Australia 2013 - Results thread

[International Brotherhood of Bernard]

Question: Does anyone have an up-to-date 2CP map?

[Vosem]

Ben Raue's called Barton, Capricornia, and E-M for the Liberals, Fairfax for Palmer, Lingiari for the ALP, and Indi for McGowan and he's declared McEwen and Parramatta to be the last two 'true' undecided seats, with the current leading party locked in everywhere else. Currently, the Libs are ahead in McEwen by 153 votes and the ALP in Parramatta by 482 votes. What say ye?

[Smid]

Question: Does anyone have an up-to-date 2CP map?

Postal votes have 13 days to be received after the election, so long as they are sent before the election (ie, 13 days to arrive from overseas), and they are still counting absentee, postals and pre-poll that have already been arrived, anyway.

I won't be making a 2CP map until they finish counting, and will update swing maps, etc, then.

[YL]

There seems to have been one change in ABC's provisional Senate results: Palmer's party are no longer getting a seat in Tasmania.  But the Motoring Enthusiast in Victoria and the Sports Party candidate in WA are still shown as winning seats.

[Platypus]

Rob Mitchell (ALP sitting member) has pulled ahead by 24 votes in McEwen. With about even numbers of postal (lib favouring) and absentee+provisionals to count, strongly favouring him, it will come down to a shade under 5k prepoll envelopes. In 2010, on somewhat different boundaries, they favoured the libs compared to the seat as a whole by a tiny margin, this time it may well be stronger. It's going to stay close.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's really no excuse for losing that seat on those boundaries.

[Platypus]

True, but as expected, the largest part of the swing to the coalition in Victoria was in the north and west of Melbourne, seats that are demographically not dissimilar to southern and western Sydney, where the transition to being The Worst People On The Planet occurred 15 years ago. For whatever reason, the coalition of low-income whites and lower-income immigrants voting for Labor has held up remarkably well on that side of the Yarra, even though it's been weakened significantly throughout the rest of Australia.

I think the West and the North, and especially the Northwest, will remain Labor heartland for a long time to come, but the ridiculous margins in seats like Gorton, Lalor, McEwen and Calwell were always destined to fall. The fact that they did so as remarkably as they did in McEwen is a surprise, but while Melbourne's east had the seats that fell, the real cause of Victoria's swing was the safe labor seats. Losing Gillard may have been a factor, and Mitchell also had significant support in the areas lost from McEwen (for a Labor member, anyway; largely due to do with his involvement in the communities there following the bushfires).

If he holds on this time around, he will be highly unlikely to see the margin this close again - but in an election about change, outer suburban areas are often the areas most likely to swing, and there's more room for that swing to occur in Melbourne than in the other cities.

It's not all bad for Labor, though. Higgins and Kooyong, and maybe Menzies, do not like Abbott's version of the Liberal Party much at all. While I think it's no more likely that they'll win those seats than it is that they'll lose Gorton and Lalor, if any of those four was to change hands it'd be Higgins, and if a second was to do so, it'd be Kooyong.

As a final point, the more established middle ring of suburbs saw a reasonable swing too, but are less likely to trend Lib over time, I suspect. Seats like Scullin and Jagajaga, but also the outer halves of Wills, Batman, and Maribyrnong, match reasonably well with seats in Sydney like Reid and Parramatta. But unlike those two, the community isn't at war with itself due to horrific planning over decades, and as long as those communities are still entirely capable of coping with the demands of their population, the politics of fear that a certain side uses so effectively in getting people to vote against their economic interests don't have as much bite. It's my conspiracy theory as to why the state government is doing so little to address concerns about access to schools and public transport in the outer fringe, something which has always seen reasonably srong by-partisan support for spending in the past.

[Vosem]

Is a full preference count done in seats where it might not make a difference? I noticed that in Maranoa, while the LNP is comfortably ahead of 50% on first preferences (and would therefore win regardless), the PUP is just slightly behind the ALP and seems to have a reasonable (PUP+KAP+FFP=22.8% right now; ALP+GRN=20.1% right now) chance of eclipsing it on preferences from other minor parties.

[minionofmidas]

Is a full preference count done in seats where it might not make a difference? I noticed that in Maranoa, while the LNP is comfortably ahead of 50% on first preferences (and would therefore win regardless), the PUP is just slightly behind the ALP and seems to have a reasonable (PUP+KAP+FFP=22.8% right now; ALP+GRN=20.1% right now) chance of eclipsing it on preferences from other minor parties.

No. A Coalition vs ALP count is done everywhere, though.

[Smid]

I'm pretty sure full preference counts are undertaken in all seats, and published on the AEC website (go to "Divisional and Polling Place Results" and then select "Full Distribution of Preferences"). Here is Maranoa in 2010.

