ACT and NSW by-elections live

11:43 – Finally, I wanted to wrap up the narratives of the ACT election.

Labor has been in power for 23 years, so it is not at all surprising to see the government losing support. But the loss of support is relatively modest. At the time of writing, Labor has suffered a 3.3% swing, and the Greens a 1.1%. That’s a 4.4% swing against the coalition government, who have polled 47% of the primary vote between them.

Hare-Clark is a proportional system, and thus it is hard for governments to turn a minority of the vote into huge majorities. But when you are using five-member districts in a small assembly, it’s not perfectly proportional. In particular, small parties can fall short and thus everyone else tends to be over-represented. All of this means that the relationship between seats and votes, while closer than in a single-member majoritarian system, isn’t perfect.

The last election saw the Greens over-represented, winning 13.5% of the vote and 24% of the seats. They won a bunch of close races, while Labor lost two seats despite suffering a very small swing. That meant that the Greens were in the front line of the government and were likely to bear the brunt of any anti-government swing. And we’ve seen that – the Greens have lost two or three of their six seats.

But this needs to be kept in perspective. The party’s vote is currently 12.4%. That isn’t as much as in their peak years of 2008 and 2020, but it is otherwise their best result. From a seat perspective, 3 out of 25 seats would be their third best result, and they may well get to four.

There is some reason for pause if you look into the details of the results. The party actually increased their vote in Ginninderra and Yerrabi – both electorates where the local Greens MP sat on the backbench. There will be questions about whether Greens ministers Emma Davidson and Rebecca Vassarotti were unable to campaign as freely as their backbench colleagues and whether that contributed to their defeat. On the other hand, those Greens ministers faced likely the strongest independent candidates in the election: Thomas Emerson and Fiona Carrick. So it’s hard to identify the causality.

While the political right might celebrate the swing against the government and the loss of Greens seats, there isn’t much good news for the Liberal Party. The Liberal vote has dropped by 0.7%. This would be the party’s worst result since 2008 in terms of votes. The party may win an extra seat in Brindabella, but they are also in a small amount of danger of losing a seat in Ginninderra.

The loss of support for the government has instead gone entirely to the various independents and small parties, in particular Independents For Canberra who polled an impressive 8.5%. But with five-member districts, there’s quite a high threshold to win seats, and they’ll only win one seat.

The last independents elected to the ACT Legislative Assembly were elected in 1998. So this is quite a big change. It also does create potential in the future for other options for governing.

Since 2004, there have been no MLAs elected outside of Labor, Liberal and the Greens. That means that the only potential shapes of the Assembly are a Labor majority, a Liberal majority, or the Greens balance of power. This has meant that the Greens have maintained a balance of power continuously since 2008, even though in that time the party has had two peak elections, lost support in between and rebuilt it. Because there just isn’t much of an alternative.

But if independents start winning more frequently, it creates potential for a Labor government to find other partners in governing. And it even creates the possibility of a Liberal government supported by independents. But tonight’s results suggest such a Liberal government is still quite some distance away.

11:15 – I’m going to start wrapping up the ACT coverage here. At the moment I don’t think I’ll be coming back with another blog post tomorrow, but there will be a podcast next week and I’ll be tracking the late counting as it comes in.

So far Labor has won 10 seats, Liberal eight, Greens two and two independents. The outstanding seats at the moment are:

• Brindabella – Greens MP Laura Nuttall looked out of the race earlier but she is currently leading. That may not last as postal votes are counted, but this is a race between the third Labor, third Liberal and Nuttall. The third Labor candidate would be Mick Gentleman – if he doesn’t win that seat, he would be the only Labor MP to lose his seat to a fellow party member – despite the fact that the party had an open seat in the electorate.
• Ginninderra – this seat has slipped under the radar but the second Liberal seat is now looking very shaky, with the party down to 1.52 quotas, and Independents for Canberra on 0.45 quotas. The second Liberal Chiaka Barry won the latest distribution by 0.28 quotas, but the Liberal vote dropped by 0.07 since then. I think the Liberal will probably be fine here but worth watching.
• Murrumbidgee – The partisan split is clear here – 2 Labor, 2 Liberal and Fiona Carrick. But the second Liberal seat is very close between Amardeep Singh and Ed Cocks.
• Yerrabi – The ALP and Liberal Party have each won two seats. Greens MP Andrew Braddock is leading IFC’s David Pollard.

There are no outstanding seats in Kurrajong.

The current Labor-Greens majority will be maintained if either party can win the final seat in either Brindabella or Yerrabi.

10:36 – If you’ve been enjoying this analysis please consider signing up as a member via Patreon. $5 or month gets you access to all of the election guides, election data, and you can join the Discord. The Discord has been very active with smart and interesting conversations about all of the elections taking place at the moment – I often learn about election news from people posting it in the Discord.

