Nepean and Tasmanian LC live

11:22 – The count has finished for the night in Nepean, with the 2CP count for Rosebud added, and the pre-poll 2CP count has surged in numbers to over 23,000 votes.

The Liberals did very well on the pre-poll and postal votes, winning 64.1% and 72.4% on the 2CP. These margins are much greater than the election-day vote. It means that Marsh’s 2CP margin has blown out to 13.5%.

As to the question of whether Tracee Hutchison makes the 2CP count: One Nation is in a clear second place on primary votes, with 24.7% compared to 21.3% for Hutchison. 15.5% of the vote was cast for other candidates, and about 3/5s of that vote sits with the Greens. I reckon there’s a good chance there’ll need to be a Liberal-One Nation count. A 3CP count would be handy, but I doubt we’ll get one.

9:50 – The primary vote figures in Nepean are looking close to done – we’ve got every election day booth, over 5500 postal votes and over 23,000 pre-poll votes. Marsh (LIB) is on 38.5%, Hercus (ON) on 24.7% and Hutchison (IND) on 21.3%. I think this probably still ends up as a LIB-IND count but I’m not completely sure now.

For the 2CP count, we’re still waiting for Rosebud, and we have less than 3,000 pre-poll votes. Marsh’s lead has blown out to a 13.4% margin. Marsh is winning the non-election day vote very comfortably.

9:32 – The Tasmanian vote count has finished for the night, with extra pre-poll votes and some mobile votes added since I last checked.

The final standing in Huon is:

• Harriss (IND) – 30.6%
• Glade-Wright (IND) – 27.8%
• McKibben (ALP) – 16.5%
• Gibson (GRN) – 15.1%
• Rowan (IND) – 5.4%
• Petersen (IND) – 4.6%

And the standings in Rosevears are:

• Palmer (LIB) – 42.7%
• Mckinnon (ALP) – 24.7%
• McLennan (GRN) – 16.6%
• Monson (IND) – 16.0%

The TEC has helpfully shared an update about what to expect next. In short, counting will resume on Monday but postal votes will need to wait until Thursday.

In preparation for the next stage of the count, work on Sunday will focus on checking and verifying ballot papers, including the transfer of out-of-division votes to the correct division and assessing the eligibility of provisional votes.

Counting on Monday will begin with approximately 860 telephone votes, followed by provisional and out-of-division votes. Rechecks of first preferences will then commence and continue on Tuesday.

Results will be updated progressively on the TEC website.

Counting of postal votes will begin on Thursday, in accordance with procedural changes legislated in 2024, which require the Commission to confirm a person has not voted by any other method before their postal vote can be counted.

This process requires roll mark-off data from all polling places to be finalised and available before postal packs can be checked against the roll and ballot papers are extracted for counting.

9:03 – The Rosebud booth in Nepean is stubbornly refusing to report any figures, but we now have a much bigger sample of pre-poll votes. And the 2CP has mostly caught up, just with fewer pre-poll votes and no postal votes. The Liberal margin is now 9.0%.

8:34 – Kevin Bonham, who knows more about Tasmania than myself, points out that Susan Monson’s preferences are unlikely to favour either leading candidate. He also shares reports that Greens preferences are more pro-Palmer than would be typically expected. These factors make me think Jo Palmer will be re-elected in Rosevears.

8:33 – I should note that, comparing primary to 2CP counts where both have reported (excluding the tiny pre-poll booth), Marsh is attracting 54.6% of preferences and Hutchison 45.4%. Just over half of all preferences to distribute are from One Nation, while the Greens make up about a quarter. Undoubtedly some One Nation voters are preferencing the independent, but I suspect the logic of One Nation voters favouring the Liberals when we go from 3CP to 2CP will hold up.

8:30 – We now have a batch of postal votes for the Nepean primary vote count, and all but one election day booth. The Liberal primary vote has climbed up to 41.2%, with One Nation on 21.4% and Hutchison falling to third on 20.9%. I would still expect Hutchison to make the 2CP on those figures. The 2CP count is quite well advanced but only includes a tiny pre-poll count and no postal votes, and Marsh is leading by a 4.8% margin.

8:19 – The final election day booths have reported from Huon and Rosevears. I suspect we are close to the final figures for the night, with election day and pre-poll votes reported.

The current standing in Huon is:

• Harriss (IND) – 30.5%
• Glade-Wright (IND) – 27.2%
• McKibben (ALP) – 16.7%
• Gibson (GRN) – 15.5%
• Rowan (IND) – 5.6%
• Petersen (IND) – 4.5%

And the standings in Rosevears are:

• Palmer (LIB) – 42.8%
• Mckinnon (ALP) – 24.9%
• McLennan (GRN) – 16.8%
• Monson (IND) – 15.4%

My best guess is that Glade-Wright is the favourite to defeat Harriss, and Palmer is the favourite to be re-elected.

