The AEC finished the distribution of preferences for Bradfield late on Friday night, after a fascinating day that started with teal independent Nicolette Boele leading by 28 votes and ending with her 8 votes behind. This was a shift of 48 votes from Boele’s 40-vote margin at the end of the indicative 2CP count on Monday afternoon.
This has automatically triggered a recount, as the margin is less than 100 votes. The recount will commence on Monday.
To get a sense of what happened this week, I have analysed the media feed. The AEC has continued to publish data roughly ever fifteen minutes during the day, so it’s possible to go back in time and identify the margins at each point in time, and when each booth’s margin changed.
The count commenced late on Monday, and then resumed throughout Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I have shaded the night-time in grey, when no changes took place.
Until Friday morning, the numbers had bounced around, more likely favouring Kapterian, but Boele did quite well on Tuesday afternoon.
The big change took placed on Friday morning, when eleven votes were moved from Boele to Kapterian. This created a net change of 22 votes, reducing Boele’s lead from 29 votes to 7. This error was found in the St Ives pre-poll voting centre.
Some of the other biggest changes were:
- Kapterian gained five votes at Gordon West on Tuesday afternoon.
- Boele gained seven votes from six different booths shortly after 5pm on Tuesday evening
- Kapterian gained five votes at Castle Cove on Thursday at 11am
- Boele gained six votes at Gordon West on Thursday lunchtime, more than cancelling out the change on Tuesday.
- Kapterian gained four votes at Wahroonga on Friday afternoon.
I expect we will see more changes as the AEC conducts a full recount over the next two weeks. While all votes that were primary votes for other candidates were rechecked this week, the primary votes for Boele and Kapterian haven’t been modified quite so much.
Finally, I have listed here every time the margin changed in a booth, how much the margin changed and what time it was. They are sorted in order of time.
Ben
A few questions regarding the recount.
– Do they recheck every vote that was cast including rejected postals and pre poll provisionals in case those voters qualify after all.
– Is the recount format in a similar format so they do it booth by booth, postals, absents, etc.
– Will there be a progressive update of the counting with the count progress detailed as well?
@redistributed here’s your answers
No all the votes are just sent to a single counting centre in this case in Asquith. Yes every single vote is recheck and recounted. The count could take up to two weeks
@redistributed here’s your answers
No all the votes are just sent to a single counting centre in this case in Asquith. Yes every single vote is recheck and recounted. The count could take up to two weeks
https://www.aec.gov.au/media/2025/05-24.htm
The booth votes are always repacked after a count/recount, same with Postals/declarations, there’s no mixing of votes from different booths or different counts.
The only large mass of votes will be Prepoll, where there will be a number of different areas counting votes. If a party turns up with only a couple scrutineers, or the scrutineers are told to pay attention to preference flows only, then it’s possible their candidate could be disadvantaged.
I haven’t been this close to a recount before but I would assume they recheck rejected votes. I believe every part of the process is segmented by booth so yes the results by booth will be updated.
The AEC is doing a media briefing on Monday afternoon so I should know more after that.
It is not as if Parliament is on a knife’s edge over this one seat. Still, it’s fascinating, especially since it is emblematic of the Liberals’ decline in urban areas. This almost certainly will go to the Court of Disputes and get into the summer. I am not sure the Liberals would win a by-election if one was called for this seat.
A seat in Canada finished like this on one single vote. Then, someone produced a postal vote rejected by the mail for technical reasons and claimed they intended to vote for the loser.
Turnout is often 20 points lower at byelections soon after General Elections, so i’d guess Boele would have problems there, particularly attracting tactical voters from May 3.
Good fightback by Kapterian, perhaps the Liberal Party might have persisted in running Warren Mundine in Gilmore, it couldn’t do any worse?
The Electoral Act gives some details of this process down to the level of specifying how the dro handles packets and when they should be opened, counted, resealed and signed off again
This is much greater detail than applies to “ordinary” counting
Gisele is now up by 9 votes
Upto 14
The libs need to hold on here to out number the Nats in NSW
Can’t see Boele coming back.
@john tbf you can’t see any libs losing
@bazza you’re not wrong but in John’s defense, there have been zero good trends for Boele on either the full distribution or preferences or the recount.
@bazza not true. But there seems to a pattern Gisele vote keeps going. Up based on the avg amount of votes that change in full recounts she would need an unusual aberration to win
It’s more or less random error, not a trend. Just like how the St Ives booth ended up having 11 votes to the wrong candidate, there’s no reason for there to not be something going the other way. So trying to predict how the errors will change in the future is just pure guesswork.
It was reported yesterday that the Liberal Party did not have a full contingent of scrutineers in Bradfield throughout the initial count. While the change in votes so far during the re-count does not amount to a trend, it is more likely than not that more errors will be identified in favour of Gisele, as the Liberal Party now has a full contingent of scrutineers.
Am I correct in thinking AEC began by reviewing preference flows and will then review first preference votes? On that basis, we can expect Boele to claw back some ground.
The re-count starts with a new tally of first preferences by candidate, followed by a second distribution of preferences.
Kapterian lead down to 10. Can’t see her holding on given this trend…
back to 11
Just had a look on the AEC website – current margin of 5 votes to Kapterian.
yes
If Boele can keep halving the lead then it looks like it will be a tie
either way i reckon this will end up in the courts
Gisele Kapterian has been appointed as Shadow Communications Minister, would be a huge embarrassment if she lost the recount.
Yeah very little chance this avoids either Kapterian or Boele contesting the result. And to be fair, both would be well within their rights to do so.
Should this land within 10 or so votes is it quite likely that a court may throw out the result if it is contested? By election likely?
@maxim unless they can show reason the count can be voided its doubtful. the court may however order another recount
@Maxim and John, only if the Court and recount finds it is a tie in the TPP, the the writs cannot not be written so it would require a by-election under federal law. To my knowledge, it different in for some state levels such as in Victoria where there was the only ever tie in Australia’s history in 1985 for Nunawading Province (previous for of legislative council), the winner was decided by a lucky dip but the results were later voided as there were 44 uncounted votes.
I don’t think it’s true that a re-election will only happen if there is a perfect tie. In practice if the margin is super close (perhaps under 10 votes) I reckon something will be found to void the result and force a new election. It wouldn’t take much.
Now at 3 votes…..
Gisele by 2