New South Wales Archive

Yesterday’s by-election in the NSW state seat of Northern Tablelands saw a result in line with expectations: the Nationals won the seat with a massive swing and a comfortable majority on primary votes.

The seat has a history of being held by the Nationals before Richard Torbay won the seat in 1999. At the last NSW state election, the three other rural independents lost their seats to the Nationals, and support for rural independents in federal Parliament has declined after the decision of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott to support the Labor federal government in 2010.

In the current circumstances, it would have been very hard for an independent without a pre-existing high profile to compete with the Nationals. Jim Maher attempted to run as a successor to the independent vote which used to dominate in the New England region. Maher polled 13.8% across the seat, and 20.8% in the Armidale area, but didn’t come close to holding on to more than a small part of Richard Torbay’s vote.

It will be very easy to interpret this result as a sign that Tony Windsor is set for defeat in New England at the September federal election. Windsor is certainly facing a tough race, but this by-election was very different to Windsor’s upcoming race. The independent and Labor candidates in the by-election had little profile, while Windsor has a history of winning his seat with massive majorities and still has a high profile. While he will have a serious fight on his hands, the Nationals can’t expect the result to be anywhere near as lopsided as yesterday’s result.

Polling places at the 2013 Northern Tablelands by-election. Armidale in blue, Inverell in green, Glen Innes in yellow, Gwydir in orange, South in red. Click to enlarge.

As a final point in analysing the by-election, I have broken the results down using the same geographic areas I used for the pre-election profile.

While a map showing the results for the seat wouldn’t be particularly interesting, as the Nationals have dominated the race across the seat, there are some interesting variations in the vote, particularly between Armidale and the rest of the seat.

All polling places have reported, along with the prepoll votes and some postal votes. More votes in the ‘other votes’ categories are yet to be reported.

The following table shows the primary vote for the top three candidates at yesterday’s by-election, as well as the vote for Richard Torbay at the 2011 election.

Overall, the Nationals performed most strongly in the Gwydir region and in the south of the seat, which were Torbay’s worst areas in 2011. The Nationals vote was lowest at 51.1% in Armidale, which also saw the highest vote for Jim Maher and the ALP.

Results as of 8:33pm

8:23pm – I’m going to call it a night now, and I’ll come back tomorrow with a results summary.

8:21pm – The Nationals vote for each part of the seat is as follows:

• Armidale – 51.1%
• Glen Innes – 63.9%
• Gwydir – 75.4%
• Inverell – 64.8%
• South – 69.4%
• Prepoll – 63.6%

8:20pm – We have now got votes from all 44 polling places, and we’re just waiting on postal votes, iVotes and provisional votes.

8:15pm – The projections have been reasonably good. Since the beginning the projection has seen the Nationals heading to the low 60s, despite topline figures in the mid-70s.

8:14pm – And we’re back. We’re only waiting on three booths: Drake Community Hall, Inverell Public School and Tingha Public School. We’ve also gained the Prepoll and Declared Institution votes.

7:45pm – Taking a dinner break now – it’s been 20 minutes since we’ve had an update. Overall about 22,000 formal votes were cast amongst those booths that have reported, out of a total of 32,000 formal ordinary votes (not including Absentee, Postal, Pre-poll, etc) at the last election. We’re waiting for two big booths in Inverell and a scattering of smaller booths.

7:39pm – Correction, there are only five booths in Armidale, and all five have now reported, with the Nationals on 51.1% in the area. I incorrectly counted the two booths that were abolished.

7:20pm – In Armidale, 2/7 booths have reported. The Nationals are on 50.7%, followed by Maher on 20.3% and the ALP on 12.4%. In the south (which includes rural electorates around Armidale), 12/16 booths have reported. The Nationals are on 69%. In Inverell, 3/6 booths have reported. The Nationals are on 69.3%, followed by Labor on 12.3%. In Glen Innes, 5/10 booths have reported, and the Nationals are on 67.3%. In Gwydir, 4/7 booths have reported, and the Nationals are on 86.3%.

7:19pm – To give you a sense of where the booths have come from, I have done some analysis using the five regions I used for my pre-election analysis.

7:16pm – We have started getting results in from Armidale now, where the Nationals are polling just over 50% of the primary vote. Their vote has dropped substantially, but it’s hard to see them not winning a majority. The ALP and Jim Maher are both doing better now, but miles behind.

6:54pm – Adam Marshall is looking very strong on 16 booths so far, but still a very small sample. The number of votes counted so far is less than 5% of the total formal votes at the 2011 state election. I also discovered an error in the spreadsheet, and have updated the spreadsheet at this link, with the first 16 booths included.

6:43pm – Ten booths in so far, and the Nationals’ Adam Marshall is winning comfortably, with 76% of the vote. My projection suggests that these booths are relatively stronger for the Nationals, and that vote should fall to around 59-60%.

6:29pm – First booth in is Chandler Public School in the south of the electorate. The booth was won with 54.8% of the vote by Richard Torbay in 2011. This time, the National has won 75% of the vote. The second-placed candidate was Jim Maher.

4:50pm – Good afternoon. From 6:30pm tonight I will be providing results commentary for the 2013 Northern Tablelands by-election. For now you can read the Tally Room profile of the race. If you are really interested, you can also download the spreadsheet that I will be using to track the results. It matches the 2013 booths to the 2011 booths, and includes results from 2011 for the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council. In theory, it will provide you with matching swings based on which booths have reported so far. I put it together today so can’t guarantee there are some formula errors, so buyer beware. You can download the spreadsheet here.

Last week, Richard Torbay’s political career came to an end. He’s been a state independent MP for Northern Tablelands since 1999, and served as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly from 2007 to 2011.

He was preselected to run for the Nationals in New England against Tony Windsor later this year, which would have caused a Northern Tablelands state by-election.

Torbay was deselected by the Nationals last Tuesday, and resigned from state Parliament last Wednesday.

The by-election is likely to be an easy win for the Nationals. While Torbay won a large majority in the lower house, the Coalition easily defeated other parties in the Legislative Council. The guide focuses on results from the Legislative Council, including a series of maps.

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