8:32pm – There are reports tonight that police were called to Warrawee booth today following an incident where an abusive DLP worker assaulted a Greens volunteer, who he pushed over a fence. The worker had apparently been verbally aggressive to a number of other booth workers.
8:14pm – The best ever vote for the Greens in the House of Representatives before tonight was 28% in the Kooyong by-election in 1994, when Peter Singer ran after Andrew Peacock’s retirement. Hamilton is on track for over 34% tonight, the first time the Greens have cracked 30% in a federal lower house seat.
8:01pm – The Liberals are going to win both seats tonight, although there have been swings against them in both seats. In Bradfield the Greens are on 26% on primary vote, while they are on 35% in Higgins. The Greens are just below 40% on 2CP in Bradfield and 43% in Higgins.
7:21pm – Nothing interesting happening here so I’ll head to the Greens party at te Pymble Hotel and will be offline for a few minutes.
7:15pm – Second booth is in for Bradfield: Chatswood North. The Greens are now above 20%.
7:12pm – First two booths in Higgins have come in. In Toorak West the Liberal vote dropped 24%. While the Libs did much better in Kooyong Park, Hamilton is still above 30% primary. Strong, but not enough to win.
6:59pm – Now I’m updating on my iPhone due to slow computer. Reports say that Greens not far behind Libs at Ferndale, informals coming third again.
6:52pm – First booth in is Lady Davidson Hospital in Turramurra. It’s extremely strong for the Liberals, with over 70% of the primary vote. Best minor candidates were the Sex Party and Climate Sceptics, who each polled 6 votes.
6:51pm – By the way, I am using incredibly slow 2G internet on my computer as it stands, so while I’m scrutineering I may be behind on any results.
6:47pm – I’m scrutineering at Cromehurst Special School in Lindfield. They have started by sorting ballots by first preference, but they are not checking whether each ballot has managed to get all 22 boxes numbered consecutively, which will be time consuming. I have already noticed a vote for Susie Gemmell (GRN) which will be informal because it is missing a 17th preference. Compulsory preferential voting is madness.
As it stands Fletcher is well in front, with Gemmell clearly second followed by the Sex Party and the CDP candidate at the top of the ballot. Informal votes is outstripping all but Fletcher and Gemmell, although of course this only includes clearly informal votes (such as blank votes).
6:00pm – Polls have just closed in Bradfield and Higgins. It should take a little while longer to get results in Bradfield than in Higgins due to the large field of candidates. I’ll be scrutineering in Lindfield while trying to keep up with results.
Lady Davidson Hospital booth in Bradfield is in. 71% to Fletcher, 15% to Gemmell, but you can’t read much into a booth like that.
First booth in Higgins (Toorak West) shows massive drop in Lib primary vote.
The first proper booth from Bradfield is in (St Ives North). Unfortunately the AEC aren’t publishing individual booth figures, just a running total. Chatswood North added now as well. Running total has an 8% swing against Fletcher.
Six booths in in Higgins. Liberal primary vote down 5%, should hang on at that rate, but very interesting.
After four booths in Bradfield Greens are up to 26%, Libs 57% (down 8%). Surprisingly informal vote under 3%. Best CDP candidate is the one with the donkey vote, and he’s only got 1.17%.
In both seats the AEC figures now show the primary vote swing against the Libs flattening out at only a couple of percentage points, not enough for them to be forced to prefs in either, so it’s looking like Libs retain both.
Hmm, Antony has individual booth numbers for swings against the Libs. Obviously he gets an exclusive feed.
That Toorak West result was definitely a rogue, (Possible explanation is that the booth is at a different location to its counterpart last election)
Swings to Libs in a number of booths in both seats. In Bradfield it looks like biggest swings against Libs are in their stronger areas.
Disappointing, Libs will retain both with only small swings against.
As for the also-rans. In Higgins the DLP are narrowly leading the Sex Party, then the Democrats.
In Bradfield, it’s the Sex Party ahead of the DLP and Simon Kelly. All these are under the 4% threshold at this stage.
Actually looks like a slight swing To the Libs in both seats. Disappointing.
Definitely seems to be a pattern of biggest swings against Libs according to Antony’s figures in Bradfield are in areas with biggest Lib vote.
