Close seats liveblog

Friday 10:54pm – The 3CP count in Ryan remains just slightly behind the primary vote count in terms of completeness, and Elizabeth Watson-Brown’s lead over Rebecca Hack has widened slightly to 611 votes.

I have built a new model which looks at the number of outstanding votes and how those vote categories performed in 2022 compared to ordinary votes. Most postal votes have been counted, but just over 3000 pre-poll and absent votes remain. Absent votes favoured the Greens and absent pre-poll votes favoured Labor.

Overall I am projecting that Watson-Brown’s lead will widen slightly to 762 votes.

10:38 – The race is looking particularly interesting in Fisher, where we now have 30 booths added to the 3CP count.

Jones is projected to be just slightly ahead of Labor. On current numbers Jones would need 80.45% of preferences after the 3CP stage to win the seat. Which is a bit higher than we’ve seen in teal seats.

So right now I think this seat looks like a very narrow LNP win, but it’s definitely in play.

Candidate	Party	Raw 3CP	Projected
Wallace	LNP	41.41%	44.60%
Jones	IND	29.99%	27.76%
Lakey	ALP	28.60%	27.64%

10:33 – We have an update from Grey, where 21 booths have been added. On paper it looks like the independent is very close to overtaking Labor, but the sample appears to be substantially biased against Labor. Once you adjust for this, the Labor-independent gap is substantial.

Candidate	Party	Raw 3CP	Projected
Venning	LIB	44.37%	44.18%
Bolton	ALP	27.88%	29.35%
Kuss	IND	27.75%	26.47%

10:16 – The first batch of absent votes in Kooyong slightly broke in favour of the Liberal Party, leaving Monique Ryan 661 votes ahead. If the assumption in the model changes so the absent votes slightly favour Hamer, that reduces Ryan’s margin to 553.

10:13 – The Labor lead in Bullwinkel has grown from 404 votes to 634, and this race is looking clearer now as a likely Labor win.

10:07 – The first 1,000 absent pre-poll votes along with another 500 postal votes were added to the count in Bradfield. The Liberal lead in Bradfield has shrunk to just 209 votes, and I expect the final outcome to be around 243 votes. But it’s close enough that a slight correction could change the trajectory.

5:51 – Not much has changed in Ryan, with the 3CP count almost complete. Labor are just short of the Greens, behind by 599 votes. I am going to rebuild my projection for Ryan when I find a few spare minutes so we can estimate how the outstanding votes may break. There are just over 3000 absent votes, just over 3500 absent pre-poll votes and a very small number of postal votes left to come.

5:44 – The absent and declaration pre-poll count is proceeding in Longman with Labor comfortably winning both vote categories, and Terry Young’s lead has dwindled to just 231 votes. I project that Labor will win by 339 votes.

5:41 – Monique Ryan’s lead is now 709 votes. Almost 5000 absent votes and 4700 absent pre-poll votes are still waiting to be counted, and those votes favoured Ryan in 2022.

5:38 – Another 1000 absent votes have been counted in Bullwinkel, and Labor’s lead has widened to 404 votes – up from 375 votes around lunchtime. My projection for Labor has dropped to 753 votes.

5:35 – Gisele Kapterian’s lead in Bradfield has slightly widened to 256 votes, seemingly a correction. The number of absent votes is still very small.

5:32pm – Most of the absent votes in Bean have now been counted, with Smith gaining 54.7% of those votes. Price’s margin is now down to 54 votes, and most of the remaining votes to be counted are declaration pre-poll votes. I expect those to favour Labor’s David Smith, and I think he’s likely to win, very narrowly.

1:43 – Lisa Chesters’ lead in Bendigo continues to widen, from 1391 votes this morning to 2278 votes now. While there are quite a few booths left to report 2CP figures, I’m happy to call this seat for Labor now.

1:39 – Terry Young’s position was improved with the addition of most postal votes. He now leads by 331 votes, but I still expect him to fall behind.

1:34 – Slight improvement for Monique Ryan in Kooyong, from a lead of 724 votes to 733.