[adma]

I'm sure full preference counts are useful as "barometers" of one sort or another, so it seems dumb to suppress them even when the winner is obvious.

By contrast, to those of us in full-count jurisdictions, the US method of only counting provisional etc ballots "when necessary" just seems...wrong.

[BigSkyBob]

Palmer lead in Fairfax down to 64 votes with 2,499, or so, ballots left to count.

[YL]

There seems to have been one change in ABC's provisional Senate results: Palmer's party are no longer getting a seat in Tasmania.  But the Motoring Enthusiast in Victoria and the Sports Party candidate in WA are still shown as winning seats.

... and now that last Tasmanian seat is shown as going to the Sex Party.

When will final results be known?

[Smid]

There seems to have been one change in ABC's provisional Senate results: Palmer's party are no longer getting a seat in Tasmania.  But the Motoring Enthusiast in Victoria and the Sports Party candidate in WA are still shown as winning seats.

... and now that last Tasmanian seat is shown as going to the Sex Party.

When will final results be known?

My memory is somewhat foggy, but I believe that so long as they were posted before the election, postal votes have 13 days to be received by the Returning Officer (in other words, Friday, two weeks after the election, that is to say, in another couple of days). Most postal votes, coming from locations in Australia, are received quickly and able to be counted earlier in the days following the election, but the thirteen days' grace period is useful for postals coming in from overseas. In most seats, a small bundle of postal votes will remain uncounted until after the mail has been delivered on the final day postal votes can be received. That way, if only one postal vote is received on that day, no one will be able to tell how that voter voted (as their ballot will be added to the small batch remaining). This is why the final few hundred postal votes are unlikely to diminish over the next few days.

As for Palmer, I suspect he never thought he'd win, and didn't actually want to (as this would require him to hand control of his company over to someone else, while he took a seat on the backbench, where he will receive very little attention). I think this is why he was calling for a fresh election in his seat, despite having a sizeable lead at the time, and everyone assuming he would win. I think he may be somewhat relieved if that lead continues to evaporate. Of course, not being successful in politics is unlikely to dissuade him from desperately seeking attention and airing his views on issues, after all, the guy's ego is even larger than his substantial girth.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Mirabella has conceded defeat... the joy is indescribable...

[Platypus]

It's the one thing that makes up for the other 90 things

Labor has also held Parramatta. McEwen and Fairfax still in doubt.

[Platypus]

It's the one thing that makes up for the other 90 things

Labor has also held Parramatta. McEwen and Fairfax still in doubt.

[Smid]

It's a shame Rudd wasn't so gracious in his concession speech.

[RogueBeaver]

It's a shame Rudd wasn't so gracious in his concession speech.

Those 2 words don't belong in the same library.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

It's a shame Rudd wasn't so gracious in his concession speech.

or Abbott is his victory speech.


In brighter (for democracy - despite increasing the LNP majority) news - Palmer is sliding and is now behind Ted O'Brien.

[BigSkyBob]

It's a shame Rudd wasn't so gracious in his concession speech.

or Abbott is his victory speech.


In brighter (for democracy - despite increasing the LNP majority) news - Palmer is sliding and is now behind Ted O'Brien.

Back up by three.

[minionofmidas]

It's a shame Rudd wasn't so gracious in his concession speech.

or Abbott is his victory speech.

A result you deemed very unlikely and a week of distance will do that to a speech.

[YL]

Palmer's lead is now back up to 98.

Antony Green has an analysis of the Tasmania and WA Senate counts on his blog.  At the moment, he thinks the Sex Party in Tasmania won't survive a crucial count against Labor, leaving it a battle between the Liberals and Palmer.  In WA, there are a couple of early counts for the Sports Party to survive to get that cascade of virtually every minor party's preferences, and there's one other critical count.  The last two seats there could then go Labor/Palmer rather than Sports/Green.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Results are basically final now, so, what the hell:



As you will note, this is a more extensive key.

[YL]

Antony Green has an analysis of the Tasmania and WA Senate counts on his blog.  At the moment, he thinks the Sex Party in Tasmania won't survive a crucial count against Labor, leaving it a battle between the Liberals and Palmer.  In WA, there are a couple of early counts for the Sports Party to survive to get that cascade of virtually every minor party's preferences, and there's one other critical count.  The last two seats there could then go Labor/Palmer rather than Sports/Green.

Update:

In Tasmania the Sex Party's lead at that crucial count has increased, but Green still seems to think they will end up losing out.

In WA the calculator is now showing the last two seats as Labor/Palmer, but it's still very close.  So there still may be a Sports Party senator...

What's the latest on changing the electoral system?