By-elections of the 44th Australian Parliament (2013-2016)

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Ugh - they're not as obsessed about marriage equality as you are. The Right's issue with Pratt is not because she's a social progressive (as opposed to Bullock et al regressives) but because they're worried about her votes on environmental and economic issues, which actually could hurt their financial base and power.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Just voted a couple of hours ago, did my vote below the line. As others have said, I predict 3 Liberal, 2 Labor and 1 Green as the result.

At my local polling booth, the Liberal, Labor and Green campaign materials and volunteers were all in equal strength, I'd say Liberal and Green more so than Labor though, from what I saw. Not much of a Palmer presence at the polling booth, although there are plenty of Palmer United signs around my neighbourhood.

I'm sick of all the Palmer advertising - in the car, I heard three PUP advertisements in the space of one minute! Not to mention on YouTube, the DVDs he sent to people's letterboxes, on TV, and all the billboards and signs around town.

[MaxQue]

Just voted a couple of hours ago, did my vote below the line. As others have said, I predict 3 Liberal, 2 Labor and 1 Green as the result.

So, the individual picked by yourself potatoes, instead of the pre-packaged potato bag, according to that silly ad of the AEC.

It's terrible geofocusing than I get them on various websites.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Just voted a couple of hours ago, did my vote below the line. As others have said, I predict 3 Liberal, 2 Labor and 1 Green as the result.

So, the individual picked by yourself potatoes, instead of the pre-packaged potato bag, according to that silly ad of the AEC.

It's terrible geofocusing than I get them on various websites.

I haven't seen that AEC ad, but yes, individually picked potatoes for me, I never vote above the line.

[Talleyrand]

I'm predicting 3 Liberal, 1 Labor, 1 Green, and 1 Hemp. Think ALP vote will be around 23-24% and Liberals just fall short of 3 quotas outright. Greens should get a full quota.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I'm thinking about 60% chance of 2 Labour, 1 Green, 3 Liberal, but a still significant chance of 2 Labour, 1 Green, 1 Minor party of right, 2 Liberal.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

78 minutes until the polls close...

I think we'll know who 5 of the 6 Senators are going to be tonight.

[YL]

ABC live blog

Some very, very early results look good, on first sight, for the Greens and for Palmer.  But I don't know what sort of places they're coming from.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Country booths in... and everything is very weird... actually (outright f'ing weird)

Yay for Senate elections.

[YL]

Putting the current ABC projections (based on 8.9% counted) of Lib 34.4, Lab 19.7, Green 18.1, Palmer 11.6, Nat 3.3, Lib Dem 1.7 (I didn't adjust shares for parties below that) into the Senate calculator gave Lib 3 Lab 1 Green 1 Palmer 1, with the last seat being quite close between the third Liberal and second Labor candidates.

[morgieb]

2/1/1/1 looks certain ATM. Unfortunately though I suspect the Libs pick the final seat up from current numbers.

[YL]

The ABC projection (using the senate calculator) has now flipped to Labor winning the last seat (2/2/1/1).  56% counted.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Have one of these: http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/wa/ been placed on the ABC website yet? They were fun

(also lol ALP, you suck)

[MaxQue]

Australia Defence minister and lead Liberal candidate has the exact same than the Canadian Governor General. It's wierd.

[Vosem]

Putting the current ABC projections (based on 8.9% counted) of Lib 34.4, Lab 19.7, Green 18.1, Palmer 11.6, Nat 3.3, Lib Dem 1.7 (I didn't adjust shares for parties below that) into the Senate calculator gave Lib 3 Lab 1 Green 1 Palmer 1, with the last seat being quite close between the third Liberal and second Labor candidates.

After the election took place, I fed the real election results into Green's Senate Calculator but gave the Sports Party a 0, and had the Calculator adjust the other numbers so it would add up to 100%, and came up with that -- so this is what would've happened had there been a threshold in the first election; seems appropriate for what is more of a revote, not a by-election. (This is assuming these results hold, of course, which is by no means certain). Rather ironic considering how much shift there was in the top-line numbers. (For the curious, I did the same experiment in Victoria, setting AMEP at 0 and adjusting everything else; in that case the final Senate seat went to the third Liberal).

[YL]

Have one of these: http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/wa/ been placed on the ABC website yet? They were fun

Yes, here.  It's gone back to giving the third seat to the Liberals, though it's very close on the last count: 625 votes out of over 280,000.  (68.7% counted.)

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Have one of these: http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/wa/ been placed on the ABC website yet? They were fun

Yes, here.  It's gone back to giving the third seat to the Liberals, though it's very close on the last count: 625 votes out of over 280,000.  (68.7% counted.)

