10:23pm – Seven candidates have been excluded in Lyons: three minor Nationals, and four ungrouped independents. The Shooters’ lead over the Liberal Party has been widening from 0.179 on the primary vote to 0.190 on the last count. The Shooters cannot lose votes to leakage, but the Liberals undoubtedly will.
10:08pm – Five candidates have been excluded in Franklin, all low-polling candidates in the Greens and Peter George tickets, although the lowest-polling Labor candidate is next to go out tomorrow morning. Labor’s lead over the Liberals has widened slightly as Labor has gained leakage from the Greens and Peter George, but the bigger test will be when the second-ranked candidate on each ticket is excluded.
As far as the intra-party contests, Petrusma’s lead over Street is steady. Brown’s lead over Munday has widened slightly.
10:01pm – The count is progressing more quickly in Clark, where there are fewer candidates running. Two Labor candidates, three Greens candidates and one Liberal candidate have been excluded, along with two ungrouped independents.
The two leading Labor candidates Ella Haddad and Josh Willie are both neck-and-neck and should both comfortably win. Vica Bayley and Helen Burnet have a bit more of an imbalance between the but there is 1.85 quotas sitting with the Greens ticket, with Burnet on 0.68 – a long way ahead of a third Liberal.
The most interesting story is the Liberal race, with the lowest-polling Liberal now out of the race. Simon Behrakis’ lead over Madeleine Ogilvie has remained around 0.08 quotas for the entire count.
9:54pm – The race in Braddon remains very clear with eight minor candidates having been excluded. Labor is still close to two quotas, while the Liberal Party is on about 3.9 quotas. Craig Garland is creeping closer to a quota too. In the intra-party race, Felix Ellis is clearly winning while Roger Jaensch is far ahead of his colleagues for the fourth Liberal seat.
9:46pm – I’m now updating the figures with the final figures for Tuesday. In Bass, two candidates have been elected (Bridget Archer and Janie Finlay) and three ungrouped candidates have been excluded. The Liberal ticket is now on 3.29 quotas, while Labor is on 2.22 quotas. The Liberal Party has been extending its lead slightly after the lead was cut significantly by the distribution of Archer’s surplus. The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers are now on 0.34 quotas – there is only one SFF candidate, so he won’t lose any votes to leakage. The party’s total will keep growing until and unless he is knocked out.
2:52pm – The surplus for Jane Howlett has been distributed in Lyons, and they have started knocking out the low-polling candidates. The gap between Stephanie Cameron and Richard Hallett for the third Liberal seat has shrunk slightly but otherwise not much has changed.
2:47pm – The minor candidates have started to be excluded in Franklin: the lowest-polling of Peter George’s candidates first, and up next is the lowest-polling Greens candidate. Nothing much to report there.
2:30pm – The exclusion of John Macgowan in Clark has changed little.
2:27pm – The distribution of Gavin Pearce’s surplus in Braddon has pushed Ellis to 0.83 and Jaensch to 0.47 without leaking too much from the Liberal ticket.
1:52pm – In the electorate of Franklin, independent Peter George was elected first. George ran a full ticket of seven candidates but there was enormous leakage – only 34% of his preferences stayed within the group.
Almost half of George’s surplus flowed straight to Rosalie Woodruff, pushing her from 0.78 to 0.88 quotas. This puts the whole Greens ticket on 1.199 quotas, while Labor is on 1.841.
This doesn’t really change much but strengthens the certainty that Labor will win two and the Liberals will fall short of winning a third seat. The Greens have about 0.2 quotas of surplus, and the remaining six George group independents are also on about 0.2 quotas. Those should favour Labor over Liberal.
One other funny point is that Eric Abetz was 17 votes short of a quota on primary votes, and he picked up 19 preferences from Peter George, electing him to the second seat. Abetz’s surplus will be distributed next, but it will only be worth 2 votes, and will come from the 19 George-Abetz votes.
1:41pm – In the electorate of Clark, independent Kristie Johnston’s 0.2-quota surplus was distributed first. This is a count of particular interest since Johnston has no other candidates in her ticket. About 0.082 quotas went to the Greens, about 0.037 to Labor, about 0.056 to independent Elise Archer and just 0.011 quotas to the Liberal ticket.
At a party total level, this pushes the Greens from 1.76 quotas to 1.85.