10:30 – I’ve seen a few people commenting on the possibility of Mick Gentleman coming back to beat the third Liberal for the final seat in Brindabella as a case of the “Ginninderra effect”. I don’t think that’s the case. As a remind, the Ginninderra effect is when a party winning multiple seats is able to efficiently distribute their vote between their candidate such that they can win with a vote that looks insufficient if you assume the previous winners require a full quota.

For the moment, let’s ignore the changes in primary vote over the last two hours since the last distribution of preferences which has increased the Greens vote by 0.05 quotas, Labor by 0.04, and cut the Liberal vote by 0.15.

As of 8:21, the Liberal primary vote was 2.72 quotas, and the Liberal vote at the final point in the count (when there were six candidates left) was 2.82. But the Labor primary increased from 2.02 quotas to 2.64. And from those, Gentleman almost wins. So the Ginninderra effect is a small factor (the first two Liberals both received full quotas, while the second Labor MP doesn’t), but the main factor is the ALP gaining a strong flow of preferences from Nuttall (and to a lesser extent, IFC).

10:10 – A fresh distribution has been posted for all seats, and of most interest is Brindabella. Gentleman is just 303 votes behind third Liberal Daniels. But also Gentleman is only 89 votes ahead of the Greens’ Laura Nuttall in the previous count. Meanwhile since this distribution was conducted, the Greens vote has climbed from 0.50 quotas to 0.55, and the Liberal vote has dropped from 2.72 quotas to 2.57. So it’s likely that Nuttall is now leading for that final seat.

9:28 – Not a lot has changed in the last hour, but the main news is:

• Labor has retained their ten seats, the Liberals have retained their nine, the Greens have clearly won two seats, while Fiona Carrick and Thomas Emerson seem to be solid to win seats as independents.
• Greens MP Andrew Braddock looks likely to retain his seat in Yerrabi, which would be a third Greens seat, and thus ensure that Labor and Greens would hold a majority between them.
• In Brindabella, it looks like Greens MP Laura Nuttall has lost her seat. Two new Labor MPs have been elected, but sitting Labor MP Mick Gentleman might survive if he can beat the third Liberal. If Labor wins that seat, that would mean they’d gained a seat.
• In Ginninderra, the result is likely 2 Labor, 2 Liberal, 1 Greens, with Chiaka Barry likely to take the second Liberal seat lost by Elizabeth Kikkert after she lost Liberal preselection and then ran for Family First.
• In Kurrajong, the Greens have lost their second MP Rebecca Vassarotti and that seat looks set to go to independent Thomas Emerson.
• In Murrumbidgee, the Greens have likely lost their seat to independent Fiona Carrick. There’s also a very close race between two Liberals for the final seat. Amardeep Singh is narrowly ahead of Ed Cocks, a sitting MP who filled a vacancy two years ago.
• In Yerrabi, Independents for Canberra’s David Pollard did quite well but looks set to fall short in favour of the Greens’ Andrew Braddock, although that race hasn’t been called.

Overall right now the likely outcome is 10-11 Labor, 9-10 Liberals, 2-3 Greens, 2-3 independents. If the Greens win Yerrabi or Labor wins Brindabella, then the Labor-Greens government holds its majority. If they lose both, Labor would instead need support from at least one independent in addition to the Greens, or from every independent instead of the Greens. If they win both, that would produce a total of 11 Labor, 9 Liberals, 2 Greens and 2 independents, at which point Labor would have a choice on any particular issue to either get the support of the Greens or of both Emerson and Carrick.

9:02 – The Kurrajong distribution of preferences has Thomas Emerson easily winning the final seat. The Greens vote is relatively evenly split between the two Greens MPs – Rattenbury is on 0.69 quotas and Vassarotti is on 0.50 quotas when Vassarotti is knocked out, with Emerson on 0.93. Vassarotti’s votes push Rattenbury over quota, with Emerson on 0.96 quotas.

8:57 – Sticking with Brindabella, I’ve heard reports of a booth where all the votes counted are Liberal, so that could indicate the Liberal vote is inflated. It’s also worth pointing out that while Mick Gentleman is losing to his fellow Labor candidate, he’s also only about 0.1 quotas behind the third Liberal, so it’s plausible you could see him win the fifth seat over the third Liberal, which would be a gain of one Labor seat.

8:27 – I had missed that long-serving Labor MP Mick Gentleman might be losing to a fellow Labor MP in Brindabella. On primary votes he’s just behind Taimus Werner-Gibbings, 0.49 quotas to 0.46. And what do you know, when you look at the interim distribution of preferences, Werner-Gibbings end up defeating Gentleman for the final seat, 0.88 quotas to 0.76.

