Victorian State Parliamentary Election - 29 November 2014

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Not a great day for my side of politics, I expected Labor to win, but by a slightly smaller margin and also surprised that Mulgrave did not swing that strongly to Labor either.

Also, what happened in Shepparton?

Shepparton was one of the seats I was told to watch. The ALP knew they had no chance, but that the pretty visible Independent had been learning a lot from Cathy McGowan's win at the Federal level in Indi. But I still found it odd that she actually won so cleanly.

Overall, what seems to have been unexpected, at least from the perspective of the people I spoke to, was how emphatic some of the wins, especially those around Geelong and Ballarat were (South Barwon and Rippon were always going to be very tough for the ALP).

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

[Talleyrand]

What is the overall two party-preferred vote at this point?

[MaxQue]

So, the Greens have claimed Melbourne yet their lead with 52% counted is only 1.2% - is this all a bit premature?

ABC uncalled it. It's now "in doubt GRN ahead".

The 8 uncalled seats are in two categories, "in doubt" and "likely".

In doubt: Bentleigh (ALP), Frankston (ALP), Melbourne (GRN), Prahran (LIB).
Likely: Carrum (ALP), Morwell (NAT), Ripon (LIB), South Barwon (LIB)

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

What is the overall two party-preferred vote at this point?

It's somewhere around 52-48.

[morgieb]

With the exception of Shepparton, this is a very unsurprising election.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

With the exception of Shepparton, this is a very unsurprising election.

even the legislative council?


I don't really understand why voting "above the line" and the preference flow still exists. I mean the only reason it was brought in was because people understandably didn't want to fill in like a million boxes. Now you only need to fill in eight or so, surely this weird Australia-specific absurdity is redundant?

[MaxQue]

With the exception of Shepparton, this is a very unsurprising election.

even the legislative council?


I don't really understand why voting "above the line" and the preference flow still exists. I mean the only reason it was brought in was because people understandably didn't want to fill in like a million boxes. Now you only need to fill in eight or so, surely this weird Australia-specific absurdity is redundant?

The solution is not to abolish "above the line", but to transform "above the line" in a preferential vote for parties, where you number every party.

[Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon]

[Vosem]

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

Why? Didn't they achieve some significant progress in gun rights?

[morgieb]

With the exception of Shepparton, this is a very unsurprising election.

even the legislative council?


I don't really understand why voting "above the line" and the preference flow still exists. I mean the only reason it was brought in was because people understandably didn't want to fill in like a million boxes. Now you only need to fill in eight or so, surely this weird Australia-specific absurdity is redundant?

Was more thinking the Legislative Assembly. Yes the Legislative Council will be fun.

[Knives]

I don't understand by the VEC didn't count early votes and postal votes when they came in?

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

Why? Didn't they achieve some significant progress in gun rights?

By your definition, yes. By mine, they helped regress them. Plus there are no 'gun rights' in Australia. Thanks be.

Plus they cornered O'Farrell into initially permitting guns into National Parks. Which showed a) they're terrible and b) O'Farrell was weak.

[Knives]

The Greens lead in Melbourne is down to .74% with 52% counted, I can't believe they claimed it last night. Will be funny if they lose.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Not a great day for my side of politics, I expected Labor to win, but by a slightly smaller margin and also surprised that Mulgrave did not swing that strongly to Labor either.

Also, what happened in Shepparton?

Shepparton was one of the seats I was told to watch. The ALP knew they had no chance, but that the pretty visible Independent had been learning a lot from Cathy McGowan's win at the Federal level in Indi. But I still found it odd that she actually won so cleanly.

Overall, what seems to have been unexpected, at least from the perspective of the people I spoke to, was how emphatic some of the wins, especially those around Geelong and Ballarat were (South Barwon and Rippon were always going to be very tough for the ALP).

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

That sounds pretty reasonable, it goes to show that the Nationals cannot take rural Victoria for granted. Also, as you may have figured, we disagree considerably on the Hunters and Shooters Party (I quite like them myself), and their presence in the Legislative Council (assuming current numbers hold), will be interesting.

This is because Labor will only have 13 seats in the new Council on current figures, and will need to negotiate with the Greens (18 seats between them, still 3 short of a majority), and the 6 councillors from the following: Shooters, Family First, Country Alliance, and the *** Party (I'd rather not type that name out) to get legislation passed.

[Knives]

You are all getting way too ahead of yourself only half the vote has been counted. There is still a long way to go.

[MaxQue]

Not a great day for my side of politics, I expected Labor to win, but by a slightly smaller margin and also surprised that Mulgrave did not swing that strongly to Labor either.

Also, what happened in Shepparton?

Shepparton was one of the seats I was told to watch. The ALP knew they had no chance, but that the pretty visible Independent had been learning a lot from Cathy McGowan's win at the Federal level in Indi. But I still found it odd that she actually won so cleanly.