8:15 – We now have 11 election day booths reporting primary votes, with just two more to come. Marsh (LIB) is on 36.6%, Hutchison is on 23.8%, and Hercus (ON) is on 21.2%.

Nine of those booths have reported 2CP figures, and Marsh leads Hutchison with 55.4%. This is the first time tonight where Marsh is trailing behind the Liberal 2PP from 2022, down 0.4%.

8:07 – This Nepean race seems like a new flavour of complex 3CP count that I haven’t seen before (although I’m sure there’s an example somewhere).

It looks pretty clear that the Liberal Party will win whether they face One Nation or Hutchison in the final count. I think the chances of One Nation making that final count are slim, but it’s still interesting as a small swing could have produced a Liberal-One Nation contest. Yet the Liberals look like they will win comfortably in either scenario.

We’ve had races before where there is a close race for second but the leader is so far out that it doesn’t matter, and we’ve had races where second and third have similar chances of success because they preference each other strongly, but I don’t know if I’ve seen one where the leader is so low, but is very highly likely to win because they get preferences from either direction.

If this is a Liberal-One Nation contest, the make-up of the Liberal majority would be quite different to if it was a Liberal-Independent contest. But because the Liberals are in the centre relative to their two main rivals, they can win with a relatively small primary vote lead. Yet it would also leave them not that far away from falling from first into third, and thus losing.

This could be something to watch for next week in Farrer, where the Liberals are again facing strong challenges from an independent and One Nation.

If this really is a new phenomenon, I’d like to nickname it ‘Three Stooges Syndrome’, after the scene in the Simpsons (season 11, episode 12) where Mr Burns is diagnosed with every illness, but told he is fine because they are all in perfect balance.

7:59 – Four booths have reported preferences in Nepean and the Liberal margin is 6.9%. My model expects this to grow to 8.8%.

7:57 – A very small batch of pre-poll votes have reported in Nepean but the VEC does not break out these votes based on the booth so we don’t know what to compare it to. It’s just 26 votes, but it’s all in one row.

7:55 – Things are slowing down in Tasmania – we are waiting for one more election day booth from each seat.

I doubt we’ll be able to call either seat tonight. Dean Harriss has a narrow lead over Clare Glade-Wright but I suspect she can chase him down. Jo Palmer’s lead is wider over Labor but there are quite a few preferences to be distributed.

7:47 – Two booths have reported 2CP counts in Nepean. It looks like the VEC has picked the right pairing, and Marsh leads Hutchison 59.2-40.8. That’s a 1.7% swing compared to the Liberal-Labor count in 2022.

7:46 – Six booths have reported in Nepean, and the vote for the leading candidates now is:

• Marsh (LIB) – 33.0%
• Hutchison (IND) – 25.0%
• Hercus (ON) – 21.8%

7:43 – Pre-poll and another booth have reported in Huon, and Harriss now leads Glade-Wright 31.4% to 26.9%. Jo Palmer’s vote in Rosevears is now down to 40.9%.

7:38 – We’ve just had the local pre-poll report in Rosevears, and Palmer now leads Labor 41.3% to 25.1%. It looks a bit more achievable for Labor to catch up, but Palmer looks like the favourite. Still waiting for two more election-day booths.

7:34 – With five booths reporting, Marsh (LIB) is on 32.9% in Nepean. Hutchison (IND) is on 25.1%, and Hercus (ON) is on 22.1%. It’s probably worth noting that if Hutchison and Hercus are close on primary votes, Hutchison would likely pull ahead with almost 13% sitting with the Greens, compared to 1.9% with other right-wing parties (Sustainable Australia’s 1.6% is probably a wash).

7:25 – Twelve out of sixteen election day booths have reported in Rosevears, and Labor has pulled out in front of Susan Monson. So have the Greens in fact. Labor is on 23%, with the Greens on 17.8% and Monson on 16.9%. Palmer is on 42.4%, up 1.8%.

7:22 – The first three booths have reported in Nepean, and in raw figures the Liberals lead on 31.6%, followed by independent Tracee Hutchison on 23.9% and One Nation on 22.6%, with the Greens on 14.1%. That is a 13.4% swing against the Liberals, but we don’t have matched swings for Hutchison or One Nation, neither of whom ran in 2022.

On those numbers, I suspect the Liberals would defeat either rival. It is very helpful to the party that their loss of support has split in two directions – if it was all one way or the other they’d be losing.

7:07 – Six booths have reported in Rosevears. Jo Palmer has a swing of 1.1% against her, while Monson leads Labor 22.7-21.2.

