Tasmanian preference count wraps up with some close contests

If you’ve been following my live blog, you would have seen that the preference count in the Tasmanian state election finished on Saturday, with the count in Bass being in doubt right up until the end.

Most seats ended up going to the candidates who were expected to win, with just a few exceptions. The parties and candidates in the lead ended up winning every seat in Braddon, Franklin and Lyons. There are two exceptions, and in this post I will explore how those preference counts played out, with the help of graphs.

The final make-up of the Assembly is 14 Liberals, 10 Labor, 5 Greens, 5 independents and one from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.

The number of seats held by the three biggest parties is stable, and the three independents elected in 2024 have also been re-elected. In net terms, just three seats changed hands. The three former Jacqui Lambie Network members have been replaced by independents Peter George and George Razay and by the SFF candidate Carlo Di Falco.

In reality four seats have changed hands, with the Liberals gaining a seat from JLN in Braddon and losing a seat to Peter George in Franklin.

In my next blog post I will explore the numbers of MPs losing their seats, to their fellow party members or to others, but not today.

There are two seats that ended up being quite interesting. In one seat, there was a close contest between two sitting MPs of the same party to retain their seat, with a non-incumbent member of the party in the lead and thus taking one of their seats. In the other case, there was an intra-party contest, but also an inter-party contest. In the end two Labor candidates came a very close seventh and eighth.

Let’s start with the Liberal contest in Clark. Simon Behrakis and Madeleine Ogilvie both held Liberal seats in the inner-Hobart division, but it was clear on election night that one of them would lose. Non-incumbent Liberal candidate Marcus Vermey was the top Liberal candidate, and there wasn’t enough votes for three to win.

Madeleine Ogilvie has a history of close intra-party contests in the past, both in her past life as a Labor MP and as a Liberal.

This chart shows the vote share (as a proportion of a quota) for the three leading Liberals throughout the Clark count. I have marked when particular candidates were excluded and significant numbers of votes flowed to the senior Liberals.

There does appear to be some gender-based trends here, but Ogilvie generally did better on preference flows. When Jessica Barnett was excluded, her preferences favoured Ogilvie and Marilena Di Florio quite a lot more strongly than male candidates Behrakis and Vermey. Di Florio did not show the same trend when her preferences flowed.

Barnett’s preferences were the first indication that Ogilvie really was in striking distance, but it was preferences from Elise Archer that put Ogilvie in front.

Archer is a former Liberal minister, now running as an independent. Archer voters needed to number seven boxes for a formal vote, but she ran on her ticket alone, so it’s not surprising plenty of them then preferenced Liberals to reach the minimum count.

The other race of interest was Bass. Interestingly on election night it looked like a contest primarily between Liberal and Shooters, but neither made it to the final count.

Labor was always going to win one of the last two seats, but the closeness of Greene and Lyons made it feasible both could win. In contrast, the combined vote for Simon Wood and Rob Fairs was higher, but it was lopsided towards Fairs, leaving Wood with a smaller vote.

George Razay had a relatively low porifle, but was able to keep up with the pack as preferences piled up. Lyons and Wood spiked when lower-polling members of their parties were excluded, but Razay particularly benefited from the exclusion of Rebekah Pentland. From this point he had a small but clear lead on Frydrych as the leading non-Labor contender.

The exclusion of Labor’s Melissa Anderson pushed Jess Greene above Geoff Lyons – possibly another sign of gender-based preferencing within parties.

Lyons led Razay by 0.07 quotas before Frydrych was excluded, but that gap was far too small to be withstood. Razay ended up overtaking both Labor candidates.

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