Overall, what seems to have been unexpected, at least from the perspective of the people I spoke to, was how emphatic some of the wins, especially those around Geelong and Ballarat were (South Barwon and Rippon were always going to be very tough for the ALP).

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

That sounds pretty reasonable, it goes to show that the Nationals cannot take rural Victoria for granted. Also, as you may have figured, we disagree considerably on the Hunters and Shooters Party (I quite like them myself), and their presence in the Legislative Council (assuming current numbers hold), will be interesting.

This is because Labor will only have 13 seats in the new Council on current figures, and will need to negotiate with the Greens (18 seats between them, still 3 short of a majority), and the 6 councillors from the following: Shooters, Family First, Country Alliance, and the *** Party (I'd rather not type that name out) to get legislation passed.

It's not Family First, it's DLP which is winning a seat right now.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

Not a great day for my side of politics, I expected Labor to win, but by a slightly smaller margin and also surprised that Mulgrave did not swing that strongly to Labor either.

Also, what happened in Shepparton?

Shepparton was one of the seats I was told to watch. The ALP knew they had no chance, but that the pretty visible Independent had been learning a lot from Cathy McGowan's win at the Federal level in Indi. But I still found it odd that she actually won so cleanly.

Overall, what seems to have been unexpected, at least from the perspective of the people I spoke to, was how emphatic some of the wins, especially those around Geelong and Ballarat were (South Barwon and Rippon were always going to be very tough for the ALP).

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

That sounds pretty reasonable, it goes to show that the Nationals cannot take rural Victoria for granted. Also, as you may have figured, we disagree considerably on the Hunters and Shooters Party (I quite like them myself), and their presence in the Legislative Council (assuming current numbers hold), will be interesting.

This is because Labor will only have 13 seats in the new Council on current figures, and will need to negotiate with the Greens (18 seats between them, still 3 short of a majority), and the 6 councillors from the following: Shooters, Family First, Country Alliance, and the *** Party (I'd rather not type that name out) to get legislation passed.

It's not Family First, it's DLP which is winning a seat right now.

My bad, I knew it was one or the other, should have paid more attention to the results. The point I was making that on those numbers, Labor will have a potentially difficult crossbench to work with.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Not a great day for my side of politics, I expected Labor to win, but by a slightly smaller margin and also surprised that Mulgrave did not swing that strongly to Labor either.

Also, what happened in Shepparton?

Shepparton was one of the seats I was told to watch. The ALP knew they had no chance, but that the pretty visible Independent had been learning a lot from Cathy McGowan's win at the Federal level in Indi. But I still found it odd that she actually won so cleanly.

Overall, what seems to have been unexpected, at least from the perspective of the people I spoke to, was how emphatic some of the wins, especially those around Geelong and Ballarat were (South Barwon and Rippon were always going to be very tough for the ALP).

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

That sounds pretty reasonable, it goes to show that the Nationals cannot take rural Victoria for granted. Also, as you may have figured, we disagree considerably on the Hunters and Shooters Party (I quite like them myself), and their presence in the Legislative Council (assuming current numbers hold), will be interesting.

This is because Labor will only have 13 seats in the new Council on current figures, and will need to negotiate with the Greens (18 seats between them, still 3 short of a majority), and the 6 councillors from the following: Shooters, Family First, Country Alliance, and the *** Party (I'd rather not type that name out) to get legislation passed.

Um, it's one thing to be conservative; but it's quite another to not be able to say the word "sex"...

Is the National Party ultimately doomed? They seem to have lost their official party status and are "reviewing their relationship" with the Libs...

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

and the Preference Whisperer strikes again! Something called "Vote 1 Local Jobs" with 0.2% of the vote is in the Council.

really Andrews has made his own bed by refusing to preference Greens and throwing out preferences to all these reactionary nuts to "prove a point" or sumfink.

[MaxQue]

and the Preference Whisperer strikes again! Something called "Vote 1 Local Jobs" with 0.2% of the vote is in the Council.

That seat was attributed to Shooters and Fishers (which are now at 2, instead of 3) in previous counts. Bad, since their whole program is let's raise taxes on Melbourne to give tax cuts to country and less money for Melbourne, more for country.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The Greens lead in Melbourne is down to .74% with 52% counted, I can't believe they claimed it last night. Will be funny if they lose.

But it also looks like the Libs may claw Prahran back... off the back of Green preferences. It is the nature of these seats, affluent, but socially progressive.

[Knives]

The Greens lead in Melbourne is down to .74% with 52% counted, I can't believe they claimed it last night. Will be funny if they lose.

But it also looks like the Libs may claw Prahran back... off the back of Green preferences. It is the nature of these seats, affluent, but socially progressive.

