but this isn’t particularly to his advantage, which his approval rating up three to 32% but his disapproval up eight to 49%. McGowan’s lead as preferred premier nonetheless narrows a bit, from 83-10 to 79-13.

Further questions find 87% expecting Labor to win the election compared with 8% of the Liberals, with 22% of Liberal voters supremely optimistic and 2% of Labor voters correspondingly pessimistic. Given a choice between the proposition that it was “important to have a strong majority government in Western Australia to lead the state’s recovery” and that it was “important to have many opposition members in parliament so we have strong checks and balances”, 51% opted for the former and 41% for the latter, with a strong partisan effect evident.

The poll was conducted online last Friday to Thursday from a sample of 1015; if accurate it will bear out the most apocalyptic assessments of the Liberals’ prospects and cast doubt upon the conclusion to my paywalled piece from Crikey today:

Talk of an over-mighty Labor government running amok also plays on suggestions the Liberals could emerge with as few as four of the 59 seats in the lower house, encouraged by last fortnight’s Newspoll result, which had the Labor primary vote on a gobsmacking 59%. Such a result would raise the possibility of the Liberals losing official
opposition status to the Nationals, who currently hold five mostly safe seats. However, the view on both sides of the fence is that the Liberals’ plea for mercy has at least been effective enough to spare them that humiliation, if little else.

For those of you have made it all the way down here, do take note of the post below this one which promotes this site’s various WA election activities and asks you for money.

The West Australian today carries results of a YouGov poll of 400 respondents in Zak Kirkup’s seat of Dawesville, pointing to a blowout Labor lead of 60-40 in a seat Kirkup retained for the Liberals on his debut in 2017 by 0.7%. Labor is credited with 55% of the primary vote, compared with 33.5% in 2017; Liberal with 33%, down from 36.7%; One Nation with 2%, well down from 9.3%; and the Greens with 3%, down from 4.4%. This is apparently at odds with Labor internal polling, which according to the report has party strategists thinking Kirkup will “probably hang on”.

Seventy-nine per cent of respondents reported a positive view of Mark McGowan, with only 12% negative, while Kirkup’s numbers were respectively 44% and 34%. The poll was a “live telephone survey” conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. The accompanying report notes that “since 2019, YouGov has not used robo-telephone calls because they tended to be answered predominantly by older people”.

Other news:

• The Liberal campaign appears to be reaching an inauspicious conclusion after Shadow Treasurer Sean L’Estrange fronted the media yesterday to spruik an accountancy firm’s costings of the party’s policies, only to be presented with a series of questions about funding black holes that he appeared unable to answer. The West Australian’s editorial today rated it as “arguably the worst financial presentation Australian politics has seen” in three decades.

• The Liberal candidate for Albany, Scott Leary, appeared to suggest during an ABC Radio interview yesterday that a rape allegation against Christian Porter had been timed to influence the state election, an assertion Zak Kirkup conceded was “inappropriate”.

With just two more sleeps until polling day, now would be a good time to acquaint yourself with the sundry delights of the Poll Bludger’s state election guide if you haven’t done so already (or to reacquaint yourself if you have). As well as that, I have the following electorally relevant developments of the past few days to relate:

• Paul Garvey of The Australian reports a “growing belief within both major parties that the Liberals’ warnings of the dangers of ‘total control’ may be enough to prevent its electoral oblivion”. However, that would still leave the Liberals’ representation in the “high single digits”, down from 13 at the 2017 election. Zak Kirkup is rated as likely to rank among the casualties owing to Mark McGowan’s popularity among the large retiree population of his electorate of Dawesville. The report notes that Zak Kirkup has campaigned in Darling Range, in which the Liberals had generally been written off after gaining the seat in a by-election in 2018, and its Labor-held neighbour Kalamunda. Conversely, Mark McGowan has seen fit to visit the seat of North West Central, which the Nationals hold on a margin of 10.1%.

• The West Australian reports three unnamed Liberal MPs and another three unnamed candidates have lined up to drop a bucket on Zak Kirkup, mostly over his renewable energy policy but also for his pre-emptive concession of defeat, which one MP felt should have included some wriggle room. Another was “worried that by trying to appeal to left-leaning voters – particularly in the western suburbs – the Liberals had instead unwittingly provided the extra nudge required to push lifelong conservatives to lodge a one-off vote for Labor”. The issue was said to be particularly a problem in the South West, “including in coastal communities such as Australind and Eaton”

• A former research officer to Matthew Hughes, the Labor member for Kalamunda, had lodged a complaint against him over “verbal aggression and workplace bullying”, while another two former staffers say they quit over his behaviour. This follows extensive reporting in The West Australian on a former electorate officer’s claim that Roger Cook, Deputy Premier and member for Kwinana, unfairly dismissed her and was responsible for a “toxic environment” in his electorate and ministerial offices.

• One Nation has dropped its candidate for Forrestfield, Roger Barnett, over the more than usually racist tenor of his social media exploits, though he remains identified as the party’s candidate on the ballot paper.

The campaign continues to be light on for news, with no published polling since Newspoll a fortnight ago, a deadening of interest arising from the certainty of the outcome, and rape allegations in the federal sphere sucking up much of the news media oxygen. This week’s assembly of campaign highlights accordingly casts the net a little wider than it ordinarily might:

• Mark McGowan was reckoned to have presented the Liberals with their first real opportunity of the campaign on Tuesday, when he suggested COVID-19 border control measures might be extended beyond the end of the pandemic. McGowan soon scotched the notion that this might mean maintaining the GTG (“good to go”) passes that require interstate visitors to disclose personal details when visiting the state, but said police might remain stationed at border crossing points due to their positive side-effect of preventing importation of methamphetamine.

• Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times reported last week on “long-running rumours” that Bill Marmion would make his seat of Nedlands available for Zak Kirkup if he lost his own marginal seat of Dawesville, which Kirkup denies. That assumes Nedlands, the party’s fifth safest seat, is not lost as well – which can’t be taken for granted if either Newspoll or second-hand accounts I’ve heard of Liberal internal polling are any guide, both suggesting the Liberal seat count could fall as low as four. Eliza Laschon of the ABC looks at the potential for the Liberals to lose their status as the official opposition and/or a parliamentary party.

• Joe Spagnolo offers a much rosier assessment for the Liberals in today’s Sunday Times, based on “the vibe I am getting from both Labor and Liberal camps”. Spagnolo suggests the Liberals will lose “three or four seats at worst”, with Hillarys and Riverton most likely to fall, Darling Range a “line-ball call” (though so apparently is Riverton), Labor-held Kingsley “an interesting one to watch”, and Zak Kirkup predicted to retain Dawesville.

• Low-level candidate issues continue to dog the Liberal Party campaign. The candidate for Collie-Preston, Jane Goff, has complained of Zak Kirkup’s failure to consult her over his keynote policy of closing Collie’s coal-fired power stations by 2025; and Jandakot candidate Mihael McCoy’s involvement with the Kings Chapel Church, which is run by his father, has tied him to viewpoints fully as extreme as those of the Republican Party and The Australian’s editorial page cartoonists. On the other side of the fence, an unidentified Labor candidate reportedly considered withdrawing over the dismissal of one of Deputy Premier Roger Cook’s electorate officers.

• The Sunday Times reports more than 210,000 pre-poll votes have been cast and 311,676 postal vote applications received, which compares with slightly more than 200,000 pre-polls and postals combined in 2017.

• You can hear my reading of the situation on last Tuesday’s edition of RTR-FM’s The Swing program here, starting at the 26:20 mark.