Wednesday 11:55pm – That’s it for today. When there are updates tomorrow I’ll resume the live blog.
11:54 – Now on to the conventional close races:
- Bradfield – Liberal Kapterian leads by 215 votes. I expect her to increase her lead slightly, but it’s still very close.
- Bullwinkel – Labor leads by 86 votes. There are very postal votes remaining, and I expect the margin to grow to about 564 votes.
- Kooyong – Monique Ryan now leads by 723 votes, after a couple of errors were found in the counting. Her chances of victory now appear strong.
- Longman – The LNP’s Terry Young leads by 471 votes, but my model expects Labor to wipe away that lead and take a narrow lead.
- Menzies – Labor’s Gabriel Ng is leading by 1145 votes, and I expect that to grow slightly.
11:31 – Now I’m moving on to the seats where the 2CP count was playing catch-up today.
In Fremantle, it appears the 2CP count has now caught up to the primary count, and Labor still leads with 51.1%. The ABC has called the seat, and I agree.
In Bendigo, Labor needs 45.2% of preferences, and on the election day booths they are gaining 60.6% of preferences. The rate on pre-poll votes is lower at 48%, and lower again at 36% for postal votes, but overall it is 48.2% with a lot more election day votes to be added. I think Labor is probably fine but there’s still more booths to count. At the moment I think Labor will be in a position to be called once the 2CP count is finished, but it’s not time yet.
In Bean, almost all votes have been added to the 2CP count, with just 13,000 election day votes yet to be distributed. Presumably they’ll be added tomorrow morning. Right now Labor leads by 429 votes, and my model expects that gap to narrow even further. Bean will remain close after the 2CP count is done.
Finally, I’m going to keep monitoring Melbourne. My projected vote share for Labor is now down from 53.5% to 52.7%.
11:04 – Okay so two extra seats that have started to look slightly interesting. We have six booths from Fisher.
| Candidate | Party | Raw 3CP | Projected |
| Wallace | LNP | 38.15% | 44.47% |
| Jones | IND | 36.24% | 28.62% |
| Lakey | ALP | 25.61% | 26.90% |
The sample is small and the skew is severe, but Jones seems to still be on track to get ahead of Labor, despite trailing Labor on the primary vote 22-17. At that point, Jones would need about 80% of Labor preferences to win. A tight ask, but possible.
Bizarrely, this seat seems to be in play.
And then there is Grey. The sample here is very small – just three booths, severely skewed towards Labor and to a lesser extent to the independent.
| Candidate | Party | Raw 3CP | Projected |
| Venning | LIB | 31.31% | 41.42% |
| Bolton | ALP | 35.23% | 29.61% |
| Kuss | IND | 33.46% | 28.97% |
Right now Kuss is on track to stay in third, but not by much and that could easily change. Worth watching.
10:40 – So for those four seats, the independents in Flinders, Forrest and Monash look set to lose, while the Greens look set to win in Ryan.
10:36 – The Ryan 3CP count is close to being finished – all but two election day booths have been included, along with just over half of the postal votes and all but one pre-poll booth.
Yet there is still a substantial skew in the count, with the remaining votes a lot more favourable to Labor. Yet even with that skew adjusted for, the projection has Watson-Brown coming out on top.
| Candidate | Party | Raw 3CP | Projected |
| Forrest | LNP | 39.36% | 39.87% |
| Watson-Brown | GRN | 31.43% | 30.36% |
| Hack | ALP | 29.21% | 29.77% |
Watson-Brown is likely the winner but it’d be nice to have the rest of the postal votes added.
10:25 – As for Monash, I have sampled the postal votes in and out based on how many seem to have been included in the 3CP.
| Candidate | Party | Raw 3CP | Projected |
| Aldred | LIB | 42.91% | 45.80% |
| Fletcher | ALP | 29.91% | 27.53% |
| Leonard | IND | 27.18% | 26.66% |
The current sample is significantly biased towards Leonard and especially Labor, so while Leonard gets closer to overtaking Labor on the projection, the Liberal vote also gets much higher. It’s hard to see anyone other than the Liberal winning on these figures.
10:05 – Let’s move on to Forrest.
| Candidate | Party | Raw 3CP | Projected |
| Small | LIB | 42.33% | 42.86% |
| Dowding | ALP | 29.03% | 28.75% |
| Chapman | IND | 28.65% | 28.39% |
This count is also substantially more progressed. It’s not clear if the postal votes are fully counted, but at least 6,000 have been counted and there are only 7229 formal postal votes, so it seems about right.
