The Tally Room

Remarkably, the result in the Senate is much more clear-cut than the result in the House of Representatives.

The Greens are on track to win a Senate seat in all six states, giving them a total of nine seats. This clean sweep is a feat never achieved by the Democratic Labor Party or the Democrats, the only ever minor parties to ever win substantial numbers of Senate seats.

The Democrats achieved their best ever Senate result in 1996, when they won five Senate seats, electing a Senator in all mainland states, but losing to Bob Brown in Tasmania. The Democrats also reached their peak number of senators after the 1998 election, when they elected four senators to join the five elected in 1996, giving them a total of nine. The Greens have now matched that total.

The Greens polled over a quota in both Tasmania and Victoria. In Victoria, the Greens polled just over a quota, but in Tasmania the Greens polled over 20%, and the second Green reaches almost half a quota before being excluded.

In terms of other minor parties, it is less clear. In South Australia, Family First candidate Bob Day trails the Liberal Party by 0.45% at the key exclusion point, and earlier in the night was in a position to win the seat. If Family First can gain ground, they will likely win the final seat on Liberal preferences, but it seems most likely the Liberal Party will win the seat.

In Victoria, Antony Green’s Senate calculator is currently giving the final seat to John Madigan of the Democratic Labor Party. The DLP polled over 2% of the primary vote, and gathers preferences until, at the key point, the DLP overtakes sitting Liberal Senator Julian McGauran and wins the seat on Liberal preferences.

Having said that, at an earlier point, Madigan only outpolls Family First Senator Steve Fielding by 0.07% of the vote, and if Family First was to overtake Madigan at that point, Fielding would likely be re-elected. At the point where Madigan overtakes McGauran, he only does so by 0.66%. It is possible McGauran could win the seat.

In the states of New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia, the result was the same: three Coalition, two Labor, and one Green. In Tasmania, the ALP has managed to win three seats, to two for the Liberal Party and one for the Greens. In Victoria, the ALP has gained two seats, the Liberals one, the Nationals one and the Greens one, with the final spot going to the DLP, Family First or the Liberals.

Overall this produces a result of 34-35 Coalition, 31 Labor, 9 Greens, as well as Nick Xenophon and possibly Steve Fielding or the DLP’s John Madigan. Regardless of who wins the final seat, the Greens will have sole balance of power, with Xenophon and any other minor party senators unable to influence legislation.

At the moment, it appears that the Coalition parties have won or are ahead in 73 seats, Labor in 72, Independents in four, and the Greens in one.

It appears that five seats are yet to be decided. In the Hobart seat of Denison, former Greens member and independent candidate Andrew Wilkie can be expected to get a strong preference flow from the Greens and Liberals, but this is still unclear, and Possum believes that he will not be able to win the seat.

In the seats of Corangamite, Lindsay, Brisbane, Boothby and Hasluck, the result will not be known for several days:

• Corangamite – Western Victorian seat, sitting ALP member Darren Cheeseman is leading by 1189 votes.
• Lindsay – Western Sydney seat, sitting ALP member David Bradbury is leading by 1017 votes.
• Brisbane – Inner Brisbane seat, sitting ALP member Arch Bevis is trailing Liberal National candidate Teresa Gambaro by 858 votes.
• Hasluck – Eastern Perth seat, sitting ALP member Sharryn Jackson is trailing Liberal candidate Ken Wyatt by 363 votes.
• Boothby- Adelaide seat, sitting Liberal member Andrew Southcott is leading over Labor candidate Annabel Digance by 814 votes.

If all five of these seats go to the Coalition, it will produce a result of 75/70/4/1 in their favour. Alternatively, if all five go to Labor, it will produce a result of 75/70/4/1, or possibly 76/70/3/1 if Andrew Wilkie is defeated in Denison.

So while it is a possibility that either party could win half the seats in the House, there is no possibility of a party winning the 76 which guarantees a majority, short of an extremely good performance by Labor in Brisbane, Hasluck and Boothby, which would be very unlikely.

In two other seats apart from Denison, we’ve seen major parties lose seats to smaller parties:

• Melbourne – Greens candidate Adam Bandt has won with 36.1% of the primary vote and 55.7% of the two-party preferred vote.
• O’Connor – This seat has been radically redrawn to cover a massive area in Western Australia. Sitting Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey has been defeated by Nationals candidate Tony Crook. Crook polled 29.7% of the primary vote to Tuckey’s 37.6%, and he won 54.2% of the two-party preferred vote on Labor and Greens preferences.

It’s worth noting that the Western Australian branch of the Nationals currently holds no federal seats, and has a tradition of independence from the Liberal Party. They have previously said that they would not sit in the joint party room, and Crook cannot necessarily be counted as another Coalition seat, even though he is counted amongst the 73 Coalition seats.

The ALP won two seats off the Coalition last night, both in Victoria:

• La Trobe – Eastern outskirts of Melbourne. Sitting Liberal MP Jason Wood has been defeated by Labor candidate Laura Smyth, who is on 50.8%.
• McEwen – Northern Victoria. After narrowly losing the seat in 2007, Labor candidate Rob Mitchell has won the seat with 55.3% of the two-party preferred vote.

