The Poll Bludger’s lower house predictions left a bit to be desired – I underestimated the Nationals, failed to spot Labor’s troubles in Gippsland, missed Russell Savage’s defeat in Mildura, punted on some roughies that failed to come home (Eltham and South West Coast) and got suckered in by some faulty conventional wisdom (South Barwon and Melbourne). However, I can claim to have salvaged some pride with my upper house predictions, all of which are looking good except my call of three Liberal and two Labor in Western Victoria, which will likely be the other way round (UPDATE: See below). Given that my prediction was for a total of 20 seats for Labor, the Western Victoria bonus would give them the magic 21 seats and an absolute majority in the 40-seat chamber. Bearing in mind that the VEC still only has results in from 1744 out of 2416 voting centres, the picture appears as follows in the eight regions listed in rough order of interest (if any).
1. David Davis (Liberal)
2. John Lenders (Labor)
3. Andrea Coote (Liberal)
4. Sue Pennicuik (Greens)
5. Evan Thornley (Labor) leads David Southwick (Liberal)
Labor is coming perilously close to having its star candidate Evan Thornley lose to the third Liberal. The Greens have a quota without much room to spare after preferences from the Democrats boost them from 15.64 per cent to 17.31 per cent, above the magic number of 16.67 per cent. Similarly, Evan Thornley starts out with Labor’s 14.98 per cent surplus over the first quota and just gets there with preferences from independent Rita Bentley (0.38 per cent) and People Power (1.37 per cent), boosting him to 16.73 per cent. He will further get the Greens surplus if he needs it, which on current figures will boost him 0.60 per cent to a total of 17.33 per cent. That gives him an uncomfortable lead of 0.66 per cent; if this lead evaporates, Family First preferences will put the Liberals’ David Southwick over the line. It is interesting that Rita Bentley is giving Thornley such a valuable boost, as her preference ticket singles him out for special treatment – Thornley is in third place behind Bentley’s running mate Geoff Taylor, while the other Labor candidates are behind the Liberals.
1. Jaala Pulford (Labor)
2. John Vogels (Liberal)
3. Gayle Tierney (Labor)
4. David Koch (Liberal)
5. Elaine Carbines (Labor) leads Peter Kavanagh (DLP)
With Labor and Liberal winning two seats each, the final seat has emerged as a contest between Labor and the Greens with the tide continuing to flow to Labor. At the critical point of the count, Labor leads 9.13 per cent to the Greens’ 8.46 per cent (their 8.17 per cent primary vote plus preferences from the Socialist Alliance). Whichever of the two emerges in front will get to a quota on the preferences of the other, leapfrogging either the Nationals or the DLP. (UPDATE: The previous statement was based on the erroneous assumption that Labor preferences would go to the Greens rather than the DLP. In fact, if Labor falls behind the Greens – which is reckoned to be at least possible by those in the know – their preferences will deliver the seat to the DLP).
1. Justin Madden (Labor)
2. Khalil Eideh (Labor)
3. Martin Pakula (Labor)
4. Bernie Finn (Liberal)
5. Henry Barlow (Labor) leads Colleen Hartland (Greens)
After the first four seats go three Labor and one Liberal, Labor is leading the Greens in the race for the fifth seat. Labor has 9.31 per cent over the third quota against the Greens’ total of 9.14 per cent. Labor is then boosted by preferences from People Power (1.24 per cent) and the DLP (0.99 per cent), while the Greens get preferences from the Democrats (0.94 per cent) – leaving Labor with a lead of 11.54 per cent to 10.08 per cent at the critical point of the count. Whichever of the two ends up behind here will propel the other over the second Liberal candidate (7.80 per cent boosted to 11.72 per cent after Family First preferences).
1. Richard Dalla Riva (Liberal)
2. Shaun Leane (Labor)
3. Bruce Atkinson (Liberal)
4. Brian Tee (Labor)
5. Jan Kronberg (Liberal) leads Bill Pemberton (Greens)
After the election of two Liberal and two Labor candidates, the fifth place emerges as a close contest between Liberal and the Greens. The Greens appeared to have the edge earlier in the count, but the tide has continued to flow in the Liberals’ direction. The Liberals are currently on 11.72 per cent above their second quota, with the Greens on 10.30 per cent. With the Liberals further boosted by 4.36 per cent from the strongly performing Family First, the current result at the final count is Liberal 17.48 per cent and the Greens 15.86 per cent – surely an unbridgeable gap.
1. Theo Theophanous (Labor)
2. Jenny Mikakos (Labor)
3. Matthew Guy (Liberal)
4. Nazih Elasmar (Labor)
5. Greg Barber (Greens)
The remarkable thing about the DLP’s near-miss was that it was not entirely down to the strength of their preference arrangements, which were inferior to those of People Power and the Democrats. Their vote of 4.85 per cent may well have been boosted by their position on the far left of the ballot paper, echoing their strong 2.3 per cent Senate vote when they were similarly placed in 2001. It was suggested on that occasion that they had benefited from confused Labor voters. However, the miracle ultimately failed to eventuate because the Greens vote has steadily increased to 16.09 per cent as counting has progressed, lifting them above a 16.67 per cent quota with the addition of 1.13 per cent from the Democrats as preferences.
1. Candy Broad (Labor)
2. Wendy Lovell (Liberal)
3. Damian Drum (Nationals)
4. Donna Petrovich (Liberal)
5. Kaye Darveniza (Labor)
The collective Coalition vote was 50.54 per cent, or a clear three quotas. With the Liberal vote on 28.65 per cent (11.98 above the first quota) and the Nationals on 21.89 per cent (5.22 per cent), these seats went two Liberal and one Nationals. Labor polled 30.05 per cent (13.38 per cent over a quota) to the Greens’ 6.86 per cent; to that the Greens could add only a tiny Coalition surplus plus further preferences from some surprising sources, with the Christian Democratic Party and the DLP both putting the Greens ahead of Labor. That still left them well short of a quota, with Labor coasting home on preferences from Family First (3.66 per cent) and the Country Alliance (2.32 per cent).
1. Philip Davis (Liberal)
2. Matt Viney (Labor)
3. Edward O’Donohue (Liberal)
4. Peter Hall (Nationals)
5. Johan Scheffer (Labor)
A straightforward result with a clear two quotas to Labor (35.36 per cent) and three for the Coalition after the addition of Family First preferences. The Nationals polled 9.70 per cent against the 4.65 per cent Liberal surplus over the second quota, and thus emerged with the third Coalition seat.
1. Gavin Jennings (Labor)
2. Adem Somyurek (Labor)
3. Gordon Rich-Phillips (Liberal)
4. Bob Smith (Labor)
5. Inga Peulich (Liberal)
Another refreshingly straightforward outcome with Labor on just over three quotas (50.72 per cent) and the Liberals just over two (33.50 per cent).
274 Comments
In Western Victoria, if the Greens vote passes the ALP, the ALP vote elects a DLP candidate.
However if the Nationals pass the DLP at a key exclusion then it is possible for the Greens to win.
Go David Southwick over Evan Thornley!
Western Victoria: At 81% of the vote counted I have teh DLP ahead of teh Naotional Party. They npick up from all qaurters. mainly from Family First.
Yes it is tight in two places the DLP either goes out before the NP nor the ALP wins over the Greens…
DLP order of foldup goes..
Primary 2.58%
They pick up from PP 0.75% sub total 3.34%
They the pick up 0.95% from CA sub total 4.29%
Family First is on 4% which goers to the DLP now 8.29%
The DLP is above the Nationals who are on 7.15%
DLP sub total is now 14.09%
DLP then picks upo the Lib surplus (1.35%) via the NP vote (Vote inlcuded in above 7.15% data)
DLP now on 15.44%
Greens 9.16% ALP 8.73%
ALP excluded an gos to the DLP who are thne on 24.17% and elected.
Not a close margin I am afraid. The Greens polled to high
Re;South Metrio… I need to correct my earlier preiction as the Democrats will most likely see Thornley well and truely over the line. Southwick would need to pick up over 75% of the pre-polls which is unlikely We estimate teh spilit to be 5000 to 2000. Thorney wins by a comfortable margin
Apart from Western Victoria all other seats look about right
ALP 42.06%
LIB 34.68%
DLP 2.58%
GRN 8.84%
NP 5.80%
LIB 0.00%
CA 0.95%
FF 4.00%
PP 0.75%
SA 0.32%
Put this in to the upper-house calc and you get….
Elected Candidates
Pulford Jaala (AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY)
Vogels John (LIBERAL)
Tierney Gayle (AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY)
Koch David (LIBERAL)
Kavanagh Peter (D.L.P. DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY)
The same as my calcs. Based on data as of 8:00PM last night. 81% of enrollment counted
There is no close margin in Western Victoria any more. Most below the line votes will get locked in under the party vote and in fact when distributed the BTL vote decreases in value and the ABTL vote increases in value (This is because of the paper based surplus calculations used.) As the rest of the BTL votes have little value they can not bridge the gap
The closest conjunction points are DLP/FF Family First would need to pickup over 0.29% (Over 1000 votes) of the over all vote.
The gap between the Nationals and the DLP (1.14% over 4000 votes) is too great. The Greens are above the ALP surplus buy 0.43% (1500 votes).
Sorry but the Gap is too big to bridge… Unless the VEC have hidden away a few bundles of postal votes they did not tell us about…
I will go out on a limb here and call it a win for the DLP… main problem is I do not have polling both data and whilst the VEC is reporting 81% of enrollment counted and 100% of lower house booths the upper house reports booths are still to be entered. I think their booth summary data is wrong as 81% of enrollment is already high.
I say the DLP come up the middle and win… (Subject of course to the VEC pulling a few undisclosed bundles from the postal ballot box under the table which might explain why they did not want to report how many postal votes had been issued.
How did you get the Greens in front of the ALP in West Vic ?
AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY 9.13
AUSTRALIAN GREENS 8.46
On my count.
If the Greens get ahead, the DLP wins.
Seriously, I’m sure Labor will win the 3rd place in Western Victoria.
I just can’t bring myself to the conclusion that the DLP will get there.
I can’t explain the maths side of it – but all this DLP talk sounds too crazy to happen.
Hi I have just implemented a new way to deal with below the line votes in analysising the potential outcome. I do not knwo way I did not do this before. The results are more accurate but the outcome is the same. Western Victoria goes to the DLP…
The fifth spot that is Western Victoria ALP 2 Lib 2 DLP 1
The only thing that could change the results is the BTL optional preferential system but i do not think it would effect the outcome. Not sure as I have not seen optional voting in Victoria before and I am not sure if the public is fuly aware of the fact that they only need to number five boxes.. anyway most BTL stay within teh group just reorder the votes and that is easy to cater for. If votes exaust on a surplus trabsfer the value of picked up I think by the continuing ballots. again due to the fact that the formula used is the number of ballot papers not the value of the vote…
Are you sure Melb?
Have heard that ALP has snuck in front of the Greens in Western Victoria but cannot confirm.
Why not just wait until all the votes have been counted? The results are just waiting to be worked out.
I’m updating the preference counts as I can at http://www.abc.net.au/elections/vic/2006/results/. Follow the LC links.
As usualy, these are just estimates of the count, but by publishing the detail hopefully the pecularities of the count, especially in Western Victoria, become more apparent.
Wait until the votes are counted? Where is the fun in that?
Have a look at the analysis conducted by Gary Morgan on which opinion poll was most accurate for this election. He claims his poll was the most accurate but has used the first figures Galaxy poll taken and not the last of the campaign. Had he done so he would have found that the last Galaxy Poll was in fact the most accurate. Mistake or omission?
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2006/4113/
Melb City: Where are you getting your WV figures from ? The website doesn’t show what you are saying, but it’s close and the Greens have yet to receive their dose of “backpacker” vote.
Maybe I should jump on the VEC ftp site..
So just to summarise:
ALP: 18
Liberals: 14
Greens: 2
Nationals: 2
Four uncertain:
E. Metro: Libs v Greens
S. Metro: Libs v Labor
W. Vic: Labor v DLP
W. Metro: Labor v Greens
And the points in each count to watch:
Western Victoria:
-DLP-Nationals.
-Greens-Labor
If DLP wins first and Greens win second, DLP wins.
If DLP wins first and Labor wins second, Labor wins.
If Nats win first and Greens win second, Greens win.
If Nats win first and Labor wins second, Labor wins.
Good summary Ben.
Also the current situation is:
DLP ahead in first
ALP ahead in second
ALP in box seat, DLP needs one piece of luck, Greens two.
However if the DLP goes out behind the Nats, does that unlock some prefs from someone like PP that can push the Greens ahead of the ALP ? ie maybe the Greens just need one piece of luck instead of two.
My site is down at the moment because my web hosts database has crashed again.
Do I gather that Melbcity is saying that the DLP will get the last spot, while Antony Green is saying that Labor will get it? Whom to believe??? Do they at least agree that ET will beat Southwick in South Metro, and that Labor will get 4 spots in West Metro?
cheers the speaker – i wondered why – the dlp better not get ahead – dont want a party of has-beens being re-elected
A DLP revival would be fantastic. The more parties the better.
What a weird contest.
It’s like a clash of the 21st century and the 1950s.
If someone suggested we’d see a seat being seriously contested by both the DLP and the Greens, you’d think they were insane.
Vote Mac Back!
The Speaqker. What do you mean by WV
The VEC siste is showing not all booths are in but over 80% enrollment of teh vote counted. That not right. Lower house shows 100% booths counted.
I am just reporting tyhe results as they unfold. We do not know waht ad from where votes are still to be counted. But I have cheched my votes recorded and they tally with the VEC site. Lateste results are now up a I will re calc.
Western Vic
The gap is too wide for a Greens Labor.
The closest gap is FF and DLP
Look at the ALP HTV card/Ticket it goes to the DLP before the Greens.
DLP 10 Greens 15
Unless the VEC published the wrong data… again I have checked the preferences recorded.
Adam yes to South and Western Metro
On the current count, Labor wins the last spot in Western Victoria, as long as Labor stays ahead of the Greens in the battle for 2nd spot behind the DLP. I would expect that to happen, as Labor will probably do better than the Greens with the declaration vote. However, the wild card is the Nationals getting ahead of the DLP. If this happens, the Greens pick up People Power preferences, Labor picks up half of the Country Alliance, but the Nationals fall short of the vote the DLP would have accumulated. In this case, if Labor stays ahead of the Greens, Labor wins the last sport, if the Greens pull ahead, the Greens win.
