Quite a bit of counting took place yesterday.
Yesterday we narrowed the list of seats to watch from 17 to 12, and today I think we can narrow that list to nine.
Seat summary
I’m ready to call Melbourne Ports for Labor and Grey and Dunkley for the Coalition. At the moment there are five seats which are extremely tight, and the rest look likely to break 72-68-5.
The seat categories are:
- Coalition leading: Chisholm, Cowper
- Labor leading: Cowan, Hindmarsh
- Extremely tight: Capricornia, Flynn, Forde, Gilmore, Herbert
- Called for Labor: Melbourne Ports
- Called for Coalition: Grey, Dunkley
This brings the total to:
- 70 – Coalition
- 66 – Labor
- 2 – Coalition leading
- 2 – Labor leading
- 5 – Others
- 5 – Extremely tight
Of the five extremely tight seats, Labor currently leads in three and the Coalition leads in two. The Coalition needs to win four of these seats to form a majority government.
Cowper and Grey
In Cowper we now have preference counts from 24 out of 70 booths. The Nationals lead with 53.9%. My model suggests that lead will widen, but I’d like to wait for more results before calling Cowper.
We have about 60% of booths with preference counts in Grey, and Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey is leading with over 56% of the vote after preferences – so I’m happy to call Grey for the Liberal Party.
Melbourne Ports
I’m going to call this seat for Labor, with the first batch of postal votes being very bad for the Greens, as expected. If this trend continues, the Greens will fall thousands of votes behind Labor.
The other races
There is still frustratingly little data on how many absent and pre-poll votes are left to be counted, so we are still mostly working off postal vote data, and assuming the same numbers of absent and pre-poll votes in 2016 as in 2013.
| Seat | Absent | Provisional | Pre-poll | Postal | Current Labor lead | Projected Labor lead |
| Capricornia | 0 | 626 | 126 | 7493 | 732 | -37 |
| Chisholm | 831 | 1314 | 335 | 4848 | -1394 | -2008 |
| Cowan | 0 | 1399 | 25 | 2116 | 701 | 784 |
| Dunkley | 0 | 1619 | 196 | 8279 | -1387 | -2777 |
| Flynn | 0 | 733 | 166 | 8131 | 1065 | -1450 |
| Forde | 1052 | 1104 | 181 | 8622 | -265 | -657 |
| Gilmore | 0 | 1425 | 322 | 1823 | -991 | -856 |
| Herbert | 0 | 1136 | 122 | 6286 | 620 | -362 |
| Hindmarsh | 0 | 1599 | 0 | 2951 | 151 | 541 |
(The first four columns of data in this table represent the number of outstanding declaration votes the AEC has announced – clearly these absent and pre-poll numbers are too small.)
Capricornia
The Labor lead has been cut by 260 votes in the last day, and now the LNP is projected to win, but still by a small margin.
Chisholm
The Liberal Party had the slimmest of leads yesterday morning, but now leads by around 1400 votes. The projection suggests this would grow. Not calling it now but likely will do so soon.
Cowan
Labor’s lead dropped, but they are projected to remain steady. Still need to wait for more information.
Dunkley
The Liberal Party’s lead has expanded out to almost 1400 in Dunkley and is expected to blow out further, and I’m happy to call Dunkley.
Flynn
We projected the Labor lead in Flynn would collapse and this is well under way. Labor’s lead has dropped from about 2000 votes to about 1000 votes. All the same, the projection expects Labor to lose another 2500 votes relative to the LNP, which is due to their very poor performance in postal votes – 35.8% in the votes counted so far.
Forde
The LNP has taken the lead in Forde and the projection is expected to grow a bit more.
Gilmore
The Liberal lead in Gilmore has increased from 353 votes to almost 1000 votes, and this looks set to stay steady.
Herbert
Labor’s lead in Herbert has been cut back by about 300 votes, but the projection remains fairly steady, expecting an LNP win by less than 50 votes.
Hindmarsh
Labor’s lead has been cut back severely, but they are still expected to win.
Note your comments about ALP clawing back in Chisolm,Gilmore.
Is that on the basis of prior year absentee, provisional, declaration – with some form a swing factored in?
How confident are you/others on the 2PP count in Melbourne Ports…
Any chance the 2PP total between Labor and Greens in Melbourne Ports is much closer than the 1P suggests.
Given the parties in 4-8 (Animal Justice, Independent, Drug Law Reform, Marriage Equality, Independent) I would expect preferences on elimination are flowing disproportionately to the Greens, and the 2PP count could be substantially closer than we think (and we have no visibility on the AEC website).
They should be showing the top 3 candidates on preferences after eliminations….
The AEC should do a Liberal vs Green 2PP for Melbourne Ports to determine whether the result (which won’t be known until the full distribution of preferences) will change who forms government. It might end up being the difference between minority and majority government for the Liberals.
Agree Daniel. Top 3, and the two 2PP.
On Melbourne Ports, the postals are against the Greens.
On the first 14% of postals, ALP extended lead by 234 votes (416 less 182) with only 93 votes to other candidates…
Put that trend on the other postals and thats another 1400 votes taking ALP lead for #2 to 3000.
On similar trends Im predicting a total of about 4750 votes for other candidates – meaning that the GRN would need a preference flow of 65% (versus both ALP and LNP)
Greens are getting 12.3% of the postal vote and they’re below 25% of first preferences now. In 2013 they got 13.8% so it could be a disproportionately conservative batch (In 2013 Danby got more and Liberals got less too), but I think it’s more to do with the kinds of minor parties they’re running against. I don’t disagree with the call but I definitely want to see more detailed info.
