Good morning, I have been writing this blog post after getting home to wrap my own head around the scale of the count. I expect I will have some issues with the website’s accessibility today, so some of this may also be posted over on Tally Room in Exile, my backup blog.
Firstly, it appears that there has been a significant increase in the number of contests involving minor parties and independents, but it will be some time before we can say how many seats are now non-classic.
Right now, 116 seats appear to be classic contests, 15 are Coalition vs Independent (including Katter and Sharkie), 10 are Labor vs Greens, 8 are Labor vs Independent, and one is Coalition vs Greens (Ryan).
But there are 19 seats where it is not clear at this point which parties should be in the 2CP, and it will require further counting to make that clear. I’m sure some of these seats will require a 3CP. That isn’t to say all these seats are in play – in some cases there is a clear winner and two parties competing to come second.
In theory as many as 43 seats could be non-classic, but at the moment 34 are leaning that way. As a reminder, the 27 non-classic seats in 2022 was an enormous jump. It’s hard to see the number not being higher this time.
I’m going to introduce a term I haven’t used much in the past: “Maverick”. The AEC uses this term to apply to seats where their initial chosen 2CP turns out to be wrong. This year, an enormous 22 seats were declared Maverick, although the Maverick status of Macnamara was later overturned. I think there’s three others where they could arguably do the same, and resume counting the initial 2PP count.
The Maverick status also covers two seats in WA where they picked the wrong party out of Liberal and Nationals. Ten of these 21 seats continue to be unclear as to what 2CP pairing will apply. There is thus a further 9 seats where it is unclear which parties make the 2CP, but since the likeliest pairing is the current pairing, they will continue counting until they decide otherwise.
The main reason for all of this complexity is the closeness of the second-placed and third-placed candidates. There are 30 seats where that gap is less than 5%.
I previously analysed these gaps at the 3CP level, which is not quite the same thing but is usually similar, and I have found the gaps have kept getting smaller. Well it looks like this trend is continuing in 2025. It is getting harder and harder to know which two candidates are the top two.
As for the seat outcomes, my current estimates are:
- Labor winning 86, leading in another 7
- Coalition winning 36, leading in another 4
- Independent (including KAP and CA) winning 10 and leading in 5
- Greens leading in 2
I won’t go into what those seats are now. Right now it looks like five of the six urban teals, plus Sharkie, Katter, Dai Le, Wilkie and Haines have all been re-elected. Zoe Daniel is leading in Goldstein, as are independents in Bean, Calare, Bradfield and Cowper, with the Calare candidate being ex-Nationals MP Andrew Gee. The total vote for independents (not including CA or KAP) has surged again to 7.8%.
The historic scale of Labor’s victory and the Coalition’s defeat forced me to collate some data on previous results, and this chart shows, as a proportion of the House, how many seats the government, opposition and crossbench have held after each election.
The exact record will depend on the final results, but it seems likely that this election result will produce more seats than the 90 seats won by Tony Abbott in 2013. There’s a chance Labor could surpass John Howard’s result in 1996, although I don’t think they’ll quite get there. As for Labor results, this is their best result in seat terms since 1943, and I don’t think any other result before that was any better.
For the Coalition, this looks like the worst result for any major party since 1943, even producing a lower seat proportion than Whitlam’s Labor in 1975. Of course the ballooning size of the crossbench means the defeat of the Coalition is a bit more impressive than Labor’s victory – an exaggerated version of the mismatch we saw in 2022.
For this whole campaign we have been looking at the declining major party votes, and what is amazing is that Labor has achieved this enormous victory while barely raising their primary vote.
The combined major party vote has continued to drop, currently sitting at 66.4%, just below two thirds of the total vote. The Coalition has also broken their own record for their lowest vote share since 1943. And the combined vote for the minor parties and independents has now passed the Coalition, and is over one third.
The final point I want to touch on is the Greens’ performance. At the moment it looks like they will scrape by in Melbourne and potentially win other seats like Wills and Ryan. Their result wasn’t particularly impressive, but I want to emphasise how much they are victims of the electoral system. Nationally the Greens vote is steady, just over 12%, and part of the story is that the Greens suffered primary vote swings in many of their best seats while gaining votes elsewhere. The map at the end of this post makes this very clear in cities like Melbourne and Brisbane, although you don’t see it in the same way in Sydney.
But in a number of their seats, their defeat did not primarily come due to a dropping primary vote, but a rearrangement of their opponents. In Brisbane and Griffith, the rising Labor vote pushed the LNP into third, and thus LNP preferences will elect Labor.