On these figures, Chapman appears likely to fall short. But if somehow she took the lead, she would be on the verge of winning on those proportions.
9:49 – This evening I’m planning to refresh all of the 3CP counts of interest. The first one is Flinders.
| Candidate | Party | Raw 3CP | Projected |
| McKenzie | LIB | 50.30% | 46.82% |
| Smith | IND | 24.23% | 27.15% |
| Race | ALP | 25.48% | 26.03% |
They have now counted all of the postal votes in Flinders, which means there is no issue in trying to separate the different postal vote batches. This means the projected Liberal vote has increased, and the independent’s lead over Labor is much smaller, but the 3CP is a bit more reliable now.
The independent would need almost 88% preference flow from Labor to win from here. In comparison, the flow in most of the teal seats in 2022 was a bit under 80%. So unless the 3CP improves, this is likely a Liberal win.
4:23 – Labor’s lead in Menzies has grown in both raw and projected terms. Right now they lead by 1655 votes, and I project they’ll finish about 1670 votes ahead – compared to Monday evening when they were projected to lead by just about 1000.
4:12 – Last time I updated Longman, I was expecting Labor to win by about 350 votes. Now that figure is 172 votes. The raw lead for the LNP’s Terry Young has actually widened from 309 to 488 votes, but the number of LNP-leaning votes yet to come in is dwindling.
4:05 – Monique Ryan’s projected lead in Kooyong has shrunk from about 900 votes on Monday evening to just 405 today.
4:02 – In Bullwinkel, Labor’s projected lead has grown from 467 to 608 with more absent and pre-poll votes expected and very few postal votes left to count.
3:55 – Let’s look now at some of the conventional close races. In Bradfield, Liberal Gisele Kapterian leads independent Nicolette Boele by 178 votes. Almost all of the postal votes have now been counted, and I expect Boele to claw back a few votes on the absent votes. My model assumes a slight advantage to the Liberals on the declaration pre-poll, and will leave Kapterian ahead by 288 votes. Not much movement here.
3:51 – A quick note about the previous 3CP analysis I did earlier today: the AEC seems to have conducted 3CP counts for some but not all postal votes. For my models, I have treated all of the postal votes as being included in the 3CP count but this is not quite true. It’s not just we don’t know how many postal votes have been included: those different postal vote batches might be different. Something to keep an eye on.
3:08 – Some other updates from other 2CP fresh counts:
- My projected Labor 2CP in Fremantle has dropped from 51.0% to 50.9%.
- Labor’s lead in Bendigo has grown, now out to 51.5%
- I have the Labor lead in Bean projected at 50.1%.
Potentially Bendigo could be headed towards seat-calling territory, but the other two are very close.
3:05 – I’ve been reluctant to call Melbourne because it has seemed like the preference flows were very inconsistent. Adam Bandt needs about 33% of preferences to win (or at least to be even before the remaining votes are added to the count). But right now we are seeing more strong Greens booths reporting preference flows below 33%.
I can’t see Adam Bandt coming back from this. My model has dropped his projected 2CP from 47.0% last night to 46.5% now.
2:57pm – The first news we have is that apparently the seat of Grey is now apparently considered to be in play. Liberal candidate Tom Venning leads with 35% of the primary vote, followed by Labor on 22.5% and independent Anita Kuss on 18.2%. The AEC is apparently conducting a 3CP count, but it is not yet on the AEC’s 3CP results page. Apparently the SA Liberal Party is now worried about losing the seat, and according to a Tally Room donor in the Discord quite a few state Liberal MPs turned up to scrutineer today. We don’t have much more data, but one to watch.
Wednesday 2:52pm – There is so much different data flying around at the moment requiring analysis, and I am finding it hard to organise my thoughts into separate blog posts.
So from now on I’m going to be posting everything in this live blog, with the newest comments posted at the top of the guide.
Just to recap, my previous close seats analysis:
- Part 1 – Focusing on conventional close races, where the 2CP and 3CP are clear and it’s just a matter of counting remaining special votes.
- Part 2 – A brief update on conventional close races, plus a deeper analysis of seats where a fresh 2CP count is underway.
