With electorate results progressively being declared, I will start appending my election guide entries with overviews of results for each seat. All five seats in Tasmania have been declared, so that seems a good place to start.
Bass provided Labor supporters with cause for nagging doubt during the early part of the count, with the smaller booths outside Launceston delivering a seemingly insufficient swing. In Scottsdale the swing to Labor was below the required 2.6 per cent, and Liberal member Michael Ferguson in fact picked up a small swing in Bridport. The turning point came when the big Launceston booths began to report, with Labor swings as high as 7.6 per cent at Summerhill and 8.1 per cent in Newnham. The other notable feature of the result was a big surge to the Greens who were able to monopolise the anti-pulp mill vote, pushing their support up from 8.1 per cent to 15.3 per cent at the expense of both major parties. This was reasonably consistent throughout the electorate with the interesting exception of Scottsdale, where the increase was only 0.8 per cent. Nothing particularly remarkable happened in George Town, the centre closest to the actual site of the mill.
The pattern of voting across Braddon was remarkably similar to the 2001 election, with voters reverting to type after the convulsion of Labor’s forestry policy in 2004. A large number of booths have produced double-digit swings first one way and then the other, including Acton in Burnie and East Devonport, along with the smaller town booths of Montague, Latrobe, Smithton. Coastal centres outside of the big towns, such as Wynyard, Somerset, Penguin and Ulverstone, followed relatively small swings to Liberal in 2004 with relatively small swings to Labor this time. However, Sid Sidebottom’s overall margin of 1.4 per cent (from a two-party swing of 2.6 per cent) is substantially lower than his 6.0 per cent from 2001. Predictions that the Mersey Hospital would boost the Liberals in Davenport at the expense of a backlash in Burnie received fairly modest support, Burnie collectively swinging 4.4 per cent compared with 1.2 per cent in Davenport. Despite a quite healthy lift on the Greens’ primary vote from 5.6 per cent to 8.1 per cent, Braddon remains their weakest Tasmanian seat.
Lyons produced a superficially status quo result, except that Liberal renegade Ben Quin gouged 9.6 per cent of the primary vote directly at the Liberals’ expense. However, this obscures big swings to Labor concentrated in the southern part of the electorate, particularly just outside Hobart at Brighton and New Norfolk. The 1.3 per cent lift in the Greens’ vote was the smallest in the state, presumably because much of the pulp mill protest vote was absorbed by Quin. Both major parties were slightly down slightly on the primary vote in Denison, the slack being taken up by a 4.0 per cent lift for the Greens. This converted into a 2.3 per cent two-party swing to Labor. Franklin was one of only four seats in the country to swing to the Coalition, due to the loss of retiring Harry Quick’s personal vote and perhaps also lingering static surrounding Kevin Harkins’ disendorsement. The Labor primary vote was down from 46.4 per cent to 41.4 per cent while the Liberals were up from 37.7 per cent to 41.0 per cent, with the Greens up from 11.1 per cent to 14.4 per cent. The Liberal two-party swing was 3.1 per cent.
A couple of other updates are in order:
• As most of you are aware, a recount began today in McEwen following Labor candidate Rob Mitchell’s six vote win over Liberal member Fran Bailey. Progressive results will not be posted, so I guess we all just have to wait a week until the AEC tells us what has happened.
• In other close result news, rechecking has reduced Liberal member Andrew Laming’s lead in Bowman to just 64 votes, although there does not seem to be any dispute that he has won the seat.
• A definitive result in O’Connor will have to await a full distribution of preferences, which to my limited knowledge is yet to be published in any electorate. There still remains a mathematical possibility that Nationals candidate Philip Gardiner can overhaul Labor’s Dominic Rose with Greens and other preferences and then defeat Liberal member Wilson Tuckey on Labor preferences. However, the possibility has been diminished by a weak Nationals performance on declaration votes, which has reduced their election night total of 18.4 per cent to 17.7 per cent, leaving a 2.7 per cent deficit against Labor that will need to be closed through Greens and other minor party preferences.
