RICHMOND (NSW) (ALP 4.1%)
Justine Elliot (ALP) vs Mandy Nolan (GRN) based on candidate exclusion order
(2019 3CP NAT 41.7 ALP 34.7 GRN 23.6)
Labor is second on primaries and needs to stay ahead of Nationals or overtake Greens (after preferences) to make top three.
Large Liberal Democrat primary may cause Nationals to make final two.
Elliot expected to move into lead on prepolls and retain.
(Elliot has claimed victory - awaiting confirmation of result.)
I will be rolling out many postcount threads for seats today either individually or in batches but I said I would start with a weird one, which has not received much attention on the night, and that is Richmond. On further checking it as not as interesting as I expected but a quick thread on it anyway.
Richmond has long been a Greens target seat but I have never believed they would win it until Justine Elliot retired. And it doesn't look like they will win it this time, but this depends on prepolls behaving as they have done in the past.
These are the current primary votes with 56.7% counted:
Hone (Nat) 21.6
LDP 7.1
One Nation 3.8
UAP 3.0
Warth (IND) 2.8
IMOP 2.4
Jones (IND) 1.9
Sharples (IND) 1.6
On current primaries, Elliot could be in strife. The LDP, One Nation and UAP preferences would seem likely to push Hone ahead of her (although that might not quite occur) unless the preferences from the minor independents and IMOP favoured her. If Elliott fell to third on three-candidate-preferred after preferences, Nolan would win the seat.
The problem for Nolan is that hardly any of the prepoll centres have been counted in Richmond. Still outstanding are Ballina, Byron, Casuarina, Murwullimbah and Tweed Heads South prepolls. At the last election the Byron prepoll was strong for the Greens but the rest were awful, especially Ballina and Tweed South which were also the largest.
What I project will happen as the prepolls and postals come in is that Elliot will move into the lead on primary votes by something like 5%, Hone will overtake Nolan either on primary votes or preferences, and the seat will revert to a classic 2PP seat (meaning Elliot wins with a big swing). Even if the Nationals are third, Elliot will win on Nats' preferences.
By the way the high Liberal Democrat vote in Richmond is not a bug, it's a feature. Liberal Democrats tend to poll very well in seats where they are running against a National candidate but there is no Liberal candidate.
I will update this post when more prepolls are in.
MONDAY: The prepolls are all in and the first 3900 postals too. It's now Elliot 28.67% Nolan 25.36 Hone 23.83. Hone should easily jump at least one of Elliot or Nolan on the LDP preferences. The question is whether Nolan can get close enough off the massive 22.6% of preferences for minor candidates, plus any gains that might occur in post-counting (eg absents) to be a chance of getting over Elliot. At the moment that looks very difficult as Elliot only needs a 19% share of the preferences to guarantee a spot in the final two and win. If Elliot's primary drops and Nolan's primary rises in remaining counting, there might still be something here. However postals so far were good for Elliot (34.7-19, 1169-639) and while that should now weaken there are not many absents in Richmond, so I don't see much closing there.
TUESDAY: Justine Elliot has a Facebook page up claiming victory and saying that after preferences the Nationals will be second and Greens third. This is presumably based on sound scrutineering data.
Is it possible that LDP preferences might skew unusually high to the Greens in this seat this specific time around? The reason I'm thinking this is that Byron and surrounds is basically ground zero for left-wing anti-vaxxers (i.e. hippies, basically) who might be inclined to give their first vote to a party that has put anti-mandate policies on the agenda but isn't otherwise all that unpalatably right-wing (like the LDP), but otherwise still prefer the Greens to the majors for their environmental policies. Do you think that holds any water?
ReplyDeleteLabor now have a 2500 prinary vote lead. The Greens must have done terribly on early votes.
ReplyDeleteIt would be very interesting to see the scrutineering preference estimate, I am not entirely convinced by Justine Elliots Fb post, plenty of decleration Prepolls which were strong for Greens last time to narrow the gap.
ReplyDelete