Anthony. Just a warning. I found a data-entry/data-quaility issue with the VEC data in relation to the DLP… You should check you are not filtering out some of the information. I notified the VEC of this error but it is still showing up in their data. Call me if discuss if you like… Latest update 5:00PM will rerun count.
Sorry Antony not Anthony
Well, if it is like the AEC, the numbers will go up and down erratically for the next few days as below the line (BTL) votes are entered. All below the line from a booth are entered as a total, and then the ‘batch’ sent off to data entry. I’ve just been using the totals for each group. The Labor Party and the Greens will have an advantage over the DLP as their totals during the count will not ‘lose’ votes from other groups that are actually BTL votes rather than ticket votes. The same reason that Family First did not win the final Senate seat in Tasmania at the 2004 Federal election. Nice for Labor that the highest below the line vote is for Carbines. Minimizes the number of votes that might leak out of the ticket.
Sorry Antony not Anthony.. Just checked agin the VEC data-entry problem is still showing showing up. be cafeful. I have to correct it every time I down load the data. And uess what it is the DLP that is effected… Anther reason why the VEC MUST ensure that its data is open top the public for independent analysis
I’m at home so don’t have my xml tools. I’ve been using the web page totals. Using tonight’s update, I get exactly the same result as published in my distribution of preferences at the ABC Elections site.
OK now fess up time – who in their wildest dreams thought that Labor would retain control of the Council?
Just updated my data to the 17:00PM data and teh same results DLP wins the fifth… William I can send you my detailed count sheet but to post here would look very messy….
The gap in favour of the DLP is widening. DLP wins…
Um, I still get Labor winning if you treat all the votes as ticket votes. I have the detailed distribution published on the ABC website. You tell me what’s wrong with those calculations. Are you making some assumptions about the votes yet to be counted?
If you can give me a site where I can FTP down my web data and distibution count I will be happy to make it available
Here is the main conjunction points as I see it…
DLP Primary 9158 (2.50%)
DLP collects from PP now on (3.31%)
DLP collects from CA now on (4.26%) FF 4.0%
DLP collects from FF now on (8.26%) NP (7.34%)
DLP collects from NP now on (16.60%) ALP (8.62%) GRN (9.13%)
DLP collect from ALP and is elected…
Antony???
I will email my count sheet and dicuss in detail off line you can phone me… I do a slightly different distribution of teh BTL data but effective the same as a full blown tciket asumption. the gap is too wide.
be carefull there is a VEC data-entry problem associated with the DLP…
By the way Melb City, your assumption that there are more Green votes below the line locked into the ticket total is incorrect. Most of Labor’s below the line votes are with Elaine Carbines or the first two candidates on the Labor ticket. There will be more Green votes leak out of the ticket than Labor votes.
Antony I have sent my count and contact number
what percentage do you have FF… DLP and ALP GRN??
They will have to leave the Greens first. They are locked in the same with Carbines. Carbines are freed up at the end.. Greens never get excluded.
A majority of BTL votes stay within teh group and only when they leave the group do they break ticket and even them a majority follow the brao thrust and direction of the ticket. I treat all the Below the lines as 1. Goring down teh goup list then back up the list so that the head of the list is last (With the exception of the lead candiadte of course). There is logic in this but I wont go throught it now as it does not effect the outcome as I see it. My fold upo is as outlined above where do we differ??
There would have to be a major correctioin to the only the night throw. over a 1000 votes. But hey we are talking about the VEc who don’t even klnow how many postal votes were issue.. of if they do they are not telling anyone… I have had numerous compliants about that one..
There were earlier reports that teh ALP preferences go to the Greens before the DLP I have checked the VEC published HTV toickets and the DLP is on 10 and the Greens 15.. Did the VEC publcih the wrong data?? Can you veryify???
perhaps we should all just wait until the VEC finish their count. i spent today scutineering and they really are being very meticulous.
Not sure if my last post got on. I still can’t see how from an initial count of Labor on 9.03% beyond the second quota, and the Greens on 8.42 including the Socilialist Alliance, how you manage to get the Greens ahead of Labor at the key point that would elect the DLP. That requires 2,100 BTL votes, when if you exclude ALP, LIB and GRN BTLs, there are only a total of about 3,800.
Hold on.. Did you find teh data-entry error in the VEc group name…
I am still pointing to the Medialite file which I have updated I can repoint it ot the verbose file… both are the same date…
I’m just taking the data off the website. And I got the same result today when I used the xml files.
Hmmm The Greens below the line vote is not as strong as first indicated. It is close..
Antony do you have the lower house data for the regions. How many votes does the VEc have in otal of the lower house?
Melb City: can you explain this DLP data entry problem ? I have access to the VEC website as well and I get the same result as Antony (ALP slightly ahead).
How do you know it’s a data problem and how do you fix it ?
All my errors so far have resolved themselves as my own programming problems. Everytime I loaded the VEC data on Sunday, which I did three times, Labor won the last Western Victoria seat. I loaded the data once today, and typed it from the website tonight and still had Labor winning. One the results on the VEC website, I just can’t see on those votes how you get the Greens ahead of Labor.
There is a VEC dataentry msinatch in their medialite data in the DLP name.
I had to change their entry from
group_fullname
D.L.P.- DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY
changed to
group_fullname
D.L.P. – DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY
This error is still there…
It is a close race and yes I think the ALP will beat the Greens. This is tyhe key to the outcome…
I don’t use the group name, I pull all the data out by ballot position and whack it into my database, then accumulate it by group.
Do we have any information where the J-Independeants votes go??
Are all the postals counted yet? Very frustrating not know which data is in and which is out…. WHY the VEC did not publish the booths results I fail to understand or agree with…
Why is the VEC still reporting that not all booths are in and which ones are still outstanding…. All te lower hosue booths were in on the night…
I can. Their IT people were horrified at the extra work load it involved when I chatted to them. The Victorian files are all quite neat compared to the vast volumes of data the NSW Electoral Commission propose to chuck at the media on election night after having decided to go down the booth by booth path.
Antony I will do liwise and rebuild my dataset based only on the meda verbose ata file. .. but I am still seeing that data-entry/data quaility issue with the DLP name. Missing space…
There are 1,744 upper house counted and about 672 to go. There were around 1,700 polling places at the election, plus another 600 or so E-Centre booths. All these E-Centre votes had to be tallied and sent back to the returning officers for the home district. It looks to me like they’ve put in all the lower house e-centre votes. These e-centre votes are only a tiny number in total despite there being hundreds of booths involved. The turnout figure in each region suggests only the declaration votes are to come, and the big gap in booth numbers is explained by the e-centres. As usual, the order of counting and data entry has been lower hous primaries, lower house preferences, then upper house.
The e-centerd votes is an issue and the system should have been deisgned to show these votes up seperately. Where can we get hold of the e-voting ceneter data?
Where is there a list of all the polling places recorded and why is it that all the lowerhouse polling place data is in bit not all of the upper-house polling places. Is there a strement of record on the number of absentee votes and postal votes issued. This is not difficult data and should have been tallied by now… This election is notable more for what data is missing then what has been reported. It would have to be one of teh worst managed elections I have seen… The AEC certainly does better and is more open and transparent.
Do we have any data on the absentee votes recieved/issued. Same for Postals I know they have not been counted as yet but the number of ballot envelopes should have been counted amnd this data made available bvefore they proceeded to opening the ballot papers. Without this data you have no way of knowing what has been counted and what is outstanding. I know the Chief Commissoner is from SA and his experiance in running larger electuins is limited BUT… this is basic infromation that should and in the past was available… Why is it not availble now…
As I understand it that teh e-voiting center data is considered as an ordinary vote or a prepoll/absentee vote. Its hard to say becase it is not seperatly categorised. Another issue…
Go to bed, Melbcity. Trust in the Great Braxy, and all will be well in the morning.
Antony you are reporting pretty vague figuras there and it seams that you are having to make a lot of assumptions. I know I am having to second guess a lot of missing information.
The VEC should have published on its website all of this data.
The result should have contained polling booth data. The number of postal votes issued, absentee and pre-polling votes issued per district should have also been available, progressive tallys if nessassary, well before these votes are opened and counted.
The issuing of postal votes closed on Thursday and pre-polling on the Friday night.
They should have known the number of ballot papers issued prior to the election on Saturday, there is no excuse. Why was this information not available on the web site and not available to candidates, scrutineers, campaign managers and the public?
The conduct of this count is unsatisfactory is akin to the pea under the shell game where the game master lifts up one shell and shoes you that the ball is not under the one chosen but he failed to show you what’s under the other shells. Its like trying to drive around Australia with a world map with no distance or scale indicators.
Without a doubt this is one of the worst managed and unaccountable counts in recent time. I will certainly be highlighting all these issues in a submission to the Parliament following the declaration along with my concerns that the VEC had accessed and pre-counted e-voting ballot prior to Saturday’s poll and without scrutineers present or the publication of the vote data file. Highly questionable and definitely inappropriate.
What is clear about Western Victoria is that the fifth spot is either going to the DLP or the ALP. If the Green vote out pols the ALP the DLP are elected on ALP preferences. If the ALP out pols the Greens the ALP is elected on Green preferences. The only other close conjunction is the LP with Family First which if Family First out-poll the DLP plus minor preferences then the National Party could be elected… and whats worst we have no idea what is in and what is outstanding in terms of location or types o the vote. No idea of the number of postal votes issued, pre-polling votes issued or absentee votes issued. We do know whats been counted but not from where. An auditors night mare. Does the VEC use the same auditors as the Liberal Party?
Its only 5PM too early to sleep
The Greens vote is lower then expeceted and Yes are present they are behind the ALP buit then there are more booths anmd ostal vptes to be counted. the Greens are shgowing a strong below the line vote. It is difficult to know where that goes but you can assume that it will stay within the group. No one thought the DLP would be the last standing (Other then the Speaker) and there is a lot of missing data and a number of votes outstanding and knowone knows how many postal votes had been issued before Staturday… It is close and too many unkown variables. the VEc has left us in teh dark and the system is not open and transparent. candidates, scrutineers and the media don’t know this information. information that should be published an readily available. an auditors nightmare.
Whilst I have not got any information on whats in and wait waiting to be recorded. I assume that they are still waiting to some of the remote rural votes? I am surprised that they have not recorded this data given that all of the lower house polling place data is in… if the votes to be counted are from the rural section and absentees these should favour the Lib/NP and DLP… FF are falling below the earlier 4% mark. The Green vote is dropping and the ALP is now ahead of the Greens Earlier they were behind. This sort of change is expect but again without knowing whats in and what’s still waiting &*^&*^%
I would love to know who was the idiot that decided not to publish the polling booth data. Previous elections including the Senate all this data was available…
If the data load was too much for the ABC then the VEC should have produced two separate data files.
The VEC has an obligation that goes beyond information the media. It is about openness and transparency
Will the polling booth data be readily available after the event or do we have to FOI them again?
It just BS, in future I trust those in the loop will recommended full disclose in the interest of maintaining of an open an transparent election process and that includes producing data on the number of postal votes, pre-poll ballots issued along with electronic votes being separated from the rest of the count.
The issue of the VEC accessing the e-voting data before the close of the poll raises a number of issues of ongoing concern about the secretary of the system of electronic voting that’s been implemented. What mechanisms are in place to ensure that the results are true and accurate and subject to effective and proper scrutiny? The world was told that Florida’s elections were a true and accurate account, but there was no way to verify the fact.
The recent mid term elections in the USA also highlight a number of issues. Our system is a little different. We have a a preferential voting system, one of the worlds best and most democratic. With preferential voting the need to provide the preference data used to calculate the results is crucial. Even more so when it involves a third party data-entry process. I have looked at the system and whilst there are some mechanisms in place to limit some data=entry problems it still is open and susceptible to errors.
In previous election counts the VEC would not do a preliminary manual throw of preferences preferring to jump in and start the data-entry.
The VEC refusal to do a manual first pass throw was a nightmare as it made it extremely difficult to monitor the accuracy of the computerised data-entry count. Another check digit removed. A preliminary throw of the BTL votes not only helps with analyzing the outcome of the election but it also assists in the data-entry and scrutiny of the ballot. Scrutineers can decide which votes are of interest and devote resources accordinally. (We had the absurd situation where if there was 20 candidates and 20 data-entry personal up to 400 scrutineers would have been required to scrutinise the data-entry process) Without a preliminary manual distribution scrutineers were denied the right to effectively monitor the various processes.
Unlike the VEC the AEC also provided information on the informal vote which was included in the data-set they provided. This was very interesting and useful as votes of interest could be identified, pulled out and rechecked.
In providing copies of the data-set, Scrutineers are afforded the opportunity of undertaking independent analysis of the data as the count unfolds. Various queries that would not normally be undertaken by the electoral office can be ran against the data highlighting votes of interest that could then be subject to a secondary glance and review.
Most of the issues discussed above diminish if and when we remove the third-party data-entry process altogether and voters record their vote directly but new additional issues of concern begin to rise with votes being recorded in real time. Issues such as the electorate office undertaking a preliminary count of the vote prior to the close of the poll. (As appears to have been the case in this election)
Electronic voting machines MUST be fitted with write once read only recording devices so that we can be confident that the data has not been hacked into from a central location out in cyberspace. Copies of this data and the backup disk must be made available to scrutineers at the close of the poll. Each unit must also be stand alone and not be reliant on a central data connection. The last thing you want is someone with access to this data recording information, unknown to others misusing that data by either changing a few preferences or selling the information to interested parties (Political and commercial). At the conclusion of the count a certified and digitally signed data copy of all votes and preferences MUST be published as part of the declaration procedures.
The issues that have been identified in America are the same here and world wide. The more elections move into e-Space the greater the significance in the provision of data in order to ensure that the election process remains open and transparent and is subject to independent public scrutiny. Without this information, as has been evident in this count, the public and scrutineers are left in the dark.
Previous elections polling booth and the number of ballot papers issued were available and should have been in this election.
Does anyone knwo what booths are still to come in.. This is like walking around in a London fogg. Tne number of politicans and their camaoign managers from all sides complaining about issues related to the poll is at an all time high. Somehow I think Tully’s contract will not be renewed… Its a bt like having a flopp on breadway on your opening night. people never forget the main stars.