It’s a perverse part of our system that the most conservative voters decide who wins in some of the most progressive seats. Elizabeth Watson-Brown likely will survive while Max Chandler-Mather will be defeated because she represents a more conservative seat where the LNP is the main opponent.
And this is a challenge for the Greens because so many of their best seats are now Labor vs Greens contests where Labor will easily win the 2CP on Liberal preferences.
And finally, this map shows the swings for Labor, Coalition, Greens and One Nation on the primary vote, and a 2PP swing for the 124 seats with 2PP counts at the moment.
Amongst those 124 seats, the biggest 2PP swings were again in Inner Metropolitan seats, averaging 5.08%. Outer Metropolitan averaged 4.07%, Provincial 2.55% and Rural 2.12%. The urban-rural divide is growing even now.
Very insightful wrap-up of the state of voting at close of polls last night. I think the days of Labor/vs Liberal/Nat party elections is done and dusted. The Labor party has grabbed the middle ground and the LNP have been pushed out in previous seats they held by the Teal type conservative middle class independents who have attracted conservative voters .
Results for the Greens really show the difference between the concepts of “owning” a seat vs winning a certain number of primary votes. What people (including the ABC commentariat last night) fail to understand is that the circumstances that won you a seat previously do not cease to be relevant once you’ve won it.
i.e. in Brisbane, people seem to forget that Bates only won the seat after a long countback, and by the slimmest of margins due to the high remnant Liberal vote and a dramatically reduced Labor vote. He had the perfect storm. But now, with a primary reduction of just 0.3%, his performance in that electorate not really changing much in primary terms, he is unseated. As Ben said, the drop in conservative vote pushes Labor into the lead.
The message from the press is a “rejection of grievance politics” to quote Patricia Karvelas, but that explains less than half a percent of the primary vote in that seat.
Ben the other thing to note on the Greens vote is that it is losing vote share inn seats where Green voters are tactically voting ofr an acceptable independent. The ACT Senate is a classical case as is the seat of Bean where around a third of Grees voters from last time voted for the Independent. I can tell you that the Greens were preferencing Price over Labor and the Liberals were preferencing Price over Labor. The issue will be how many follow the ticket – I suspect that the Green preference flow to Labor will be well below normal
Thank you Ben and well done Labor.
There is no effective opposition here which is poor for democracy. Actually, I think the Teals have more suburban seats than the Liberal Party. The opposition is actually the Country Party. It is difficult to see how the Liberals come back. They did the correct thing and put some very good female candidates in traditionally blue seats and they were defeated. More concerning is that the seats that 3 of the last 4 Liberal PMs held are no longer Liberal seats. If they were to form government next time, it is probable that their PM will be a regional MP.
The ABC website reports that “Electorates with high numbers of Chinese Australian voters — a key demographic that moved against the Coalition at the last election — again stuck with Labor, costing Liberal Keith Wolahan his seat in Menzies, and helping Labor retain Bennelong, which had notionally moved to the opposition following a redistribution.”
I called this months ago, when I wrote the Liberals will not win Menzies, and Chisholm. Certain right wingers went into meltdown, and I am not referring to the more measured NP.
I got Kooyong wrong. Even Antony Green wrote that “the addition of Toorak, Malvern, and Armadale will favor the Liberal Party in Kooyong”.
I never bought the line that Hawke, and Gorton will fall to the Liberal Party. So much for Victoria taking baseball bats to Labor. Labor has increased their majority in Melbourne, and an Independent has a slim chance of winning Flinders.
If a party runs a campaign on sacking 41,000 public servants and preventing people from working from home, while saying that they want to see house prices steadily rise, and repealing tax cuts and axing economic aid to those with HECS debts, they are going to be wiped out. If a party wants to overturn the energy rebate and says there are too many free services with Medicare, like visits to the emergency department, they are going to be wiped out. If a party thinks waging culture wars is the way to go while offering nothing but tax breaks for fat cat business lunches, and a petrol rebate for a year, they are going to be wiped out. If a party wants to jettison plans for a renewables future at the expense of nuclear power, they are going to be wiped out. If an opposition leader says that they would not be concerned if there was a nuclear reactor in their own electorate, they are going to lose their seat. If a party says they are going to continue with fossil fuels until nuclear is up and running, they are going to be wiped out. If a party says that they are going to overhaul the school curriculum (one that was drawn up by their previous leader), they are going to be wiped out. If a party wants to set up a DOGE they are going to be wiped out. If an opposition leader attends a function for a Sydney billionaire while their state is under threat from an environmental disaster, they are going to lose their seat.
