Australian Federal Election - Results Thread

[Smid]

Senate counting is funny: DLP now has a Senate seat.

For real? How amusingly retro.

They've had a seat in the Victorian Upper House for the past three-and-a-half years. Mind you, they won it on about 1.5%, I think, one of those "miracles of preferences" that sometimes occurs under STV.

[Smid]

Clive Palmer pumped lots of money into that seat for the Nats.

PS. Al - just saw your blank maps for Australia. You are all shades of awesome.

[Smid]

The Greenies came second in Batman, meaning that it loses it's traditional position in the list of the ultra-safe. But at 58/42, the next Melbourne it isn't. The figures in Grayndler are 51.6/48.4 and Labor are very lucky that the Greens haven't overtaken the Liberals in the division of Sydney.

Compare Melbourne, Richmond and Brunswick with Northcote in the Victorian State Parliament. All are 2PP Labor vs Greens, but the first three are between 2 and 3%, but Northcote's about 8.5%. The seat of Northcote is all within Batman, too. Brunswick is Wills, Melbourne and Richmond is Melbourne.

[Smid]

I heard from a friend who was scrutineering in Brisbane today that it is pretty much all over there - Labor would need something like 80% of the remaining postal votes to pull in front.

As for conservative independents... as plenty of people said, they left the Nats for a reason. Russell Savage backed Steve Bracks over Kennett, even though he had much more in common with a Liberal Government. It gets more interesting if Labor needs either Wilkie or the Greens in the mix... I don't think the country independents would support them. I'm hearing conflicting news out of Corangamite about the postals.

The DLP didn't re-group, it's been around the whole time, contesting the occasional electorate here or there. They're still pretty much just Catholics. Apparently their scrutineers at the Senate count say that it's a contest between them and Family First, but personally I think there are about a quarter of a million postals out there still to count and I think those postals will strongly favour the major parties, so I think the final result for the Senate could change and the DLP drops off, but let's just wait and see.

[Smid]

While it would be in Labor's favour to do either, I also think it would be in democracy's favour. The likelihood of 75-75, which means 74-75-1 with the speaker and a government permanently at risk of no confidence without the speaker voting (no tie at 74-75) is real, but with a 151st seat the most equal it could be is 75-75 allowing the speaker to vote. Much better (also for the coalition should they find themselves in such a position one day).

For this reason I have been advocating adding an additional 11 Lower House seats and one Upper House region to the Victorian Parliament - there are presently 88 Districts in the Assembly and 8 Regions (for a total of 40 Members) in the Council. I think it would be better to be 99 Districts and 9 Regions (for a total of 45 Members). I was most concerned about a 44-44 hung Parliament after preparing a simulation based on the "normal" result for each seat and then giving a statewide swing to or against a party, and then an additional smaller swing in each electorate - I ended up with a good number of 44-44 splits (of course, it's theoretically possible the Greens could win a few seats and posibly support the Coalition, lol). Anyway, I think it needs to be done, but whether or not anyone listens to me... I might start lodging submissions to the Electoral Matters Committee for their investigations.

[Smid]

Now it looks like Tony Crook and WA Nationals are saying that they won't support the Coalition unless they get more $ for rural WA??:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/profile-tony-crook-20100822-13azk.html

That's related to a question I was going to ask --

What - other than a political disaster - would prevent some sort of Labor-National coalition (other than the LNP merger in Queensland)?

What - other than a political disaster - would cause African Americans to vote Republican in the mid-terms this year?

(okay, probably a little more chance of the Nationals going off and having a Coalition with Labor, but you get the point... the Coalition has been around for about 80 years now - longer than the Liberal Party has been in existance in its current form).

[Smid]

I know this was asked before, but I didn't quite follow the answer: What specifically happens if it's 75-75, and neither side will budge?  Say Labor gets 75 votes on its side, and has to pick someone on its own side for Speaker because no one on the other side will take it.  Does the government instantly collapse?  Is the only way for 75-75 to work to get someone from the other camp to agree to be Speaker?