Reports at hand “The VEC has said they won’t provide electronic files to scrutineers” Chief Commissioner Steve Tully does not intend to be held accountable or maintain an open and transparent election system,. Looks like we will have to go down the FOI track again to get information to get hold of information that should have been provided in the first place. This is a direct abuse of his duties and obligations. We will also petition Parliament to intervene and to ensure that the detailed election results are published. Shameful really. If Mr Tully can not provide an open and transparent electoral system then Parlament should consider sacking him.
We will write to the Speaker of the Lower House and the The President with copies to Rob Hulls, Minister responsible for the Electoral Office to express our concerns and our ongoing complaints.
Right, here’s the info you are after MelbCity. It’s actually not hard to get if you ask the VEC. All the booths are counted. The outstanding booths are simply the e-centres, which they are recording as separate booths in each district. (I think they should be bundled into a single total persoanlly, but that is the VEC’s appraoch.) That is why the count is above 80% with all booths not reporting. The E-centres are a tiny number of votes. Most of the postals and early votes will be entered today. They’ve been counted, but the entry has been delayed by work on sorting out the lower house. The Absent votes will probably start being counted late today or tomorrow. It always takes time for Absent votes to be returned to their home district for counting.
The VEC will be publishing the final details by booth, though it is more likely it will be made available in Excel spreadsheets than in book form.
Many of the e-centre booths have zero votes, but they have yet to be flagged as having reported. Think about it. How many electronic votes for Gippsland South or Nepean are going to be recorded at the Shepparton E-Centre.
Ok guys so who won the last seat in Western?
as for the lower house Tammy at Gembrook has got over 200 extra but the guy is asking for a recount, wishful thinking Simon. NMaxine in mount waverley will hold on by 130 votes but I guess a recount will happen there too.
Morwell I think to the nats
I have just received advise from scrutineers and others that Steve Tully is refusing to make available relevant data files for independent analysis.
This information is not confidential and is a public document. If need be we will make an application under FOI immediately following the declaration to the poll.
We will also be following up with a petition to the Parliament early 2007.
Mr Tully’s refusal to provide this information is an abuse of process and continues to bring the conduct of the 2006 State Election into disrepute.
- copy of our first letter was sent off today to all parties, media and candidates.
We ask for your support in ensuring that this action and future elections are open and transparent and that detailed information and election results are published accordinally.
The Speaker and President and members of the Victorian State Parliament
Good Governance.
Request for urgent action and review to ensure Victoria’s elections remain open and transparent and that detailed election results are placed on the public record.
I have just received advice from scrutineers and other interested persons that the Victorian Chief Electoral Commissioner, Mr Steve Tully, has refused to make available detailed election results and relevant computer data for scrutiny and impendent review.
It is fundamental and essential to good governance that our public elections are open and transparent and that all available information is placed on the public record.
Mr Tully’s refusal to provide this information has brought the Victorian Electoral Office and the conduct of the State Election into disrepute.
.
This information is a public document and is available under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act and was previously available in past State and Municipal elections.
If need be an FOI application will be made in order to secure this information but this should not be necessary and if required would be an abuse of process on behalf of the Victorian Electoral Commission. There is no legal limitations or requirements that prevents this information being published and made available to members of the public.
Whilst Mr Tully currently has no direct statutory obligation to provide this information it is clearly in the public interest that this information is published and readily available to members of the public.
I hereby request that the Parliament take appropriate steps to ensure that Victoria Victoria’s elections are open and transparent and that all relevant detailed computerised election results are published in electronic form accordingly.
The information required should include (where appropriate for both the upper and lower-houses of Parliament and Municipal Council’s)
1. all voting centre/polling booth returns, candidates primary and above-the-line data and any electronic data-file containing detailed voters preference allocations.
2. the number of ballot papers that were issued prior to the election and the number return.
If necessary to avoid a repeat of this disgraceful situation where access to election results are denied to scrutineers and the public that the State Parliament legislate to so as to make it mandatory for the Victorian Electorate to provide access to this information during and as part of the procedures for the declaration of the poll. This information must be provided in a timely fashion and readily made available on request and/or published on the Electoral Commission’s Internet site.
I seek you urgent attention and action on the above issue in the interest of good governance, and the conduct of open and transparent elections.
Should you require further information I can be contacted via return email
Yours sincerely
Anthony van Der Craats
http;//melbournecitycouncil.blogspot.com
cc media, candidates and other interested persons
Current figures are showing Labor is ahead of the Greens in Western Victoria and as such Labor will most likely be elected BUT much depends on the flow of below-the-line preferences.
there are also other close function points between Family First and the DLP the DLP and the National Party with a number of polling places still outstanding it can not be stated for sure who will win. We have to wait and see. Its a bit like the con mans trick of three shells and a ball. You select on shell and he shows you the ball is not under it but refuses to lift up the remaining shells or show you where the ball is located.
We may never know where and how those preferences were allocated as the Chief Commissioner is refusing to make this information available to scrutineers or the public…
Anthony that is not the advice we have received and I am more interested in the below-the-line preference data which should and must be made available to scrutineers in the first instance and a certified digitally signed copy published on the VEC web site. I have been informed that Mr Steve Tully has indicted that this information will not be available. I have contacted the relevant Ministers and members of parliament who are looking into this issue. Many who are puzzled as to why Mr Tully will not make this information available. There is already legal precedence on this issue. I will drag out the link to the 1999 VCAT hearing which clearly stated that this is a public documenta and must be available to the public.
Mr Tully’s refusal to provide this information continues to bring the conduct of this election into disrepute. there are also a host of other complaints that have been forwarded to me and we are looking into them. non of which effect the result but go to the heart of maintaining an open and transparent election process.
E-viting should have been flaged down as separate voting type in the same way as they treat postal. pre-poll and absentee votes. We have asked for this informatino and Mr Tully has refused to provide it. we also asked for the number of postal votes that had been issued and the VEC was unable to provide this basic infornmation.
Centaur,
I agree with your assessment on Gembrook. The trend since Saturday and the end of booth counting has been towards Tammy Lobato – margin 285 and going away.
Mount Waverley is the only seat where new figures have been added in the recent updates, and Maxine Morand has turned a 130 deficit into a 106 lead. Depending on whether this sets a trend or volatility of late votes continues, she looks in a good position to hold. We’re still sweating on further figures in Ferntree Gully and Kilsyth.
Antony has the Government only losing 4 seats which is less then the media is reporting. I must admit it is better the my estimates. There was a clear firming up of voter intentions in the last week possible the last day.
Anyone wondering about the legality of publishing the detailed elections results including the voter preference data here is VCAT ruling.
It was heard by senior VACT member Mr McNamara who ruled in my favour without reserving his decision or the need for me to give my right of reply to to the City of Melbourne’s false arguments. the City of Melbourne acting on instruction from Alison Lyons, legal Officer, spent over $60,000.00 trying to avoid disclosure of the Council’s election results. It would have cost them less then $1.00 for the price of a floppy disk or nothing if they emailed it. It was a disgrace and something that should never be allowed to happen again. An abuse of process. Looks like Tully is heading down the same track. I might need to talk to PILCH this time instead of representing myself.
VACT Ref: (You can find it on the Internet via Google)
Victorian Civil Appeals Tribunal in 1999 (van der Craats v City of Melbourne [2000] VCAT 447 (29 January 2000) VICTORIAN CIVIL AND ADMINISTRATIVE TRIBUNAL General List No. 1999/057919)
ferntree gully gone and so is Kilsyth. I had narracan and morwell down on my predictions. I only got Gembrook wrong and had Bass swinging back.
The nearly DLP in upper is most annoying. I will be voting below the line in future, they are family first with a different name.
As for the recreational group REG it smells of dummy to me 1 2 thornley 3. Hmm a small investment from a rich man to ensure the seat.
Centaur,
I don’t concur with your view that Ferntree Gully and Kilsyth are gone, any more than I consider Mount Waverley is held, given the current margins and the outstanding votes.
I do agree that the most likely outcomes are Mount Waverley to Labor, and the other two to be Liberal gains. While I now class Gembrook as a Labor hold, I think the other three should probably still be regarded as “in doubt”.
I always vote below the line and above just to make sure…
I have just noticed that the VEC has published limited information on the polling place place results for each of the districts. Missing is the upper-house and 2CP assessment for each polling place.
Why this information was not available on the night and why there is not data on the upper-house per polling place I fail to understand or accept.
There are a lot of people asking a lot of questions and the post-mortem is not favourable other then the result of course. Well for some…
As I said earlier, Toorak Ted needed a minimum of ten gains to claim a respectable result. As it is, he only has three – Evelyn, Hastings and Narracan, plus Morwell for the Nats. He will probaby also get Kilsyth and Ferntree Gully, and he might get Mt waverley and Gembrook. Even if he gets all of them that’s only seven for the Libs – a poor result by any standard. I spent the day on the booth at East St Kilda, and I can report that working-class voters were totally unimpressed by the Two Toffs from Toorak – Ted and Clem Newton-Brown – with their balloons and tee-shirts and gimmicks. Dumb and patronising, they said.
Adam,
You missed Bayswater in your list of Liberal gains, but I think you’re on the money with your assessment. The Libs will certainly need to make good use of the (limited) new blood which they now have; a four-year term before another shot at the title must be a dispiriting prospect and may well lead to a continuation of the faction-fighting which has hampered the Victorian Liberals since 1999 (not an unknown experience for Labor in Opposition).
In this morning’s Age Tim Colebatch has an interesting comparison between the Baillieu Liberals in 2006 and Brumby Labor in 1996. Brumby’s quite effectiveness in carving out territory for Labor before handing over to Bracks was critical to what has happened since.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/tim-colebatch/the-ghosts-of-polls-past/2006/11/27/1164476130441.html
evelyn, hastings, kilsyth, bayswater, ferntree gully, narracan and morwell to the nats. I make it 7.
Yes not really good enough with big swings in the held seats. Labor has to deliver on the promises because mark my words inactivety will see them booted out at 2010. If people don’t see the schools improved and the water situation adressed then at the next election Prahran, Mt.waverley, gembrook, Burwood, Mordialloc, Frankston and a swag of country seats will go
Oops I missed Bayswater, so that makes 7 probable gains. I agree with Centaur’s views on the risk for Labor in a third term unless the government delivers, particularly on the fix-the-schools policy and the water crisis.
The Coalition (when they join up, not if) are now in a completely comparable situation to Labor in 1996, except for the amount of potential gains in country Victoria.
Tuesday 28, 11:37AM Western Victoria Update:
The conjunction point between FF and the DLP is very close and a drift of preferences way from the DLP could see Family First rise above the DLP at present Family First (3.92%) and the DLP (4.06%) at the conjunction.
That’s close.
The ALP is comfortably ahead of the Greens at this point. But it is difficult to know A) what’s missing in the data and B) what the below the line preferences are doing.
This is the first optional preferential ballot in Victoria and many of the Green and other parties below the line votes could exhaust.
The other conjunction point between the National Party and the DLP is just as close with the DLP (8.0%) and the NP (7.9%). The DLP relies on preferences from the minor parties whose BTL vote could also exhaust.
Its a question of who is voting for who below the line… The combined ALP (9.04%) and Green (8.41%) at the third conjunction vote should see the Alp overt the line but again it depends on the BTL voting pattern. With optional preferential voting we could see things either stay the same or a dramatically altered position.
This is new territory and like mushrooms we are left in the dark and feed…
Antony Green has the Liberal and one ind winning only 4 seats. The liberals had a slight swing against them in the last week not sure what happened there maybe they reacted to the gimmicky publicity stunts.
It most definitely is not a good win for the Liberal Party. Third terms are always the hardest. The fourth term could become like a comfortable slipper. Maybe voters felt that labor is doing OK, no major controversy and given that John Howard has complete control in Canberra its best to stick to the Government we have and provide a check and balance. But that assumes the electorate is an thinking and intelligent entity. After all, all on this blog are election junkies.
The electorate think with their pockets and, 10% overall but over 50% in some areas have necks that are red raw and there’s not much upstairs.
A federal change from Beazeley will see a labor win but we have to act quickly. The dream team was mentioned in the age and I believe it will strike a cord, Rudd looks like a young Howard but is also very smart.
Of course we all know that they will be keeping the seat warm for Baron Bill….the next labor prime minister unless bomber goes early.
WE CAN’T AFFORD TO VOTE FOR THE COALITION(foreign debt, highest taxing government, international reputation, 36th ranked health system OECD, xenophobia, race wars, iraq war, AWB kickback etc etc…)
Anyone wish to give us an update on the Thornley V Southwick contest? Southwick appears to be closing the gap.
I think Rudd is very intelligent but I am not sure if he has that common touch. In my opinion the best prime-minister was Paul Keating. I guess we only get one good prime-minister per generation. I think Gillard is capable but she does not have the broad faction support. Beasly is just yesterday’s bread. Not really inspirational.
Yes Keatings got my vote too but will he come down out of renovations? I doubt it.
Why not legislate (on the German model) that parties cannot be elected to the Legislative Council with less than 5% of the primary vote in their electorate this would end the corrupt preference-selling and buying game by the microparties and the majors.
Centuar 007
LOL actually foreign debt was highest under the last labor government, you might be confusing it with the current account deficit, which has very little to do with the government.
Total taxes are higher, because total GDP is higher, Australia has one of the worst indirect tax system of all OECD country, that is the results of things like land tax, payroll tax, excise tax, etc, which are the domain of state governments, which Howard had tried to get rid of. Australia does have one of the highest top marginal individual tax rates, which can create a skill drain, but the Labor party has complained about the cuts in tax rate and increase in threshold the last two times, so they are unlikely to do anything there.
Race war, what race war, I did not know we are in Indonesia, US, Iran, Africa, Iraq or Israel. If you think Australia is bad, you need to go overseas. Also you might want to invent a policy which stop anyone being racist.
Iraq war, it is ok for Sadaam to kill 1million people over 5 years, there was little outcry over that.
Health system, health is a state government issue, The only role federal government has is allocating spending and the private health care system and you cannot complain about taxes and spending on health at the same time. The state governments have record GST revenue at the moment, yet in NSW, VIC, SA and QLD, the % of budget spending on healthcare had decrease from when the labor government were voted in.