Bye bye Potato Head. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Labor is looking very good in Wills, first batch of postals counted last night was 67% Labor and you got to remember how many old Italians/Greeks live in the seat who are completely rusted on Hawke Laborites.
Absentees leaned Greens only slightly last time, outside electorate prepoll leaned Labor last time, provisionals too. Greens didn’t have a good statewide HTV game whereas Labor vols always seemed to have one ready at polling booths, plus Liberals also having a good statewide HTV strategy might just get Khalil 51%ish victory.
@Tim
“The message from the press is a “rejection of grievance politics” to quote Patricia Karvelas, but that explains less than half a percent of the primary vote in that seat.”
The Media have their own narratives. Whether it’s significant, I wouldn’t know, but all the Liberal Moderates trying to make a comeback were well, beaten, Trevor Evans, Tim Wilson, Katie Allen, Nicolle Flint, Andrew Constance, Vince Connelly, Paul Fletcher and a few more like Bridget Archer, David Coleman, James Stevens, moderate Warren Entsch’s replacement, lost outright.
Longtime moderate Russell Broadbent only drew 10%, Liberals held Monash anyway and Wannon, where non Moderate Dan Tehan was going down in flames, he won well.
Also, Liberals’s completely misread the Tasmania salmon protests as a Green stunt. While that was superficially correct, there is a real environmental issue there which went right over Liberal Party heads.
In Qld, the Brisbane area result mirrored the State result, as did the Caloundra to Townsville results.
In the end, Dutton was just too weak, couldn’t stick with a position, and got sucked in by NewsCorp editorialising for Nuclear Power for years, once he committed, NewsCorp ran dead on the the issue and Dutton was left high and dry.
No Mondays nailed it. The political right in this country are actually disconnected from Australia. They don’t belong here.
“Longtime moderate Russell Broadbent”
Broadbent backflipped on supporting the Voice, promoted horse medicine to combat Covid, and voted against same sex marriage. If that’s the bar for moderation, then yes – moderately unhinged.
Entsch’s replacement was far from moderate too. He blamed feminists for Trump losing in 2020. He repeatedly called for the defunding of the ABC. Let’s not even start with his ‘moderate’ comments about China.
Thanks for the helpful summary Ben. Obviously an emphatic win for Labor (or alternatively a crushing loss for the Coalition), but it’s been a fair bit harder to get a good sense of the many non-classic contests.
As I said on another thread, it’d be nice if the AEC started off with 3CP or 4CP counts where it is warranted, although I believe they are currently mandated to do an indicative 2CP on election night.
Antother psephology wish of mine is that the results systems on the ABC and PB won’t call seats until the winner is mathematically certain (like what happens for US elections). It’s difficult to follow along when seats keep jumping between ‘called’ and ‘in doubt’.
It’s interesting how the Australian political landscape has been completely upended overnight. Before the election, even if Albanese was re-elected, no one expected him to survive beyond 2028. Now with a large buffer of seats and with the Coalition severely depleted of fresh talent, government beyond 2028 is looking like a strong possibility.
Perhaps not the strongest result for the Greens and Community Independents, but both factions are well positioned for future gains if they can work constructively this term and broaden their appeal.
It’s clear that the Coalition can no longer rely on the Baby Boomer cohort to win elections and will need to evolve into a party that targets the aspirations of Millenials and Gen Z. But for now they’ve lost a lot of younger MPs that would help with that.
Overall, it’s pretty significant and absolutely devastating for the Coalition if they manage to have zero seats in all of:
– Adelaide
– Brisbane
– Melbourne
– Perth
– Sydney’s North Shore
– Tasmania
– The ACT
You wouldn’t have a single seat called if you waited for mathematical certainty.
**Broadbent backflipped on supporting the Voice, promoted horse medicine to combat Covid, and voted against same sex marriage. If that’s the bar for moderation, then yes – moderately unhinged.**
The Voice wasn’t a moderate proposition, that’s why 61% said NO. Farmers had been quietly self medicating with Invermectin for years without issues, afaik, and some pretty extreme people demonstrated for SSM.
Broadbent was consistently front and centre on refugee issues his entire career spanning 36 years, so yeah, he was a moderate’s Moderate and it turns out his Liberal preselectors made a good call in sending him home.
Bottom line is the Liberal Party bought the Be More Moderate mantra from the 2022 election results and have lost another 15 seats chasing butterflies.