I'm pretty sure that Dictionary.com has that as the very definition of a Constitutional Crisis... and the reason that Hugh said the size of the House needs to be expanded or shrunk (which echoes my opinion on the Victorian House - see earlier posts).

[Smid]

IMO, Legislatures should always have an odd number of seats to prevent this from happening.

Agreed!

Dunkley is because a couple of bundles have been found in the Liberal pile that should have been in the Labor pile during the recount. I've scrutineered recounts a couple of times and this is not as uncommon as might be suspected. The AEC collects votes in bundles of fifty, so this would have been four bundles in the wrong pile, leading to a change of 400. The Liberal incumbent still leads by 600 votes, so although much closer than before, I suspect he'll hang on.

Corangamite, Liberals trail by 1200 votes and need about 53% of postal votes (2PP) to win the seat... certainly not an impossible task. According to the AEC website this afternoon, just under 80% of the vote has been counted.

[Smid]

Lingiari?

Greens are on 16.23% and Sex Party are on 5.06%, Shooters and Fishers just ahead of Sex on 5.37% (evidently men like hunting and fishing more than sex... go figure...).  

That leaves Country Libs on 38.84% and Labor on 32.99%.

http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateDivisionFirstPrefsByVoteType-15508-306.htm

Hugh - yeah, Senate, therefore first preference by group.

[Smid]

so it's a pretty good indication of what would happen without preferential voting, and without tactical voting that FPTP encourages...less horrible for Labor than I would have expected (but still bad...55 ALP, 1 Green, 94 Coalition)

I've done this map (for the reason you mention here) for the last Victorian State Election. Not sure if I've uploaded it here yet. Actually, have some sensational maps of the 2004 election (estimated vote by CCD), which I can print out and give you over coffee later (I didn't draw them, but I think the copyright probably is in the public domain, at least for non-commercial purposes).

[Smid]

I'm struggling to think of any recent election anywhere in the world where things have still been this uncertain three days after the election.  OK, there are cases like Iraq, but that's a bit different.  There, you've got about five significant factions, and the question is which particular combination of them is going to make a deal.  In countries where it's normally a contest between two major parties, when was the last time something like this happened?

In Australia (federally), the last time would have been 1961.

There are a large number of myths surrounding this election, put to rest, however, by former Democrats Senator (and Greens candidate in Brisbane at this election), Andrew Bartlett, on his blog.

[Smid]

Independent back in front in Denison, according to AAP Newswire, but Liberal lead is narrowing in Hasluck.

Denison, Wilkie leads by 1,100 votes, with 1,600 pre-poll all that remains left to count.

[Smid]

FWIW, the standard pattern is *usually* that the coalition lead on absentee and postal and Labor on provisional (but that's usually not a huge number of votes). I'm not sure which way pre-poll leans, but I'd suspect not in the direction of Labor.

Absentee tends to go much the same as on the day, as it's people voting on the day from outside their electorate. Since parties all have their campaigners out, the only parties to be disadvantaged are the ones who don't run in all the electorates, who only get a handful of votes anyway.

I'd normally factor pre-poll to favour Coalition, although not as strongly as postals. Hold on, while I look at a few seats (approximate values based on deviation from Ordinary Votes, these are percentage points, so if the Greens received 10% of Ordinary Votes in a seat, and they received 12% of postals, it would be shown as +2%, not +20%. Additionally note that I'm only listing some of the parties, not all, so estimates won't sum to 0):

2007:
Chisholm (Absentee): Lib -1.5%, Lab -5.5%, Greens +3.45%, Fam First +1.55%, Dems +1.1%
Chisholm (Pre-Poll): Lib -0.6%, Lab -1.8%, Greens +1.6%, Fam First +0.45%, Dems +0.2%
Chisholm (Postals): Lib +6%, Lab - 5.4%, Greens - 2.4%, Fam First -0.5%, Dems +0.14%

