Bradfield and Higgins are both incredibly safe seats for the Liberal Party. Bradfield is the second-safest Liberal seat in the country, and neither seat has ever gone to preferences. The Greens achieved a strong result in a right-wing heartland seat while running an explicitly left-wing campaign.

Ever since the Cunningham by-election, conventional wisdom always assumes that the Greens have a chance of winning any by-election in a safe seat, and build it up so that it becomes a disappointment when the Greens don’t achieve some dramatic victory. Of course, some of these races are genuine opportunities for the Greens, such as those in Marrickville, Mayo and Fremantle.

Bradfield and Higgins were never going to be seats that the Greens could win. The absence of an ALP candidate gave the Greens a shot at increasing their profile and winning more votes, but these extra voters would never come close to the numbers needed to win the seat, and the Liberals still had a solid majority of support in both seats.

Clive Hamilton polled the highest achieved by any Greens candidate in a federal lower house by-election, while Susie Gemmell polled higher than in the Cunningham or Mayo by-elections on primary votes. That was the achievement for the Greens. Ultimately the goal of the Greens in areas like Bradfield and Higgins is to bite into the ALP vote and strengthen their Senate vote. The absence of the ALP made the Greens the only progressive alternative and gave the party an opportunity as ALP voters seriously considered and voted for the Greens for the first time. If half of those voters stick with the Greens in the Senate in 2010, it will be a big step towards getting Lee Rhiannon and Richard di Natale elected.

Even if you agree with the assumption that the by-elections were a ‘referendum on climate change’, it is madness to suggest that the result in two blue-ribbon Liberal seats has national implications in terms of the climate change debate. It is also not necessarily an endorsement of climate change policy for voters who have loyally voted Liberal for decades to continue voting Liberal.

No-one has ever suggested Tony Abbott would have trouble holding on to his party’s base in their safe seats. His problem lies in marginal seats where the ALP will attack him on climate change and other issues. Those are the seats that keep the ALP in government and Abbott needs to win them to bring his party forward. Last weekend’s by-elections do not offer a shred of evidence as to how Abbott will play in the key seats, nor how those seats will react to campaigns around climate change.

It’s also worth remembering that the Greens ran on a principled, explicitly left-wing platform in both seats, focusing on strong action on climate change. Yet they managed to achieve the same vote the ALP had achieved in 2007. It is not reasonable to assume that all ALP voters would automatically switch to a party running substantially to the left in a conservative seat.

The Greens were never going to win either seat at this election. Both by-elections were great  opportunities for the party to continue it’s goal of supplanting the ALP amongst progressive voters, and the Greens achieved this. In particular, the Greens have an opportunity to almost entirely push the ALP out of the north shore of Sydney over the next decade. The Greens have already come second at a state level in the seat of North Shore and beaten the ALP in Pittwater, and came close to beating them in a number of other north shore seats. By being the only progressive option in northern Sydney, it may not be enough for the Greens to win lower house seats, but it substantially increases the party’s presence and chances of electing Senators and MLCs. Bradfield helps move the party closer to turning the north shore into a series of Liberal-Green contests.

The Greens aren’t a centrist party, and aren’t going to be winning seats in conservative areas for a long time. Most of the party’s chances at a state and federal level lie in inner city areas in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

8:14pm – The best ever vote for the Greens in the House of Representatives before tonight was 28% in the Kooyong by-election in 1994, when Peter Singer ran after Andrew Peacock’s retirement. Hamilton is on track for over 34% tonight, the first time the Greens have cracked 30% in a federal lower house seat.

8:01pm – The Liberals are going to win both seats tonight, although there have been swings against them in both seats. In Bradfield the Greens are on 26% on primary vote, while they are on 35% in Higgins. The Greens are just below 40% on 2CP in Bradfield and 43% in Higgins.

7:21pm – Nothing interesting happening here so I’ll head to the Greens party at te Pymble Hotel and will be offline for a few minutes.

7:15pm – Second booth is in for Bradfield: Chatswood North. The Greens are now above 20%.

7:12pm – First two booths in Higgins have come in. In Toorak West the Liberal vote dropped 24%. While the Libs did much better in Kooyong Park, Hamilton is still above 30% primary. Strong, but not enough to win.

6:59pm – Now I’m updating on my iPhone due to slow computer. Reports say that Greens not far behind Libs at Ferndale, informals coming third again.

6:52pm – First booth in is Lady Davidson Hospital in Turramurra. It’s extremely strong for the Liberals, with over 70% of the primary vote. Best minor candidates were the Sex Party and Climate Sceptics, who each polled 6 votes.

6:51pm – By the way, I am using incredibly slow 2G internet on my computer as it stands, so while I’m scrutineering I may be behind on any results.

6:47pm – I’m scrutineering at Cromehurst Special School in Lindfield. They have started by sorting ballots by first preference, but they are not checking whether each ballot has managed to get all 22 boxes numbered consecutively, which will be time consuming. I have already noticed a vote for Susie Gemmell (GRN) which will be informal because it is missing a 17th preference. Compulsory preferential voting is madness.

As it stands Fletcher is well in front, with Gemmell clearly second followed by the Sex Party and the CDP candidate at the top of the ballot. Informal votes is outstripping all but Fletcher and Gemmell, although of course this only includes clearly informal votes (such as blank votes).

6:00pm – Polls have just closed in Bradfield and Higgins. It should take a little while longer to get results in Bradfield than in Higgins due to the large field of candidates. I’ll be scrutineering in Lindfield while trying to keep up with results.

I will be at Cromehurst Special School in Lindfield today, and mostly I will probably be covering it on my Twitter account, although if there is news I may update it on this blog post.

Paul Fletcher leaving Westfield Hornsby - and taking his signs with him - very shortly after arriving Thursday evening.

I will be covering tonight’s results as well, originally while scrutineering  at Cromehurst, since I figure you won’t get solid results for a while and I’m fascinated to see how high the informal vote goes with such a large field.

While these two seats are both blue-ribbon Liberal seats, recent events and strong Greens campaigns should give the Greens a strong showing. Indeed, when I was in Hornsby on Thursday evening, Liberal candidate Paul Fletcher packed up and left his stall quickly after arriving, not long after Greens candidate Susie Gemmell tweeted that she was on her way. The sense from locals is that, while the seat is extremely Liberal and they are very strong frontrunners, Fletcher has little campaigning skills and the party has been hurt by recent internal divisions.