Sarah Courtney Resignation And Recount

Bass recount for seat of Sarah Courtney (resigned)

Seat will be won by a Liberal - most likely Lara Alexander or Simon Wood

Alexander had an advantage in votes for which the recount outcome is already known

Alexander has a lead in primaries in the recount and is likely to win. (Update: And has.)

UPDATES FEB 25: The recount has started and I have seen a media report that, unofficially, on primaries Lara Alexander had 44%, Simon Wood 37.6%, Greg Kieser 12.6%, leaving 5.8% for other candidates.  The exclusion process will be relatively fast and Wood will need over 67% of preferences from Kieser and the other candidates, which is unlikely.  Alexander has basically held her lead on known primary votes across the unknown primaries.  

6:20 It's over; Alexander wins by 620 votes (52.9-47.1).  The expected outcome and an unsurprising margin.  Interestingly this is only the second case of a female for female replacement on a recount (after Cassy O'Connor replacing Peg Putt (both Greens.)) The reason turns out to be that only 24 previous female MHAs have completed their careers and of these only four did so by resigning, so there have been very few chances for this to occur.

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This thread will analyse and later cover the recount for the resignation of Sarah Courtney (Liberal, Bass) from the Tasmanian Parliament.  Courtney resigned for a range of personal reasons, following a trip to Europe that had attracted some controversy.  Courtney, an eight-year incumbent recently elected for the third time, was Minister for Tourism, Hospitality and Events, Minister for Education, Minister for Skills, Training and Workforce Growth, Minister for Children and Youth and Minister for Disability Services.  In the last year or so Courtney had been the subject of some future leadership speculation, and the loss of an established Minister is a blow to the Government.  

The recount to fill Courtney's place will occur in a few weeks' time.  The recount is of all the votes that Courtney had when she was elected.  These were:

* 2227 (19.8%) votes that were 1 Courtney.

* 8999 (80.2%) votes worth of ballot papers that were 1 Gutwein 2 Courtney (9294 papers)

The recount will certainly elect another Liberal, the question being whether it will be Tasmanian St Vincent de Paul CEO Lara Alexander, George Town Mayor Greg Kieser or former Launceston councillor Simon Wood.  

The Bass 2021 preference distribution provides some insight concerning the second set of votes, because these were redistributed as a small surplus when Courtney was elected.  Each of the 9294 ballots only had an ongoing value of about 3.17% of a vote, because nearly all their value was consumed electing Courtney.  This is where those votes went:

47.8% (38.3% of recount) Michael Ferguson (Lib)

23.7% (19.0%) Alexander (Lib)

15.9% (12.7%) Wood (Lib)

4.7% (3.8%) Kieser (Lib)

5.4% (4.3%) non-Liberal candidates

2.4% (1.9%) lost due to fractions - these votes will mostly return to various candidates in the recount

Thus of the 35.5% of the recount that is accounted for, Alexander leads Wood by 6.3% while Kieser is so far behind that it will be hard for him to recover the difference on any of the remaining votes.

The most important parcels to see whether Wood can catch up will be the 38.3% of the recount that consists of votes that were 1 Gutwein 2 Courtney 3 Ferguson, and the 19.8% of the recount that consists of votes that were 1 Courtney.  At some point in the recount process Kieser is likely to be excluded and his preferences thrown, which would give Wood another chance to catch up.

The 1 Courtney parcel may favour Alexander because of gender effects, which are often seen in Hare-Clark preference flows.  There is really no way of knowing what the 1 Gutwein 2 Courtney 3 Ferguson votes will do.  The other argument in Alexander's favour was that she is reasonably high profile - though that wasn't worth a lot in primary vote terms.  

While Alexander has an advantage on known votes that may be hard to pull back, there are some arguments in Wood's favour.  Wood had better preference flows than Alexander from votes that were 1 Gutwein and did not go to Courtney (1108-914) and from all the votes Greg Kieser had when excluded (about 824-421).   The first lot of votes does not include anything from the recount, and votes that flow into the recount were worth very little in the second lot, but this may point to a better ability to get preferences from Liberal voters generally.  

If Alexander wins, there will be fences to be mended: during the very incumbent-focused Liberal campaign Alexander's team complained of being muzzled by party headquarters, alleging the party exercised "complete control" over public appearances and only wanted "cookie-cutter candidates".  This (or perhaps the precedent of Madeline Ogilvie not sitting as a Labor MP when elected on a recount in 2019) was enough for some media reports to specify that Alexander had confirmed she will sit as a Liberal if elected.  All of Alexander, Wood and Kieser have confirmed they will contest. 

(PS Apologies to Greg Kieser for numerous sleep-deprived misspellings of his surname in the original version of this article.)