For tonight’s update, I’m going to first touch on the races I included in this morning’s post and how they have changed. Those are the seats that are conventional close races.
Then I will turn my focus to the seats where the two-candidate-preferred count has been recalibrated to a different pair of candidates. In these seats there has been some significant progress today towards resolving these seats.
As a quick summary, two of the seven conventional close races have been called today for the Liberals in Goldstein and Labor in Wills. One of the five races I profile in this post has been called – for Labor in Franklin. Bean, Bendigo and Fremantle look set to become conventional close races, while Melbourne could either be headed for a conventional close race or for a clear Labor win once we get more 2CP booths tomorrow.
Conventional close races
- Bradfield – Liberal Kapterian leads by 178 votes. We learnt today that the St Ives pre-poll booth had not finished reporting, and the addition of the remainder of the booth pushed Kapterian into the front. My model expects her to increase her lead.
- Bullwinkel – Labor’s Cook leads by 50 votes. The postal votes are not favouring the Liberals by much, and there aren’t many left. My model has Labor winning by about 470 votes. Not called but leaning Labor.
- Goldstein – Called for former MP Tim Wilson, defeating his successor Zoe Daniel. Wilson leads by 684 votes with plenty of postal votes yet to come.
- Kooyong – Independent MP Monique Ryan leads by 1002 votes, and my model has her winning by about 600 votes.
- Longman – LNP MP Terry Young is leading by 439 votes, but most of the postal votes have now been counted. Labor is expected to do better on the absent and pre-poll votes, and my model has Labor winning by 260 votes.
- Menzies – Labor’s Gabriel Ng leads by 1,655 votes. The Liberals are expected to gain ground on the postal votes, while Labor will recover a smaller amount on the pre-poll and absent votes. My model predicts a 1365-votes final result. There is still a lot of postal votes to count. If the Liberals don’t do better than expected on postals, we could be looking at this seat being called soon.
- Wills – Called for Labor MP Peter Khalil, who leads by 3,316 votes.
Bean
The 2CP has been counted for almost half of all primary votes, and Labor currently leads by 722 votes. Independent Jessie Price is gaining a very strong preference flow – about 70% on the election day booths and 75% on the pre-poll booths.
My model has the independent taking a 0.1% lead when all of the current votes have 2CPs. The ABC is projecting a 0.5% lead, and Kevin Bonham has the lead as 0.03% (at least the last time he updated his blog). Any of these would then move Bean into the “conventional close race” category.
Bendigo
Most of the votes with 2CPs are ordinary pre-poll votes. When I apply my model it has Labor leading by about 1121 votes. Kevin Bonham’s model has the National with a tiny lead. Either way that won’t be enough to decide the seat, but we’ll see how the 2CPs go on Wednesday.
Franklin
The 2CP count in Franklin is not as far advanced as Bean or Bendigo, but it was enough to become clear today that Peter George isn’t getting close to winning enough 2CP votes to win. This seat was called today for Labor.
Fremantle
This was the one surprise when I did the analysis this evening.
On the primary vote, Labor has a strong lead over independent Kate Hulett, 39.3% to 23.3%. Hulett needs about 71.5% of preferences to win from that position.
Right now Hulett is gaining 67% of preferences on election day and 71% on the pre-poll vote. I extrapolate that trend to produce a Labor lead of 51%, while the ABC has Labor on 50.2%. Certainly looks like it will produce a close race.
Melbourne
Melbourne is a tricky one. Barely a quarter of votes have been counted as 2CP votes, which is less advanced than the other seats listed above. Labor has a substantial lead on that 2CP sample, but it’s not that big.
Bandt needs about one third of preferences to get into the lead, and there is a wide variety of preference flows, that has some relationship to how high the Greens vote is, but not a close one.
Overall on the ordinary election day vote Bandt’s preference flow is only about 22%, which is not enough, but that reflects that the three largest booths to report 2CPs are poor ones for Bandt – Cremorne, Burnley and East Melbourne. I suspect that rate will improve. And so far we only have one ordinary pre-poll booth with a 47% preference flow.
Right now my model has Bandt losing badly, with 47%, but I think we need more votes before calling this race.
Ben your thoughts on Ryan? I some very mixed opinions on how the remaining votes will go. Also mixed opinions on how the minor right-wing party preferences will flow, along with other minor factors like Labour’s donkey vote benefit.
One thing I’ve found interesting is the fact that, in this election, the GRN policy base and rhetoric appeals even less to PHON, TOP, PF and FF voters than previous elections. Perhaps the methodology is flawed, I’d be interested in your thoughts, but I analysed the QLD state results in overlapping and neighbouring state level electorates to Ryan, and in 2024, I noticed PHON preferences flowing more to ALP than GRN, while the inverse was true in 2020, which was unexpected and could bode well for ALP here. Mai war does not support the hypothesis, still showing higher GRN flows than ALP.
Albanese’s relative personal popularity, Labor’s general popularity and success, and Dutton’s unpopularity in conjunction with the aforementioned worsened ideological differences, could lead to the gap between GRN and ALP being closed on these preferences.
The reason the prepoll in Melbourne has a strong preference flow is that it’s the Brunswick PPVC which actually isn’t in Melbourne but is in Wills so any Melbourne voter voting there would not have received a Liberal how to vote card for Melbourne. The same pattern of very strong flow to Greens relative to their vote share was seen in 2022 at the Footscray and South Yarra PPVCs which were also outside the division.