It would appear, particularly looking at the stronger Labor booths in Higgins, that a fair number of Labor voters may have preferred to vote Liberal than Green.
The Bradfield results might be a good sign for the Senate vote next year. Being an area with not much of a Labor base, it would make sense that the Greens will become the main alternative to the Libs there, which might mean a few more percentage points from Susie’s vote will be retain as Greens votes next year.
Higgins much harder to tell, because there’s a bit more of a Labor base. Hamilton was really the only non-Liberal candidate with any profile, so naturally had to do quite well, but the numbers are even better than what I’d expected.
Hmm, Mulholland is on 3.89% in Higgins. If he cracks 4%, who gets the cash? Might be a messy legal dispute there….
Looks like low turnout in Higgins. What’s the usual % of ordinary votes for a by-election? (can’t think off the top of my head)
Being noted elsewhere that as I’d observed, the better Labor voting booths in both seats have seen increased Lib primary vote.
Nick C,
Over a quarter of Higgins voted pre-poll and postal at the federal election. Pollbludger says the booth turnout is about 90% of what it was at the general election.
Final primary votes for the night in Higgins. Hamilton finishes on 34.96%. O’Dwyer and Hamilton were the only candidates to crack 4%, surprising given the electoral climate, but it says a lot about the apparent lack of alternatives for people to vote for.
But congratulations to the Democrats for recording their highest vote in Higgins since 2001 – 2.36%. Rebuilding effort clearly moving along in leaps and bounds, comfortably outpolled by the DLP.
Ah, thanks MDMConnell.
Would appear to be a bad night for Labor in the one election they are contesting today – Broken Hill City Council. This is a general election to elect a new council after the last council was sacked by the state government on the eve of the 2007 state election. Labor mayoral candidate Neville Gasmier is polling a paltry 16.1% of the vote with one booth outstanding. Short of an extraordinary control of preferences between other candidates, the newly elected Mayor of Broken Hill will be Wincen Cuy, whoever he is (his candidate information sheet is blank).
Informal vote in Bradfield at the end of the night only 6.74%. Perhaps indicates that the really big influences on informal voting are education levels and English proficiency. Even with 22 candidates, the voters of Bradfield couldn’t match the informality rates of electorates with lower socio-economic status.
That’s it, I’ve had enough for tonight. Waiting to see full results for each booth, maybe tomorrow. Get your act together AEC!
Ok, well, the AEC have now published full results for each booth.
In Bradfield the Greens actually topped the primary vote in one booth – Chatswood North. Fantastic.
And in five booths in Higgins – Carnegie Upper, Prahran, Prahran East, South Yarra and Windsor.
Good grief, the DLP topped 10% in two Higgins booths: Hawksburn Central (13.84%) and Hughesdale North (10.22%). Recount please.
Sex Party got their best result at Windsor, with 7.72%.
In Bradfield, I don’t see any evidence of the CDP’s strategy of giving each candidate an area to target making much of an impact, no stand-out results for any of their candidates in any booth. Simon Kelly got over 5% in a couple of booths around St Ives, and the Sex Party got over 4% in a few booths, otherwise, no significant results for any of the minor candidates in any individual booths. Some big variations in informal votes across some of the booths.
The person who was abused (and the guy who was there with him) are from the Blacktown Greens. The Blacktown Greens guy not abused is a friend of mine and he rang me at about 3:30pm and told me about it. I tweeted about it but it seems as though most people on Twitter either missed it or didn’t care.
8:14pm – The best ever vote for the Greens in the House of Representatives before tonight was 28% in the Kooyong by-election in 1994, when Peter Singer ran after Andrew Peacock’s retirement. Hamilton is on track for over 34% tonight, the first time the Greens have cracked 30% in a federal lower house seat.
Am I missing some qualifiers to this statement?
Nick Says: Good grief, the DLP topped 10% in two Higgins booths: Hawksburn Central (13.84%) and Hughesdale North (10.22%). Recount please
Victoria and some parts of Northern NSW and Qld still hold pockets of high support for the DLP. As the party rebuilds I dont think that these figures will be uncommon.
As for the Democrats, I really think that there support has moved off either to us or the greens and that became obvious with Andrew Bartlett gaining pre-selection for the greens.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=928606
A lot of Democrats who were involved in some of the foriegn issues IE West Papua have found a home with us as well.
