10:47pm – CORRECTION – My calculations were miscounting absentee votes from last time. Now that I have fixed this, and added in prepoll votes (which helped the Greens, but not enough) it seems likely that Labor will win on postal votes, unless the Greens do very well on them. Having said that the gap is barely 200 votes so who knows.
9:49pm – And here are same vote maps showing the two-party-preferred votes. I’m signing off for the night.
Results of the 2012 Melbourne by-election, showing which party won each booth.
Results of the 2012 Melbourne by-election, showing two-party preferred vote for the party that won each booth.
9:45pm – With all but one booth reporting, Labor leads with 50.14% on raw votes. However my projection has the Greens ahead with 50.57% once you factor in the same swing for the remaining votes to come.
9:22pm – So with ten booths reporting preferences, Labor leads with 50.37%. However the swing suggests the projected 2PP will be much closer, around 50.0. It’s basically a dead heat.
8:45pm – Sorry, eleven booths.
8:39pm – With twelve primary vote booths in, the trend is clear. 6.6% swing to the Greens, 2.2% swing against Labor. Sex Party on 7%, Nolte on 5.8%, Mayne on 4.3%.
8:34pm – Three booths now have reported preferences. Swing of 6.34% from Labor to Greens. Worth noting that while the VEC is reporting 52.8% to the Greens overall, these three booths are relatively good for the Greens so that number will be lower if this swing is replicated.
8:32pm – We now have nine booths in. The swing to the Greens on primary votes is 6.5%. There’s a swing of 3.1% against Labor. This is on primary votes.
8:22pm - William Bowe is projecting a two-party-preferred split of 50.3%. This assumes that all minor party voters went 70-30 to the party that their how-to-vote favoured. However the largest minor party so far is the Sex Party. Their how-to-votes favoured Labor, but they are notoriously independent voters and are expected to favour Greens more than the how-to-vote would suggest.
7:56pm – On the first two booths, Labor is up 0.5% and Greens up 6.1%.
7:49pm – With North Melbourne East and Parkville reporting, there’s a swing of 6.11% to the Greens. 4.98% at Parkville and 7.3% at North Melbourne East.
7:12pm - Nick Carson (I believe a Greens scrutineer) on Twitter is reporting that the Greens won the RMIT booth 489-300. If this is two-party-preferred, that’s 61.98% for the Greens, a swing of 13.37%.
6:22pm – Still no results. There are fourteen booths, compared to 15 in 2010. Three of the booths from last time have been abolished, with two new booths created. I’ll be attempting to provide a swing based on which booths have come in, and as the night goes on I plan to provide some maps showing the results. For the time being you can see the maps showing the results in 2010 at my guide to the by-election.
6:00pm – Polls have just closed in Melbourne. There are fourteen booths to be counted, as well as extra votes.
5:48pm – Polls will be closing in twelve minutes in Melbourne. I will be covering the results as they come in right here at the Tally Room.