Tasmania 2025 – the close races

Tasmanian election results can often be simplified to totals for each party in each electorate. But votes aren’t cast for parties, they’re cast for candidates. When candidates are elected or excluded, preferences don’t always flow to fellow members of the same party (or “leakage”). A particularly efficient distribution of votes within a party group can also allow a party to compete for an extra seat beyond what the party totals might suggest.

For today’s post I will run through the current state of play in terms of vote shares for the key candidates in each electorate, and the other blocks of votes that will come into play.

This data is as of the end of Monday 21 July. While some postal votes have now been counted, the primary vote count is nowhere near finished. I won’t be regularly updating these figures, but may revisit the data at some point in the next two weeks, before the official distribution of preferences commences.

Bass

• 3 Liberals, 2 Labor and one Green elected
• Four individuals have been elected. There are intra-party contests for the third Liberal seat and the second Labor seat, but the fourth Liberal and third Labor could also be contenders for the final seat.
• The other main contender for the final seat is Michal Frydrych

This chart shows the primary vote for the main leading candidates, and the other main pools of votes that will be decisive in the result.

On the Liberal side, Bridget Archer has been elected with an enormous surplus, while Michael Ferguson will comfortably win the second seat.

When examining the remainder of the Liberal vote outside of Archer’s quota and Ferguson’s vote, the biggest pool of votes are those in Bridget Archer’s surplus. There’s good reason to expect those votes to be quite leaky. Considering Archer’s history as a maverick MP, she may have attracted some who did not go on to preference her Liberal colleagues.

Rob Fairs has a large lead on his Liberal colleagues for the third Liberal seat and I find it hard to see him being chased down, but Archer’s surplus is big enough to potentially overturn that lead.

Otherwise, Simon Wood and Julie Sladden are roughly tied for the fourth Liberal seat. Preferences from others (Liberals and others) are much more significant than their primary votes.

Labor will definitely win a second seat, with Jess Greene narrowly ahead of Geoff Lyons. There is another two thirds of a quota with the other four Labor candidates (also including Janie Finlay’s small surplus).

The Liberals at first appear to be the best prospect for the final seat. But Archer’s likely leakage makes things harder. Rob Fairs will also continue to attract preferences that do not help either Wood or Sladden.

As for other contenders, Shooters candidate Frydrych has a third of a quota. There is just the one SFF candidate, so no leakage. George Razay and Rebekah Pentland both have a higher primary vote than either of the competing Liberals, but probably don’t get enough preference flows to be competitive.

Kevin Bonham also points out that if Labor candidates Greene and Lyons can stay close to each other, they could both remain viable to the point where they can attract preferences. There is quite a substantial surplus Greens vote, but only a small part of it is sitting with the second Green.

On the other hand, about two thirds of a quota is sitting with various independents.

Honestly this one is hard to pick.

Braddon

• 4 Liberal, 2 Labor, Craig Garland
• Ellis and Jaensch leading for last two Liberal seats, but the decisive factor will be Rockliff’s surplus.

On the party basis, all seven seats are clear.

The only doubt is who will win the last two Liberal seats, although I find it hard to see one of the last three Liberals overtaking them.

The issue is that so much of the Liberal vote is sitting with Jeremy Rockliff – while the party has about 50% of the vote, over 31% is just Rockliff himself. So his preferences matter far more than their primary votes.

Still, Ellis and Jaensch are sitting MPs and are likely to do better on Rockliff’s preferences than their colleagues.

Clark

• 2 Labor, 2 Greens, 2 Liberal, Kristie Johnston
• Unclear whether Behrakis or Ogilvie wins the second Liberal seat

Kristie Johnston has topped the poll in Clark, with 1.21 quotas, but has no-one else in her group to gain her preferences.

On a party basis the seven seats are clear. The only interesting question is who wins the second Liberal seat. The first seat has gone to non-incumbent Marcus Vermey, so one of the two sitting Liberals will lose their seat.

The two Labor members and the two Greens members all have some way to go before they reach quota, so they will absorb most of the preferences sitting with the other Labor and Greens candidates. They should also gain most of Kristie Johnston’s surplus.

This means the deciding factor in who wins the second Liberal seat is mostly preferences from the four lower-ranked Liberal candidates, along with small amounts of leakage from Johnston and lower-ranked Greens and Labor candidates.