• Two other strong performances by independents should be noted. In Calare, Gavin Priestley might overtake Labor on preferences and leave John Cobb of the Nationals with a fairly narrow win on two-candidate preferred. However, Cobb’s 48.5 per cent primary vote is high enough that he does not face a serious prospect of defeat. In neighbouring Parkes, independent Tim Horan has polled 20.7 per cent. This is unlikely to be enough for him to overhaul Labor’s 25.4 per cent on preferences, which is just as well for Nationals candidate Mark Coulton who has pulled up short of a primary vote majority on 46.8 per cent.
379 Comments
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I have made by final comment in my little difference of opinion with the Possum here:
http://psephoblog.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/stirring-the-possum/
The new government should pass a bill saying that no seat can have more than 100,000 voters. That would give the ACT three seats and SA 12. The Libs would say that was to Labor’s advantage, and of course at present it would be, but they are in no position to talk. Their bill to keep the NT’s second seat was called “the Dave Tollner Preservation Bill” even by Liberal MPs.
Will our election process become gradually subject to CORRUPTION by election
2,515,254 Australians did NOT go to a polling booth to vote (20%)
Historically it WAS harder to get to the polling booths due to lack of cars/transport
Today it is easier to get to the polling booths but less are going
The result is that postal votes alone have grown 28% from the 2001 election
(form 4.28% of the total vote in 2001 to 5.46% in 2007)
My TWO fears are that the 27% increase in postal votes on the Total Count
1/ may be a higher % in “marginal’ seats
2/ may in part be caused by Party’s “encouraging” or “soliciting” such behaviour
Numerous possible “corrupt” consequences can follow INCREASING by election:
a/ may allow Party’s to ’solicit’ block votes in nursing homes, retirement villages
b/ may allow Party’s to gain otherwise Booth ‘donkey votes’ as HTV direct votes
c/ may place Party officials in position to decide if to onpost applic. or votes
Some but NOT ALL of these problems would be overcome by restricting the right to post postal applications by the aec alone
Marcus @ 136, yes, very good point on the greater catchment – Queanbeyan, Yass, Goulburn, along with smaller towns like Captain’s Flat, Bungendore, Braidwood etc — are all now very much satellite commuter townships and rapidly growing with the attraction of the commuter lifestyle advantages.
The people have far more in common interest with Canberran urban issues, than they do with the rest of their NSW regional electorate neighbours.
Belconnen long had the rep for being the “panel-beaters” town, blue-collar district, (with some scattered pockets of wealth like elsewhere in Canberra) and Gungahlin, although newest development, is more economically down-scale too, relatively speaking.
Inner north & south are your main pockets of crusty Liberals in the oldest parts of town, well-kept 50s double-bricks and oak tree-lined avenues, and the inner-south “Embassy Belt” with all the dippos for neighbours, coupled with very recent rapid development of high-rise city apartment dwellers in Civic and Woden, but with the inner-north “cafe-latte” University crowd of local ‘intelligentsia’ and their pushbikes, and interstate undergrads trying to find cheap group house rentals.
But in a lot of places, Canberrans do tend to live next-door to each other in the older parts of town, although that is changing more each year, like an old in-joke I heard when I moved here ” His & Hers BMWs do live next-door to the squat of welfare housing junkies
eg.. In Weston Creek, looking at the booths, there is Chapman with some Leafy Liberal Avenues sticking out, but only a 5-minute walk away from one of the largest state housing pockets in Rivett, or the Kingston/Manuka ‘townhouse trendies’ right next-door to several of the original state housing blocks of units etc (which I understand ACT Housing are desperately trying to relocate to Gungahlin, so they dont upset the newer neighbours, and sell off the better priced real-estate)
Tuggeranong is far more well-established now, and has started to outgrow its *new* urban housing development status, I suspect it is the more mixed demographics of the three now.
Antony: Thanks for the info on Bob’s proposal – putting all political speculations aside, (entertaining as they might be *grin*) simply on the grounds of obvious population growth, a third seat needs to be added. How the seat boundaries are divvied up, or classified as notionally marginal, safe etc is another matter.