AWB kick back, well they were clear for that. Even if everyone knew everything. For me, I do not see it a crime to help Australian farmers; there is many more shady way of doing business.
I would be really surprise if Beasley get voted in
a. he is incompetent
b. as shown in QLD and NSW next year, when time are good, people do not vote out a governments. The government has to be more than incompetent and must be hated by everyone for them to be voted out.
centaur_007: there are no swing voters on this site, so there’s no use Politicking.
Peter Fuller thanks for the article mate – v.good
Geoff I like the German model of no less than 5% but why stop there and use NZ’s model… that way major parties who win most seats are forced to work with minors- which is more democractic [I think this unicameral electorate/list system should be used in Tasmania] and yet again why stop there and introduce the Robson rotation to all jurisdictions… that’ll make a fairer system than currently in place [yes im dreaming]
Lucky Bracks… in comparison to the good ol’ year of 1996… it was the same year that undid Goss from -yet again- a freeway decision which hurt in the Logan Areas during the 1995 QLD Election. At least Bracks was able to minimise the damage. I wonder how much will be left over from the Cross-City Tunnel for the NSW Labor Govt? Probably safe to say that Clover Moore well remain Bligh MP due to this blunder on the Govt behalf.
I won’t even pretend to understand all the machinations of counting for the Victorian Upper House.
Thanks all for the comments: a very intelligent bunch of political junkies!
Looking like a very healthy majority for Bracks in the Lower House, and maybe control of the Upper House too?
Good Luck Evan Thornley – no, it’s not me, but I hope my namesake makes it.
Adam raise St Kilda booths, I have had a look at VEC website with booth results, and I note the Greens beat the Liberals in several booths at the St Kilda end of Prahran,
I agree with Centaur the next election will be fought in Prahran, Mt.waverley, Gembrook, Burwood, Mordialloc, Frankston and Forrest Hill.
The seats in Ballarat are around 6%, Seymour is 6% and the seats around Bendigo and South Barwon will also be more marginal next time, and one other thing, there should be a redistribution within the next 4 years, this will change things further.
Has was reported in today’s Age, the result looks like 1996 where the ALP got some really big swings, but in the wrong seats.
Well done to the Bracks Government on being returned.
Have today’s figures clarified the situation in West Vic, or helped confirm Thornley’s position in South Metro?
As at the latest update on the ftp site, just after 5 pm, the result in Western Vic still shows the ALP beating out the DLP.
Before GRNs go out, the result in excess quotas is
GRN 0.506
ALP 0.542
DLP 0.952
The gap of about 2060 votes seems a bit hard to make up. As far as I know, the Greens are scrutineering the BTL, but I don’t know the results (and probably not in WVIC, anyway). On Sat night, ALP scrutineers in WMET reported that their BTL vote was “splitting 50:50″ when it left the ALP, which I took to mean between GRN and Coalition. If that happened for ALP candidates 1 & 2, then ALP leakage to the Greens could put the DLP over the line. Ironic.
In the Assembly, a recount is going on for the booth vote and all the Ordinary Votes have been reset to zero in quite a few electorates. This will peeve some people.
Why would the ALP BTL vote leave the ALP before it went through ALP candidiates 3, 4 and 5? If it does not it remains in the ALP quota and has no effect on the respective positions of the ALP and the Greens.
Adam,
Elaine Carbines (3rd on the Labor ticket) will win Western Victoria. The count is over 85% complete, and after preferences my estimate of her current margin is over 3,000 votes.
Evan Thornley is in front and will probably take the last spot (Greens Sue Pennicuik will be 4th elected). In Southern the count is only 74% complete, the trend has been in favour of his Liberal rival David Southwick, and his margin is a skinnier 1,430. So the conclusion about Thornley is much more tentative. There’s a lot riding on it as he will provide Labor’s 21st Legislative Council seat completing the majority, if he is successful.
This analysis assumes that BTL preferences will approximately follow party ticket preferences – or more correctly that the variations employed by BTL voters will cancel out (e.g. Greens who prefer Liberal to Labor will be offset by FF voters who go the other way). If significant numbers of BTL PP, Greens or Democrats prefer Southwick to Thornley, ET may miss out.
The ALP BTL vote won’t matter. They are mostly with Carbines anyway, so doen’t have an opportunity to leak out of the ticket.
If they are with Carbine they are locked in. Odds are that other ALP BTL will stay within the ALP in which case they also are locked in with Carbine. But it depends on how many of the green BTL votes exaughst and do not travel beyond the Greens. No one knows and the Chief Commissioner has indicated that he will not be making the preference data file available for independent scrutiny. (A direct contribition to legislation and obligation to ensure the election process is subject to proper scutiny. Without access to this data it is virtually impossible to scutinize the count.) An absolute disgrace.
Southern Metro. Simmilar situtation and aagin depoends on what percentage is spliting and or exaughtsing. The other issue is noone knows whats going on whats to be counted and how any opostal votes were issued. We should know what back but again this information is not available. Scutineers are telling me they have not been given this information and have been denied access to the preference data file.
Have they counted the 7000 odd postal/prepoll votes from Caulfield and how did they flow? Expected to be against the ALP
The VEC still has not corrected the data-entry/data wuaility error in relation to the DLP’s goup name. (Missing a space) I have to manually correct this every time I do a down load.
A rough calculation shows that if the Legislative Council had been elected under the old system, Labor would have won 10 seats, which added to the 17 they won in 2002 would have given them 27 seats out of 44, enough to lose a few in 2010 and still keep control. I can’t recall such an act of political self-sacrifice as Labor’s reform of the Council in all the annals of party political history.
Chris Curtis asks:Why would the ALP BTL vote leave the ALP before it went through ALP candidiates 3, 4 and 5? If it does not it remains in the ALP quota and has no effect on the respective positions of the ALP and the Greens.
Stuff Happens
There is a distinct tendency to vote across the columns and this can have a critical effect in some cases. It particularly happens with the #1 candidates when they are high-profile people. In a Local Council election here in Sydney 38% of the BTL vote for a #1 candidate in one party preferenced a #1 of another party as their #2. This wouldn’t matter if the 2nd #1 were elected at the first count, but it would matter if if the 2md #1 were in a party later excluded. In the instance I cited, it changed the make-up of a Council from 7:5 to 6:6. (This was, however, partly a consequence of a candidated being excluded because of neing elected Mayor. It nevertheless revealed how common “across the top” can be.)
In numerical terms in WVIC, a leakage like the above from the ALP #1 in could see 38% * 0.60 (=TV) *6140 Madden votes leak away. That’s 1415 votes, in a situation where 2,000 will make the difference
Is this the Chris Curtis who contested Diamond Valley for the DLP in 1974 1975 and 1977?
Key conjunction points
Lib surplus (2.16%) increasing to 2.23% with BTL before elimination
ALP surplus (8.88%) increasing to 9.06% with BTL over half a quota (16.67%)
NP from 5.3% increasing to (7.91%) with BTL + preferences before elimination
DLP (4.07%) FF(3.92%)
DLP (7.98%) NP (7.91%)
ALP (9.06%) GRN (8.4%)
Much depends on how many BTL only list five and exaughst. Unkown factor. Still not sure what is outsstanding. Absentee/ More postals/Booths?? An Auditor/scrutineers nightmare.
Adam, Its not self-sacrifice but self interest. The concentration of the Labor vote in Western Melbourne, meant that under the old system the party was disadvantaged. If they would only have won 10 out of 22 this time with 54-55% of the 2PP that does that show? It means barring an earthquake of 2002 proportions they would be in permanent minority.
– as in fact they were.
Now either alone or with the Greens, the left can expect to be in majority in most occasions, as per the federal senate from 1981-2004. Better to have the Greens with the balance than be in permanent minority to the conservatives.
I don’t see any self-sacrifice in that.
To all those critics that dismissed the Senate profiling think again with the exception of FF which increased by 1% point and PP who were unknown but took away from the DEM much of the other minor parties including the Greens votes more or less the same way in the 2004 senate..
I agree with your point about the 2PP and the unfairness of the old electoral system, but there are two ways of looking at the new situation. Labor does not want to share a political space called “the left” with the Greens. Labor is a party of the centre, and being dependent on the Greens in the Council can only force Labor to the left, which is of course the path to defeat. Recall the fate of the Field government in Tas. The Greens are a polarising party – 10% love them, 90% hate them, and this is alliance Labor must avoid. Thanks to Bracks Labor has avoided that fate for now.
Incidentally it is very instructive that despite the best efforts of the Age and the ABC to hype them up, the Greens actually lost votes. 10% seems to be their absolute ceiling vote.
Adam,
10% is now base vote. (the glass is half full).
Remember that 6 groups actively leafletted against us, while Labor ran a very effective campaign pretending that Greens preferenced Libs.
I can tell you now that that campaign had a huge effect. I was on the ground at a booth that recorded a 30% vote for the Greens. But still had at least 1 in 10 go in saying they weren’t voting Green on the basis of Labor’s campaign.
If it hit us hard at one of our best polling booths, imagine the damage it did in other areas.
Now to see how long Labor can cry wolf and get away with it.
Adam,
Yes, I am the Chris Curtis who contested Diamond Valley in 1974, 1975 and 1977 – and don’t forget Greensborough in the 1973 and 1977 by-elections and Templestowe Province in 1973. Are you Adam Carr (with the election results website)?
Re your post on the balance of power and the Greens: I am sure the ALP would prefer to have a majority in its own right in the Legislative Council, but, if that is not to be, I bet there are a few hardheads who would prefer the balance of power in the hands of the DLP rather than the Greens. Irony or ironies: the Libs refuse twice (1973 and c2000) to live up to their promise to the DLP to bring in PR; this deprives the Libs of any influence on the details of the system and helps destroy the DLP; with the DLP out of the way, the ALP does bring in PR; and the DLP (which actually voted itself out of existence in 1978) gains the balance on ALP preferences.
bmwofoz
St Kilda is very strong Green territory and we tend to win booths on preferences.
Adam’s booth if it was East St Kilda was quite high too.
My booth St Kilda priomary was roughly 30-32% for each electorate (Albert Park, Caulfield, Prahran). around 5000 voters.
Bring on the redistribution.
Hello Dinesh, are you back in Melbourne? I think you are wrong, if you look at the situation in Tas, or Germany for that matter, the Greens vote in most places reaches a ceiling and stays there. I don’t think the Aust Greens can advance beyond 10%.
Chris, yes it would be a fine irony if the current DLP (not your one, of course) held the balance in the Council courtesy of a Labor government, but I don’t think you’ve quite got there. And nor should you on 2.5% of the vote. I would have put in a 5% threshold as in Germany to prevent preference surfing of this kind. On your other point, yes I would much rather have the DLP hold the balance of power than the Greens. Labor will never lose an election by being dragged to the right. The fatal precipice is always to the left.
Adam,
Just to add another irony, I think the ALP is now to the right of the original DLP on some things; e.g., privatisation.
that’s why all the old Groupers are happily back in the ALP.
“old”?
You’d have to be pretty old by now to have been a Grouper
I agree with Adam that Labor was successful because it occupied the centre ground.
The results in Gippsland though are interesting because Labor lost heartland seats over local issues including water, greenhouse, local government and representation.
Country people respect Brumby and Bracks. They are suspicious though of the rest of the Labor Cabinet and if local issues are raised contrary to the government position they will support a viable alternative (ie Mildura and Morwell).
Let me assure you it was not self interest in bringing about the upper house reform. There were many who argued that it be delayed another term. We had the chance of changing it back in 1985 when the ALP had control of the upper-house for a brief period. Not enough to change the powers of the house but enough to change the electoral system. I had written a paper which argued for reform as an alternative to abolition which was the ALP policy at the time. To my surprise this paper was taken up by Evan Walker and later supported by John Cain. I was asked to do some more research and together with Henk van Leeuwen and later John Lenders we continued to do more research. The only reason it did not get though in 1985 was because Jean Maclean and George Crawford and other members of the left argued that they would only support reform if the power to block supply was removed. In reality it was about protecting their seat and not about the need for change. Anyway Cain realised he was not going to get it though as they indicated they would cross the floor and he devoted what time he had to push though IR issues and other legislation that did have support. Again the window of opportunity was short as we new they would call for a fresh election. Nunawading was one on a draw out of a hat.
We continued to do more research and considered issues such as entitlements and transitional arrangements. I felt and so did Evan that the best option was a swift and straight forward transition, others wanted a phase in approach, Half elected by PR and the other half to follow.
It was all academic at that time as we did not have control of the upper-house and unless we could persuade the National Party or some of the Liberal Party Members to support the change it was not going to go anywhere.
John Lenders was ALP Organiser later State Secretary and he was committed to the reform package along with John Brumby. Abolition was also still ALP policy at the time. Reform or abolish.
Looking back I think the campaign to save the auditor general had a profound impact on ALP thinking and When we came into government and later secured control of the upper house for the first time. John Lenders who was then Leader of the house steered the reform package though.
At first I recommended a 5 seat by nine member option and John Lenders favoured a five seat by 7 members with a reduction in the lower house to 75. but as time moved on and I was no longer involved in the policy (I was working in NSW and involved with the National Trust at the time) the proposal changed. It was considered to difficult to get agreement on the reduction of the lower house and as such the idea of increasing the upper house by even one member had a negative connotation about it. They wanted to be seen to reduce the size of the parliament and not increase it. I tried arguing that it was possible to have upper house boundaries that still matched in with the existing lower house boundaries but that two would have more lower house seats then the remaining three and still remain within the 5% tolerance.
As things turned out further negotiations resulted in the eight electorates five member option and a few other proposals that we new would not be supported by the commission because of obvious issues (Boundary division and the like) for some unknown reason to me the Five electorate model was not on the table when the commission met to consider all options.
I must admit I am disappointed about the five seat option not being adopted (Be it seven or nine member seats) as I thought it was the better of the various models in that it was an odd number of seats with an odd number of positions and and an odd number in total this there would always be a clear majority.
Options aside the current reform is most certainly better then the old single member two term system that was in place which had to go.
Whilst the reform started with Evan Walker and John Cain and to a lesser extent but also supported by Bill Landeryou who succeeded Evan as Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council it was John Lenders and John Brumby with support form Steve Bracks that really delivered on the reform package.
