11:21pm – So this is where I’ll leave tonight’s brief and sporadic liveblog. I’ve put together booth maps showing the ordinary election day votes for the three top candidates in Huon and the two top candidates in Rosevears. Although we should emphasise that these ordinary votes make up a much smaller share of the total vote than we’d normally expect. The maps default to the likely winners but can be toggled.
9:51pm – At the moment the most likely outcome would see Labor take a seat from a conservative independent, and the Liberal Party replacing a progressive independent. This result would mean that the upper house would only include seven independents, alongside five Labor and three Liberals. This is the weakest representation for independents in the history of the chamber. Independents held thirteen seats as recently as 2012-13. Independents were replaced by party members in 2013, 2016, 2017 and 2018. So the likely outcome this year would result in six seats flipping from independents to parties over seven years.
9:37pm – Postal votes have reported from Huon. Labor has polled 33%, Armstrong polled 24%, and Caruana (Greens) polled 12.4%. This has pushed Armstrong into second place overall on 19%, but a long way behind Seidel on 31%. We’ve still got the other half of the postal votes to come tomorrow which will likely strengthen Armstrong’s position, but Labor is currently in a strong position to win the seat. Preferences from the Greens should strongly favour Seidel, although Armstrong will likely benefit from other candidates’ preferences.
9:18pm – And the postal votes for tonight have come in for Rosevears. 42% for Palmer (Lib) and 31% for Finlay. It’s a good position for Palmer, although we would need to know more about preference flows before calling the result.
9:14pm – We now have some pre-poll votes from Huon. Labor polled 34%, the Greens and Harris both polled 16%, Armstrong polled 19%. This has pushed Armstrong into third place overall.
8:50pm – The first batch of pre-poll votes in Rosevears largely follow the pattern of the rest of the seat – 41% for Palmer and 32% for Finlay.
7:42pm – We now have all of the ordinary booths reporting. In Huon, Labor’s Bastian Seidel leads with 30% of the primary vote, followed by the Greens’ Pat Caruana just under 20%, with conservative independent Dean Harriss on 16.6% and sitting independent MP Robert Armstrong just behind on 16.4%. It doesn’t look good for Armstrong, although a lot of pre-poll and postal votes are yet to be counted. Labor looks like the favourites here but preferences will be crucial.
In Rosevears, Liberal candidate Jo Palmer is leading on 41.8%, with independent Janie Finlay on 30.7%. No-one else has cracked 10%. It will clearly be a race between these two. I suspect Finlay will do better on preferences, but there’s also a lot of pre-poll and postal primary votes to be counted.
6:30pm – Polls closed thirty minutes ago in the Legislative Council elections in Huon and Rosevears in Tasmania. I won’t be doing a lot of early coverage but will be back later tonight with some more analysis once most of the election-day votes are in.
In the meantime, check out my guides to Huon and Rosevears. You can also listen to my podcast about these elections.
One major factor in these elections is the tremendous number of postal votes received. According to Kevin Bonham on Twitter, we should expect about half of these votes to be counted tonight.