1:33 – There’s been no change in Bradfield, but in Bullwinkel the Labor lead has widened to 375 votes. My model now predicts an 808-vote victory.

1:28pm – The first batch of absent votes in Bean has 53.2% for Labor’s David Smith. This has cut the independent margin to 165. My model (using that percentage for the remainder of the absent votes) has Smith winning by 161 votes.

8:58 – There’s no updates from Grey but quite a few more booths have been added to the 3CP count in Fisher. Independent candidate Jones is just narrowly ahead of Labor. Jones would need 81% of Labor’s preferences which is a bit higher than most of the teals achieved in 2022. So I think this seat is on track for a slim LNP win.

Candidate	Party	Raw 3CP	Projected
Wallace	LNP	42.35%	44.87%
Jones	IND	30.04%	27.85%
Lakey	ALP	27.61%	27.27%

8:47 – The Ryan 3CP count has continued to progress with some absent votes added. The 3CP count is just 563 votes short of the primary vote count, so we can just watch the raw count now.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown leads Labor’s Rebecca Hack by 599 votes, which seems likely enough to win but not locked in.

8:44 – There has been some more booths added to the Bendigo 2CP count, with just over 80% of the primary vote caught up in the 2CP count. Labor MP Lisa Chesters is now leading by 1391 votes and is projected to win with 2445 votes.

8:38 – The LNP lead in Longman continues to shrink. The first batch of absent votes has a 57.8% majority for Labor. Terry Young’s lead is down from 320 to 289, and I project that Labor’s candidate will end up winning by 179 votes.

8:37 – No absents reported in Kooyong, but apparently the last postal batch is more favourable to Monique Ryan. Her lead is now 724 votes, and I project her to win by 1146 votes. I suspect if the first batch of absents is good for Ryan that might seal it.

8:33 – Bradfield had exactly 1000 absent votes processed yesterday, and Bullwinkel is the same. Labor candidate Cook’s lead has widened from 231 to 333. The absent votes broke 55-45 to Labor, and my model assumed a 54% 2CP for Labor. My model now has Labor winning by 754 votes.

Friday 8:31am – Late last night, the first batch of absent votes was added for Bradfield. Despite there being quite a high Labor and Greens primary votes, the 2CP favoured Kapterian, extending her lead from 198 to 237 votes. I’m now projecting the Liberal to win by 337 votes. Not a good sign for Boele.

Thursday 6:41pm – The Ryan 3CP count is now almost complete, and the Greens have a small lead over Labor, about 599 votes. Which is a clear lead but not an insurmountable one.

Candidate	Party	Raw 3CP	Projected
Forrest	LNP	39.78%	39.84%
Watson-Brown	GRN	30.44%	30.33%
Hack	ALP	29.79%	29.83%

6:03 – Some extra 3CP booths have been added for Grey. They are much more representative, but they push Kuss further into third place. Not looking that encouraging, but lots of booths yet to report.

Candidate	Party	Raw 3CP	Projected
Venning	LIB	41.75%	42.61%
Bolton	ALP	29.35%	29.15%
Kuss	IND	28.91%	28.25%

4:56 – Finally, I just wanted to touch on Calwell. The AEC’s media briefing today touched on this seat and made it clear that they don’t plan to run any 3CP or even 4CP count here. They expect the seat to require a full distribution of preferences to decide the result. And it was described as quite possibly the most complex distribution that the AEC has ever conducted. So look forward to that.

4:54 – It doesn’t look like any more votes have been added to the Ryan 3CP count since last night. It’s close to complete, but not totally complete. The same is true for Fisher and Grey. No more progress on the 3CP counts.

4:49 – The Bendigo 2CP count is still slowly moving along, with just over three quarters of votes added to the 2CP count.

Labor is picking up 48.7% of preferences so far, and my model is predicting Lisa Chesters’ 1661-vote lead will expand to 2693 votes.

The AEC earlier today told us that they expected the 2CP count to catch up to the primary vote count tomorrow. If nothing dramatic changes, I expect Labor will win Bendigo tomorrow.