Might be interesting though, if the city were ever to be subject to intensive ‘on-the-ground’ campaigning (which it usually isn’t), might just annoy more into voting informal instead – many of us enjoy our sleepy quiet lifestyle and wouldn’t take kindly to it being interrupted by campaigning door-knockers and junk-mail.
(And the tree-hugging loopy-left Greens can stay on the northside *grin*)
Adam,
Don’t they have optional preferential voting in NSW for the upper house? That might be a solution for the Senate, although to avoid confusion it would probably mean introducing OPV in the House as well, which neither major party would agree to.
Adrian,
Bob Brown has propsed a system of preferencing above the line for senate voting so that voters can choose thier own prefernecs (after the FF debacle in Vic last election ) without having to fill in all then BTL’s.
I agree with increasing the number of seats in the House (and therefore, Senate too). The last major increase was in 1984 from 125 seats to 148. It has since crept up to 150. In 1984 the population of Australia was about 15 million, today it is 21 million. So whilst we’ve had a 37% increase in the population, that’s only been accompanied by a 3% increase in the representation! More electorates would also go some way to reducing the ineqaulity of representation, i.e. the number of peope in electorates in ACT and SA will be comparable to the number of people in NT and TAS.
How would a bill awarding SA 12 seats not be in violation of the constitution?
The Tassie redistribution will probably be a little academic at the Federal level – I don’t know the population trends but I’m guessing the growth centres are still around Hobart and Launceston, so changes minimal maybe? – but at a state level they could be very important, particularly in a close election.
Taswegians are turned off by all three (remember the Hare-Clark lower house – the Greens take seats) parties at the moment, though we Greens have had something of a renaissance with the pulp mill debate/clever local gov’t campaigning. As a result, the 2010 election will be something of a watershed, as there’s no attachment to the government. If the boundaries change at a federal level, I assume they shift automatically at the State level, so in close seats like Kim Booth’s in Bass or Paula Wriedt’s in Franklin, even little shifts could make a difference in a hung parliament/close election.
I agree though – with this last election, WA and QLD are the states to watch as the population centres and interesting voting patterns shift north and west.
TO WILLIAM BOWE
I have made 2 blogs today
1/ in response re no of senators
2/ re postal voting trends which is in moderation – specifically WHY
ha obviously #154 was directed to Adrian, not Adam.
Thank you David W & Antony G for clearing up the situation regarding the nexus.
A book I am reading on the 1972 election indicates that the size of mainland electorates then was around 62 to 65k
It seems to me that the populations of some electorates is too large for parliamentarians to look after them properly. If you write to a federal parliamentarian it often takes a long time to even get an ack. I would imagine that this is a function of the lack of office staff they are provided with and the sheer volume of contacts they receive. This is not good for our polity.
Even at the risk of having more Erica Betzes I think we have to bite the bullet and increase the number of senators in order to balance up things in the house.
An increase in MHRs beyond 152 or close to would necessitate an increase in Senators. This could happen three ways:
1. Make the Territories (or one of them) states. One changing would increase the number of Senators from 76 to 86, and two would make this 96. Reducing the number of Senators from each state to ten but increasing the number of states would may work better, meaning a maximum of 80 Senators.
2. Increasing the number of Senators from each state to 14, which would mean 88 Senators instead of 76.
3. Changing the constitutional requirement for there to be a rough 2-1 ratio.
Myself, I would like to see a 3-1 ratio, with 10 Senators from each state and about 200 MHRs.
@ 153 Rain uses the term “welfare housing junkies”. I take he means the Howards given their limpet like attacment to their waterside abode.
A problem to the whole concept of increasing the number of Senators and MHRs is the size of parliament house. How many more parliamentarians can it take before a new one has to be built?
Why can the Senate not be increased to 13? Is there a rule that says it has to be even?
While this would perhaps increase the possibility of an outright majority for the Government int he Senate it would also help the minor parties who frewuently get the “wasted” quota.
Adrian @ 149 “BTL votes are much higher in Tasmania and ACT partly because they are used to the Hare Clark voting system and also because the ballot papers have less names.”