Victoria will be the better for it. It takes on average around 62,000 voters to elect a single member to the Legislative Council compared to around 34 thousand for the lower house. If you look at the results of this election you can see that the outcome mirrors the voters support and it is quite possible that the Liberal/NP Government would have secured control of both housed based on the 1992 and 1996 State elections. (Or even the 2004 Senate Vote).
This is a great historical event in Victorian political history only to have been married by the Chief Electoral Commissioner, Steve Tully, who has refused to make available important and necessary information. This data MUST and WILL be published with our without Mr Tull’s support and we will have it published if not sooner by the will of the Parliament by order of the courts/tribunal. Tully’s refusal to provide this information is not supported by anyone. He continues to do himself and the VEC as dis-service by bringing the conduct of this election into disrepute.
Antony Green at 8.35 p.m. :
“The ALP BTL vote won’t matter. They are mostly with Carbines anyway, so doen’t have an opportunity to leak out of the ticket.
My concern in my qualifying remarks (at 8.45 p.m.) is primarily about transfers from other candidates’ BTL votes, rather than within the Party groups (although as Geoff Lambert points out, even that assumption isn’t an absolute certainty).
For example, in Southern Metro (the only seat which I think is really in doubt) the Democrats have 3887 Group votes which will automatically go to Evan Thornley rather than David Southwick. Their three individual candidates have between them just over 1000 votes. These may prefer Thornley, prefer Southwick or exhaust before they are of use to either candidate. Evan is also relying on PP, Group C Independents and probably the Greens. My calculations have merely assumed that they these BTL votes will help Thornley. Correspondingly, I have assumed DLP and Family First BTL votes will go to Southwick.
This simplification will not matter unless there is a numerically significant tendency in either candidates’ direction, which is at odds with a party’s allocated preferences.
To be even more pedantic, I have disregarded the 239 votes of Myers the ungrouped candidate at the bottom of the ticket, as I have no way of knowing whther these votes ultimately prefer Southwick, Thornley or exhaust. It’s threatening to be close enough for those votes to matter.
Exactly. In Western Victoria if sufficent Green voets only vote 1-5 Green then who knows what the effect will be. Thornely klooks safe but as they say it aint over until the fat lady sings…
The VEC conduct of this electin is not the best.
Someone just wrote me saying that the VEC issued the wrong voting papers in Gembrook and it took them some time before they realised. Can anyone confirm this fact?
Update on the “Hold Tully accountable and ensure Victoria has an open and transparent electoral system” has gone international.
Not only have we contacted Rob Hulls office (Minister responsible for the VEC and FOI) we have also written to all member of parliament and candidates that stood for public office at Saturday’s election.
We have contacted a number of electoral advocacy groups in the USA and Europe highlighting the refusal of Steve Tully to provide an open and transparent electoral system.
The fact that the VEC accessed electronic voting data prior to the close of the poll is of considerable concern as the Mr Tully’s refusal to provide relevant and detailed information on the election results.
Without this information it is impossible to conduct a proper scrutiny of the ballot.
Mr Tully’s reputation is at stake and so is Victoria’ commitment to open and transparent democracy.
There still is time for Mr Tully to reconsider his refusal to make this information available. There is no legal issue preventing this information being made public only the desire of the Chief Commissioner to not be held accountable.
In Southern Metro, is seems the key issue is whether Evan Thornley gets to a quota before Family First is excluded. If that doesn’t happen, he’s going to have to go back to selling software.
Enough about Mr Tully already
I agree Adam – it seems a little repeatitive to me
The situation with some of the LC counts in Victoria, where a seemingly small shift in vote distribution from one party can produce an unexpected result in the contest between two others, contrary to perceptions based on primary support, is not that unusual. Although it could be labelled by psephologists as “perverseâ€, it is also true that no proportional representation system can be free from intransitivity (the “Condorcet phenomenonâ€); this intransitivity is more likely to show up in extreme situations or at “tip points†such as exist in a couple of Victorian LC seats right now.
Intransitivity is not even confined to PR- one can imagine a Federal Parliament in which a majority of seats were held by a party that had only 25% of the two party preferred vote.
PR is a bit like the Brownlow Medal count, where the weight of opinion, expressed by mass rankings, produces a result that is generally supported as being valid. PR has some well-known weakness, some discussed on Bludger a fortnight ago, but I don’t think the current Victorian counts are reflective of those weaknesses. Apart from Ticket rorting, that is.
The key points to come out of this first time PR in Victoria are:
1. Just like federally PR doesn’t stop control of the house being gained by one party. Federally this is more difficult because of an even number from each area being elected. In Victoria with 5 being elected, a high primary vote for both major parties will likely see 3-2 splits everywhere and minor parties shut out. This is much more likely to happen under a Coalition government than a ALP one. This would have been prevented by having 8 areas of 11 seats with 6 MLCs, or 11 areas of 8 seats with 4 MLCs. Unfortunately the fact that there are 88 lower house seats makes creating areas difficult.
2. When the conservative parties eventually do win office, it is highly likely that the ALP will be decimated in the Upper House. They will likely fall below 14 seats, winning one seat in Rural areas and South Eastern Melbourne areas. One could see a 24 LNP 13 ALP 1 GRN result occur at a election where the LNP wins 50-60 lower house seats.
The worst aspect of the new arrangement is the scrapping of overlapping terms, ie the whole upper house is elected at the same time as the whole lower house. This negates the whole point of an upper house, which is that it has a longer mandate than the lower house and can thus serve as a house of review. The new system perpetuates the worst aspect of the old, with the government controlling both houses and thus having no real legislative oversight. While the new arrangement has turned out to be in Labor’s short-term interest, as Howard says Labor will eventually lose office and will then lose the upper house as well. My preference would have been for the NSW system – the upper house being elected by statewide PR for overlapping eight-year terms, with a 5% threshhold to prevent preference surfing.
A point about the Nationals…
Antony Green wrote an article on the decline of the Nationals as demographics change and should eventually disappear. [I think the article was written late last year or earlier this year.] However, after gaining more lower house seats to being a total of 9, would one say the Nationals are on a comeback [if not nationally, just in Victoria] or was this an anamoly? Come 2010 it could be interesting to see how many rural seats Labor looses, and whether these go to the Liberals or Nationals… and if the Nationals can pick any from the Libs and viccie versa. I think for now the Nationals are here to stay, but I reckon they have just delayed their death. [Sounds a bit like the democrats to me - if they manage to keep MLCs in NSW and Senators federally.]
I think the main reason why we see “perverse” results such as the election of a Family First senator in 2004 or the possible election of a DLP MLC in 2006, is due to the institution of “ticket voting”.
It really is ridiculous how an entire party’s support can be lumped onto another candidate, when we all know that different voters will express preferences differently.
Compare this to the NSW upper house system, where I don’t think preferences decided a single position.
If you want to stop candidates being elected with ridiculously small amounts of votes, rather than setting an arbitrary bar of 5% (there is a massive difference between someone being elected with 4.5% and someone winning with 0.5%), you should abolish ticket voting.
Instead, voters may direct preferences, or not, above the line. So if you vote [1] Greens, your preferences only flow to the Greens candidates. If you wish you can then vote [2] Labor if you wish, and some would probably preference the Liberals second.
I think the Nats’ best chance of survival is to do what they did at this election; sell themselves as a sort-of-independent country voice distinct from the Liberals. This is especially the case when the Liberal leader is a city boy with few rural credentials.
The other advantage of this approach is the ability to localise the campaign in specific seats (which they did here in Morwell and Mildura), rather than being at the mercy of the statewide Liberal campaign.
Why is it taking the VEC so so long to started counting the “Absentee Votes” in the lower house???
There is at least 2500-3000 votes still outstanding in seats like Kilsyth, Mount Waverley, Gembrook etc
Usually, Absentee votes have to be (used to be?) bundled up in the electorate in which they were cast and sent (by Registered Post?-it used to be) to the Electorate to which they apply. That’s over 7500 packages to post via an inherently slow method. But, maybe they are like Laurie Brereton and deliver them on the pillion seat of a motor bike?
More puzzling than the delay on absentees is why in some electorates they have counted so few early votes. I realise that they want to prioritise the close seats, and that is fair enough, but surely there are staff in district offices without any close seats who could have counted more than 200 early votes.
I think the other main reason the Nats gained this time is because they had to run everywhere really hard in order to have a chance in the upper house.
I ahve been telling you guys there is a lot of concern about about the way this count has been undertaken. I have just been talking to some senior contact I have in the Liberal party and they are saying the same Labor and the Greens.. The conduct of the electon is well below par and expectations.
There was rports of the wrong ballot papers being handed out in Gembrook. I am still seeking confirmation and details of this.
As this is an upperhouse thread the isse that is still unknown and could efefect Southern and Western Victoria is how many Green BTL votes exaughst. If the number is over a thousand then its a very close race indeed. I am still writing for reports from scrutineers who are also concerned and my contacts. Talk is that we will not know until some time next week is what I am being told.
The VEC website is still reporting that not all polling places are recorded for the upper house yet the lower house has a full count. If the VEC treated pre-poll and Absentee votes as a separate polling place we would have a better way of falling the progress. Again in the absence of detailed polling both data it is impossible to effectively monitor the upper-house count.
Howard if you read my post above about the early days of the reform proposals we were looking at a 5 x 9 model Five seats none member and also a 5 x 7 model. There were suggestions of a 7 x 7 but this had issues. 1) the community of interest issue. 2) it did not fit into the lower house nexus 3) it mean an increase in the number of MPs which was not available. But yes I agree an even number of seats create problems. If you apply the 1992 and 1996 or even the 2004 senate results to the new boundaries then the Liberal party would have had control of the upper-house. The main difference with the Australian PR system is we have preferential voting and not a party list system. The jury is still out on the issue of optional preferential voting.
The other issue which Antony has not yet analysis is the segmentation and order of election. Some votes retain a higher value and are not mixed into the general distribution of a candidates votes. Some of the BTL votes decrease in value as a result of the paper based surplus and increase the value of the party vote. It not clear at this stage to what extent but it can be in the 100’s…
The liberal party think it is close and they are monitoring the election and calling for more scrutineers. The Greens are looking closer at Western Victoria and secretly are hoping that Labor will lose in the West and that Green votes will exhaust. Why? Because if it does then their influence in the upper-house increases ten fold.
As long as Scrutineers do not have the information necessary or access to the data file they are walking around in very tall grass or lost in a thick fog… No one knows how many votes have been issued and whats outstanding? Information on absentees votes still have not been tabulated. In time I am sure they will but they should have been able to provide this information well and truly by now.
Yes Adam, I’ve been back in Melbourne for aout a month now(to campaign in my old seat – Prahran and get Sue Pennicuik over the line – hopefully that will happen).
I think we’ll have to disagree on the Greens. As I have said before, The Greens took a hell of a lot of hits from about six groups, and Liberal preferences against us in the upper house hurt us. But, we got the same vote as 2002. If you were on the ground you would have noticed that Labor’s dirty campaign worked in spades.
If the Greens had enough money to counter a Labor campaign, it would have been different. Labor workers were hiding in shame at my booth when I explained preferences to voters.
I think it would be a very brave person who would bet that 10% is the ceiling for the Greens. Remember when “some people” said the Greens would languish at around 2-4% because we were a one issue party?
What is a mis-sort?
This category of vote is appearing in the web pages, lumped with informals
Welcome back to Melbourne, Dinesh – a Labor town
If you look at the history of minor parties, the pattern is for them to rise fairly rapidly to their “natural” ceiling, or in other words to fill the niche available for them, and then to fluctuate around that level until they fade away or are superceded. That’s what happened with the DLP and with the Democrats. The DLP peaked in (from memory) about 1958 and then gradually declined (with a last upward spike in 1970), then fizzled when their base collapsed in 1974. The Democrats polled much the same vote at every election from 1977 to 2001, before collapsing in 2004 when the Greens stole their base. Much the same has happened with the Greens in Germany and New Zealand, with the Lib Dems in the UK, with the NDP in Canada, and so on. The available niche for that brand of politics is only so big. So that’s my prediction for the Aust Greens – but I have been wrong before
It’s a booth total discrepancy between primary votes and two-candidate preferred results. The primary votes must be fully accounted for in each booth, but the 2CP by booth is only done for information purposes. Minor discrepencies are dealt with by ‘mis-sorts’. If there is a significant difference, the 2CP is sometimes done again. Otherwise, doing the coumt all over again just to find a one or two vote discrepancy in a booth of 3,000 votes is a bit of a waste of money.
The official 2CP in each seat is done at the district level, not the booth level, so dicrepencies in the Booth 2CP total is irrelevant. If you check published results in Victoria, you nearly always find that in seats where a full distribution of preferences is carried out, the official 2CP and the total of 2CP by booth do not necessarily add up. Not significantly different, just minor discrepencies.
SOUTHERN METRO
As of last night 66.5% of the enrolled counted. Thornley has a 0.5% lead against FF+Lib Surplus.
This is a comfortable lead assuming that a) all below the lines stay within the group and b) they do not exist. We are still left in the dark as to knowing if all postals , prepoll have been counted. There should be a progressive tally of the votes outstanding. They should know the day after closing how many ballots for each region had been issued.
The public record of the counting of the election has very little to desire. No polling booth data no ballots issued summary.
Re: ABOVE THE LINE VOTING
Its not the above-the-line that is the issue it is the registered ticket. If voters were granted the option to preference above the line ie A-1 B-2 C-5 D-4 E-3 (Which would be translated into going down A then B then E then D then C columns voters would have much more say in the group order they want their vote cast. I have no problems with group voting but the singular option of placing a “1″ above the line that is the issue. It most certainly give favour to the registered part ticket. Another way of looking at it is each group is a “candidate” in compared to the lower-house and voters can vote the order of the group allocation.
I voted in a bust booth in London —- votes were being flown over on the Monday morning after ,but they phoned through the numbers of votes cast….
there was a heavy turn out from Southern Met seats?
whats the sorry in the Melbourne seat?
So the greens are hoping that their vote go down in West Mel, just wondering, why did they not give preference to DLP in front of LP, it seems logical, if they want the balance of power
As for the greens, they are a party that is to the left in the political spectum, and like one nation (far right) that demographic will max out at around 10% if the vote, so unless they move to a more center position (where labor is) they will offer no attration to voters, except as a protest vote
Melbcity…as of last night Thornley was 0.5% ahead with 80% counted, postal and prepolls are three quarters counted…it is very close…if Greens have a quota (still unsure about this) their flow-on will be crucial to him.