That distribution is also showing that the Liberal Party is winning a third seat off Greens MP Laura Nuttall. Nuttall is knocked out when there are seven candidates, three Liberals, three Labor and a Green. At that point she is on 0.595 quotas, to Mick Gentleman on 0.654. It’s unlikely she could close that gap and is also unlikely she could win if Gentleman is knocked out first, as his preferences would strongly favour Werner-Gibbings.

Nuttall also narrowly defeats IFC candidate Vanessa Picker in the previous round, 0.505 quotas to 0.474. That gap could be closed, but it’s unlikely Picker would win when third Liberal James Daniels already has such a large lead.

7:55 – The interim distribution of preferences in Murrumbidgee has Amardeep Singh defeating Ed Cocks by just 0.03 quotas – 0.748 to 0.718. Too close to call.

In the previous round, Emma Davidson is knocked out on 0.59 quotas, with Carrick on 0.95 quotas and both Liberals on about 0.68 quotas. I can’t see that changing, so Carrick has been elected and Davidson has been defeated.

7:50 – In Yerrabi, the interim distribution of preferences is giving the final seat to Greens MP Andrew Braddock. He ends up on 0.87 quotas to third Liberal John Mikita on 0.69 quotas. It’s surprising that David Pollard from IFC is knocked out earlier. At the point where Pollard is knocked out, he’s on 0.52 quotas, Labor’s third candidate Raj is on 0.54, Mikita is on 0.61, and Braddock is on 0.69. He could theoretically do better if he can close that gap on Raj, but Braddock is looking strong.

7:45 – A peculiarity of the ACT election is that a large proportion of the vote is cast electronically, mostly pre-poll votes, and those are the votes that have been counted so far. This has created a weird effect where we haven’t got much change in the vote since that initial rush just before 7pm.

It also means that, for those electronic votes, the Commission has already conducted an interim distribution of preferences. This could change as more votes are counted, but effectively gives us a notional margin for close races. I’m going to run through those figures over the next 15 minutes.

7:41 – Also worth noting that Ed Cocks filled a casual vacancy in 2022. The two other members to have come into the Assembly mid-term are the Greens’ Laura Nuttall, who is in a fierce fight to retain her seat in Brindabella, and Liberal James Milligan who is leading for the second Liberal seat in Yerrabi.

7:40 – So just to recap, the seats worth watching in the ACT are:

• Brindabella – Greens MP Laura Nuttall (0.46 quotas) defending her seat against a third Liberal (2.77 quotas) or Vanessa Picker from Independents For Canberra (0.41 quotas).
• Kurrajong – Greens MP Rebecca Vassarotti has been defeated, with Independents for Canberra’s Thomas Emerson the likely winner (0.81 quotas).
• Murrumbidgee – Independent Fiona Carrick (0.74 quotas) with a big lead over Greens MP Emma Davidson (0.51 quotas).
• Murrumbidgee – Liberal candidate Amardeep Singh (0.47 quotas) narrowly ahead of Liberal MP Ed Cocks (0.44 quotas).
• Yerrabi – Greens MP Andrew Braddock (0.66 quotas) defending against IFC’s David Pollard (0.55 quotas).

The Greens need to retain either Brindabella or Yerrabi for a Labor-Greens majority.

7:31 – There’s potential for an intra-party upset in Murrumbidgee, where second Liberal MP Ed Cocks is currently trailing one of his Liberal colleagues. Former Liberal leader Jeremy Hanson is on 0.84 quotas, with Amardeep Singh on 0.47 and Cocks on 0.44 One of those two will win, but Singh has a good chance of winning. Labor’s Chris Steel and Marisa Peterson have a clear lead over the other Labor candidates so should be fine.

7:29 – Rachel Stephen-Smith will likely retain her seat as the second Labor MP in Kurrajong but that may not be called tonight. She’s on 0.46 quotas, with no other Labor candidate on more than 0.16 quotas, but Andrew Barr is on 1.32 quotas himself. I guess the question will be what her lead is, and how big his surplus is, at the end of the night. If these numbers don’t change by the end of the night I would probably call her elected but I think it’s fair enough to not call her seat yet.

7:26 – While there doesn’t seem to be that much of a prospect of a party change in Ginninderra, there is still a question of who would take the second Liberal seat previously held by Elizabeth Kikkert. Right now Chiaka Barry is on 0.4 quotas, ahead of Joe Prevedello on 0.33 quotas. Either could win.

