Tasmanian election – count update

We are now entering the final stages of the Tasmanian election’s preference distributions. After all votes were collected, preferences began to be distributed yesterday, with substantial progress yesterday and today.

Kevin Bonham has been doing a great job of tracking the preference distributions in his liveblogs for the five electorates. I thought I would run through a quick summary.

Bass

Four seats have been decided – three for the Liberal Party and one for Labor. There are four candidates left in the count. The quota is 10,830 votes:

• Jennifer Houston (ALP) – 6654
• Andrea Dawkins (GRN) – 6571
• Bridget Archer (LIB) – 3505
• Simon Wood (LIB) – 3418

Wood’s preferences will presumably favour Archer overwhelmingly, bringing her closer to the Labor and Greens candidates, setting up a tight three-way race. If every Wood vote flowed to Archer, she would lead Houston by 269 votes.

In practice you’d expect a decent number of Wood votes to leak to Houston or Dawkins.

Dawkins needs to gain 84 votes net on Houston, or 352 votes on Archer, to stay in the race. If Dawkins is eliminated, her preferences will presumably elect Labor’s Houston.

If Archer is eliminated, her preferences will presumably elect Labor’s Houston. If Houston is eliminated, who knows? It could go either way.

Once Wood’s preferences are distributed we will know which of the final three drops out first, with a final count later tomorrow.

Braddon

Two Liberals have been elected, with six other candidates left standing. The quota is 10,718 votes:

• Anita Dow (ALP) – 8570
• Shane Broad (ALP) – 7531
• Roger Jaensch (LIB) – 6826
• Joan Rylah (LIB) – 6005
• Themba Bulle (ALP) – 4211
• Felix Ellis (LIB) – 3175

The Liberal Party holds 1.49 quotas in remaining votes, while Labor holds 1.89 quotas, so you’d expect Dow and Broad to both win their seats, and very likely that Jaensch will win the third Liberal seat.

Denison

One Labor, one Liberal and one Green have been elected, with five candidates left standing. The quota is 10,866 votes:

• Sue Hickey (LIB) – 9130
• Ella Haddad (ALP) – 6909
• Madeleine Ogilvie (ALP) – 5664
• Kristy Johnson (LIB) – 5288
• Tim Cox (ALP) – 5248

Hickey will definitely win a second Liberal seat when Johnson is eliminated, while Tim Cox’s preferences will decide the second Labor seat between Ella Haddad and incumbent Madeleine Ogilvie. Kevin Bonham’s analysis suggests that there’s a correlation between a higher Haddad vote and a higher Cox vote, which suggests Cox’s preferences will favour Haddad, increasing her 1245-vote lead.

The next count, expected tomorrow morning, should decide this final seat.

Franklin

Two Liberals and one Labor MP have been elected, with four candidates left standing. The quota is 11,863 votes:

• Nic Street (LIB) – 10,643
• Rosalie Woodruff (GRN) – 10,562
• Alison Standen (ALP) – 7,983
• Kevin Midson (ALP) – 6,073

Midson’s preferences (likely distributed in the morning) should elect Standen, with the surplus deciding the race between Street and Woodruff. There are 2193 surplus Labor votes (excluding any which leak to the other two candidates or exhaust), which is easily enough to overcome the 81-vote gap if they favour Woodruff, which I’d expect.

We should find out tomorrow morning.

Lyons

Only one candidate has been elected in Lyons (Labor leader Rebecca White), with five Liberals, three Labor, one Green and one JLN candidate in the race.

The Liberal vote collectively adds up to 3.18 quotas, with the third-highest polling Liberal candidate (Rene Hidding) well ahead of his closest rival with over three-quarters of a quota. All three of the incumbent Liberals should be re-elected.

There is a close race for the second Labor seat, with the votes currently sitting at:

• Janet Lambert – 3,901
• Jen Butler – 3,784
• Darren Clark – 3,461

Clark is the next to be excluded, and his preferences should clarify which Labor candidate is leading, but preferences from the Greens, JLN and the two lower-ranked Liberal candidates will also help decide who wins this seat.

This is likely to be the last seat to be decided, and I am not sure if it will be resolved tomorrow.

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