National Party has stuck to their knitting and lost no seats, a stark contrast. Looking back, the die was cast when Andrew Constance was allowed to recontest Gilmore.
If you think Peter Dutton ran a campaign steering the Liberals to the moderate centre, I have a submarine contract I’d like to sell you.
How are The Greens expected to fair on the votes remaining in Melbourne and Ryan?
And in Ryan, out of the two scenarios in which The Greens lose (being GRN -> 3rd, ALP Wins OR LNP overtakes GRN), which is more likely?
Dutton ran with gimmicks rather than policies, sacked a candidate for a few social media posts years ago, ran with some of the same moderate candidates rejected in 2022, ran with moderate economic policies.
Went nowhere.
Albanese kicked Moderate into touch, threw the switch to Populism, has won Labor’s biggest ever victory if he gets to 91 [Hawke won 60% of the Seats in 1983 with 75]. National Party stuck with Populism, won 16 of 17.
Anyway, my highlight of the ABC TV coverage was Jim Chalmers early on saying students were approaching volunteers at Rankin booths asking them to calculate their 20% HECS reduction.
The irony was completely lost on him.
I agree with @Real Talk, I voted for the Coalition but in no way have they been moderate on the federal level in the past few years, they’ve only gone further right with Dutton.
Opposing the Voice was a moderate thing to do given the referendum result, so I’ll give @Gympie that one. But same-sex marriage? That was NEVER extreme. The only people who opposed that were either immigrants who didn’t understand the concept due to culture or religion or socially conservative right-wingers. I strongly support the right of same-sex couples to marry, because why should the government stop two consenting adults from marrying?
As for Wong’s comments which haven’t been mentioned but I’ll bring up anyway, the Voice was rejected, gay marriage wasn’t, so no Penny, I don’t think we will go back and think “why did we have a debate about this?”. People, including many Indigenous people, rejected the model of the Voice because of a lack of detail. But that doesn’t mean we don’t want to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. When Jacinta Price said “we don’t need a Voice, we need ears”, she meant that the Voice won’t solve incarceration, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, domestic violence, poverty, life expectancy, etc, nor will it help revitalise Indigenous culture and languages, but instead the government actually helping people and listening to them will.
Also I grew up in a rural town and I don’t remember anyone ever using ivermectin as a treatment for humans, only for livestock.
@Jim F, shocking result in Melbourne. I expect Adam Bandt to hold on but wow, just goes to show that even the inner-city is fed up with the woke Greens. As for Ryan whoever finishes second will win on preferences from whoever finishes third. Either the Labor will finish second or third, and either the Greens will finish second or third. The LNP will finish first but unfortunately Maggie Forrest, an excellent candidate, won’t be elected.
@Gympie Dutton was not moderate. The Nationals are not populist. Also, the Nationals hold safe and very safe regional and rural seats in NSW and Victoria. While the metropolitan areas wanted Labor back in these regional and rural seats where much of the Australian economy is are paying the price of the COL crisis. People wanted a change because they wanted things to be cheaper, hence why they stuck with the Coalition. Also Labor literally never wins rural seats.
Just how many moderates do the libs still have in the lower house? The fewer there are, the harder it’ll be for the party to resist heading further right into electoral wilderness. Too few and they’ll find it as impossible as one nation of returning to the centre. Not that 1N was ever in the centre.
That aside, apart from ALP spin doctors, did anyone come even vaguely close to predicting the result?
@Nether Portal
Thanks for the reply. I’ll note that if you look at the Melbourne thread, there were warning signs that I pointed out for Bandt.
Looks like The Green’s grip on Ryan may be too strong, particularly with third party preferences (One nation, people first, family first) flowing stronger to The Greens (as a protest vote) than Labour, solidifying Greens in second place. That is, unless the remaining 25% favour Labour strongly, which does seem to be the general direction that the remaining numbers are moving in, with Watson-Brown slowly shifting from a +3.0%, to a +0.6%, to a -0.3%. Could be interesting to see how it plays out.
Also interesting to note is that Trumpet of Patriots directed preferences to Labour in Ryan, not the LNP, which could make all the difference for Labour.
Melbourne seems too close to call but I wouldn’t assume Bandt is at all safe, particularly with strong prepoll labour numbers flowing in Wills. Ryan is safer at this point.
@Nether Portal:
**The Nationals are not populist. Also, the Nationals hold safe and very safe regional and rural seats in NSW and Victoria.**
The Nationals have won seats off Labor in recent times Hinkler Dawson Flynn and Capricornia in particular in Qld.