- Part 3 – Just posted a few hours ago, focusing on fresh data from seats where the top two is not clear and the AEC has been conducting three-candidate-preferred counts.
By my count at the moment there is four categories of close seats:
- Top three not clear, will require a full distribution of preferences
- Calwell
- Top two not clear, 3CP counts underway
- Flinders
- Forrest
- Monash
- Ryan
- Grey (new!)
- Fresh 2CP count underway
- Bean
- Bendigo
- Fremantle
- Melbourne (on verge of being called for Labor)
- Conventional close races
- Bradfield
- Bullwinkel
- Kooyong
- Longman
- Menzies
This is a good format for keeping track of things I think. I like the list of seats at the bottom. I’m finding it difficult to follow along with the ABC and AEC results pages, especially for those new 2CP/3CP races, which they are not really well configured for.
Grey is an interesting one to come back into play. There might be a few others like this at the end of the count, I’m thinking Fisher and Lyne might also have independents in the final 2.
I am glad that AEC are finally doing 3CP counts. When scrutineering in Macnamara, I asked AEC to do av 3CP count, but they refused.
Are there any estimates on final turnout figures?
Great job, love your work!
When do we expect the first absents and declaration pre polls to be coming through?
I’m getting:
Bullwinkel to ALP
Bradfield 50/50. I simply don’t know. A guess is LIB holds on, but with no confidence.
Longman to LNP
Kooyong to LIB continuing to trend like it was in adjacent Goldstein. Unless something change Ryan won’t win.
Bendigo to ALP – close though
I think it is premature to call Melbourne, but agree that it looks troublesome for Bandt.
Db with that latest batch from st Ives pushing Gisele over Boele I’m saying they will hold it due to highly favourable postals still coming in. Kooyong will be a lib win unless the postals are less favourable the ones currently in. Bendigo I think the Nat might just pop Chester’s. I’m thinking the alp will get over the line in Bullwinkel but I can’t imagine they will hold it next nelection.
I think Wilson will scrape over the line in Fremantle. But if Hulett challenges him again in 2028 he might be done. One nation has probably saved him.
Are the LNP safe in Longman now?
Calwell will probably take at least 2 weeks to confirm result.
Hi Ben, this might be for another day, but do we know why NSW informal voting has increased (by 1.44 ppts to 7.67% currently)? In nine seats it is more than 10% – including Fowler (13.89% – higher than the Liberal vote), which is a relatively close seat. I know NSW state elections are optional preferential, which probably explains why NSW has higher informal overall (next highest state is SA with 4.9%), but I don’t know why it increased again this year. It dropped in all other states except Qld. I also don’t know if there is a partisan pattern to it (eg would more informal voters in Fowler have been intending to vote for Labor vs the Independent, and would that have been enough to switch the result if they’d filled in all the squares?). It seems like the AEC needs to do a lot more voter education in NSW in 2028.
The high informal rate is mainly in seats with non English speaking backgrounds
Informality in Petrie dropped .5%.
Is there any correlation between changes in informal rate and turnout? 2022 had the lowest turnout of enrolled voters ever, I believe, and I’m seeing a lot of seat percentage of votes counted that are only just over 80% that definitely don’t have 20% of votes still to count.
I wonder if Labor will retain Bendigo?
McPherson, 87,683 formal cast v 97,083 in 2022, informals up from 5.4 to 8.05%, 1116 more so far, 13 candidates this time versus 8.
I think labor will have two party preferred majorities in Warringah, Wentworth, Fowler, Clark and Mayo in the seats where there is no liberal vs labour contests while the libs will have two party preferred majorities in Kennedy, Mackellar, Indi, Curtin and Calare
Looking through the AEC data in every seat where the polling place count is complete and when counting up the votes counted at each place+envelopes still remaining to be processed, a lot of electorates are looking at 80-85% of enrolled voters casting a ballot. Am I missing something? Is there normally a late flurry of arriving envelopes that are not in the system yet?
Have noticed while scrutineering in the past that [some] published AEC data may not change from early on week 1 of counting until declaration.
Has it’s funny moments though, can be waiting all day for a batch of postals to show up, DRO can offer no ETA, then the Labor scrutineers turn up and the batch arrives 10 minutes later.
I put it down to Labor having a professional outfit and the LNP being amateur hour, but there could be other explanations.
These posts are fascinating insights, Ben, and really useful. Thanks for sifting through all the data coming in and explaining everything.