Tasmania 2024 – the close races

In this post I’m going to run through each seat in depth, explaining who I think has won and which seats are in play.

To summarise, at the moment I have 15 Liberals, 10 Labor, 5 Greens, 3 JLN and two independents in the lead.

I think there’s only three seats which are seriously in play between parties. The JLN is leading Labor in Bass and Lyons, and the Greens are leading Labor in Clark. So if Labor was to take the lead in those three seats, the count would switch to 15 Liberal, 13 Labor, 4 Greens 1 JLN and two independents. At that point Labor, Greens and O’Byrne would have the numbers for a majority. But that would be a bit unusual as Labor is behind in all three races.

There are some other interesting contests within parties. There is a close intra-party contest for all three JLN seats. The final Liberal seats in Bass, Braddon and Clark are all unclear, and there’s a slim chance the same could be true for Franklin.

The second Labor seat in Franklin is unclear, and if Labor wins a third seat in Clark or Lyons it’s not clear who would win it.

As expected, the number of sitting MPs losing their seat was reduced in a contest with ten extra seats. The two ex-Liberal independents Lara Alexander and John Tucker both lost without much suspense. One of the two incumbent Liberal MPs in Franklin will lose his seat (likely Dean Young). There’s also three other Liberals (Ogilvie, Wood and Jaensch) who may lose to a fellow party member, but are more likely to win.

Bass

• 3 LIB, 2 ALP, 1 Greens elected.
• JLN leading Labor for final seat
• Contest between Simon Wood, Julie Sladden and others for third Liberal seat.
• Contest between Rebekah Pentland and Angela Armstrong to be the final standing JLN candidate.
• Independent Lara Alexander easily defeated.

The Liberal Party had their biggest swing against them here, sitting at 21.9% at the time of writing.

Five seats have been decided: Ferguson and Fairs for the Liberal Party, O’Byrne and Finlay for Labor, and Rosol for the Greens.

The Liberal Party, Labor and JLN could be in contention for the final two seats.

I think the Liberal Party will definitely win the sixth seat, but the identity of that member is not clear. Incumbent MP Simon Wood is on 0.23 quotas, with Julie Sladden not far behind on 0.2 quotas, and two others on 0.18. If Wood was to be the last standing Liberal, he would be relying on getting elected from 1.14 quotas of Liberal votes from other candidates. While some will undoubtedly leak and some will flow to Rob Fairs, enough should stay with the ticket to elect Wood or one of the others.

If Wood were to lose, that would be the first case of a sitting MP losing his seat to a fellow party member in 2024.

JLN’s Rebekah Pentland appears to be her party’s leading candidate, but is only leading Angela Armstrong by 0.06 quotas, so that could change.

The JLN ticket has 0.65 quotas. The remaining Labor candidates have 0.57 quotas. But Geoff Lyons, the third-standing Labor candidate has a lower primary vote than either of his JLN rivals. Plus some of the Labor vote sitting with the four other Labor candidates will likely flow to O’Byrne and Finlay, who haven’t quite reached quota themselves.

At the moment it looks like JLN are leading, but things could change with late counting.

Braddon

• 3 LIB, 2 ALP elected
• Liberal and JLN likely to win final two seats, with outside chance for Craig Garland
• Roger Jaensch likely to win third Liberal seat, with Giovanna Simpson leading for fourth Liberal seat
• Tight contest between Miriam Beswick and James Redgrave for JLN seat

The first four seats are locked in.

The Liberal Party will definitely win a fourth seat, but Jeremy Rockliff’s surplus will be more decisive than any candidate’s primary vote. It seems likely that Roger Jaensch will benefit most from Rockliff’s preferences.

The Liberal Party seems likely to win a fourth seat, but their vote is not well-distributed. Giovanna Simpson is the likeliest candidate for that seat, but she’ll be relying on over 1.5 quotas of Rockliff surplus and preferences from the three other Liberals. But Jaensch and Ellis will take a lot of those preferences, and a relatively low leakage rate could still lead to a lot of votes leaking.

Braddon is the best electorate of JLN, and they have polled close to a full quota, but it is split almost evenly between the three. Miriam Beswick is narrowly leading James Redgrave at the time of writing but this could be easily overturned. Honestly I can’t say how that will play out.