Take Riverina, has been a Labor Seat in the past, it didn’t turn National because the voters were thirsting for Moderates.
High hopes were held for the Teal Moderate in Cowper, she was well beaten. Same for the Teal in Wannon.
Going Moderate creates a political vacuum where the Labor Party can run wild, and that’s what happened in Liberal land, imo.
A few points:
– Goldstein – I am not convinced that Zoe Daniel is the sure fire winner – a lots of postals out there – it could come down to postals. Interesting to see that there was a swing against her in lots of booths.
– Melbourne – not convinced that Adam Bandt is home – last time the Greens underperformed on postals – and didn’t do that well on absentees. His
42% will come down so if the Libs preferences hold up the Labor will be home.
– Climate 200 seems to have done a lot of dough for little return.
@Gympie Hilarious! The ALP last held Gympie 45 years ago, when Broken Hill was in the electorate!
Keep at it son. You’re the reason people vote Labor!
*Riverina, not Gympie. Sorry about the typo but I was laughing so hard.
@David there are some moderates left and surely after a result like this they’d give one of them a go.
@Jim F given Ryan is on the state level a marginal Labor vs Liberal seat and on the council level a safe LNP vs Greens seat, is it possible that the Greens have no longer got a geographical base in Australia should Melbourne fall?
@Gympie, Pat Conaghan himself is pretty moderate, and he was far better than Caz Heise which is why he won again, and he absolutely deserved to win, he’s been a great MP. The Queensland seats you mentioned are now all safe or fairly safe LNP seats.
If being moderate doesn’t work then why do the Liberals consistently do better in teal seats and inner Brisbane at state and local elections? Why did Lia Finocchiaro win so big in the Northern Territory but Peter Dutton hasn’t won any seats there? Why did Jeremy Rockliff win the entire state election in Tassie but Dutton didn’t win any seats there? Even Bridget Archer who should’ve been safe given her moderate views was defeated on the basis of Dutton being leader.
Zali Steggall has been asked whether the shift to independents is more permanent, and if there’s any chance the Liberals could win back seats like Warringah and Wentworth.
She asks if the Liberal Party is capable of listening to the electorate.
“I saw some grabs of Jacinta Price last night and my indication would be no. What’s missing is, they have abandoned concepts of liberalism, where they are now a conservative party,” she says.
But Price is a Nat not a liberal – basics?
I think there is a bit of denialism about the Greens performance and predicament here.
They will probably go below 12% nationally. The fact that MCM and bates have lost PV as sophomores underestimates the rejection notwithstanding that the major factor is the collapse of the LNP and recovery of the Labor vote there.
I don’t know what anyone sees in Wills suggesting a win there. I actually think Bandt will lose Melbourne given postals and preference flows are going to be worse than the likes of the pollbludger and ABC models are assuming.
Ryan is far from certain for the same reason but even if they hang on there and Bandt hangs on by a slither, it is a total rejection of how the Greens conducted themselves last term.
THey would want to learn that lesson given the opportunity that presents them with the senate numbers
@Nick well! That negates the whole argument Steggall is making then! She’s actually CLP but never mind.
Anyway, re-read the bit about not listening. there may be something in there for you.
@Nether Portal
My thoughts exactly, it’s a hard hit for them.
@MB
Yes agreed. I did a very thorough analysis on The Greens positioning before the election, as their performance seemed to be taken for granted, and I was shocked to see how easily it would be for Bandt to lose, and more broadly, for them to be wiped out of parliament, you can see my thoughts a few weeks ago in the Melbourne thread, discussing state level results and polling etc.
I do agree that Bandt is on a knifes edge, but how can you see Ryan going to Labour? With third party preferences, which all flow stronger to GRN than ALP, wont the Greens’ second place position be even further solidified?
@Lachlan Ridge, Jacinta Price is indeed a CLP Senator but she does sit with the Nationals.
As for whether she had anything to do with the loss I highly doubt it, in fact I think it would’ve been better for the Coalition if she was leader instead of Dutton.
@Jim F, I think the Greens are far less likely to lose Ryan than Melbourne.
The path for Ryan is the donkey vote flow, the many postals left to count and the micro preferences flowing more to Labor this time around both because of a broader focus on the Greens in hard right campaigning and getting the soft donkey.
All of these factors will be more influential in Melbourne. It has a bigger potential donkey flow, probably a better mix of minors anyway in terms of preferences but without the Libs at 2CP soaking most of them.