Mis-sorts?
Antony Green Says:
It’s a booth total discrepancy between primary votes and two-candidate preferred results. The official 2CP in each seat is done at the district level, not the booth level, so dicrepencies in the Booth 2CP total is irrelevant.
Thanks Antony
Even so, there are currently some rather large ones. I had set up my system to automatically count the Primary:TCP discrepancies on Saturday night, when they were large. In most seats, the diff is now less than 10, but in Albert Park, Benambra, Mill Park, Bundoora, Derrimut, Oakleigh, Ripon, Thomastown and Yan Yean, they range from the low hundreds to over 2,000 as of noon yesterday.
Well, there are two ways of looking at the Vic result for the Greens… you can see it as the maxing out of their/our vote, at the 10% magic ceiling, or it could be more a barometer that there was little mood for change in the electorate. Victoria is one of the rare states that has a functioning Labor Gov’t and a genuine alternative in the Baillieu Opposition. I can therefore understand the attitudes of voters not looking for what’s painted as ‘radical changes’… also I think perhaps the Labor campaign on preferences was underhanded and made the difference where it counted. Anyway, I choose to see it as the shoring up of our record in 2002 and possibly a good baseline for the future.
A quick note on the already much-noted optimism of Green commentators before a poll: you have to be optimistic to be in a minor party. For me at least any halt in the rise in Greens votes across the country is a disappointment because so far our history has been one of increases. There were some big predictions in the lead-up to the election, and I might add Bob Brown tried to hose them down a bit: “The over-excited pollsters should take a cold shower” or somesuch. Not always overly optimistic, but every now and then the bug marked ‘HOPE’ bites and you can’t help but dream. Ah well. 4 years to wait, then
In terms of the Greens, the ’state to watch’ label can now be passed to NSW….. both of the old parties are a bit on the nose here. Orkopoulos, Debnam vs Debus etc. Absolute debacle. Look out for a POSSIBLE (don’t want to get too optimistic) Greens gain in inner Sydney, or otherwise seeing three of the Upper House ticket elected. This campaign will be big.
Geoff, you might find some of those are caused by them doing re-counts. I think the mis-sorts is a calculated value. Trying to automate feeds from electoral comissions after an election can always be messy as numbers erratically go up and down as they remove totals before re-entering
Southern metropolitan is very tight. If you only count ticket votes, and locked in BTL votes (i.e. first 3 cands on Lib ticket, 2 on ALP ticket and 1 on Green tiucket). Labor is 2810 short of a quota, Greens 672, LIB 3226. Labor’s leads over Liberal just 416. If you include in home party BTLs, then the Greens reach their quota, Labor in 1977 short and Liberal 3225, Labor’s lead over Liberal 633. At this point, there would still be 4311 BTL votes floating around. 1005 of these are Democrat BTL, 1727 with People Power, 828 Family First, 306 Group C, 239 Ungrouped, 206 DLP.
On these figures, Labor’s position might be slightly strengthened by the Greens approaching the quota on BTL votes, which means when the Democrat ticket is distributed, the small Green surplus released would help Labor. But the total counted in South Metropolitan is currently the lowest. If the Liberal vote increases relative to Labor and the Greens on postals, absent and early votes, then this could be extremely tight for Evan Thornley’s chances of winning the final seat.
Yes…. they began taking away votes on Tuesday night with the re-checks, but I don’t think this is related to that. Usually with the re-checks they temporarily took away the entire “Ordinary”, so the discrepancy was briefly in the tens of thousands. The Albert Park discrepancy has been around for some days, I noticed it early because it is always on the screen at the left-hand end of my spreadsheet. I didn’t look as closely at the others.
Where the discrepancy is large, it seems to arise a from only one or two booths. In Albert Park, it is at Elwood North, for instance. Most booths have a zero discrepancy. The “TCP counted” is never larger than the “Primary counted”.
I think you have to assume that most of the voters voting below the line will stay within the group associated with their first preference. One advantage of running five candidates even though you are not going to ever win five. Its the smaller parties below the line that concern me. I haven’t checked the latest rules but some rules allow the exhaust votes to up the value of the votes that express a continuing preferences. I know this is the case in the surplus calculation. In an exclusion this would not be the case and the value of the vote will be excluded.
Yes anything under 0.5% has to be considered close
I think Labor has the advantage. Similar concerns in Western Victoria but in this case it is a question of how many green BTL votes will exhaust and how many carry on to Labor. Again Labor has an advantage and were in latest votes creeping be it slowly ahead.
Do we know if the 7000 postal/prepoll votes have been counted and were did they fall. Again we are really working in the dark not having detailed breakdown of what in and what’s waiting to be counted. there is much that could be improved with the VEC reporting that’s for sure. It is not open and is not transparent. Scrutineers are also reporting problems with the lack of information.
The web site is still reporting the same number of booths for the upperhouse counted as was teh case on Staurday night yets teh lwoer hosue is all in. I have lost confidence in the VEC totally
If you assume that the BTL vote is lcoked in and travels in teh same direction the ALP is 3000 votes ahead of the combined FF and Liberal vote.
As of 5:ooPM last night the results were
A, FAMILY FIRST, 5385, 828, 6213
B, PEOPLE POWER, 2272, 1727, 3999
C, Group C, 812, 306, 1118
D, LIBERAL, 131704, 4384, 136088
E, DEMOCRATS, 3887, 1005, 4892
F, D.L.P. – DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY, 2863, 206, 3069
G, AUSTRALIAN GREENS, 38831, 6538, 45369
H, AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY, 88916, 3987, 92903
Total, , 274670, 18981, 293651
, , 66.41%, 4.59%, 71.00%
, , , , 413587
They need to provide
1. the total number of Postals Votes issued. (That should be known on the Friday before the election.
2. The total number of pr-poll votes issued and received. (You can not take them away so the two should balance. They should have known the total number again on Friday night. These votes have already been checked and marked off the roll.
3. The total number of votes issued at the polling place on Saturday (This should have been reported on Saturday night and balanced with the number of ballot papers printed and delivered to each polling place)
4. The total number of absentee votes issued (The preliminary figure should have been reported on Saturday Night or Sunday at the latest. These need to be verified and cross checked with the role but there should be a record of the total number of votes in the system at any one time.
5 Postal returned closed on Monday and the VEC should know a) how many were issued and how many returned.
Come Tuesday they should have a full house minus overseas/interstate ballots (If any outstanding)
Armed with this information and an idea of the above the line and BTL first preferences ideally should tally once postal votes have been checked off and opened. (As I understand they were checking off the postals as and when they were returned. Absentee votes take a little longer.)
If they published this information and they were reporting online what stage they are at and what is still outstanding you would have a much better and clearer picture of where they are at. Once they have established a total number issued they should be able to proceed to recheck and data-entry of the BTL data. Above the line just needs manual counting.
Scrutineers should have an idea of how many BTL ballots exhaust and how many follow the general thrust and direction of the tickets. (Unfortunately we do not have this information as yet). Depending on the inbuilt bias in the BTL ballot bundles (ie Polling place versus Postal early returns and Postal late returns) we should just like looking at polling place data (Which is not available for the upper-house) be able to form a good judgement father say 10% of the BTL data being keyed in. In past AEC elections and Local Government elections the preference data was made available to scrutineers and forwarded on for analysis. Mr Tully has indicated that this information will not be available to scrutineers. Quite extraordinary really.
We are left in the dark. The closer it looks I am sure the main players will be asking for much more information and Mr Tully will have to reconsider his poorly made decision if he wants his contract renewed.
Some of the data is already available ready to go (ie the e-voting system data that the VEC has already counted (prior to the close of Saturdays poll)
10% should be a reasonable sample and when checked off against the subsequent 10% by the time we reach 30% a clear idea of the result will begin to take form. Just like a polaroid photo waiting to develop in our hands.
Given that the last 2 elections have been Labor’s two highest record votes in Victoria, as I understand it, then this would seem to augur well for the Greens’ long-terms prospects in the inner-city. When eventually, as it inevitably will, the pendulum swings back to the Coalition then those seats will become easier to win for the Greens. Assuming the Green vote stays constant, if you take 5% off the Labor vote and give it to the Coalition, then the Greens win Melbourne.
Not much consolation right now perhaps, but a reason for optimism if you’re a Green.
11:05 UPDATE RESULTS: Thornley still showing a notional 3000 votes ahead of the Liberal+FF vote. No idea of what has been counted and whaty is still wating to be counted. Spoke to scrutineers and they are being left in the dark also. Does not look like the 7000 Caulfield votes are yet in. 71% of the enrolled vote conted. Who knows how many votes have been received back all together. the 71% doesa not included repoirted informals.
Southern Metro Stats. (11:05AM 30 November 2006)
Recroded to date
Total Enrolled. 413587
Total Formal : 293634 (71% of enrollment))
Quota:48940
Four Quotas accounted for ALP 1 LIb 2 Green 1.
At end of notional count I have
ALP Thornley on 50413
LIB Southwick on 38190
FF MsSwiney on 9271
All others either elected of excluded.
Every vote added to the count increased the quota and leave 1/3 on the table at the end of the count. To make up ground you would need what 9,000 votes. Thornley clearly home. The BTL can not back that much difference. There would have to be a lot of wrong votes on the wrong piles. New votes can not make up ground here and I doubt that many will exhaust or leave the main tickets.
Apologies for delays moderating comments – I’m on the road at the moment. Those who have been following this thread carefully are invited to take another look at comments from the past two days to see what they’ve missed.
I think this is one count MelbCity where you need to worry about the above and below the lines. On the 11am count today, I’ve taken all the Labor, Liberal and Green votes as a group total, but broken down all other groups into ticket and BTL votes. After the election of the Green, and with a quota of 48,979, Labor ends up on about 47,283, Liberal 46,355, Labor ahead by 928, but not having allocated around 4,300 below the line votes. At the moment, the guaranteed preferences from tickets don’t get Labor over the line. If the Liberal vote does increase in relation to the Labor and Green votes among the declaration votes to be counted, then this contest is extremely tight.
Andrew, you are wrong about the inner city.
If you take 5% of the ALP vote and give it to the Liberals in the inner-city, then in most cases the Liberals will outpoll the Greens (particularly when you consider that anecdotal evidence suggests a small portion of the Greens’ primary vote are in fact disaffected Liberals who will return to the Libs pile when they get their act together at the State level).
If those two events occur, then in most cases the Liberals will pull ahead of the Greens, meaning the two-party preferred race will return to Labor Vs. Liberals, and Green preferences will push Labor over the line.
Oh, though the above analysis ignores the point that the more BTL’s that flow to the Greens, the more Green ticket votes end up in the Green surplus which helps Labor. The closer the Greens are to a full quota thanks to BTL votes, the more ticket votes flow to Labor as preferences when the Green is elected on Democrat preferences. However, if any of the city regions are going to see declaration votes favour the Liberals, it will be South Metropolitan where they have the most lower house. If the Liberal vote increases in proportion to the Labor and Green vote, the gap on the final seat narrows in this seat.
Well yes, good point. But presumably if Vic Labor was in a downswing and on the nose, more like Labor in NSW, then the Greens would pick up a chunk of disaffected Labor voters who are currently happy enough with Bracks.
It’s all a bit speculative and yes, the Greens would have to stay ahead of the Libs, but I’m sure it would assist the Greens overall in the inner-city seats.
Still every new vote on the table adds to the quta. At first I asked myself where did you get your quota then I remembered I am not counting the sole independent. I might create a split ticket for him to account for his vote and nulllify his vote.
If every new vote adds to the quota and there is only two quota’s left on the table towards the end. As long as the Green cross the line fouth its a race between Southwick and Thornley. Southwick in theory collects the FF vote. Above the line filter though the quotas already counted pushing up the quota on the way. The question I have is how many of the 7000 If you take into account the segmentation which I disagree with teh below the line vote retains power when abosrb into the above the line flow (ie the beow teh line votes for the for candidates eleceted earlier on quota they increase the value of the major party vote as teh surplus id calcualted by dividing the number of balot papers and not based on the value of each vote. (An issue I have already raised elsewhere in discussion) Segmentation helps who ever is leading and disavantages the party seeking to catch up. Every time you vote BTL and then transit via a candidate about to be elected you vote adds to the power of thier ticket. The Greens being elected fourth on a defered count means the ALP benefit the most from this in this count.
I don’t see Thornley losing out in the count unless there is a lot of votes miscounted. But then this is the VEC and bundles have been known to appear from nowhere. and we have no real idea of whats out there with data undisclosed and the full number of ballots issued unknown.
The gap between ticket and BTL votes is highest for Labor and the Greens overall, it is an ‘broad left’ vote selecting individual candidates from the Labor/Green pool according to personal preference. Thornley is the type of candidate who would deal well out of these voters.
There is some discussion about the ALP’s dominance in state elections, particularly in Victoria, which was once regarded as the jewel in the Liberal crown. The 27 years of Liberal rule from 1955 to 1982 are the genesis of both this claim and the present view of Labor Governments as some sort of aberration. On the contrary, Victoria. has been a natural Labor state for more than 50 years. This truth has been disguised by the consequences of the Great Labor Split of 1955.
That period of Liberal rule is largely explained by the DLP voters who gave their second preferences to the Liberal Party. The combined Labor percentage vote (i.e. ALP and DLP) versus the combined Liberal Party and National Party percentage vote at state elections since 1955 has been 45.2-47.3 (1955), 52.1-46.5 (1958), 55.5-43.6 (1961), 51.2-48.4 (1964), 52.2-46.2 (1967), 54.7-43.1 (1970), 49.4-48.3 (1973), 45.0-52.9 (1976, when the DLP did not contest a number of seats in order to punish the Liberals for breaking their 1973 promise to introduce proportional representation for the Legislative Council).
The DLP disbanded in 1978 (though some members did not accept that decision and are still contesting elections), and the Democrats came into existence before the next election, so the figures are not so clear at 45.7-47.1 in 1979. Even though the 1955 figures show both Labor parties below the Liberal Party and the then Country Party vote, I think that if there had been no split the Labor vote would have been higher.
These results suggest that if there had been no split, Labor would have governed Victoria from 1952 to 1976. This would have meant 45 years of Labor Governments compared with 13 years of Liberal Governments by the next election.