I never knew this! I’ve been a BTL voter all my life. I get a buzz out of defying the bell curve wherever possible *chuckle*.
Also a *personal* thing, I get some petty childish satisfaction out of putting my most disliked candidates last, and working up the numbers list. Like saying “Take That – You &^*% ”
But never knew my ACT neighbours were also more likely to do it.
Hare Clark was fairly recent in ACT elections, and we did suffer through minority Liberal governments with some strangely bizarre Independents holding balance-of-power there for awhile. Perhaps it confused many, before finally getting the hang of it? Just guessing, but maybe we learned the hard way through painful experience, over several elections, that the Number 5,6 7 etc vote, isn’t a worthless junk vote, as it is in other voting systems.
Albert Ross @ 163
@ 153 Rain uses the term “welfare housing junkies”. I take he means the Howards given their limpet like attacment to their waterside abode.
MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Ta Albert, needed that!
165
I think there needs to be an even no. of Senators because each election sees half of the seats vacated. It would be a bit awkward for the final senate position to be timeshared!
Why does the ABC site have the coalition now winning 85 seats and Labor 83 now? Before the recount in McEwen they had Labor on 84. Do they know something we don’t?
That site is here.
http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2007/results/
Ron at 152 re corruption of election process by postal voting – here is more food for thought. I know for a fact that the booth previously available at my father’s retirement village was not available this year. Why not, I have no idea, nor does he. Is the increase in postal voting related in part at least to fewer booths being made available? And was this one of the ‘clever’ things the rodent is responsible for?
In a Double Dissolution election the first 6 highest vote getters get 6 years and the next 6 get only three years.
If you wanted a 13 per state in the Senate you could have 6 x 6 years and 1 x 3Y available at each election easily enough. A little weird, no doubt, but it works…
Wouldn’t having a third ACT seat be a disadvantage for Labor, making neighbouring Eden-Monaro a fairly safe Liberal seat, sure there’d have to be a redistribution and I’d speculate that such a move would push a few rural seats north, maybe helping Labor in Gilmore or McCarthur by including more Labor voting territory from Wollongong and Campbelltown.
Also I don’t think the sitting member of Eden-Monaro would take too kindly to this, and all those arguments from other sitting members wanting stability of electorate. If this happened, we would probably need to have a new bell-wether seat, or would it revert back to McArthur.
172 Stephen Hill. No the ACT boundaries do not extend to Eden-Monaro
If you had 13 Senators, a half Senate election would be entertaining.
Gee, I always thought Queenbyean was just inside the ACT, is it part of NSW?
yep
adrian/grace pettigrew/antony/anyone
Grace Pettigrew answered Adrian’s 940 with her 1022 previous thread Morgan 58.5-41.5 Dec 13, 2007
Adrian: “There seem to be a lot of provisional/absent/postal/prepoll votes being excluded. Apart from not being on roll, what else causes this. Is there any breakdown of the causes for exclusion. How does it compare to previous elections. Nationally then we have 500,000 plus informals, probably 400,000 plus excluded and plenty more who never got on the roll. Surely we could do better than this?”
Follow up Q. CW: Can I find the booth by booth breakdowns, now or eventually? Do such breakdowns include by type as nominated by Adrian?
Am I correct in assuming that the information posted on the site re booth counts is coming only from the individual scrutineer?
Another thought from a novice — and further to mine at 170 – the box/booth that was available at the last election at my father’s retirement village but not in 2007 – as far as I understand was always a strongly labour voting one (am I paranoid or what?) Also — and pardon me if this is basic – does more postal voting also mean inevitably more informal voting as people presumably do not replace the ballots they mess up????
I notice the ABC calculator has pegged ALP back to 83 seats today and LNP up to 65 presumably this is in relation to the McKewen recount.
If Antony Green is reading the blog currently I’d like to know if he has any new information that he is basing this on?
