NSW 2019 – election night live

24

11:35 – I’ll leave this liveblog here. Sorry I wasn’t around much, hopefully you found my posts at the Guardian. Apologies also if you had trouble accessing parts of the website. Hopefully it will be easy to access now. Unfortunately that’s probably the reality as long as this website is a one-man operation – for some big elections it will struggle to serve demand. I’ve written a piece summarising the seats in play at the Guardian. In short, I still have 7 seats in doubt. The Coalition will need to win four to hold their majority. I will be back tomorrow with some blog posts, and then more on Monday. I have a few ideas, and am hoping to get a podcast out in the morning.

10:56 – I have eight seats left to be decided. The government will need to win at least four of them to win a majority, and they currently lead in five. These seats include Barwon (likely SFF), Dubbo (likely IND), Coogee (likely ALP), Lismore (likely GRN or ALP), Wollondilly (unclear IND or NAT), and East Hills, Coffs Harbour and Upper Hunter (likely Coalition).

10:15 – Let’s have a quick look at the upper house. We’ve got less than 20% of the vote counted, so it’s quite early, but we do have a sense of how the bigger parties are performing.

The Coalition is sitting on 7.3 quotas, with Labor on 6.2 quotas. The Greens are just over 2 quotas, with One Nation on 1.4 quotas and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers on 1.3 quotas. That adds up to 17 out of 21 seats decided on primary votes, assuming the percentages don’t change dramatically.

Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party is on 0.45 quotas while Animal Justice is on 0.37 quotas.

But there’s over 13% of the vote in the ‘others’ pile. This includes all below-the-line votes, above-the-line votes for other groups, and informal votes with markings on the paper.

We don’t have a sense of the primary vote for Keep Sydney Open, Sustainable Australia, Liberal Democratic Party or Jeremy Buckingham.

We do get a little bit of a sense by looking at the lower house primary votes. Sustainable Australia, who ran in 58 out of 93 seats, are on 1.5% of the vote. Keep Sydney Open are running in 42 out of 93 seats and have polled 1.3% so far. It seems entirely possible that either party could poll over 2% and have a chance at winning one of the final upper house seats.

9:24 – I have just called Ballina for the Greens with an increased majority, and Murray for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. It’s remarkable to say this, but Murray is the only seat that has changed hands so far tonight.

I have 14 seats not yet called.

There are three particularly complex seats where we don’t have a preference count. The Greens are leading Labor by about 4% in Lismore, but the two-candidate-preferred count is Labor vs Nationals (which Labor is winning for what it’s worth) and ex-Greens independent Sally Townley is leading Labor by about 1% in Coffs Harbour. Local mayor Judy Hannan is on 20% of the primary vote in Wollondilly, well ahead of Labor. In all three cases these challengers are trailing the Coalition on the primary vote, and we won’t have a two-candidate-preferred count tonight.

We then have 11 other seats where the count is too early or close to call, and we’ll just have to keep tracking those throughout this evening, gradually calling them as more votes pile up. This includes the Labor seats of Kogarah, Rockdale, Strathfield and the Entrance, as well as the Coalition seats of Barwon, Coogee, Dubbo, East Hills, Penrith, Tweed and Upper Hunter.

8:35 – The Nationals look shaky in a number of regional electorates where they are competing with minor parties, but so far we haven’t been able to call a single seat gain for Labor.

Labor has failed to gain any of the seats in the range pf 6.6% to 9.7%: Oatley, Goulburn, Holsworthy, Heathcote, Bega, Kiama, Myall Lakes, Seven Hills, Terrigal, South Coast, Mulgoa and Clarence.

8:14 – Let’s look at the seats in the 6-10% margin. The Coalition has retained Oatley, Holsworthy, Heathcote, Kiama, Terrigal, South Coast and Mulgoa. I’m still watching Penrith, Goulburn, Bega, Myall Lakes and Seven Hills but a number of these seats are leaning to the government.

7:58 – Sorry about my absence, you might want to check out my analysis on the Guardian liveblog. Labor doesn’t look like they are picking up enough seats to form government, but it’s still early.

7:18 – We’re starting to get some real results here. There isn’t much of a sense of marginal seats flipping between the major parties, while the Greens and the Shooters look good.

6:00 – Polls have just closed across New South Wales. Join me as we cover tonight’s results.

Liked it? Take a second to support the Tally Room on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!

24 COMMENTS

  1. Calling the election for the Liberals at 7:24Pm, Congratulations to Team Berejiklian and the Liberals, the swing is just not big enough. And having Labour struggling in some of their marginals. I am predicting either a small coalition majority, Or them being 1 or 2 short, but theres no way Labour gets in unless they are the largest party which seems unlikely at this stage. I concede that we are not doing as well as expected.

  2. Massive swings against the Libs in Wollondilly on the smallish seats reporting in so far. Hannan looking pretty good at the moment.

  3. Its official, Antony Green has predicted a coalition majority government, theres a chance tonight that labour might only gain 1 or 2 seats

  4. Liberal win at 8:20 pm. “Our Glad” has class, confidence and dignity which we all respect, even me in Victoria. I wonder how the anti demolition of the football grandstand folks are feeling, including that republican with the bandana around his head?

  5. Disappointing night if you’re a labor supporter. Looks like only a 2 seats may change from lib to labor.

  6. The surety that some have had that Liberals (and lesser degree Nationals) should not even try is tonight proven false.

    It is only 7 weeks or so to the federal election – one day at a time, every day is worth fighting for!

  7. Redistribution due in next NSW term…? Would be very interesting and could unfortunately undo some things…

  8. BJA, I believe the federal election will be a far tougher fight for you and the Liberals compared to this one. I think of how many people who voted Liberal in NSW that still are pushed away by the NSW Labor stench but are much less enthused to vote Liberal federally. Or in my home state of Victoria, how many who despite the landslide victory for Labor, reluctantly voted Liberal at the state level but intend to smash the federal Liberals (Scomo does not appeal here). And that’s not even mentioning the other states.

    If you guys do manage to retain power come May though, my hat would be off to your team’s remarkable success while also being gobsmacked at how Labor blundered what would be their equivalent of the 1993 unloseable election.

  9. Don’t think much inference can be taken from this for the federal poll. The NSW libs are nowhere near as incompetent as the federal libs, and vice versa for the ALP. Labor will still easily win in May

  10. So question for those more knowledgeable than me on this kind of thing. Whats the state of play with Wollondilly? I know all the other candidates were preferencing the independent hannan over the liberal bloke, and at the moment hes only sitting on 38% of the primary. ABC is calling it for him but I don’t understand how he gets across the line? is it that lots of people don’t follow the how to vote material and he gets across the line because of exhausted votes? are there stats you can use to predict that kind of thing? or is it something else?

    I’m fairly new to this and want to understand it better. Realistically what are Hannan’s chances at this point?

  11. The prediction is directly in line with the results but only 57% of the votes have been counted so far. They would be modeling on the preference flows booth by booth and trying to factor in what happens in pre poll and postal.

    Assume that pre-poll favours the government of the day. If there is a large enough number, then Smith would look about home.

    Best place to check is NSW EC for exact numbers.

  12. @Hawkeye Thanks for the explanation. How do they model based on the booth by booth preference flows when there isn’t a TCP for the seat? The original TCP was lib vs lab and now when you look at it it says “The Two Candidate Preferred (TCP) count for this district is not available at present.” Sorry if these are really dumb questions.

Comments are closed.