The modern Labor Party will not make the mistakes of the past and Liberal supporters seem unable to understand why they lost, so we are therefore likely to enjoy many more years of Labor Governments.
Antont… Havce you looked at Northen Metropolitan lately… Have another look
False alaem someone told me it was a lot closer then it is… I think it is as safe Green win… Not sure where they got their data from but I have the Greens cossing the line above 17%… Family First is not even distributed. The ALP handed out sectional HTV cards to various community memebers. Good strategy.
I think you are over-confident about Southern Metro being a Labor win on the last seat. Labor plus the available ticket votes don’t add to two quotas. I think that is more reliable way to view a tight contest than just treating all BTL votes as ticket votes. There are 1,000 BTL votes with DLP and FF, but 2000 with PP, Ind and DEM. Based on ticket votes alone, Labor is only 700 ahead of the Liberal. If the Liberal Party can wipe out that lead on the votes to be counted (entirely possible), then Labor only wins the final seat on below the line votes. The count in Southern Met has bobbed up and down for two days now and the Libs keep losing a small number of votes. I reckon that the Labor Party is busy scrutineering to shore up their primary vote.
Though if lots of BTL’s leak to the Greens it helps Labor, as it ensures that when the Democrat preferences are distributed and elect the Green, the maximum number of ticket votes end up n the small Green surplus.
True the DLP/ALP split has a profound effect but the DLP as it currently stands still has a core 2.5% of the vote. I am not sure exactly why I assume it is a core catholic vote in there somewhere. But it is consistent election after election. It is not a mistaken identity issue as some here have tried to assert. It matches the sentate vote like a glove.
I agree with your 5.22 message rather than your 4.56. It is true, Labor and Greens have lost ground (0.64%, and 0.17% of the vote respectively, and the DLP and Liberals have improved their position since Saturday night.
I suspect that your informant had been impressed by the fact that Greg Barber (Greens) was now below a quota, whereas he’d been either over or within a handful of votes (stray Labor BTLs would probably have beeen enough, earlier in the count). Your informant may also have confused the fate of People Power votes. Their primaries (1.43%) go to the DLP, but PP were boosted by an early elimination of the Democrats whose preference sequence was PP then Greens.
The Democrats 1.14% gives the Greens a very solid margin. If the Democrats had favoured the DLP over the Greens, it would have probably given the DLP the final seat, in a very tight finish.
Since there’s been three or four extras comments on this thread while I was tortuously preparing my 5.39, can I clarify by saying I’m responding to MelbCity’s comments about Northern Metro?
On North Metro, the problem is a DLP win requires all preferences to follow the ticket. Any leakage of BTL or exhaustions of BTL gets the Greens over the lune.
In the inner city discontent with Labor would move some votes to the Greens, some from the normal swinging vote some from disaffected Labor voters.
In such a situation the Greens could run a “a vote for the Libs is a vote for Labor” campaign in the inner city.
5pm update – Liberals win final seat in South Metro
Mind you, only by about 114 votes.
Latest update from the VEC:
The ALP now has a 19 vote lead in Ferntree Gully(2PP).
They also lead by 138 votes(2PP) in Mt Waverley, and over 400 votes in Gembrook(2PP), after the latest counting.
The Libs ahead by more than 100 in Kilsyth.
If these results hold, Bracks ends up with 56 seats, and a majority of 24.
I won’t even attempt to look at the Upper House results!
Cheers,
EVAN
Is the dream over? No chance of the DLP getting over the line?
I just did a run on Southern Metro based on today’s 5:00PM data and for the first time I had Southwick elected. I will need to double check my data.. Could this be the 7000 votes counted…
Antony What do you have?
I have just been told yes the 7000 votes were counted today and it looks very much that Southwick has taken the lead.. This is one that will defiantly go to a recount.
I dont have north metrio as a contest. BUT South certainly is… Peter you are right again..
Sorry Antony I missed you latest update. Looks like we are in sync… I am doing a notional distribution of the below the line votes which helps on the segmenation issue. I will print my totals and see whats what.
I have Southwick winning by 0.04% than close Exhausted and drifts will make all the difference. More reason why the data files MUST be made available for detailed analysis.
Big count today. The liberal Party picked up 7000 ticket votes today alone… The ALP picked up about 4,000. Southwisks below the line did not increase much only buy 10 votes. Solid ticket votes there. Looks as though someone had been printing then out the back.
No way of double checking as the VEC failed to provided information on the number of postals issued… before Saturdays election …
As I was saying all afternoon, Labor’s problem is that its vote plus the ticket preferences it receives don’t get to a quota. In other words, we won’t know the result until every last BTL vote is entered in the system and the button hit to distribute preferences. The Labor and Liberal votes my bounce up and down slightly from here on in, but it looks like it will be the BTL votes that decide it.
The Jewish vote clearly sent a message they were not happy about the ALP preselection in Northern Metro… We knew it was coming but not sure as to the full extent.. Now I expect the Greens vote will exhaust out and Evan will fall more behind. I have them within 200 votes…
I thought it early also but with all the talk I reconsiders. It hard seeing whats comming in the fogg. Not enough information of where they are at in the count.. This could go to court…
I knew it needed 9,000 votes on the table but did not expect 12,000 was in the post…
Just goes to show you can buy your preselection but you need to spend more to buy the electorate…
(
I have just posted an updated graph of the notional distribution if you are interested.
http://melbournecitycouncil.blogspot.com/2006/11/southwick-heads-south-southern.html
If I had a web site I would post the count as I see it…
Te gReen spicked up so few votes on the postals in Southern Metrio I am begining to wonder if postals will effect the other seats.. .. THIS IS WHY I WANTED THE NUMER OF POSTAL VOTES ISSUED SO WE KNEW THE FULL EXTENT OF WHAT WAS EXPECTED. Not having this data before the close of the poll leaves a discomfortining feeling and I am still left wondering WHY the VEC did not provide this information when requested… Use to get it from the AEC daily.
MelbCity, is that snide reference meant for Thornley or Southwick? At least Thornley made his own money rather than inheriting it. And he has some real ability whereas Southwick is a complete droob as anyone who saw him debate Danby in 2004 will recall.
Both. I am not sure about Thornley’s money it seams that he took it and ran before the dot.com collapse.
Trust me I am not a fan of Southwicks either and fully support Michael Danby. My interest here is in the electoral system and the unfolding of the results. The other issue is that the Greens now move up a notch as the ALP will sadly have 20 seats in the upper-house and by the time they appoint the Presindt that leaves them at a disadvantage. It seams to me the problem was in the preselection on the other pole (Northern Metro) that caused the upset. 12,000 votes was not what I was expecting I thought around 7-8000 was outstanding. BUT I knew it was close.
For what it is worth I lost out on two elections by 300 votes and one miscalculation on preferences. I know how it feels. Porblem is I do not knwo how many votes are still to be counted or is the only hope in finding that mistmatch in Albert Park. Effective srutiny of the ballot is only possible with access to a copy of the data-files. Data that the Chief Commsioner has refused to provide… Data that is normally available.
Thornley might actually win, see my post on this
http://andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com/2006/11/southern-metro-evil-thornley-may.html
Andrew Landeryou http://www.andrewlanderyou.blogspot.com has just reported, correctly, that the surge in vote and the Greens poor polling in the late returns could see the Greens bumped from their spot in which case Evan Thornley is back in the RACE.
Confused? It has to do with the fact that with every new vote the quota rises. If it rises high enough then and the Greens run out of energy then they don’t cross the line. The order of election is often miss-read and means very little actually. the longer you can hold on the more chances of picking up votes… well that was the theory but with optional preferential voting its the opposite. Problem is we do not know how many votes are still wating in the ballot boxes out back. No information not ewway to balance the books …
While I speak andre posted.
Antony your figuar is closure becuase you have not made any allowance for the segmentation. That distorts the result when its this close. The paper-based formula issue might also come into play in this election.
I agree today’s count hasn’t been good for Thornley, but yesterday’s was good for him, and so may tomorrow’s (or Monday’s anyway) be. The fact is that the result is too close to call and will remain so until next week. Andrew L is right that Thornley will benefit if Southwick gets ahead of Pennecuik just as much as if Pennecuik is ahead of Southwick. So let’s all hold off with the verdicts just for a bit.
Proposition: If Labor loses the count in South Metro it will be because of the ill-advised decision to introduce optional preferential voting, which has allowed a small but crucial number of minor party voters to exhaust their votes, to Labor’s detriment.
Comments?
Whose brilliant idea was this? Hulls?
Is there any chance of the Liberals getting elected fourth and Labor winning on Liberal overflow ie the Greens not getting a seat ?
Yes that what Andrew Landeryou was taling about
His assessment is a possibility as for each vote added to the table the quota changes. 2/3rds of each vote is absorbed in the existing four quotas.
Problem is we do not know how many ballot papers have been issued. We tried to get this information from the VEC but the Chief Electoral Commission was unable to unwilling to provide any statistics on the number of postal votes that had been issued. This information is normally readily available but for some reason Steve Tully refused to provide the data prior to Saturday’s poll.
As a result it is difficult to ascertain. Certainly if there are more votes to be counted and the Greens percentage is declining then YES the Greens could lose out and could fall below Evan Thornley in which case Evan will cross the line first. Again its like walking around in the fog without necessary information. Another issue that needs to be examined is the impact of optional preferential voting. I am waiting to hear feedback from Scrutineers. Hopefully they will be able to secure a copy of the preference data file because without that there is no way they can properly scrutinise the election in this round without it. again this information use to be made available but Mr Tully has to date refused to make it available. With this election being close he will have to reconsider or face a court challenge.
more on my blog
http://melbournecitycouncil.blogspot.com
Optional preferential damages whichever party has the most ideological fragmentation on its political fringe. Thus in the 1998 Qld election, Opt pref damaged the Nats, because One Nation voters, to the right of the Nats, chose to exhaust rather than preference them, costing them a swag of seats. But in Vic, and especially in inner Melb, the fragmentation is on the left. There is a hard core of Greens who will not preference Labor if the voting system gives them that choice, as it now does in the Council. The fragmentation is not as big as it was for the Nats with ON, but it may just be big enough to cost Labor the South Metro seat, and thus control of the Council.
andrew l is full of bullshit. dont visit his site. he doesnt deserve anyone visiting his pathetic site.
In this instance he knows what he is talking about.
Adam, I think I have long ago reached a verdict on Evan Thornley: Guilty. But as it relates to the election you are – as always – correct, it’s too early to know for sure.
As for optional preferences in the upper house, I assume this was designed to minimise informality which – urban legend has it – often seems to impact most on Labor’s vote. So it might have helped in Western Metro and hurt in Southern Metro.
How many votes left to count in Southern Metro?
When I said Andrew L knows what he is talking about in this instance, that was a psephological observation, not a political one. I do not share Andrew’s view of Thornley’s character.
On the election, note the following. Yesterday, after a notional distribution of list preferences, the position of the three parties, expressed as quotas, was:
Lib: 2.97
ALP: 2.00
Green: 1.03
Today it is:
Lib 3.00
ALP 1.99
Green 1.01
Thus Labor has fallen behind. BUT note that of the Lib gain of 0.03, two-thirds (0.02) has come from the Greens, and one-third (0.01) from Labor. If this trend continues, the Libs will have a surplus which will go to Labor. If the Libs can gain a surplus of 0.02 of a quota (about 1,000 votes), that will get Thornley up ahead of Pennecuik.
Thats the theory. 73.5% of the enrollment is counted and Andrew thinks it coulod go as high as 90%. that means there is another 50 to 60,000 votes to hit the table problem is we don;t knwo exacly how many and more important from what source. Yes the Greens could fall below quota as we saw Evan fall from a lead of 2,000 in one day. I have started praying… but I would feel better if I had the infomration that should have been provided before… reports comming in indicate that Scutineers and candiadte are being left in teh dark also. BUT somehoe I think tyhay will change tommorrow. The Greens are hitting the panic button and they will be joining the vote watch in force. I know the Liberal party have also put a call out for its heavy weights to attend the count. The Chief Commisisoner will come under more pressure to provide much more information then what he has provided to date. Hopefully thiose that have been reading this unfolding drame will begin to appreciate the value of this sort of information and why I keep stressing its importance…
How desperate is Bracks to get Evan Thornley into parliament? Even if he comes up short in South Metro, I wouldn’t write off Thornley just yet – there will no doubt be an upper house vacancy to fill in the next 4 years, or a lower house seat could become available.
And, there is the next Federal election too – a seat could be found for Thornley in Victoria, or elsewhere.
I wouldn’t be writing his political obituary just yet, especially when all the votes for South Metro haven’t been counted.
MelbCity, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Ignore the value of the quota. Whatever the number of votes, it is still 16.67%. The actual value does not matter. All that matters is the relative percentage of the vote for Labor, Liberal and Green. Labor lost the 2nd seat today because the Liberals rose relative to Labor and the Greens. The effect of the extra votes on the vote value of the quota is irrelevant. I estimated this morning that if the Liberal vote rose by 0.2% they would win the last spot. That’s exactly what happened today.
What you need to do now is break the count into above and below the line votes. Add the tickets of Family First and the DLP to the Liberal vote. Add the Democrat ticket to the Greens, and People Power and Group C tickets to Labor’s vote. At this point, none of these three totals reaches a full quota, though the Greens are the closest. The balance is determined by the below the line votes. Unless the relative percentage of Labor, Liberal or Green increases against the other, none of these totals will reach a quota.
The real unknown is what happens if enough BTL votes drift to the Greens. If this happens, then the Democrat ticket will elect the Green, and release a small number of ticket preferences for Labor. That is the point when your issue with what you call segmentation will become important. You will need to know which bundle of votes at what value put the Green over the line, which may then effect the calculation of the Green surplus. But as at that point nearly all the Green vote will be full value votes, while nearly all the reduced transfer value votes will be locked away in the Liberal and Labor tickets, the order the bundles are distributed should not matter. It seems extremely unlikely any vote vould increase in transfer value with this distribution.
What Labor needs to win the last spot is for as many BTL votes to drift to the Greens before the Democrat ticket is distributed. Unless the relative %’s of the party change again, on the current count Labor will need a surplus from the Greens to win the last spot.