Ogilvie currently trails Behrakis by 0.11 quotas with 0.51 quotas of preferences sitting with the other Liberals. It’s worth noting that Vermey is only on 0.72 quotas, so he will also pick up preferences from plenty of other Liberals, which reduces the pool of preferences for Behrakis and Ogilvie.

I think the gap is probably too wide for Ogilvie, although Kevin Bonham points out that she did do a bit better on preferences in 2024. She may also do well on the preferences of Elise Archer, the ex-Liberal independent with a quarter of a quota to distribute.

Franklin

• 2 Liberal, 1 Labor, 1 Greens, David O’Byrne, Peter George
• Labor probably winning the final seat, but who is unclear
• Also unclear who will win the second Liberal seat.

The ABC has not called the seventh seat for the second Labor candidate although I think they’ve probably won. But the race for who will win that seat is very close, with sitting MP Meg Brown in a close contest with union leader Jess Munday. There is also an intra-party contest between sitting Liberal MPs Jacquie Petrusma and Nic Street. There’s a game of musical chairs on the Liberal side: they’ve lost their third seat, but it’s not entirely clear who will end up on the floor.

Outside of Labor and the Liberals, there is:

• 0.3 of a quota with other Greens candidates, most of which will likely help Rosalie Woodruff reach quota but some will spill over to Labor
• 0.29 of a quota as Peter George’s personal surplus, which may also flow to Woodruff but also between the Labor candidates. Unlike most independents, Peter George ran a full ticket of seven so it’s more likely votes will exhaust when they leave his group.
• 0.1 with Peter George’s six running mates. As above.

Eric Abetz is on almost a full quota so he won’t absorb much Liberal preferences. David O’Byrne and Dean Winter are both around 0.9 quotas so can both absorb some of those Labor preferences.

On the Labor side, Meg Brown leads Jess Munday by 0.11 quotas with 0.34 quotas to distribute from the four lower-ranked Labor candidates. That’s going to be hard to close, but bear in mind there will be some votes flowing from the Greens and Peter George’s ticket too.

There is 0.7 quotas sitting with the four lower-ranked Liberal candidates. While that is a lot, it’s unlikely to close the 0.19 quota gap between Petrusma and Street.

So what about Street potentially beating the second Labor candidate? This would be why the ABC hasn’t called that seat for Labor. There is 0.93 quotas sitting with the six lower-ranked Labor candidates. There is also 0.39 with the George ticket and 0.3 with the Greens candidates. About 0.4 of those quotas can be used up electing O’Byrne, Winter and Woodruff. But that leaves about 1.2 quotas of votes to elect a second Labor candidate.

In comparison, Nic Street is on 0.42 quotas. If he gets half of the Liberal preferences he’ll be on 0.77 quotas. That’s a gap of about 0.43 quotas. It would require a lot of leakage from the centre-left candidates to the Liberals to close that gap.

Lyons

• 3 Liberal, 2 Labor, 1 Green
• Final inter-party seat likely SFF vs Liberal
• ABC has not called second Labor seat, but almost certainly going to Brian Mitchell
• Some doubt about who would win third Liberal seat, and a lot of doubt about who would be fourth Liberal

The Liberal vote is a long way short of four quotas, but the vote has been evenly distributed in a way that makes winning four seats possible.

The first two Liberals are just narrowly passing quota or just falling short. Right now both are just over quota with just 0.07 quota surplus between them.

Mark Shelton is leading for the third Liberal spot on 0.46 quotas. As for who is the fourth competitive Liberal, Stephanie Cameron is on 0.29 and Richard Hallett is on 0.24, with 0.27 quotas with the last two Liberals. Those votes (and the surplus of the first two Liberals) needs to be spread between Shelton, Cameron and Hallett.

The primary vote for SFF candidate Carlo Di Falco is strong, but if preferences split fairly evenly between the third and fourth Liberals, they could stay ahead of him.

It’s also worth noting that there will be leakage from the Liberal ticket but none from the SFF ticket since they have just one candidate.

In the contest between Di Falco and the fourth Liberal (likely Cameron), there is also 0.34 from the Nationals and 0.4 from independents.

On the Labor side, Brian Mitchell looks set to win the second seat. Mitchell and Butler will absorb a lot of the preferences from the other Labor candidates, so I don’t think a third Labor candidate can win.

Postal votes will have two weeks to come in, although most will come in much sooner than the deadline. There will also be some other special votes to be counted. The full distribution will commence two weeks from today, on Tuesday 5 August.