Australia 2013 - Results thread

[YL]

ABC currently showing the Australian Sports Party, whoever they are, getting a seat in the Senate from WA with 0.22% of the first preference vote.  Even if it doesn't stay like that, it really makes this above the line system look ridiculous, and I say that as someone who likes the basic idea of STV.

[YL]

According to their website the Australian Sports Party support "Healthy Living Through Sport" and say

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I suspect that if we had this system in the UK we'd have a decent chance of a Raving Loony Senator...

[YL]

Xenophon slams bizarre preference deals

Xenophon himself was actually quite high up Labor's preference list in South Australia (10th) but his running mate, Stirling Griff, was way down (49th).  When Labor's second candidate was eliminated, the votes first went to the Greens, electing their candidate, but then transferred to Family First and the Liberals ahead of Griff.  The Green preferences also went to Family First (but not the Liberals) ahead of Griff.  (Obviously this is all provisional.)

Mind you, I think what Xenophon does (splitting his votes equally between a left-wing and a right-wing ticket) is also quite weird, and a bit Moderate Heroish.

[YL]

2013 Australian Federal Election Results - Palmer Primary Vote

Bigger map in the Gallery, etc. Roughly an inverse to a typical Greens' strength map... Greens' strength has a central epicentre and radiates to lesser strength further from the core. Palmer strength is weakest in the city centres and inner suburbs, and typically seems to gain strength as it reaches the outer suburbs. This is evident in every state, including Queensland, which has some ridiculously high Palmer vote totals. Within the outer suburbs, there seems to be a slightly stronger result in more blue-collar, Labor seats - it's really slight, though, and I could be imagining it (and there are definitely some exceptions). I suspect it may be have been predominantly a blue collar protest option for typically Labor voters who didn't want to vote Coalition (except in Queensland, which is completely different to everywhere else).

For the record, the only electorate with a Palmer vote of less than 1% was Melbourne. The highest Palmer vote was for Palmer himself, in Fairfax. Even there, he only received 27% of the vote, so just over a quarter. If he is elected, it will be due to Labor Party preferences, and the Labor Party will be responsible for the collective national embarrassment.

Some of those patterns are vaguely reminiscent of UKIP...

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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?

[YL]

Senate results in Tasmania and Northern Territory have been finalised:

Tasmania
2 Liberal
2 Labor
1 Greens
1 Palmer United

So the below the line votes did indeed work against the Sex Party, who the ABC calculator shows as the winner of the last seat if all votes had been above the line.  They ended up 244 votes behind Labor on the critical count, and were eliminated.  Later, the Palmer candidate survived the other critical count Antony Green was talking about, against the Liberal Democrats, relatively easily, by over 1200 votes, and went on to be elected.

[YL]

Antony Green has a blog on the Tasmanian senate count.

I think the Sports Party candidate still has a decent chance in WA.  The critical count is the one which ABC's Senate Calculator, which treats all votes as if they were above the line, labels count 21.  At this point, two Liberals and one Labor candidate have already been elected, and the fractions of a quota for those parties still in the count are shown by the Calculator as:

Labor 0.8636
Liberal 0.7646
Greens 0.6677
Palmer 0.3701
Nationals 0.3527
Lib Dem 0.3184
HEMP 0.2277
Sports 0.1882
Shooters & Fishers 0.1243
Australian Christians 0.1223

On these figures, the Christians are eliminated, and their preferences flow to the Shooters & Fishers, which puts the Sports Party last, so they get eliminated, and the minor party preference flow ends up with Palmer.  However, if the Christians end up ahead of the Shooters & Fishers on this count, the Shooters & Fishers' preferences go to the Sports Party, and so the Sports Party stay in the count and are able to pick up all those preferences to get elected.

Green shows the Christians ahead on "locked in" votes, in particular excluding below the line votes which the Calculator figures are treating as if they were above the line.  So if the Shooters & Fishers miss out on enough below the line transfers, the Sports Party get in.

[YL]

There has been a development in the count for the Queensland division of Fisher. The AEC had previously listed the seat as LNP ahead, on the basis of a two party preferred count against the ALP. However the PUP first preference vote, in third place, was not very far behind the ALP vote. Presumably transfers from the other seven candidates have pushed PUP above ALP, so that a full preference count is needed to decide if LNP or PUP have won the seat.

LNP only had 44.46% of the first preference vote, so a victory from the third first preference place might be possible.

Fisher has now been declared for the LNP, and the two candidate preferred is LNP vs Labor.

Fairfax is still undeclared, with Palmer currently shown as 42 votes ahead.

[YL]

Antony Green's summary of the NT Senate count

Oh, and Palmer's winning margin is currently showing as 3 votes.

[YL]

South Australian Senators determined

2 Liberal
1 Xenophon
1 Labor
1 Greens
1 Family First

Presumably if Labor and the Greens had preferenced Xenophon's running mate ahead of Family First and the Liberals then he would have been elected instead of Family First.

WA is still too close to call, though I think Lab/PUP is now slightly more likely than Greens/Sport.  That count should be done tomorrow.

[YL]

The WA Senate count ended up with Labor/Palmer winning the last two seats, giving Liberal 3 Labor 2 Palmer 1.  The margin between the Shooters & Fishers and the Christians at the critical count was 14 votes (if the Christians had been ahead the last two seats would have been Green/Sports).  The Greens are asking for a recount.

(From Antony Green's blog.)

[YL]

So the full Senate result is
Coalition 17
Labor 13
Greens 3
Palmer 3
Family First 1
Motoring Enthusiast 1
Liberal Democrats 1
Xenophon 1

which makes the new Senate
Coalition 33
Labor 26
Greens 9
Palmer 3
Family First 1
Motoring Enthusiast 1
Liberal Democrats 1
DLP 1
Xenophon 1

(assuming no changes from the likely recount in WA)

[YL]

The results of the "Recount" have been declared and The Greens and Sports Party have snatched seats from Labor and PUP. PUP will challenge in court.

LOL.

In the recount, the Australian Christians were 12 votes ahead of the Shooters & Fishers (as opposed to 14 votes behind before).

[YL]

I don't think there is any way that there could be variable quotas for re-polling new results - that the Liberals would require 64% to elect another Senator, while other parties would require a lower threshold. The method of proportional representation used is to provide a quota that would elect precisely the requisite number of candidates and no more and no less.

I'd assume that if a satisfactory way of doing that had been worked out it'd be in use for by-elections in Ireland (and Scottish local government).  What they actually do is an AV by-election, which means the strongest party in the area tends to gain seats which other parties had won in the original election, and the equivalent in this case would be running a 2-seat STV election just for the two disputed seats, which as already mentioned would almost certainly give one seat each to Labor and the Liberals.

Reading Antony Green's blog, he seems to think a full re-run of the election is the most likely.  I wonder whether the Sports Party will be able to get all those preference deals again?

[YL]

From Antony Green's blog:

The AEC have released details of how the missing votes would affect the re-count figures.  On the crucial count, the Shooters & Fishers would gain 18 votes, and the Christians would gain 5.  So that turns a 12 vote Christian lead into a 1 vote (!) Shooters & Fishers lead, and if that were the correct result on that count it would go back to electing Labor/Palmer for the last two seats.

Green thinks this increases the chances of a new election.  I suppose we're effectively in Winchester 1997 territory: the result is so close that it can be affected by the sort of minor errors that happen all the time in election counts but don't normally matter.  (Whether the Western Australian electorate have the same attitude to bad losers that the voters of Winchester did remains to be seen.)