NSW 2015 – another Legislative Council update

By
Ben Raue
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6

We’re now getting quite close to the end of the Legislative Council count, and the button is expected to be pushed at some point later this week.

The ‘initial count’ of above-the-line votes is almost complete – there are a small number of seats where absent and other special votes are still being counted, but most seats have concluded and it seems the figures are now close to final – only a few more votes have been counted since my last update on Friday.

The ‘check count’ – where below-the-line votes are counted, and all preferences are entered into the NSWEC’s computer – is approximately 85% complete.

Using the projection model which I explained in Friday’s post, this is my current projection, based on the final figures on Monday evening:

Candidate Party Votes Quotas Projected votes Projected quotas
Courtney Houssos Labor 139,358 0.8295 167,287 0.8584
Robert Borsak Shooters 142,484 0.8481 164,397 0.8435
Fred Nile Christian Dem 107,636 0.6407 121,487 0.6234
Peter Jones No Land Tax 69,730 0.4151 79,401 0.4074
Hollie Hughes Liberal 74,230 0.4419 75,748 0.3887
Mark Pearson Animal Justice 63,951 0.3807 75,161 0.3857
Shayne Higson Voluntary Euthanasia 34,594 0.2059 39,653 0.2035
Justin Field Greens 24,436 0.1455 34,985 0.1795

As projected last week, the Labor and Shooters vote has increased to a safe position, and the Coalition has vote has declined significantly, from 8.6 quotas to 8.44 quotas.

Comparing the approximately 85% of above-the-line votes counted in the check count to the 100% counted in the initial count, the count at the moment is still biased towards the Coalition by about 0.21%, and away from Labor by 0.15% and the Greens by 0.14%. It also appears to be biased slightly towards No Land Tax and away from Animal Justice, but the numbers get pretty small.

Because of this, the model is projecting a drop in the Liberal vote, a slight drop in the No Land Tax vote and a slight increase in the Animal Justice vote. The figures are very similar to the first projection, with No Land Tax leading by just under 4,000 votes (compared to 5,000 in the previous projection), and the Liberal and Animal Justice close behind. In the last projection, the AJP was ahead of the Liberal by 114 votes, now Liberal candidate Hughes leads the AJP by 587 votes.

At this point, you would have to say that No Land Tax remains slight favourites, considering the very light preference flows in the past, although it should be noted that the Greens’ Jeremy Buckingham and the Nationals’ Sarah Johnston gained over 20,000 and 15,000 votes respectively in preferences from other parties in their race to catch up with Pauline Hanson in 2011.

Considering that context, it is still entirely possible that Liberal candidate Hollie Hughes or Animal Justice candidate Mark Pearson could overtake No Land Tax candidate Peter Jones with preferences from other parties.

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6 COMMENTS

  1. Well that’s a bit depressing.

    Ben, do you know if there is any data on the boost that being first on the LegCo ticket brings? I can’t imagine that many people actually went out of their way to vote for the mysterious No Land Tax.

  3. How strong do you feel preference flows from the Greens to AJP will be? My prediction would be that they would need 15% of the Greens preferences to go ahead presuming the Liberals or No Land Tax don’t receive preference flows to the same level that AJP does.

  4. I don’t think the AJP will have much trouble overtaking the Liberals from here. Labor and Liberal tend to do very badly on preferences in these sorts of situations, even without the Green ticket going to AJP. The question seems to me a) how many Greens will bother to preference and b) will there be people who vote for their own candidate (and maybe one or two others) and then go over to the left of the ballot and start at column A. If so No Land Tax will be well positioned, but I can’t see them attracting many deliberate preferences.

  5. This is now a two-horse race between No Land Tax and Animal Justice. AJP will be relying on greens preferences to get up.

  6. Results just published by the NSWEC, and Animal Justice got the final seat, despite being about 5,000 votes behind No Land Tax on first preferences.

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