It’s worth still keeping half an eye on Craig Garland. He is on 0.41 quotas, but there are a lot of preferences to play with, including 0.81 in preferences from minor Labor candidates which could leak, and 0.23 from the Shooters. The Greens combined vote is higher than Garland, but if some of the votes from the Greens minor candidates leak, Garland could get close to overtaking Darren Briggs, the lead Greens candidate. In that scenario he could gain a decent number of Greens preferences. Still, everything would have to go right.

Clark

• 2 LIB, 2 ALP, 1 Green and Kristie Johnston elected
• Contest between Madeleine Ogilvie and Marcus Vermey for second Liberal seat
• Helen Burnet (GRN) leading Stuart Benson or John Kamara (ALP) for final seat

The first five seats are locked in.

The Liberal Party will definitely win a second seat, but it’s not clear who will win it. Sitting MP Madeleine Ogilvie is leading Marcus Vermey by 0.14 quotas, and there’s another 0.49 quotas from the other four Liberal candidates left to distribute. I think it’s unlikely that Vermey could overtake Ogilvie, but it’s certainly possible.

There is no clear Labor third candidate, with Benson on 0.25 quota and Kamara on 0.22. They’re helped by neither of their leading candidates filling up a full quota. There is another 0.39 quotas sitting with their three other candidates, but some of that will probably go to fill up Haddad and Willie’s quotas.

The primary votes for the five low-ranking Labor candidates adds up to 0.86 quotas, while the total vote for Greens candidates other than Vica Bayley is 0.85 quotas, but more of that Greens vote is sitting with Burnet than with Benson or Kamara on the Labor side, so Labor should suffer from more leakage.

But ultimately I suspect this race will be more likely decided by preferences from others. There is over a quota of votes sitting with minor candidates, with 0.4 quotas with Sue Hickey. Overall I think the Greens are in the lead but it’s not clear.

Franklin

• 3 LIB, 2 ALP, 1 Greens and David O’Byrne elected
• Nic Street likely defeated Dean Young for third Liberal seat
• Meg Brown leading Toby Thorpe for second Labor seat

Franklin is the clearest and least interesting contest at this point. On a party basis, all seven seats are clear.

There are two potential intra-party contests, but only one of them is close.

While there is an outside chance that an incumbent could lose their seat to a fellow party member in other electorates, it will definitely happen in Franklin. Both incumbent Liberals have been crowded out by Eric Abetz and Jacquie Petrusma. It looks likely that Nic Street will defeat Dean Young for the third Liberal seat.

On the Labor side, Meg Brown has a lead of 0.08 quotas over Toby Thorpe, with 0.57 quotas of preferences from other Labor candidates in play. Although I’d expect quite a few of those to fill up Dean Winter’s quota and thus not play a role in deciding the final seat.

The Greens vote has dropped far enough that their chance of a second candidate is out of the question. I doubt they could be competitive even if their vote was fairly evenly distributed between two candidates.

Lyons

• 3 LIB, 2 ALP, 1 Greens elected
• JLN leading Labor for final seat
• Andrew Jenner leading Troy Pfitzner by a tiny margin for JLN seat
• Jen Butler likely to win second Labor seat, and Richard Goss or Ben Dudman in play for potential third Labor seat

Six of these seats are reasonably clear. There has been a tiny bit of doubt about the Greens winning the sixth seat, but I think they’re home.

The Lambie Network is likely leading Labor for the seventh seat, but there’s a lot of preferences to be counted. For a start, Labor’s Jen Butler needs a lot of preferences to secure her seat before Labor can seek out a third seat. Labor has 1.65 quotas available for those two seats, but that means there’s a hell of a lot of votes that can leak from Rebecca White’s enormous surplus. It’s also an open question about how much of the Labor vote goes to Butler. It would be much better for the party if she finishes on 0.8 or 0.9 quotas and doesn’t use up too much of the remaining Labor votes.

There’s less of an issue with leakage for JLN, but there is almost nothing splitting their two leading candidates. It seems like that could just come down to luck as to who comes out on top.

There’s a bunch of Liberal and Greens preferences, although they will mostly be used up filling up quotas for their winning candidates. There are also some Shooters preferences as well as John Tucker preferences. I have to think those will favour JLN over Labor.

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