While the counting for the lower house is finished (barring a recount in Ryde), counting continues for the NSW Legislative Council, due to conclude with the pressing of the button next Wednesday.
There are two different counts for the upper house. The ‘initial count’ commenced on election night, and only counted up the number of above-the-line votes for the 15 groups with an above-the-line box. The ‘check count’ is the process of data entering the votes, and includes figures for every candidate – above and below.
The initial count is close to completion – the total vote count is 96.1% of the votes counted for the Assembly. The check count is about two thirds progressed as of Friday evening – 67.5% of the total votes counted for the lower house.
We are starting to get a sense of where the final primary votes might end up, and preference flows suggest it is possible we could see one of the trailing parties catch up and win.
This post will run through two questions. Firstly, I’ll try to adjust the primary vote figures so far for the votes yet to be counted. Secondly, we’ll think about how preference flows could change the outcome.
For the first, I am comparing the number of quotas for each of the above-the-line parties on the check count to the number of quotas they are polling if you only look at above-the-line votes. The latter figure can then be compared to the initial count to get some sense of how much bias there is in the check count.
| Group | Initial count | Check count ATLs | Check count | Projected |
| Labor | 8.17 | 7.97 | 7.89 | 8.09 |
| Liberal/Nationals | 6.69 | 6.60 | 6.51 | 6.60 |
| Greens | 1.99 | 2.05 | 2.06 | 2.00 |
| One Nation | 1.25 | 1.29 | 1.33 | 1.28 |
| Legalise Cannabis | 0.79 | 0.85 | 0.86 | 0.80 |
| Liberal Democrats | 0.75 | 0.78 | 0.77 | 0.75 |
| Shooters, Fishers, Farmers | 0.68 | 0.75 | 0.75 | 0.68 |
| Animal Justice | 0.47 | 0.48 | 0.49 | 0.47 |
Most of the differences aren’t dramatic, but I expect Labor and Coalition to pick up some ground, while the Greens, One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and the Shooters will drop back slightly.
If this projection comes true, it would leave Animal Justice starting out the preference distribution on 0.47 quotas, trailing the seventh Coalition candidate on 0.60 quotas.
So how would we expect the preferences to flow? This is partly about examining past preferences, but it would depend on which parties have votes to distribute. If this projection comes true, Legalise Cannabis, Liberal Democrats should be confident of victory but won’t have votes to distribute. The Greens and Labor will have little to no surplus, while One Nation’s 0.28 surplus will be a substantial part of the votes available, similar in scale to the preferences flowing from Elizabeth Farrelly, Lyle Shelton and Sustainable Australia.
Animal Justice polled 0.42 quotas in 2019, which was their previous best result, but their rivals were also polling less. The Liberal Democrats polled 0.48 quotas, and the Christian Democratic Party polled 0.50 quotas. That’s a gap of just 0.08 quotas.
In contrast, the AJP are projected to be 0.13 quotas behind the Coalition in 2023.
The AJP didn’t just overtake the Liberal Democrats, they also chased down the second One Nation candidate. At the final point in the count, they were on 0.6 quotas, ahead of the unsuccessful CDP candidate on 0.56. That’s a turnaround from an 0.08 primary vote lead to an 0.04 final vote deficit, or a total change of 0.12 quotas. And the AJP is projected to start 0.13 quotas behind the Coalition.
That seems very close! But we can also think about which votes are available as preferences. Labor and the Greens will have little to no preferences, but that was also true in 2019.
In 2019, there were 2.28 quotas of preferences between the eleven parties excluded during the count. That included 1.1 quotas from the Greens, Keep Sydney Open, Sustainable Australia and Voluntary Euthanasia, and 0.8 quotas from the Liberal Democrats, Shooters and Conservatives.
This time around there are just 1.7 quotas of preferences available to potentially flow. That includes 0.8 quotas from Labor, Elizabeth Farrelly, Sustainable Australia, Public Education and Socialist Alliance, as against 0.7 quotas from One Nation, Lyle Shelton and Riccardo Bosi.
Overall that means the left does have a slightly stronger flow of preferences, but the overall size of the preference pool is smaller, with Animal Justice needing a stronger flow to win.
At the moment this race still looks very close, but I think the Coalition might just have the edge.