7:21 – Something that might make things harder for the Liberals in Brindabella is that so much of their vote is concentrated behind Mark Parton, who has a full quota in his own right. So while the Liberal ticket collectively is on 2.77 quotas, third-placed Liberal James Daniels is on just 0.43 quotas. The Greens collectively are on 0.46 and IFC are on 0.41. The Liberals would be in a much stronger position if their vote was more evenly spread amongst their three leading candidates.

7:18 – The Liberal candidates in Epping and Hornsby have won their races easily. Monica Tudehope is on 60% of the primary vote in Epping, and James Wallace is on 48% in a more competitive race in Hornsby. It’s hard to compare these to 2023 due to the absence of the ALP, but the ABC is expecting the 2CP margin in Epping to be around 68% and almost 60% in Hornsby.

7:14 – We now have eight booths reporting in Pittwater, and Jacqui Scruby has a sizeable majority on primary votes. The ABC has called this seat, and I’m also happy to call this seat as an independent gain. Right now the independent swing is 19.8%, although that is inflated due to the absence of Labor and Greens. The ABC is expecting a 2CP margin of 7.8%, which would be a swing of 8.4%.

7:12 – Zooming out to the whole ACT, the current numbers in the Assembly are 10 Labor, 9 Liberal and 6 Greens. Labor won two seats in every electorate. The Liberals won two everywhere except Kurrajong. The Greens won two in Kurrajong and one everywhere else. The Greens won a lot of close races which inflated the government’s majority.

Right now Ginninderra looks like a status quo 2-2-1 result. In Kurrajong and Murrumbidgee the Greens look likely to lose a seat to an independent (Emerson in Kurrajong and Carrick in Murrumbidgee). They also look likely to lose a seat to either Liberal or IFC in Brindabella.

If those three results happen, they reduce the Labor-Greens government to a slim 13-seat majority.

But the Greens are also in a close race in Yerrabi. If they lose a fourth seat in Yerrabi, that would deprive the current government of a majority, producing an assembly of 10 Labor, 9-10 Liberal, 2 Greens and 3-4 others. It would theoretically allow for a Liberal government, a Labor government without the Greens, or a Labor-Greens government with the support of at least one independent.

7:05 – Brindabella right now looks like the best chance for the Liberals to gain a seat. The party is on 2.77 quotas, with Labor on two and no other party over half a quota. The Greens are on 0.46 and IFC are on 0.41. Far too early to call but Liberals looking good.

7:04 – Labor and Liberal look set to retain their two seats each in Yerrabi. For the fifth seat, the Greens are on 0.66 quotas and IFC is on 0.55. That looks close.

7:01 – Independent candidate Fiona Carrick has almost doubled her vote in Murrumbidgee, on 0.74 quotas. She is a long way ahead of the Greens, on just 0.51 quotas. Right now she’s in the box seat to take a Greens seat.

7:00 – The Greens are defending two seats in Kurrajong, and they are down 7% on the results so far. On those numbers, they will definitely be losing their second seat, likely to be Rebecca Vassarotti. Thomas Emerson from IFC is looking quite strong – he’s on 0.59 quotas personally and his party is on 0.81 quotas. Alternatively it’s possible that the second Liberal could win but I think their vote is a bit low so far.

6:57 – In Ginninderra, ex-Liberal member Elizabeth Kikkert’s Family First party is on just under 0.3 quotas. That’s probably not enough for her to win. The Belco Party is also a long way behind, and it is looking like a status quo result of 2-2-1, although Independents For Canberra on 0.45 quotas shouldn’t be totally dismissed.

6:55 – The first swings from the ACT have Labor and Greens both down, 3.7% and 2.4% respectively, and Liberal up 1.9%. The Independents for Canberra are on 8.2%. This strongly suggests the government will lose seats (and the Greens are more likely to lose seats than Labor) but not clear if that’s enough for the government to lose its majority.

6:53 – Scruby has a very strong lead in the first big booth in Elanora Heights, and I’ve heard of big leads in other booths. She is in a strong position.

6:46 – The ABC doesn’t have any data for the ACT election, but Antony Green has reported some figures for about half of the vote. I can’t find this data on the Elections ACT website, but it sounds like the Liberals are leading Labor on primary votes.

Meanwhile there is a very large swing to independent Jacqui Scruby on two small booths in Pittwater. A good start for her but very early.

6:00 – Polls have just closed for the Australian Capital Territory’s Assembly election, and for three state by-elections for the New South Wales seats of Epping, Hornsby and Pittwater.

A Labor-Greens coalition government will be attempting to retain its majority after 23 years of Labor rule and 16 years of the Greens in the balance of power.

In New South Wales, most of the focus will be on the Northern Beaches seat of Pittwater, where independent candidate Jacqui Scruby is in a fierce contest with Liberal candidate Georgia Ryburn.