I’ve had dealings with them over the years so I sincerely hope the LNP continue to use the Exclusive Brethren in their campaigning. You don’t get closer to touching mainstream Australia than a weirdo Patriarchal religious cult.
NP, Be yourself is the worst advice you can give some people. Jacinta Nampijinpa did a great job of scaring the employees of the largest employer in Australia, the Federal Government. When she dived into the culture wars it made the coalition appear, well, a tad different to ordinary folk. But by all means promote her. Caucusing with the Countr…err, National Party she’ll never lead the Liberal party and, ipso facto, never become LOOP. Which is a shame, because between her and Barnaby Joyce the ALP could govern for the next thirty years!
@NetherPortal:
**If being moderate doesn’t work then why do the Liberals consistently do better in teal seats and inner Brisbane at state and local elections? Why did Lia Finocchiaro win so big in the Northern Territory but Peter Dutton hasn’t won any seats there? Why did Jeremy Rockliff win the entire state election in Tassie but Dutton didn’t win any seats there? Even Bridget Archer who should’ve been safe given her moderate views was defeated on the basis of Dutton being leader.**
Let’s break this down: 1. Liberals haven’t won an inner city State seat since Newman in 2012 and retained Central, lost Paddington, and have never held The Gabba, the only 3 Inner City Wards, at the Council elections last year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Brisbane_City_Council_election
2. Jeremy Rockliff didn’t win the last Tasmanian Election, he leads a Minority Government.
3. Dutton dis everything possible to support Bridge5t Archer, including forcing the ember for Braddon’s retirement after he’de threatened to pull the pin if Archer was preselected in Bass.
Result: Gavin Pearce was 100% vindicated, Archer was well beaten on her merits in Bass and the Liberal Party are in the wilderness in Tasmania after hopes of winning Lyons and Franklin. So much for going Moderate.
As it turns out, Not-a-Moderate Jacqui Lambie was right:
Tasmanians don’t want the Salmon pens in Macquarie Harbour, and they don’t want an AFL stadium in Hobart.
Liberals were so focussed on being Moderate, they completely misread the electorate.
The results exceeded what I hoped for.
Liberals may pick Taylor as leader.. he shares a lot of responsibility for the loss
He did not do his homework and came across as lazy and self entitled.
@Nether Portal:
**Why did Lia Finocchiaro win so big in the Northern Territory but Peter Dutton hasn’t won any seats there?**
Lia Finocchiaro won on a Law and Order platform, the antithesis of Moderatism. Turns out she was really a Moderate all the time, which is why the CLP did nothing in Solomon.
In Lingiari, I suspect the AEC Mobile teams found those missing voters enrolled in 2021, plus Finocchiaro didn’t do all that well in Lingiari anyway. Jacinta Price mentioned untoward goings on at remote prepoll in her ABC interview last night.
I’d say Labor will win her spot too, so much for Civic Nationalism and being a Moderate.
Gympie… Riverina of Grassby’s day is very different to today. Currently based round Wagga….previously was based around the Mia.
I don’t think there is any area in common.
@Angas upthread, coverage in the US doesn’t wait for mathematical certainty to call seats either (notice that California is always called for the Democrats the second polls close there). They have an internal model to determine when to call seats same as here but it’s a lot less transparent and it seems to be highly tuned to FPTP (also accounting for its stability – there’s no question of getting the right preference flows etc.) to the point that the AP and other outlets that rely on the AP are chronically incapable of identifying obvious winning margins in Maine and Alaska where preferential voting is used.
Every time I watch foreign election coverage I feel like we’ve got an unrivaled coverage culture here so kudos to Ben and all the others who contribute to that culture.
@Gympie
Jacinta Price can have a sook about it all she wants, but from reports from the booths serving remote indigenous communities, she’s made herself pretty deeply unpopular…
I think Gympie has the right of it.
What a lot of people still, somehow, don’t understand is that politics is that politics isn’t as simple as ‘stick to the middle of the sliding scale’. There are voters that historically voted Labor that are waiting to vote for something else, but the Coalition could not figure out how to appeal to them because their leaders seem to think it’s still 20 years ago – they basically ran on “we’ll cut red tape and reduce political correctness”.
Up to 1 million resident New Zealand citizens may have voted in the 2025 Election under an Albanese Government Pathway to Citizenship.
No idea where Kiwis live elsewhere, but there’s heaps in Kippa Ring, Mango Hill, D Bay, which are in Petrie, Luke Howath’s electorate, until yesterday.
Quite a few in Forde too [Beenleigh, Loganlea].