The booth by booth breakdown of Higgins looks really interesting. There were some massive anti-liberal swings on some of their best booths, but they neutralised them by picking up solid swings to them on some of the better booths for the ALP. That’s a very impressive campaign effort from Kelly O’Dwyer. I can’t help but wonder if the ALP would have given her a bit of a fright if they’d run a really good candidate.
Tim’s right to point out all the qualifiers on the Greens performance, but it’s still a good result for them. They got a massive swing to them when the ALP vote could have split off everywhere. Despite what some people from both the left and the right think, it’s just not a given that all ALP voters will (or should, for that matter) automatically prefer the Greens to the Liberals. You can see in most by-elections where one of the majors don’t run that the other major picks up some of their votes. I was expecting all the candidates in Higgins to increase their primary vote, and that turned out to be wrong this time – but that’s because of the anti-liberal swing on some of the strongest liberal booths. There was a protest vote from traditional liberal voters, but it was effectively neutralised by the ALP voters who preferred the Libs over the Greens. So although it’s a solid result for Tony Abbott and the liberals, the anti-lib swing on those booths is something they should not ignore.
As for the minor parties – it’s interesting to see how well the Sex Party and the DLP polled in Higgins. Those two parties could have an impact with their preferences in the senate in Victoria next year. Even a vote of 0.5-1.5% could change the outcome for the 3 contenders (ALP, Greens & Libs) for the last 2 spots.
The whole of NSW, not just northern NSW, are represented by the NSW Branch of the DLP more than adequately Ziggy.
The DLP volunteer, Neil, was not abusive. He was speaking up for many other volunteers from all the other parties and independents. Neil requested that the toilets be opened. One Green gentleman challenged the request on alleged safety grounds which was ridiculousbecause the toilets were only available to the electoral commission workers. The Green man made a sudden charge towards Neil, having first becoming verbal. Neil, on reflex just pushed the man back with both palms of his hands in defence.
Circumstances in Higgins a bit different, but I was a bit disappointed that the Bradfield campaign seemed to focus so entirely on climate change. With the turmoil in the Libs in the last fortnight I would’ve thought a more general message about the Greens offering certainty and authenticity vs the Libs’ chaos and flip-flopping might’ve provided an opportunity to appeal to more voters for whom climate policy was not the primary factor influencing their vote. Would it have made much difference to the result, who knows, but I make the point that voters already know where the Greens stand on climate change, wouldn’t it be better to tell them something they don’t know?
I think the Greens tried to cut through the perception that they were solely running a climate change campaign in Bradfield by running a local candidate who understands local issues like development. Unfortunately to a certain extent the NSW Greens’ campaign was hijacked by the VIC Greens campaign thanks to Clive Hamilton’s media profile and his proclamations that their campaign is being fought on climate change alone.
I have to agree with Ben’s well-known criticism of running Clive Hamilton in an almost-feasible seat as I believe it did affect the running of the campaign in Bradfield and single-issue blow-ins will never win lower-house seats no matter who it is. However I don’t believe that any candidate could really have won Higgins, even on the most well-funded, well-oiled campaign – Higgins’ voters just aren’t angry enough yet with the Coalition and the Greens just don’t have the brand power in Victoria yet to be trusted with public office by the voting public. That’ll change as Di Natale gets into the senate at the next election.
I think Adam Bandt will learn from how the NSW Greens ran their campaign against the VIC Greens and will use that experience to help win Melbourne. Andrew Bartlett with Brisbane too.
Most senators will continue to be elected from the low-pop states, but the first lower house seats will be won in the three high-pop states due to demographic concentrations. Remember.. it’s the highest primary vote yet for the Greens in federal lower house.. so it speaks well for targeted inner-city seats.
deconst, you make some fair points. Yes, Susie’s campaign didn’t start out with such a heavy focus on climate change, but particularly in the last fortnight, when circumstances opened up bigger opportunities, everything did appear to focus narrowly on climate change. I do stand by my point (though you’re welcome to disagree), see the HTV for instance (assume this is it):
http://greens.org.au/system/files/u143/Greens%20Bradfield%20HTV%202009.pdf
Comments are closed.