Crikey W @177
Its available on AEC website. For each HoR division you can check the rejected votes for all 4 categories of votes by clicking on “Declaration Vote Scutiny Process” (sixth on list of information options). Similarly “First preference by vote type” shows where each of the 4 vote categories ends up. Its only available for whole Division not by polling booths as far as I know because they are checked/counted at only 1 place for each Division (exception might be Provisional votes which could be done by booth). The informals show up in National, State, Division and booth figures.
I thought the reason that labor lost the Canberra seat in 95 was because of Keating’s remarks regarding the local elections there shortly before.
The libs got power locally and Keating was asked for his reaction, he replied “Oh, who takes notice of municipal elections”.
The by-election followed shortly after which the libs won with a swing of about 17%, laughed when I saw the result and thought well Paul are you going to take note of that result bucko.
The ABC page on McEwan has a ALP TPP swing of 5.6% which I think is the nationwide swing? Most likely the web site reverted to using those figures due to the recount being closed to updates until the recount figures are released.
McEwen.
182, 183 et al
You say tomato, I say tomayto
I say potato you say potahto
You say McEwan, I say McEwan
Let’s call the whole thing off
McEWEN – OMG, now I’ve done it too
Adrian at 180, thanks, I found it in the meantime, kind of by chance.
I also checked on a nursing home in Boothby.
The number of formal votes cast there totals 172.
Internet records on the particlar home show the no. of beds, ie residents to be 72 (ish) 2007.
I phoned the particular home to confirm the number of beds/residents.
Confirmed it is 76.
Votes according to AEC website for that home, seat of Boothby. Special Hospital Team 3 (whatever that means)
FORMAL 172 95.03 +1.42
INFORMAL 9 4.97 -1.42
TOTAL 181 0.19 – 0.04
Two CP Candidate Party Votes Percentage (%) Swing (%)
CORNES, Nicole Australian Labor Party 72 41.86 +12.59
SOUTHCOTT, Andrew Re-elected Liberal 100 58.14 -12.59
Clue, anyone?
“The city of Canberra, which encompasses the outlying suburbs , or satellite towns, is Labor through and through – A third electorate taking in the city and expensive inner suburbs may be a chance of going Liberal, but you must remember that the ‘old’ public servants, who bought early and well, and were brought up under the old PSU, live here in relatively high numbers still.”
Yes, or marginal swinging, might depend on whether or not it includes/excludes the Weston Creek valley, the oldest of the southern central sections.
“…but you must remember that the ‘old’ public servants, who bought early and well, and were brought up under the old PSU, live here in relatively high numbers still….”
true – but also Catholic Labor-right in that ‘old family’ PS community that are now established with 3rd, 4th, 5th generational branches, with strong historical family *roots* originating in Melbourne’s Catholic Labor strongholds of the 1950s.
This caught me way off-guard when I first moved to ‘berra in the early 80s, coming from young hippy-trippy inner-city Sydney loopy-lefty territory.
Some classic social faux pas with putting my foot in it with the Catholics, and to a lesser extent Anglicans, noticing the extraordinarily large number of tyke schools in the neighbourhood, and working in Personnel/Recruitment reviewing hundreds of CVs with St Eddies, St Clares, Saint this, Saint that), with plenty of 2nd-generation Navy, Army and Air-Force brats too… coupled with how socially conservative the city is on some issues, (eg abortion), along with the streams heading south on the Hume to Melbourne every school holidays.
Although its changed and grown a great deal since then, that theme is still there in the ‘old family’ pockets in some canberran social and workplace circles. They dont much like the younger Green “blow-ins” either.
186
Can only suggest day patients, relatives visiting, staff OR current residents have a number of aka’s (LOL).
Not So Mad Max.
AEC Notes:
1. The percentage of votes counted are calculated against the total enrolment figure.
(Doubt that they have day patients, cannot see why they or visitors (or staff) would be enrolled there, but give a very few, for sake of it. They most certainly do not have a staff/patient ratio of that level. In fact the home has twice failed accreditation standards, most recently this year)
AEC Notes Cont. On election night, all ordinary ballot papers cast at polling places on election day (approximately 80% of the total vote) are counted and the results entered. The remaining 20% of votes (including pre-poll, postal, absent and progressive votes) cannot be counted until after polling day.