7:05 – I want to emphasise generally that we don’t have any 2CP figures in Tasmania, and won’t have any – they just do primary counts then a full distribution once all votes are counted. On a primary vote basis, there are issues with calculating primary vote swings because the candidate field has changed. In Huon in 2022, Dean Harriss polled 23.7% and the Liberal Party polled 22.7%. This time there is no Liberal candidate, so you’d expect Harriss to pick up a lot of that Liberal vote (as well as the fact that he’s an incumbent). So a swing of about 4% isn’t very impressive. Meanwhile on the left, the Labor+Greens vote is down from about 46% to 30%, but that is a lot of preferences for Glade-Wright to benefit from.

In Rosevears, independent candidate Janie Finlay did well in 2020, polling 30% of the primary vote and narrowly losing. She isn’t running this time, as she is now a Labor lower house MP. It is probably not fair to expect Labor to pick up all of her vote, and right now it looks like it’s scattered amongst the three non-Liberal candidates.

7:02 – With seven booths reporting in Huon, Dean Harriss leads Clare Glade-Wright 34.1% to 25.6%. There is another 29.9% with Labor and the Greens, and 10.4% with two other independents. Glade-Wright will likely do better on preferences but it’s worth noting that Harriss is polling 4.3% better than his 2022 vote. Although in 2022, there was 22.7% sitting with the Liberal candidate, so that’s probably not a great sign for Harriss.

6:57 – Susan Monson is now narrowly ahead of Labor, 22.4% to 22.2%, and my model projects that this gap will widen slightly.

6:57 – We now have four booths in Rosevears, and the Liberal vote is now down 0.5%. I have also modified my analysis to credit Janie Finlay’s 2020 independent vote to Labor, since there is no equivalent this time and she’s now a Labor MHA. Upon this calculation, there is a 22.4% swing to Susan Monson, a 7.6% swing to the Greens, and a 17.6% swing away from Labor. So Finlay’s vote has scattered amongst three candidates, not all gone to Labor.

6:52 – We now have three booths in Rosevears and the primary vote swing to Palmer (LIB) is now 1.5%.

6:51 – The fifth booth, Glen Huon, is still relatively small, but they are getting bigger, and this is a good one for Harriss, with a 9% swing. This means he is now up 1.7% overall, and just narrowly behind Glade-Wright. This race looks very competitive but Glade-Wright is clearly Harriss’ main rival.

6:47 – Four booths in now in Huon, and Harriss is down 1.1%, with Glade-Wright leading 33.6-22.0.

6:45 – Two small booths in Rosevears have reported. Liberal MLC Jo Palmer is up 2% to 43%. The other vote is split roughly three ways – Labor on 22.6%, independent Susan Monson on 18.2%, and the Greens on 16.3%. Everyone has a swing towards them, because there was a big vote for independents in 2020 who aren’t running now. To be honest it looks like a roughly status quo result so far.

6:42 – Three small booths have reported in Huon. Independent Clare Glade-Wright is leading with 36.5%, with incumbent conservative independent Dean Harris on 24.2%, Greens on 16.5% and Labor on 14.6%. This is a slight 0.9% swing to Harriss compared to last time. Labor and the Greens are both down – Labor down 7.8%, and Greens down 10.1%. Glade-Wright is currently looking very viable and is Harriss’ main challenger. But they are just three small booths.

6:00 – Polls have just closed for some elections being held today in Victoria and Tasmania, and I’ll be tracking the results tonight on this live blog.

In the Victorian state seat of Nepean, a by-election will choose a new member of parliament to serve until the November state election, following the resignation of Liberal MP Sam Groth. This seat was held by Groth by a 6.2% margin. Labor is not contesting the seat but the Liberal Party faces a challenge from One Nation, independent Tracee Hutchison, or both.

In Tasmania, voters are electing two members of the Legislative Council, in the seats of Huon (which covers rural areas to the south-west of Hobart) and Rosevears (which covers rural and suburban areas to the north-west of Launceston). Tasmania’s MLCs serve six-year terms, with 2-3 seats up for election each year over a six-year cycle.

In both seats, conservative MLCs are defending seats they last won by narrow margins.

Labor won Huon at the last regular election in 2020, but that MP resigned within two years, and the 2022 by-election was won by conservative independent Dean Harriss, winning by a 2.5% margin over Labor. Labor and the Greens are challenging Harriss this time, alongside three other candidates.

Liberal MLC Jo Palmer narrowly won Rosevears by a 0.6% margin over independent Janie Finlay, who later became a Labor lower house MP. Three of the four candidates in Rosevears are Labor, Liberal and the Greens. Independents have traditionally played a big role in Tasmanian Legislative Council elections, but Rosevears is as close as they get to a straight Labor-Liberal contest.