The biggest unknown in Clark now is who will win the second Liberal seat. Very few votes flowed tom Johnston to the Liberal ticket, but Ogilvie gained slightly more than Behrakis, but Behrakis still leads by 0.08 quotas.
1:33pm – In the electorate of Lyons, Liberal candidate Guy Barnett was elected first, but with only a very small surplus. His colleague Jane Howlett was just 22 votes short of a quota, so his surplus has elected her. She now has a surplus of 172 votes, and those will be distributed next. That shouldn’t take too long. After that, they’ll start knocking out the lowest-ranked candidates.
1:30pm – In the electorate of Braddon, Jeremy Rockliff’s enormous surplus has now been distributed. There has been some understandable leakage from the Liberal ticket, about 5.9%, but they are still on 3.89 quotas so should still win the four seats.
The most interesting consequences are within the Liberal ticket. Gavin Pearce gained the most preferences, pushing him to 1.11 quotas and electing him as the second member. Felix Ellis has also been boosted to 0.78 quotas and Roger Jaensch to 0.44 quotas. This is enough to elect Ellis as the third Liberal and Jaensch is looking very solid for the fourth Liberal seat.
As no Labor candidate has reached quota yet, Pearce’s surplus will be distributed next.
1:27pm – In the electorate of Bass, the second count saw the distribution of Bridget Archer’s 0.55-quota surplus. Unsurprisingly, quite a few of these votes leaked out of the Liberal ticket (about 11%). The biggest beneficiaries were Michael Ferguson and Rob Fairs, which is also unfortunate since they are in the least need of those preferences. Ferguson is now on 0.967 quotas and Fairs is on 0.59.
In the race for the fourth Liberal seat, Simon Wood has widened the gap over Julie Sladden, and indeed Chris Gatenby overtook Sladden. Wood is on 0.228 quotas while Sladden is on 0.187 and Gatenby is on 0.202.
The total Liberal vote has dropped from 3.34 quotas to 3.28, while the Labor vote has climbed from 2.20 to 2.22. The SFF vote is on 0.333, while the Greens are on 1.331.
Geoff Lyons has slightly extended his lead over Jess Greene for the second Labor seat, but only very slightly.
Tuesday 29 July, 1:21pm – The final postal votes were added to the count in the Tasmanian state election this morning, and the Tasmanian Electoral Commission (TEC) has commenced the process of distributing preferences.
I’ll be using this live blog as a chance to post updates as the counts progress. Although I will be driving to Canberra tomorrow and back to Sydney on Thursday, so there will be big breaks in my updates during that time.
For this first post I’m going to quickly summarise changes that have taken place in the primary vote count between when I published this blog post on Tuesday last week and the end of the count today. I have updated the charts in that post with the final primary vote figures, so I won’t bother reposting them there.
In Bass, Geoff Lyons has gained a slight lead on Jess Greene. Sitting Liberal MP Simon Wood has increased his lead against Julie Sladden, and the Greens have gone backwards slightly. The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers also lost a small amount of ground.
There was nothing of significance to report in Braddon.
In Clark, Madeleine Ogilvie has narrowed the primary vote gap against her colleague and rival Simon Behrakis, from 0.11 quotas last week to 0.08 at the end of the count.
In Franklin, Labor MP Meg Brown has slightly extended her lead on Jess Munday. Liberal MP Jacquie Petrusma has significantly widened her lead against Nic Street for the second Liberal seat, from 0.19 quotas to 0.23 quotas.
In Lyons, Jane Howlett fell just below a quota, which should speed up the count since her primary votes won’t need to be distributed as a tiny surplus. She will still be elected almost immediately (indeed she already has by time of publishing this).
Mark Shelton has increased his lead on the other Liberals for the third Liberal spot. Casey Farrell has fallen into fourth place amongst the Labor candidates.
SFF candidate Carlo Di Falco has also lost a small amount of ground.
That’s it for this introductory post. We now have the first distribution for Bass, Braddon and Lyons so I’ll post them shortly.
Ben I am sure it is just a typo but Janie Finlay is in Bass not Lyons.
I think the Aus elections are very secure.
But I am curious to see how some of the algorithms being used to detect potential manipulation of the electronic system in the USA, play out in Australia, as a control population.
Do the troubling effects seen in marginal electorates in the USA occur randomly in safe, electorally different Australia, perhaps in marginal seats? Or not. The answer is interesting however it turns out.