Fingers crossed Reynolds wins the final seat...

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Have one of these: http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/wa/ been placed on the ABC website yet? They were fun

Yes, here.  It's gone back to giving the third seat to the Liberals, though it's very close on the last count: 625 votes out of over 280,000.  (68.7% counted.)

Fingers crossed Reynolds wins the final seat...

I would obviously prefer not, but as long as it's uncontested and valid.

Oh there are massive internal power rumbles about Bullock's little outburst and what the possible impact in relation to the vote it might have had - sufficed to say, even members of the right are PISSED at him.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Good news:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/shorten-urges-change-to-alp-rules-remove-union-requirement/5370652

Hopefully Shorten's legacy will be democratising the ALP. It will be painful, but it's better than this sort of ery happening again and again.

(I find it kind odd that in the British Labour Party the unions are more left-wing than the membership, but the ALP the unions are right-wing and the membership are the "mad" lefties.)

Is anyone else deeply disappointed that the preferences lottery didn't elect some raving weirdo crossbencher in a strange single issue party? I hope the Australian Sports Party enjoyed their admittedly brief national spotlight.

[Vosem]

Is anyone else deeply disappointed that the preferences lottery didn't elect some raving weirdo crossbencher in a strange single issue party? I hope the Australian Sports Party enjoyed their admittedly brief national spotlight.

Apparently under early figures it appeared the Voluntary Euthanasia party had a fair chance of grabbing a seat, but then the chance disappeared. HEMP got up to 7% through their preferences, but they didn't have a chance of winning the way the numbers were set up, since the Libs and the ALP were both past 10% when HEMP was eliminated.

[Hifly]

The postal votes are beginning to be counted, and unsurprisingly they're coming in extremely favourably to the Liberals, who are running way above their election day margins.
It's all but assured that Louise Pratt is gone and the following candidates have been elected:

1. David Johnston - Liberal
2. Joe Bullock - Labor
3. Scott Ludlam - Green
4. Michaelia Cash - Liberal
5. Zhenya Wang - PUP
6. Linda Reynolds - Liberal

That makes for an astonishing 4 seats for the Right and 2 for the Left (including Bullock). I honestly wasn't expecting this.
The question now is how much support did Bullock's comments cost Labor, if any?  

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

IMHO Labor's problems were:

* Complacency. The whole campaign was based on the idea that the state and federal government are both kinda pants; and somehow unsatisfied voters would magically be attracted to Labor, sort of like how Scottish Labour hubristically assumed disenfranchised Lib Dems would automatically vote Labour. ALP (and the LNP) also swallowed the media idea that the Greens and PUP were dead.

* Messaging. Say what you like about Tony Abbott's LNP - they are masters of controlling issues. "Scrap the tax. Stop the boats. End the waste" - all pithy ways to control the narrative, and it made the ALP elite look like scrabbling nerds when they replied with a few paragraphs on how the carbon tax isn't really a tax etc etc etc. This election the ALP decided to get all hypothetical about potential cuts on the budget, which I don't think is particularly great a negative ad.

* Bullock. I'm sorry Hifly, but Labor would probably have just clawed the last seat if it hadn't been for his comments. It was a terrible thing to leak, as it reminded voters of the ALP of Rudd vs Gillard, Left vs. Right - and why would anyone vote for a party that hadn't changed. His admission that he thought Abbott was a great PM also broke any ALP message that Tony is the worst thing evehh.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The other problem was that despite some initial belief that this would trigger stronger votes for the two majors - it basically turned into a GIANT by-election, following general by-election behavior such as strong support for minor parties, including massive, almost inexplicable swings.

The Lib and Nat vote were whacked harder than Labor (as a proportion of their vote) but the Libs had a large buffer from September that would absorb it... plus a good deal of their lost primary vote, came straight back from preferences.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

One thing that is interesting from the wash-up of the election...

A key union that was responsible for putting Bullock into the number 1 slot is now publicly regretting having done so. The other thing is the 'possible' impact of the Bullock comments in the period before the close of postals is that the ALP is actually running ahead of its normal votes by 3% and the Greens are way behind on their postals v normal (7-16%) ... considering how unusual a situation this is, some commentators are now suggesting this is the impact of Bullock statement, shifting support from the ALP to the Greens in the final 24 hours.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

So ... this isn't technically an election of the current Federal Parliament - but there is the risk that if the NT Country Liberals do not win the Blaine by-election today - since they'd technically go into minority status (12/25) it could trigger a motion of no-confidence and an immediate election be called.

There's only been one poll (electorate-level polling caveat considered) and it has the CLP up 51-49 (off a previous CLP margin of 15%)... so a big swing it probably on, how big and it's impacts remains to be seen.