8:45pm – There are currently 23 Greens MPs around the country. There were 24 Greens MPs from Ronan Lee’s defection to the Greens in late 2008 to his defeat in March 2009. There are three Greens waiting to take office in the WA Legislative Council after last year’s election, and they’ll take office next week (although one Green will lose his seat). Including all of these WA changes, there will be 26 Green MPs around the country.
8:42pm – This result is the highest primary vote the Greens have ever gotten in a state or federal electorate at a general election or by-election. The previous record was in the 2005 Marrickville by-election, when the Greens polled 38.96%. This is also the first time the Greens have polled over 40%. In contrast, the Greens polled 23% in the Cunningham by-election.
8:23pm – Okay, the WAEC has updated and things are back where we expected them to be, with Carles on 51.26%.
8:18pm – Hmm, the WAEC’s notional distribution of preferences has Tagliaferri just ahead of Carles, which doesn’t make much sense. Let’s see where this goes.
8:06pm – Antony Green just called Fremantle for the Greens, and I’m gonna do the same. This is over.
8:04pm – A number of booths have been added, bringing the total count up to 62.69%. Tagliaferri briefly took the lead on primary votes, but Adele Carles is now 7.5% ahead on primaries.
7:47pm – A strong Labor booth has just come in and Tagliaferri is leading Carles on the primary 42.7% to 41%. Still a projected win for The Greens.
7:33pm – “Independent Liberal” Carmelo Zagami is doing appallingly, sitting on 4%. There seems to be conventional wisdom that, when the Liberals don’t run, Liberal voters will seek out the hidden Liberal running amongst the random candidates. It reminds me of the 2005 Werriwa by-election, when the independent Liberal candidate was expected to get around 20%, but only got 8%. Most people don’t go beyond reading the how-to-votes and the party names on the ballot paper. When neither of those say “Liberal”, most Liberal voters won’t research enough to know that you’re supposedly the party’s standard-bearer.
7:21pm – With almost a quarter of the vote in, Carles still leads over Tagliaferri by almost 4%, 44-40%. Remember, Tagliaferri needs to come first on primary votes to win.
7:16pm – We’ve now got almost 10% of vote in, and Carles is still above 46% of the primary vote with Tagliaferri just below 38%.
7:11pm – We now have prepolls in, and the Greens are leading with 46.8% of primary votes. This is very early.
7:07pm – The first handful of votes have come in. I assume they are from Rottnest Island, as there are only 88, and they overwhelmingly go for the Greens.
7:02pm – We’re yet to see any votes from Fremantle. It appears that they are counting the daylight savings first. Speaking of daylight savings, with 40% of the vote counted, the ‘no’ vote is sitting on just over 53%, and it appears that the referendum will be defeated. While I’ll try and cover both votes, the Poll Bludger is a Fremantle local and is covering the by-election. (Ben)
6:18pm – Your regular host at The Tally Room, Ben Raue, is currently in transit so I’ll be guiding you through the Fremantle By-election results until he gets back.
The election will be a Labor vs. Greens affair, with the Liberals deciding not to field in a candidate. Antony Green has recalculated the two-party preferred figures for each booth as a Labor vs. Green contest to allow for more accurate comparisons here. The WAEC will not be publishing two-party preferred figures for each booth, only the electorate as a whole, which makes it more difficult to analyse results. We’ve also got pre-poll and postal votes coming in so hopefully we’ll get a result tonight.
There’s 11 candidates in this election and it’s most likely going to come down to preferences so I’ll give a brief run down on who’s preferencing who.
Greens candidate Adele Carles will receive preferences directed to her from former Liberal candidate, now independent, Carmelo Zagami and independents Jan Ter Horst and Sam Wainwright, the latter of whom is affiliated with Socialist Alliance.
Labor candidate and current Mayor of Fremantle, Peter Tagliaferri will be picking up preferences from the rest of the candidates who include independent Nick Varga, Rob Totten from the Citizens Electoral Council and Andriette Du Plessis from Family First, amongst others. (Oz)