But above all, you need to watch the relative level of Liberal, Labor and Green % votes
Now this count still has some way to go. We do not know which votes were entered into the system today. It may be votes from a particular source that may be reversed by votes added tomorrow. Scrutineers at the counting centre will have a better idea than any of us.
Of course, the other scenario is that the Liberal vote relative to Labor and the Greens continues to improve. In that case, there is the outside possibility of the Liberals reaching the third quota and fill the fourth seat, and then the Liberal surplus elects Evan Thornley ahead of the Greens. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Liberal Party was responsible for putting Evan Thornly in Parliament and delivering Labor a majority in the LC.
Whatever, the trick is to break out the ticket votes which are assured preferences, and then work out how many BTL votes are required. I think the models where you treat BTL votes as ticket votes are too crude in such a close count as this.
All these bullshit preference flows makes me wish they had a 50 member upper house with a simple statewide 2% quota, which is similar to NSW isn’t it? This would be much more sensible than the shit that has been played out since saturday. Okay, a few more lunatics may get into parliament but it would make for interesting times. Can anyone tell me if the upper house electoral changes have been consititutionally entrenched. This election has convinced me that if the Libs ever get a result like 1992 or 1996 we could go back to the (even worse) old days.
Oh, and it may well be that exhausted preferences will decide the final seat. It may well be at the final count, neither of the two remaining candidates has a full quota, so the candidate with the higher count would be elected. Don’t ask what happens if there is a tie. That would be too perverse.
Ray,
The constitutional changes are entrenched and, I am informed, the section that entrenches them is iself entrenched to stop future trickery. I do not know how much of the detail in the electoral system is entrenched.
Antony, do you care to make a fearless prediction at this stage? (Malcolm Mackerras has already called the 2010 election, so you won’t lost your status as the Most Cautious Pundit.)
Thanks Chris, I agree with your assesment of the ALP in Victoria. But I would go even further back and say that the mallaportionment that went on until WW2 hid this reality as well. The good burghers of Richmond had to make a 30,000 people seat while a few hundred farmers from the middle of nowhere had their own member of parliament.
Of course I’m not going to make a prediction apart from saying it’s close. As I always say about the Bush victory in 2000, the Florida result was indeterminate as the margin of victory was less than the margin of error of the counting equipment. On election night the ABC computer uses a 99% confidence interval in picking the winner, though dud historical booth data can bugger that up, as occurred in the seat of Melbourne. As MelbCity says, if you know exactly what’s being counted at each point, you can make a better estimate. If you don’t know, well, you’re only guessing. Picking a winner now means estimating what will happen with the remaing votes. I don’t know so why guess is my view.
Sigh. Such relentless logic.
Antony, count one more vote and your head is going to explode.
On a more cheerful note, Anne Eckstein is in front for the first time in Ferntree Gully, so that Toorak Ted can now claim only four clear wins (Bayswater, Evelyn, Hastings and Narracan) and one probable (Kilsyth). FTG and Mt Waverley are only possibles, and the trend in both is towards Labor. Not much of a result, and not enough to keep him safe for four years.
There seems an awful lot of crystal ball gazing and “what iffing” about the Upper House results when it appears that there are lots of votes to count which could change close results. It seems silly to me to be so concerned about it until all the votes have been counted. The result is in the votes (and electoral legislation). It’s just waiting to be discovered.
Something quite apparent in this upper house election, senate elections sine 1984 and NSW upper house elections before 2003, is the impact of party registered preferences for ATL votes. My democratic instincts tell me that it would be much better for individual voters to have to indicate preferences (eg as in the NSW upper house, by voting BTL or preferences parties ATL) and it would throw up fewer “random” results (eg Steve Fielding getting elected).
Minor parties would probably really dislike the idea (I’m sure that Arthur Chesterfield-Evans put out a press release against this change in NSW before the 2003 election) and the major parties may dislike it too as it means that the can’t negotiate a watertight preference deal. But nonetheless, it may produce results that have less randomness.
randomness makes life interesting
Florida was renowned for a corrupt electoral commission who denied access to information and proper scrutiny of the ballot. We are being kept in the dark. Whilst some might like to sit on a train and wait for the train station to come to the train. I like to be in the rally car seat, looking at the map and knowing the times and kilometers to go to get to where I am heading. There more to it then waiting and trusting in the outcome of the electoral commission its about ensuring we have an open and transparent system. That all relevant information is laid out on the table for everyone to see. It’s about building confidence in new systems and educating the public of the process and shuttles involved. If you are properly informed you can supply resources to assist in the campaign and when it is this close you need to be sure that every vote is accounted for.
Sacha
I agree (for Multimember elctorates), but there is a reasonable compromise. One could blend the current system with what you suggest. (also allow ordering within each group list too). When the voter’s intent is unclear then the first prefernce “group ticket vote” can be applied. That way you would not get exhausted votes, but people could optionally detail theit list of prefernces to the level they “care”. I also think quotas should 1/n rather than 1/(n+1). That way less voters are unrepresented, and at least the last elected is even those voters least disliked. Where counts are tallied by computer you can do a reverse count and exclude candidates by most unprefernced rather than least votes. I think that numbering ABL votes , being counted as the “group ticket vote” is poor in most STV in Australia because it disempowers the voters obvious intent. Those bits of electoral act sgo against the “err in the favour of the franchise” values.
Hope those thoughts were dense enogh with “rabbit ears”
Disasterboy
Disagree on the stratewide upperhouse concept. The same deal could be at play. Buyt haveing smaller electorates you are avoding the need for an artifial qouta. I thinkm the system is find\e to a ceetain extent. A avakue based surplus is a must we could retain any remainders with the candidate and have one single transaction per candidate and get rid of the abitary segmentaion system or at least refine it to be FIFO. (Best o have one transaction per candidate). I head what your saying Adam and I also have reservations about optional voting. We will have to wait and see. If Evan loses out in teh state seat he could try and find a position in Canberra were he want to be anyway. I a more concerned about control of the upper-house and the issues that suround a Green Green contorled upper-house. The ABTL voting system was designed to assist in teh counting of the vote. It’s much better then the Party List system ihn use in Europe. Voters always have the option to vote below the line which in many countries you do not have.
Antony I have been taking teh BTLV into account. I dont just dump them in to the overall total and trat them as a soilid single ticket vote. To te contrary. But I have to assue for teh excerise that BTLV will in general a) stay within the group of the voters first reference 2) generall follow the thgrust of the gorup tciket. IE Labor or Liberal direction. We will know more when and if we get hold of the preference data. Past experiance shows that is generally the case except for the Democrats which spilt 60.40 below the line There are always exceptions but when it is showing this close it difficult to know if the waves have ceased. I do not expect a major shift in the vote in the vote other then prehaps the Grens falling below quota and mayube behind Labor. All three are pretty close. The Dmeocrats preferenecs are the only thing holding up the Greens vote.
re the comment ‘The constitutional changes are entrenched…’ you might like to look at the new book on Victorian Constitution by Dr G Taylor, of Monash University – it is possible that these constitutional changes were not properly entrenched, and may be open to challenge in the courts. State Constitutions are very ‘flexible’ and easily amended.
Antony Green Says:
November 30th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
5pm update – Liberals win final seat in South Metro
Antony Green Says:
November 30th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Of course I’m not going to make a prediction apart from saying it’s close.
Adam, I doubt Toorak Ted will last another 4 years as opposition leader.
If the Libs can’t win back seats like Gembrook, Mt Waverley and Ferntree Gully, they’ve got serious problems. Ted might wander round in speedos for the next year, but I doubt that’ll help him.
All this focus on one Upper House seat: are people in Victoria that obsessed with the fate of Evan Thornley?
I think that some of the attacks here on people “buying” preselection and similar should be left alone. Politics needs more Thornley’s and less useless party hacks, but with these new upper house regions, we have seen that Southern Metro is v.strong Liberal.
5 member electorates have not ended the problem of the Labor vote (and the Green for that matter) vote being bottled up as under the previous system. Maybe statewide PR with a 5% German style threshold would have been the way to go, it would have forced a Liberal-National joint ticket as well.
Geoff R – it’s partially dealt with it, as the West Metro. region is returning 1 Lib and 4 Lab/Green members.
Melb City – I agree with Antony – the measuring device in the 2000 Florida Presidential elections wasn’t accurate enough to determine the result of the election, whether or not the electoral officials did their job correctly.
So are we any closer? Thornley has been given a a cabinet secretary roll as has Carbines. did carbines fight off the DLP, and id Thornley going to win?
Re south metro
The green are not doing badly at postal. It is just per the election result which was 40% labor, 40% lib and 10% green
The were always going to do worst when the postals start coming in, it is just whether they are close enough to a quota to begin with, that they still fall over the line.
The greens might end up with jjust 1 senate seat, which would be a disastrous result for the greens
Maybe I am miscounting but it seems to me the Greens are 250 votes from Doom in South Metro ?
It is very interesting Southern Metro. Southwick made up 1.6% on postals and pre-polls after the Melbourne Ports Federal Election. On the evening of the vote, the margin had fallen from 5.6% to 4.9% By the end of counting Danby held the seat by 3.3%. The point, Southwick does well in pre polls and postals. In fairness of course that area only represents Albert Park and Caulfield predominantly and there are 9 other lower house seats to deal with here. All up Southwick should scrape home for 4th or 5th
Evan,
The reason people are pre-occupied (obsessed?) with the fate of the final seat in Southern, is that in Tim Lane’s terminology “the close one”. More significantly, it seems likely to determine whether Labor has 21 seats – an absolute majority – in the new LC. The fact that your high profile namesake is the candidate twisting in the wind adds some piquancy to the mix.
Western Victoria has counted most of their vote over 80% not sure how much is left but she is looking pretty safe.
Southern Metro is still listed as very close and could be ALP+Lib or ALP + Grn or LIB + Grn for the fourth and fifth spot. Its a close race and someone ends up being whats referred to as the wasted quota 16.66% (-5)
I am told by scrutineers that they have closed up the count more or less and will count the remaining postals on Monday with data-entry starting on Tuesday. I am also told by one scrutineer who was working in South Melbourne that not that many votes opted for 5 preferences only. Not sure if that was the case across the board.
Big question is can the Liberal and ALP secure enough votes from the remaining (estimated to be somewhere between 30-60,000 votes to be counted. I am told Monday is the last date for portals to be returned and they must be date-stamped prior to the election date. Absentee votes still are being cross checked off the roll today I think.
Problem is no one seams to know how many votes are expected or how many were issued. Scrutineers from all sides are trying to obtain this information. Information we sort prior to Saturday’s poll but was refused by Mr Tully. So we will be left waiting until next week.
William this file is getting long can you create new thread ?
Disasterboy says:
I think you’re talking about a “savings provision” like South Australia has for the lower house.
Whilst I can understand the notion that exhausted votes are undesirable. I fail to see how directing one’s vote (preference) to a party the voter never indicated any desire for is somehow better.
Here’s where you’re wrong. If 1/n is the quota, then (n-1)/n of the vote elects n-1 candidates.
That leaves 1/n of the vote and means the last elected candidate just needs a majority of the remaining vote. So the last quota in effect
becomes 1/2n.
Remember that in single member seats, up to half the voters are “unrepresented” as you put it.
I was aasked if I could the result data as well as my groah on the web and if your interested.
Check it out http://melbcity.topcities.com
disaterboy if it get down to one vote I am sure there will be many challenges. There is a good reason for there being a quota of 1/(n+1)+1 which I do not have time to go into here. More important issues is to have the remainders remain with the candidate/ scrap the calculation of the surplus based on the number of ballot papers and base it on the value of the ballot paper/vote. And revise the segmentation rule.
I most certainly do not favour a party list system with an artificial fecondation quota threshold. Optional Preferential voting does not appear to be a major issues in this ballot. Most people are too use to the old rules and not many know that you only need to number 5 BTL.
I have Southern Metro only up on the topcities web page up will soon post other regions.. feedback welcomed. I could put the spreed sheet there as well if people are interested.
Some of us are now redirecting our attention to a certain other election in Canberra next week.
games over red rover is certainly NOT the case. The Greens as my predicament comes around, is 2 with a good chance at 3, in WV.
Adam, too true!
It’s heaven right now for political watchers all over Australia!
So, who do you all think will win on Monday? I’ll predict Beazley wins by a nose(even though Rudd gets my vote).
Peter: thanks for the explanation! I’m wishing my namesake all the luck in the world: we need at least one Evan in parliament somewhere.
I think while I am in my current employment I have no opinion on that. Ask me on the 24th when I will be gloriously unemployed.
We used to have Evan Walker, he was good value.
It has probably been written earlier but in any event its worth repeating. If Southwick and Thornley both get in, Thornley will get in on Liberal Party preferences. The ALP as a result will have a majority in the Upper House becuase of the Liberal Party. You couldn’t have scripted that one.
Yes I predict Beasley too. Wake up ALP we can win with “the dream team”
The Federal ALP is known for mass stupidity – Mark Latham is a prime example! I expect most of them to reelect Beazley and get hammered again by Howard in 2007.
For what it’s worth I think Labor and the unions really believe they have to win the next election and will do anything to win. I’m tipping the “dream team” to get up. If not they can kiss the next election goodbye.
It’d be so much better if we just reverted to the simpler, superior provinical system we used to have for the LC
SOUTHERN METRO: As of 5:00PM today Thronley has taken the lead over Southwick. It is a neck and neck race to the finish better then the best Melbourne to Hobart Yacht races. Some people like to read about the result at the end of the journey but it much better to watch the race in progress. I will update the Southern Metro count sheet shortly. Any errors please report to my blog.
http://melbcity.topcities.com
If the first duty of oppositions is to oppose the government of the day…amd an Upper House in which the Government of the day lacks a majority surely is the most useful tool in an opposition’s bag of tricks,…then the Victorian Liberals are Prize Chuckleheads,as their first strategy should have been to devise a preferences allocation which would have meant ,that Labor would have been in the minority in the Upper House.
Even if that had meant a Green-Lib-Nat controlled House so be it.
In the lifetime of any government,things arise that they don’t want aired in either House.
A House controlled by parties other the A,L,P may in the future , have suited the Liberals purpose. If they have thrown that chance away and given the Labor Party a majority there,they are more inept and stupid than I gave them credit for,
MelbCity, the quota totals after preferences appear to be exactly the same as yesterday:
ALP 1.99
Lib 3.00
Grn 1.01
What are you basing your new assessment on?