65% of preferences seems quite doable given the kinds of minor parties running. I don’t know anything about the independents.
Matt, we can’t see the 2p count other than for Lib/lab.
So how do we know how close 2nd and 3rd are in 2pp?
I know…
All I’ve done is taken the Postal numbers and projected them onto the 1P count… (and collapsed the smaller candidates into Other)
Rough numbers (and this excludes any Absent, Provisional etc which probably favor the ALP more)
_____ Ord__ Post Proj____ Total
Liberal 24442 791 4778 30011
ALP___ 16302 416 2513 19231
Greens 14985 182 1099 16266
Others 4087 93 562 4742 Need 65% of these from prefs
Formal 59816 70249
Given the policies of AJP, DLR,ME and the Independent Holland – the Greens will get good flows, but 65% is difficult in a three-cornered contest
agree 65% is difficult, but this is an odd mix of special interests!
Just wish we could all see how close it was.
Can someone explain why Hindmarsh is expected to be in the red column? I’t down to just 8 votes and the trend is clearly pro-Lib.
Because there are a lot of absent votes (very strongly favouring Labor) and not that many postal votes to be counted.
For hindmarsh, there is currently only an 8 seat margin but they’ve only counted postals. They prefer the libs at 54.33% and with only potentially another 4000 to come thats only an extra 350 net votes. There are 10,856 others ( 7614 absent, 1599 provisional & 1643 pre-poll) which might go at the election day swing of 49.61% or a loss of 423 votes! Still theres only 80 votes in it and 15,000 votes to count. There’s no statistic program or assumption that is accurate to 0.53%.
Damn the AEC for not counting any of the pre-polls anywhere (except for a few on NT).
I’m not quite sure about Absentees strongly favouring ALP in Hindmarsh once you take into account Pre-Poll and Provisionals.
Ive done a quick sum of Absent/ Prepoll and Provisional across the last 3-elections.
2013. Split ALP/LNP 51.1%/48.9% versus 48.1/51.9 (+3.0%) for the Division
2010. Split ALP/LNP 56.1%/43.9% versus 55.7/44.3 (+0.4%)
2007. Split ALP/LNP 56.0%/44.0% versus 55.1/44.9 (+0.9%)
This is also the first time we’ve got a sitting LNP candidate, which might alter the trends.
With the postals outstanding Libs will likely get to a +100 lead.
To get those 100 votes you need a split (assuming 10000 Absent/PrePoll/Provisional)
of 50.5%/49.5% versus a 50/50 divisional split (so +0.5%)
Thus based on 2010 it would be a very very narrow LNP retain, 2007/2013 and ALP gain.
On probability its an ALP gain, but its still very close in my opinion
Actually my maths is incorrect on Melbourne Ports.
Whilst Greens need to pickup 64-65% on the 4700 votes — this assumes nothing goes to the ALP.. Reality is its more likely that nothing from those candidates goes to the LNP.
So the Greens would actually need about 82% of the preference flows – assuming nothing flows to the LNP.
This is far more difficult.
Animal Justice preferences will overwhelmingly flow to the Greens, Marriage Equality will be about 50/50 Labor & Green, and while Drug Law Reform will mostly favour the Greens I think some of those preferences will fly all over the place.
I didn’t see Peter Holland’s HTV card (saw other people with it though, it was huge) but his website recommends that preferences go to Labor first, then Green, then Liberal. His issues are so localized though that I think his preferences will fly all 3 ways, but being such a St Kilda focused candidate might favour the Greens despite the HTV, because they did the best around the St Kilda area.
John Myers is a disgraced doctor from Balaclava campaigning on corruption. His vote is so small it won’t make much difference but for what it’s worth, I think Danby will get most of his preferences.
Of the current minor vote I imagine around 2400 to Greens, 1300 to Labor and 600 to Liberals.. Nowhere near enough to move the Greens into second place.
Just saw the Ports count was updated about half an hour ago too with another 2000+ postal votes counted.
On the Lib/Lab 2PP, the Labor lead has been trimmed by another 0.2% but the postal vote which was trending at almost 59-41 to the Coalition after the first batch yesterday is only 55-45 now, which means the Libs would need to trend at over 60-40 the rest of the way to catch up.
I’m projecting about a 51.1-48.9 Labor win. Meaning they have a lot of work to do to retain it at the next election because one more swing like this one will be a Liberal win. It was almost 58-42 only two elections ago.
Agree the LNP has no chance in Ports on a ALP v LNP 2PP.
While it looks like Hollands’s UnChain group pushed for the Greens in 2013, his Facebook page shows a HTV with 2 ALP 3 GRN 4 LNP, but again I suspect it might not have had wide distribution.
Agree with your rough analysis of the other parties but still think the prefs will break more GRN and less LNP, albeit I suspect not enough to get them over the line..
The other factor is the seat is 13-15% Jewish religion based on various sources, and even if they have put another candidate 1, they are unlikely to preference GRN — the same factor that will get the LNP over the line if the GRN do end up in 2nd.
In some respects its more interesting than the other seats because there is no historical information to go on for a 3P pref distribution, and the AEC has limited info that can help you make an assumption.
From a long-term perspective the Greens may have been better directing preferences away from the ALP, given the advantages of incumbency (although aware the same debate has been had in other seats previously)
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