@Jim F Advance Australia ran a very highly-resourced campaign in Queensland to “put the Greens last” due to fears of them taxing mining companies, but their volunteers were apparently telling voters the Greens would legalise heroin. Insane stuff.
In 2022, a lot of right-wing minor party voters preferences the Greens over the major parties due to the distaste in the major parties. This election, they’ve been told not to
how long before the teals start targeting canberra and perth? The ind in canberra polled 11%
@Jim, I haven’t looked at Ryan in depth, but I will when we get some 3CP data from the AEC. I know they have started doing the count but until we get the data broken down by booth it isn’t much good.
@Ben we have the 3CP data, its been released. Labor is second, ahead of the greens by ~0.25%. Check the AEC site or WB post.
Yes I have seen that data but it is useless without a breakdown of the booths, so I didn’t report it. It also implies the Greens winning Richmond which I don’t think is true.
@Darth Vader – as another regular commentator has said previously it seems that Teal/Community independents seem to do well in safe seats. 2022 showed that they are successful in safe Liberal seats. This election shows that they can do well in safe Labor seats too
In the classical swing seats it can be a bit harder to get traction – also would be hard if there is all ready a strong Green vote
It probably also depends on the leadership of the incumbent party and the quality of the local MP
Personally I was sad to hear that Zoe Daniel lost Goldstein. Heard her speaking on the podcast “Global Roaming” and it was clear to me that she had a firm grasp of foreign affairs and had the smarts to be a good local representative.
Wish I could say the same about Tim Wilson who always appeared to me to be a pugilist. What are the chances of him coming up through the pack and become the Liberal leader? Youngish, white, male, christian, conservative and urban. Ticks all the boxes of a modern day Liberal leader.
@Ben: For the life of me I can’t understand why the AEC does not have Grey in SA as close? It is not a traditional race for sure. The AEC has just done a routine Labor/Liberal distribution. I have seen it many times scrutineering.
So “minor votes” are examined only as between Liberal & Labor. So for sure the Trumpets, National, Family First, ON vote were not examined except as between ultimate Labor/Liberal preference.
ABC notes Nationals preferencing straight to Kuss. Trumpets & Greens are preferenced straight to Kuss also.
At last night here is the theoretical perfect preference outcome:
a Trumpets 2249 (first out) + Nationals 2995 (next out) [but not donkey] so say conservatively 2000 + Greens (fourth out after Family First) 5381 + Kuss 17416 = 27,046
b Bolton (ALP) 21541 + donkey Nationals say 995 = 22536
c Kuss easily jumps Bolton
d Kuss 27046 + Bolten 22356 = 49,582.
e Venning 33581 + ON 9310 + Family First 3389 = 46,280
Subject to postal votes, that’s a big lead by Kuss on theoretical preferences.
Now it’s trite that preferences don’t happen theoretically. They were spray extensively both ways. But the Liberals do not have the advantage of an incumbent to help the spray to its advantage. You have to rate Kuss a good chance?
Fancy winning a seat with 18 % of primaries would this be a record for MHR?
@bazza I think the common factor for Teals to be competitive is the demographics of the seat – anywhere wealthy middle class (I would also add ‘white’ – the Teals aren’t very multicultural) is likely competitive for them. Labor should be worried about the ACT.
@Roger Roughead the National HTV in Grey was NP, LP, ON, FF, Kuss, ToP, ALP, Grn.
@Roger Roughead , the record, AFAIK, is McMillan in 1972, when the Country Party candidate Arthur Hewson won from 16.6% of first preferences (and third place). He benefited from the Independent (disendorsed Liberal) and DLP preferences to leapfrog the newly endorsed Liberal, and then the Liberal to leapfrog Labor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_results_for_the_Division_of_McMillan
It’s commonly said that absentee voting favours the more left-wing party of the two in the 2CP e.g. Greens in Melbourne or Labor in a Labor vs Liberal contest. It’ll be interesting to see when it’s a teal vs Labor contest.
Also, since it was close to back to back long weekends and with the pandemic behind us, will there be more absentee votes? Will the absentee votes skew more to the centre? Remains to be seen.
@Neil Flanagan failed former Mackellar MP Jason Falinski was on Sky News this morning calling for Tim Wilson to be the new Liberal party leader
@bazza , interesting. My take is that both his colleagues and the party (let alone the voters) would find Tim far too bumptious
My model now has Lib at 51% favourite for Kooyong after today’s counting, reversing 60% in favour of Ind. This assumes some minor deterioration in postals to Lib of 57% on remaining postals.
I have Lib slight favourite in Bradfield at 53% after counting today.
I have Longman at 51% for Labor and 53% for Bullwinkel.
@Kevin Bonham, Liberals at Brunswick pre-poll as far as I saw had statewides to give out if people asked, but I doubt many asked.
@DB how can either party be at 53% in Bullwinkel when the lead is only 59 votes as of now?
NP, I think DB might be referring to the % chance/odds of the party winning each seat rather than the actual margin. After all, he is talking about a model which would refer to a % chance rather than % margin of victory.
@Yoh An ah okay, makes sense. Even then I’d still say the Libs are the favourites.