Goldstein (Absentee): Lib -6.2%, Lab -0.9%, Greens +5.2%, Fam First +0.36%
Goldstein (Pre-Poll): Lib +1.8%, Lab -2.5%, Greens +0.7%, Fam First -0.26%
Goldstein (Postals): Lib +11.1%, Lab -7.3%, Greens -3.5%, Fam First -0.35%

Higgins (Absent): Lib -6.3%, Lab -0.9%, Greens +4.8%, FF +0.7%
Higgins (Pre-Poll): Lib +4.3%, Lab -4.5%, Greens +0.53%, FF -0.03%
Higgins (Postals): Lib +11.11%, Lab -7.5%, Greens -3.8%, FF +0.12%

Hotham (A): Lib -0.21%, Lab -9.2%, Greens +6.1%, FF +0.9%
Hotham (PP): Lib +1.3%, Lab -2.8%, Greens -0.9%, FF -0.24%
Hotham (P): Lib +4.9%, Lab -2.6%, Greens -1.9%, FF -0.4%

Isaacs (A): Lib -1.5%, Lab -3.9%, Greens +3.7%, FF +1.55%
Isaacs (PP): Lib +1.2%, Lab -3.4%, Greens +0.95%, FF -0.33%
Isaacs (P): Lib +8.2%, Lab -5.4%, Greens -1.5%, FF -1.4%

Kooyong (A): Lib -3.9%, Lab -2.7%, Greens +5.1%, FF +0.6%
Kooyong (PP): Lib -0.5%, Lab -1.5%, Greens +1.8%, FF +0.09%
Kooyong (P): Lib +10.9%, Lab -7.7%, Greens -3.2%, FF -0.03%

Melb Ports (A): Lib +2.1%, Lab -7.01%, Greens +3.4%, FF +0.75%
Melb Ports (PP): Lib +0.9%, Lab -1.5%, Greens +0.45%, FF +0.16%
Melb Ports (P): Lib +10.2%, Lab -2.7%, Greens -7.2%, FF +0.03%

These seats are all clustered in the inner south of Melbourne. Some are safe Liberal, some are safe Labor, Isaacs was (at the 2004 election) the most marginal Labor seat in Victoria (if my memory serves me correct). The Greens do particularly well in Melbourne Ports, and still very well in Higgins and Kooyong. I figure all of them clustered together makes them good for comparison, but at the same time, having variation between types of seats means that there is no particular trend (such as a Liberal incumbent's name recognition in every seat which might influence the result - ie, some seats have a Liberal incumbent, some a Labor incumbent, I think a retiring member in Isaacs, very high name recognition of incumbents in probably all non-retiring seats, including Peter Costello and Simon Crean). None of these seats were marginal following the 2007 election, however, so some results may not be directly comparable with the marginal seats currently being counted.

[Smid]

From the ABC numbers, the Lib lead in Hasluck has grown, and is now almost as big as the Labor lead in Corangamite.

Hasluck: Lib lead of 586
Corangamite: Labor lead of 637

Still 11,000 postal votes to count in Corangamite, I'm told. So far they've been going to the Liberals very strongly (hence why Labor's lead yesterday dropped from 1,200 to 637).

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I mentioned Bowman back in the pre-election thread, but the swing there last election was exaggerated because of a scandal. Perhaps Bonner was the same (scandal was also there, although I would consider it probably a marginal Labor seat in most elections).

Corio borders on Lalor and I think where the boundary is (the bit near Werribee) is all a similar community of interest (indeed, the new boundaries in the draft redistribution bring them together). Her office is down that end of the electorate too, I think, and she'd certainly be popular down that way.

McEwan (I think I've mentioned) had 10,000 new voters whose houses didn't even exist at the last election, most of whom had moved out of northern and western Melbourne.

The rest that you've mentioned about Sydney, I think is fairly spot on. The last redistribution had brought in some fairly safe Labor territory around Kings Cross, I believe, but I think much of the swing to Turnbull was his stance on the ETS because it is quite a green electorate.

