Seat in focus: Fairfax

Clive Palmer's push to take the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax off the Liberal National Party looked like it had been successful on election night, but a very poor performance on special votes has Palmer's lead falling so fast that it is likely to...

Sunday night counting update

There are four seats I am now tracking where I don't think it's entirely bedded down: McEwen, Fairfax, Indi and Parramatta. UPDATE: Now covered all four key seats. McEwen Labor MP Rob Mitchell currently leads by 97 votes, over the Liberal Party's Donna Petrovich. Vote type ALP % LIB % To...

Cunliffe wins NZ Labour leadership off large membership vote

As the Australian Labor Party prepares to be the first political party in Australia to allow its membership to directly elect its leader, the NZ Labour Party has just chosen its new leader: its first elected directly using a similar model to the ALP. David...

Seat in focus: Indi

Indi has been the seat that has been the most interesting seat during the first week of counting. Cathy McGowan has led for most of the week, but was on track to fall behind before an additional 1003 votes that had not been correctly...

Seat in focus: Parramatta

Parramatta in Western Sydney currently is sitting as the second-most-marginal seat in the country. Labor MP Julie Owens is leading by 482 votes: a 50.32% margin. Click here to read my pre-election profile of Parramatta. Owens started out leading by over 1000 votes, but has not...

Friday night counting update

As it stands, there are still a bunch of seats left outstanding. Seven seats are on margins of less than 50.6%, and I'll run through a couple of key races here: Apart from these seven seats, the Coalition holds 87 seats, the ALP holds 53 seats,...

ALP and NZ Labour experiment with leadership in parallel

On Thursday, we saw former Labor Senate leader Stephen Conroy come out attacking the new Labor leadership rules pushed through by Kevin Rudd during his very brief second stint as Prime Minister. He said the Coalition are "getting away with murder" while Labor's leadership remains...

Seat in focus: McEwen

McEwen was the closest seat at the 2007 election, and this time it's one of the closest again. Currently the Liberal Party's Donna Petrovich leads the ALP's Rob Mitchell by 331 votes, which amounts to a margin of 50.19%. McEwen covers parts of northern Victoria...

Seat in Focus: Capricornia

Behind yesterday's profile seat of Barton, Capricornia is the second-closest seat in the country, with the ALP's Peter Freeleagus currently leading by 156 votes. Capricornia is Labor's only Queensland seat outside of Brisbane, and was expected to fall with the loss of Kirsten Livermore's personal...

Tuesday counting update

Another short update on today's counting in tight races. Barton - the addition of more ordinary votes has narrowed the Labor lead from 68 to 42. Capricornia - the addition of more ordinary votes has increased the Labor lead from 141 to 152. McEwen - Labor MP...