The Coalition has retained all five seats that were made notionally Labor in the redistribution, namely Gilmore, Macarthur, Dickson, Herbert and Swan.

They also gained nine seats won by the ALP in 2007:

• Solomon – Darwin. Sitting Labor MP Damian Hale has lost to Country Liberal Party candidate Natasha Griggs, who is on 53.2%.
• Bennelong – Northwestern Sydney. Sitting Labor MP Maxine McKew has lost to Liberal candidate John Alexander, who is on 53.8%.
• Macquarie – Outer Western Sydney. This seat was redrawn to include the Hawkesbury area. Sitting Liberal Member for Greenway has gained the seat, defeating Labor candidate Susan Templeman and winning 51.1% of the two-party preferred vote.
• Bonner – Brisbane. Sitting Labor MP Kerry Rea has lost to Liberal National candidate (and former Member for Bonner) Ross Vasta, with Vasta polling 53.1% of the two-party preferred vote.
• Dawson – Central Queensland. Labor candidate Mike Brunker defeated by Liberal National candidate George Christensen, who is on 52.2%.
• Flynn – Central Queensland. Sitting Labor MP Chris Trevor has lost to Liberal National candidate Ken O’Dowd, who is on 53%.
• Forde – Southern fringe of Brisbane. Sitting Labor MP Brett Raguse has lost to Liberal National candidate Bert Van Manen, who is on 51.6%.
• Leichhardt – Far North Queensland. Sitting Labor MP Jim Turnour has lost to Liberal National candidate Warren Entsch, who held the seat from 1996 until his retirement in 2007, and is on 54.5%.
• Longman – Sunshine Coast and Caboolture. Sitting Labor MP Jon Sullivan has lost to 20-year-old Liberal National candidate Wyatt Roy, who is on 52.4%.

Six of these nine seats were in Queensland, along with two in New South Wales and one in the Northern Territory.

Following a few days of campaign cameos by John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Mark Latham, Malcolm Fraser and John Hewson, two new polls today both have the ALP with slim leads.

The Newspoll in the Australian has the ALP back to an election-winning lead with 52% to 48%. The Galaxy Poll in News Limited tabloids has the ALP ahead on 51%. Both polls have the same primary votes of 42% for the Coalition, 38% for Labor and 13% for the Greens.

A Nielsen poll on Saturday had the Coalition ahead on 50.6% of the two-party preferred vote. The Coalition is on 44% primary, with the ALP on 36% and the Greens on 13%.

There is a clear trend in recent polls, with the Greens consistently polling around 13%, and the two-party preferred vote being tightly divided between the two parties.

In terms of the election guide, I have been going through and updating the candidate lists for each seat to the final ballot order, and have done all but a handful of seats (those beginning with ‘T’ and ‘W’).

I’m also going to be appearing on 2SER at 8am today, and for the following two Mondays, to discuss the election campaign.

Since the Group Voting Tickets were announced on Sunday, there has been wide-ranging discussions about how people can vote below the line. There has been a campaign for Victorian voters to put Stephen Conroy last, and a group has set up a website that allows voters to produce their own personal how-to-vote card.

One point I thought I should emphasise. If you vote both above and below the line, then the below the line vote will be counted. But if your below the line vote is found to be informal, the above-the-line vote will be counted. So if you are worried about voting informal below the line (quite a high risk in a state like New South Wales, with 84 candidates running), you can vote both above and below the line to give yourself insurance.

The AEC yesterday released the preference orders determined by political parties running in the Senate, which will be used to distribute above-the-line preferences, and determine Senate results in a difficult-to-understand process.

William Bowe at the Poll Bludger has posted simplified versions of the tickets, and Antony Green will soon be posting Senate calculators, which will allow you to predict the results in the Senate based on different primary vote levels.

The Democrats in the ACT and South Australia have pushed the Greens below major party candidates, making it harder for the Greens to win those seats, despite the Greens putting the Democrats ahead of all other significant parties in every state.

In the ACT, the Democrats have put the Greens below the Liberal Party. With only five groups running, the Democrats should still poll a decent number of votes, and it will be extremely difficult for the Greens to outpoll the Liberals with the Democrats flowing the other way. The Greens have argued that they had a deal with the Democrats to swap preferences, while the Democrats have argued that ACT Liberal Senator Gary Humphries is a “small-l liberal” who would be a “hand of restraint” on a possible Prime Minister Abbott, which seems pretty unlikely.

In South Australia, where the Greens are competing with the ALP, the Democrats also preferenced against the Greens. Former Democrats leader and current Greens candidate Andrew Bartlett attacked Democrats preference decisions as “ludicrous & intellectually dishonest”.

In NSW, the Liberal Democrats received a strong preference flow from many microparties, but failed to get the preferences they needed from the Christian Democrats and Shooters which would allow them to compete with Labor and the Greens. Antony Green has analysed the preference flows, and argues that the Climate Sceptics and Family First have a chance of winning in South Australia.