[Smid]

Off the AAP Newswire:

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And this morning, in The Age

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[Smid]

The AEC has received legal advice regarding a small number of pre-poll votes cast in the Queensland seat of Flynn. These votes won't be counted, but won't affect the result.

[Smid]

National 2PP is dead on 50.00 at the moment. Libs ahead by about 900 votes.

Just had a look at the latest update.

TWO PARTY PREFERRED

Labor      5,487,334
Coalition 5,487,478

That's unbelievably close.

Very close, and that's what I've been talking up, but the fact remains that there are eight electorates where the 2PP (Coalition v Labor) has not yet been determined - four on the left and four on the right. Obviously the election will still be close once they've finished that, but it probably won't be as close as it is now. I think my money would be on the margin of Denison+Melbourne+Batman+Grayndler > Kennedy+New England+Lyne+O'Connor, though, so I think that will tilt it back in Labor's favour... still... let's wait and see what happens.

Hugh, I'm struggling with trying to work out Julian McGauran's likelihood of being returned in Victoria (as I discussed with you the other day). Antony Green's quoted in an article as saying pretty much the conclusion we both reached, but I've been grappling with the maths involved in adding small numbers into the equation for PR-STV (if anyone wants to help me out...). Obviously additional votes increase the quota to be elected, which therefore reduces the transfer value, but at the same time, they increase the surplus, increasing the transfer value. I'm trying to figure out if the increase to transfer value is greater or lesser than (or evern the same as) the decrease to transfer value. In short... does an additional vote going onto the Liberal pile have the value of a vote, or just some fraction of the vote. The change in transfer value will affect all the votes spilling down to lower-order candidates, but I'm not sure what affect it has overall...

Also just saw that there could be a by-election in Boothby after an AEC stuff up resulted in about 3,000 votes being excluded from this razor-thin marginal seat.

[Smid]

I've been grappling with the maths involved in adding small numbers into the equation for PR-STV (if anyone wants to help me out...). Obviously additional votes increase the quota to be elected, which therefore reduces the transfer value, but at the same time, they increase the surplus, increasing the transfer value. I'm trying to figure out if the increase to transfer value is greater or lesser than (or evern the same as) the decrease to transfer value. In short... does an additional vote going onto the Liberal pile have the value of a vote, or just some fraction of the vote. The change in transfer value will affect all the votes spilling down to lower-order candidates, but I'm not sure what affect it has overall...

Can you put up/link to the relevant numbers at present?

I think the answer to your question, if I understand it correctly, depends on the relative proportion of Liberal votes that have yet to be added (compared to the existing proportion of Liberal votes as a fraction of all votes cast).

I was guessing something like that, but although I can handle some algebra and other maths formula, it's never been my strong suit.

The best two websites that I've been using the most are:

Antony Green's Senate Projections based on current figures

and:

The Electoral Commission's current count for Victoria
(note, you can click links at the top to take you to any state or the national totals, or by clicking "Senate" on the top left side, you can click on "Victoria" in the "Division and Polling Place" section and see how many postal votes, etc have been counted for the Senate in each Division for each party).

Antony Green's one is useful because it says the number of votes at each step of the count, and the point I'm particularly interested is the second-last step, where the Liberal Senator, Julian McGauran is excluded and the preferences mainly flow to the DLP, leading to the next step where the DLP is elected. He trails the DLP by, well, about 16,000 votes or so (changes, obviously, with every update... it's been everywhere between 14,400 on election night and 21,000 by Monday, but has been coming in from there every day this week), and there are still lots of votes to count for the Senate, so if he brings it in far enough, he'll overtake the DLP at that stage, and their preferences and Family First preferences (and the scattered remnants of various other micro-parties) should get him elected if he can pull in front. This should even be the case if Fielding displaces the DLP earlier in the count, as was mentioned in the article - it shouldn't make much of a difference because they cross preferenced and the other parties are likely to have a similar preference flow regardless of which of those two parties leads towards the end of the count. Either way, the Liberals are through to the final, but the DLP and Family First are in a knock-out semi-final beforehand with the winner taking on the Libs... and I'm then more interested in the Liberals' chance of winning that final against whoever makes it through.