2. These results are not final.
I took the trouble to ring the office Chloe Fox, (my) State Member for Bright, Intrigued and will follow up.
The AEC told me no preliminary re-count figures would be released for McEwen. Well, they are being released. The prediction is completely automated. Wait till all the votes are re-counted by the middle of next week.
CW, my guess would be that while one nursing home is listed they actually cover more. Mayo covers a large geographical area – the hills, Fleurieu and KI -with quite a few nursing homes but there are only 4 special hospital teams listed and some of the homes they’re listed for are the smallest in the area. OTOH, Mt Barker has several homes, including one of the biggest in the hills, but no team assigned.
I went along to the Matt Price memorial service at Parliament house today:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22918227-601,00.html
It was very moving, but also very funny. Julia Gillard and Joe Hockey both spoke very well, as did Annabell Crabbe, Dennis Shanahan and Neil Breen. Barry Cassidy was the MC.
Rain @166
It seems that we have more in common than our wet pen names. I, too, being a citizen of wonderful, cosmopolitan, politically aware and tolerant Canberra, enjoyed voting BTL and putting the most disliked candidate last. In fact, I don’t know anyone who voted ATL.
To all the others who would increase the Senate – it’s ridiculous and expensive to have so many Senators. The Senate is not as democratically elected as the House. Didn’t the revered PK call them “umrepresentative swill”? I’m not in favour of abolishing the upper chamber, just limitimg the numbers which should be reduced or frozen. Imagine making NT a state and giving it 12 senators! What over representation that would be. Good quality senators usually have no difficulty in transferring to the House, so they wouldn’t necessarily be thrown out of Parliament in a reduction of numbers.
193
La Nina – funny thing is that if everyone voted BTL the Senate would be by far the most representative constituent assembly. Seats allocated at close to the proportions of votes received . . . sigh – it will never happen.
Someone asked earlier about Bob Day and how much the campaign cost him.
He has been refusing to answer questions on how much money he ultimately spent, but given that he spent over $200,000 before the election was even called and then had at least 2 electorate-wide mail-outs per week during the campaign proper, I would suggest that it would have been close to $500,000.
Given that the result wasn’t even close, I suspect he’s now regretting his decision to eschew the advice of the Liberal campaign office and run his own, more personalised campaign. A lot of his “non-traditional” campaign techniques went down like a lead balloon in this electorate and his refusal to take advice from those who actually know what they are doing was just plain dumb.
Oh, and pretending Workchoices wasn’t a problem with the electorate – and stating that repeatedly and very publicly – was even dumber.
Thank god he wasn’t elected.
To be fair La Nina the current constitution allows for new states to have whatever limiting of their rights the others see fit to put into the agreement.
Number of Senators being right up there on the list.
So the NT can become a state without necessarily receiving 12 senators.
Greetings all
Sorry to go off thread a bit, but we have important breaking developments in the ACT war. The old trots are a-titter. Amongst the comrades the angst is palpable.
BTW, ESJ, how are the ngusys of Kamchatka? I trust you are picking up a bit of scientific materialism and have learned to shed your false consciousness at the school for de-programming running dogs.
You are also being deprived of important developments in the class war. The ACT now has a new liberal leader. We had Brendan. We nearly had the Richard but he spat the dummy. We had Bill and now we have Ned. Still leaves Vicki and Jacqui for the full roster of wannabees, exes and actuals but in all the excitement I might have missed a couple.
#
159
Ron Says:
December 13th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
TO WILLIAM BOWE
I have made 2 blogs today
1/ in response re no of senators
2/ re postal voting trends which is in moderation – specifically WHY
I don’t know Ron, they must have had words in them that triggered my moderation filters, which serve to block spam and ensure compliance with various stupid laws we have in this country. They were unblocked not all that long after you posted them.
William could we possibly have a list of banned words so that we can avoid transgressions? Is the J-word still one of them? (I think this needs justification). The only other one I keep tripping up on is c*rrupt. I assume the f-word and c-word are on the list so you don’t need to list them if it would make you blush to type them.
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