Regardless if the Greens don't end up winning in Melbourne they will look beyond ridiculous. However the reality is unless a candidate is up by more than 3% you can't really call a seat as so many votes are either yet to be counted or haven't been added to the official tally at the VEC. I dunno, I feel that after recounts we won't know the results for quite a few seats for a bit longer. And the VEC is totally blamable for this because they didn't count early votes as they got them as they underestimated the rate at which Victorians would vote early.

[Knives]

Well it has started and both major news publications have called the Greens out for premature celebrations. The gap is 300 votes with over 8000 to be counted today. We should know all final results later today.

[Barnes]

The ALP candidate in Prahran, Neil Pharaoh, has pulled ahead of the Liberal on a 2PP 50.2 - 49.8.

Of course, there are quite a few votes left to count here.

[Platypus]

I tend to think it'll be ALP and Liberal, based on nothing but my gut

---------

I'm feeling kind of mixed about the result. Labor did not deserve to win, but as is the case in most elections in Australia, and pretty much everywhere, the government had to prove it deserved to stay in and it failed utterly to do so.

So we've got Daniel (sorry, Dan) Andrews as Premier, and he doesn't deserve it. But the Libs had four years to build a case for re-election, and they failed to do so. I think there are three big reasons for the loss.

They weren't helped by the fact that people simply don't pay attention to state politics unless it's a scandal. The good things that were done were essentially invisible, and only the controversial things stood out. This happened to the Brumby government in 2010, too, and is generally counterbalanced by the unedifying use of taxpayer money for advertising by the government of the day, of either colour, to sell it's message.

They were absolutely not helped by the federal government. Yes, voters are able to distinguish between state and federal politics, but the federal Liberal party is so utterly detested by Victorians (especially moderates) that it certainly had a huge effect. Tony Abbott's very limited contributions to the debate down here hurt way more than they helped. This new brand of rah rah populist conservatism mike work in NSW and QLD, and in a few outer suburban seats of Victoria, but it doesn't play at all well in Prahran, or Albert Park, or even Carrum or Yan Yean.

Federally, I'm unequivocally on the left, but at the state level I think I'm more nuanced. A bad Labor candidate will get my vote ahead of a bad liberal, and the same for a combo of good ALP/Liberal, but a good Lib will go above a bad Labor.  If it was a gubernatorial election, for example, I'd've voted for Napthine. Which brings me to the third point. The Liberals knew that Napthine was an asset, and made their campaign all about him. All you ever saw was his face, 'the Napthine Liberals' etc etc., while in the meantime the ALP was running a huge ground game of face to face contact, with the footsoldiers working not on electing Daniel Andrews, but on electing Neil Pharoah, or Sonya Kilkenny, or Danielle Green. In those seats, the Liberals were actually reasonably good at having high candidate visibility, especially Clem Newton-Brown in Prahran (which is why he's still in the hunt), but basically the statewide narrative from the Liberals was very much Napthine vs Andrews, and from Labor it was very much Labor vs the government, and here have a flyer with the nice face of your local Labor candidate.

What makes that so appalling is the number of Labor candidates who don't live in the electorate they were running for, but hey, it worked.

------------

I also want to say I was really disappointed by the hand-out-the-vote people at my booth. We had a green, a liberal, and a labor representative.

The Green was skirting the rules pretty badly and had to be pulled up a couple of times. She would stand at the gate to the school, and shake people's hands as they were about to head in, demanding their attention lest they be incredibly rude and not shake an outstretched hand. I was not a fan.

The Liberals had two women, the first between 8-1 or so, who essentially coralled the other two like a mother hen, making sure they had sunscreen and water and weren't breaking any rules. She was clearly a bit of a character, but a positive one, and she was respectful of the voters. The afternoon one was a bit of a wallflower and left by three o clock, leaving the Lib HTV cards in a box on a chair, after asking if the other two would be OK with handing them out, To which the green said "I'm happy to tell people they're there, but I can't hand them out' - fair enough, I guess - and the ALP guy said 'no worries'. And then proceeded to absolutely not do, and didn't even tell people about them when asked. His line was 'Clearly the Liberals don't care about *insert booth name here*, but Labor has a plan for this area and Victoria', or variations on that theme. Anyway, second liberal really shouldn't have left, but we didn't have many voters after 3 anyway.

The Labor guy was also our only scrutineer for the count, and was fine in theory, although I was very disappointed that he wasn't prepared to do the right thing and hand out the Liberal cards along with the Labor ones. To be honest, that simple lack of an action would have changed my first preference vote away from Labor and on to the Green or Voice for the West candidate, cos I didn't think his party deserved my $2.13 after that But he was fine in the scrutineering, the only significant issue was a vote for Singh that had a clear 2-3-4-5, and a pretty clear intent on the 1, but basically there was a 5 in the box that was crossed out, then a 1 was written in the box too and part of the scrubbing out of the 5 overlapped a tiny bit of the 1. I can't say what ended up happening with the vote, but I thought it was a bit ridiculous to challenge it.