4:40 – Not much has changed in Menzies since last night. Labor is still leading by over 1000 votes and that lead is expected to grow to about 1500. The ABC and Nine have both called Menzies and that seems like a good decision. That’s Labor’s 90th seat.

4:38 – LNP MP Terry Young’s lead in Longman is just 320 votes now, and we have begun to see the first absent votes reported. Those votes are 57.8% Labor, which is stronger than I had expected. Right now I have Labor winning by about 150 votes.

4:35 – Monique Ryan’s lead in Kooyong is just 617 votes now, but I’m expecting that to grow slighty.

4:33 – Labor’s lead in Bullwinkel has widened from 86 votes to 231. There aren’t many postal votes left, so I expect Labor’s lead to widen, to perhaps 700 votes.

4:28 – Not much has changed in Bradfield. Liberal Gisele Kapterian’s lead has narrowed from 215 to 198. Apparently we’ll start getting absent votes for Bradfield today.

4:27 – Firstly let’s go back to Bean. I have moved this seat from the 2CP recalibration list to the conventional close seats list. At the moment Price leads by 195 votes. Unfortunately we don’t have a precedent in this seat for a Price 2CP in 2022, and we don’t even have similar seats to compare her to, which means I am a bit blind as to how to estimate how well we would expect her to go on the absent or declaration pre-poll votes.

One of my Patreon supporters in the Discord pointed out that Price does much more poorly on pre-poll than on election day on the primary vote, but that gap is wiped out in the 2CP, seemingly because the Liberal Party has the opposite trend and is preferencing Price. So I suspect Price’s trajectory will look a bit more like a Liberal trajectory, doing better on postals and worse on absent and pre-poll votes. That is certainly what happened to Dai Le in 2022, the only recent example we have of an independent defeating a Labor MP with Liberal preferences. But Price is a bit more left-leaning than Le, and also gained Greens preferences, so that comparison isn’t amazing. My model right now has Labor’s David Smith regaining a slim lead, but it isn’t based on much.

4:13pm – I’ll be updating the live blog shortly with updates on the close races. Stay tuned.

12:45pm – The independent, Jessie Price, has now taken the lead in Bean, as the 2CP count has now caught up with the primary count. Price won the Norfolk Island election day booth comfortably with 64.7% of the 2CP there, and is now in the lead by 20 votes.

I will need to move Bean over to the conventional close races list.

We are still waiting for votes to be counted from the Norfolk Island pre-poll booth. In 2022, that booth provided 441 formal votes, and it will presumably favour Price substantially.

There are plenty of other votes yet to report: 1911 absent votes, 3203 declaration pre-poll votes, at least 396 postal votes with about 1700 others that could possibly still come in, and up to 587 provisional votes (most of which usually don’t get counted). So Labor still has a good chance to come back, but it couldn’t be tighter.

Thursday 10:07am – I just thought I’d summarise the state of play for Thursday morning, based on my analysis late last night.

Labor is on 89 seats, the Coalition on 40, independents on 10, and the Greens are yet to lock in a seat.

There are five conventional close races. Labor looks likely to win Menzies and Monique Ryan is likely to win Kooyong. Bullwinkel and Longman are extremely close, and Bradfield leans slightly Liberal.

2CP catch-up counts continue in Bean and Bendigo. In Bean, the race seems projected to be extremely close still after this count, with Labor possibly having a slight edge. Labor seems to be taking the lead in Bendigo.

We are still monitoring 3CP counts for Flinders, Monash and Ryan. The independent seems to have fallen short of the Liberal in Flinders and Monash, but the Greens look likely to win Ryan. I also had Forrest on this list late last night but the ABC has called that seat for the Liberal and I think that is right. I am also keeping an eye on Fisher and Grey which have been called for the Coalition but it’s too early to unpick those calls.

We have no idea about Calwell and probably won’t until the full distribution of preferences decides which of the independents makes the 3CP, likely makes the 2CP and has the outside chance of defeating Labor.

Overall this suggests Labor is leading in 91, Coalition 43, independents 11, Greens one, and Bean, Bullwinkel, Calwell and Longman are basically toss-ups.

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