[Smid]

It would be an improvement from the ALP's point of view; a DLP Senator would probably vote with them about a third of the time or something like that.

There's a DLP member of the Upper House in the Victorian State Parliament. You can see how he votes. He votes with the Conservatives on many social issues, but votes with Labor on some of the economic issues that come before the Parliament.

[Smid]

Oh, Mr Morden beat me to it. Anyhow...

The AAP Newswire reports:

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[Smid]

Labor will be gone come next election. This government is in an even more precarious position than Cameron's. Expect an election to be called before 2013.

I highly doubt an early election. Still looking into a few things in the Constitution, but I read on Antony Green's blog a few months back that there is a provision in the Constitution preventing an ordinary General Election being called in (I think) the first two years of the life of the Parliament (I think this is something to do with the Senate having to sit for a certain length of time, but haven't found the relevant section yet). The only type of election that can be called in that time is a Double Dissolution, which still takes a while - because legislation has to actually be passed in one House (which takes time) and then be blocked in the other House (while debate is still likely to occur, so even blocking it will take time), and then be passed again in the original House and be blocked again in the other House... so don't expect one of those any time soon. Additionally, the independents are not going to want to squander their opportunity to hold the Government to ransom on every piece of legislation, so they won't want to provide the Government with a DD trigger, nor are they likely to support a no-confidence motion (or blocking a confidence Bill). Perhaps if they were willing to support the Coalition and change governments mid-term, they might support a motion of no-confidence, but I can't see it happening.

[Smid]

I also wouldn't be surprised if Joanna Gash in Gilmore retires before the next election... I think there's a big personal vote there.

Just watch the Coalition go for the jugular, I think Tony Windsor will be fine (his is a deeply personal vote)... but Oakeshott is vulnerable. Personally, I'd not take a Ministry on the chance that this actually turns out to be a bad Government, and not only will the Nationals be baying for your blood, but you're actually 'part of the Government'.

I agree completely. My earlier post was only half of a longer post in which I started with... oh, I'll just post it, I'd copied and pasted into Word in case I changed my mind. Here it is:

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[Smid]

Found the bit about half Senate elections not being in the first two years of the election...

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[Smid]

Smid, there could be House-only elections, no? I believe Senate and House elections were not aligned for much of the 1960s and '70s.

I'd been discussing that last week, but I don't think that would happen... people really hate elections, and I don't think they'd buy into having them offset. Maybe they would, if there is too much instability... I think there was a poll saying people wanted to go back and have a second shot. Anyway, let's wait and see...

Anyhow, I think that at this point it's meaningless to speak of any single National Party as such. In the NT, ACT, and Tasmania, of course, there has never been a National Party. In Queensland alone, the Nats were the establishment, and thus now they have seen fit to rebrand themselves with the Liberal name, as the rural partner in the Coalition is increasingly forgotten. I predict that the LNP will drop the "N" at some point. In NSW and Victoria, the Nationals hold the same sort of position that they hold at Canberra: they are a junior partner to the Liberal Party, and not really all that different. Windsor and Oakeshott, it may be noted, both hold traditionally Country/National seats in NSW. In South Australia, the Coalition became one party long ago. There is a National Party there, but it is independent (having supported Labor until being defeated at the last election) and not very important. In Western Australia, the Nationals are not relly very clear about where they want to be in relation to the Liberals, resulting in the current confidence-and-supply agreement.

The National Party is not a unified national party. The independents in the House provide a more effective means of representation of rural interests, and the Nationals must either follow them or the Liberals. They cannot tread a middle ground.

The LNP is more the other way around, from what I hear. I could tell you a lot about the merger up in Queensland, but it's probably best I don't put any of that into writing. I very much doubt the N will drop out - I hear they already began dropping the P in election material last month...