Darling Range by-election live

Primary votes – 18/20 booths reporting

Two-party-preferred votes – 18/20 booths reporting

Sunday, 8:43am – We saw another batch of pre-poll votes after I went to bed last night which brought the latest margin down to 53.3%. I’ll be back later this morning with deeper analysis.

8:51 – Okay I’m going to end the liveblog now. We haven’t received any more primary votes but it looks like most two-party-preferred votes have been counted, and Liberal candidate Alyssa Hayden is sitting on slightly less than 54% of the 2PP vote. She should win comfortably. This is about 8% better than the Reachtel poll predicted, and a swing of almost 10% compared to last year’s election. I’ll hopefully return with a map tomorrow if we have 2PP figures by booth, and possibly provide some more analysis on the result (which we’ll also discuss in this week’s podcast). If you’ve found my analysis of this by-election useful, tonight and over the last few weeks, maybe you could consider signing up as a donor via Patreon?

8:03 – We now have every election-day booth, as well as sizeable numbers of pre-poll and postal votes. I can’t imagine there’s many primary votes left to count. On the 2PP count, we have about 10,000 formal votes (about half of the primary vote count) and the Liberal Party’s Alyssa Hayden is still over 57%. I still don’t have any booth data for the 2PP count so I think I’ll probably call it a night soon and come back tomorrow to do a map once this data is available.

7:54 – Judging by Antony’s list of booths reporting 2PP figures, I reckon there could be a difference of about 2% in the swing between the booths reporting so far and those to come. But the Liberal Party is on 58.7%, so this would still represent a swing of about 12%.

7:51 – We are now just waiting for one ordinary booth on the primary vote, plus two types of special votes, and the swing against Labor has dropped back a bit. So we probably should also expect the 2PP swing to drop back, but it’s hard to see the Liberal Party losing at this point. I would probably call the seat if I could conduct my booth comparison, but alas.

7:41 – It’s worth noting that Reachtel’s recent poll put Labor on 54% after preferences in Darling Range. On current numbers this was off by about 12-13%.

7:32 – I don’t have a two-party-preferred count by booth, so I can’t run my model, but we have a seat-wide total which is about 1/3 of the primary vote total so far and it has Liberal candidate Alyssa Hayden on 58% after preferences.

7:18 – The swing against Labor isn’t too harsh in Mundaring but is over 15% in Oakford. Interesting that we haven’t seen a two-party-preferred count yet but it’s worth noting that the Shooters, Christians and One Nation are on over 18% between them, compared to 8.5% for clearly centre-left minor parties. So Labor can’t rely on preferences to overcome a primary vote deficit.

7:09 – We have three more booths and the trend is similar. Labor suffered a 19.7% swing at Marri Grove, although they barely lost ground at Pickering Brook.

7:04 – The latest booth is Serpentile Jarrahdale Community Recreation Centre, and Labor has suffered a whopping 18.7% swing on primary votes there. If the current trend continues, it’s hard to see Labor winning.

6:51 – We’ve just received two more booths. Labor has suffered swings of 8.2% and 11.7% at Armadale Primary School and Bruno Gianetti Hall respectively. The Liberal Party also lost ground, suffering swings of about 1% in each booth. Overall Labor is currently projected to suffer a swing of just over 8%, but the Liberal Party is also expected to suffer a swing.

6:45 – By the way, for the booth matching I’m not currently including last election’s pre-poll votes.

6:44 – Okay we now have the results from Karragulleen District Hall which produced a swing of 3.3% to the Liberal Party, a 7.2% swing against Labor, a 2% swing against the Greens and a 2.4% swing against One Nation. Definitely suggests the Liberals will recover some ground, but not clear if it’s enough to win.

6:31 – We have 66 formal votes reporting from one small pre-poll booth. I won’t update my table yet because the inclusion of these votes will trigger the booth-matching against the entire pre-poll vote. The Liberal Party is on 42.4% in this small batch, with Labor on 28.8% and the Greens on 13.6%.

6:00 – Polls have just closed in the state by-election in the Western Australian seat of Darling Range. I expect we’ll start to see results in about half an hour. I’ll be running a booth-matching model tonight. For now the results tables are at the bottom but I’ll move them to the top once there is something useful within. In the meantime, why not take a read of my guide to this by-election?

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