2022 Hobart Council Count

All figures on this page are unofficial - see TEC for official results when available.

MAYOR (Incumbent: Reynolds):  CALLED (Friday 10:30) Anna Reynolds defeats John Kelly with reduced margin compared to 2018 win.

DEPUTY (Incumbent: Burnet):  Burnet leads Behrakis and will win by very large margin (Called Saturday before final exclusion)

COUNCILLORS (11 recontesting incumbents, 12 vacancies): 

Called: Reynolds, John Kelly (off initial sampling), Zucco, Burnet (off 20% count), Elliot, Behrakis, Bloomfield, Dutta, Harvey (off 50% count)

In The Mix (for three seats): Posselt, Lohberger, Sherlock (these three leading substantially), Fox, Kate Kelly, Briscoe.

Coats, Thomas, Fox, Briscoe currently projected to lose seats.

UTAS MOVE ELECTOR POLL: CALLED No has won.

2022 Tasmanian Council Counts: General And Councils Other Than Hobart

Numbers noted here based in scrutuneering are unofficial. For official results see the TEC website.

Introduction

This is my general page for commentary on the 2022 Tasmanian council counts.  Specific comments on individual councils will be added where time permits below (my main focus being on the Hobart count) and there will also be some comments on general themes.  Don't expect to see much on this page on Tuesday; comments will be added on Wednesday.  I will not necessarily cover all councils but expect to have brief comments at least on several.  

On Tuesday ballot papers will be removed from envelopes and there may be some computer data entry for some large councils but don't expect official figures.  I may have some indications from scrutineers depending on the pace of counting but the main counting activity for Mayors and Deputies together with the start of data entry is on Wednesday. The TEC expects to have provisional 20% or 50% distributions for all councils at some stage on Wednesday.  These provisional results are what would happen if only the votes entered to that point were used to decide the election.  Usually most of the candidates who are provisionally elected at the 20% stage end up winning, but often some of those elected to the last few positions change.  It is common to see media misreporting that candidates "elected" in these 20% and 50% interim counts have "won" but it is only when the final, 100%, count is done that the winners are official. 

Tenth anniversary!

Just very quickly noting that today is the tenth anniversary of me starting this site!  As noted in the fifth anniversary article I originally set up shop on Blogger to make sure I had somewhere to start posting right away, expecting that it would probably be temporary, but still here I am.  

After ten years this site has published 843 articles including this one and about 4550 comments (about a third of them mine).  It's had about 4.2 million pageviews including over 1.8 million unique pageviews.  Analytics claims there to have been about 400,000 users though a lot of those would be duplicates from different IP addresses. This is what the pageview pattern looks like for most of the last ten years (the first several months are missing but there wasn't that much happening then anyway):

A lot of the spikes correspond to the obvious elections (federal, Tasmanian state, Tasmanian councils and some other state elections especially Victoria 2018) but the 2022 federal election spike was something else entirely (more on that in the end of year stats review).  

At this stage I have no firm plans to do anything differently but I may at some stage set up a separate professional website and I've also had some money donated with a request that it be used to set up an easier portal for people to donate to thank me for my work.  The problem is that all these things take time to arrange. I've had a catastrophic shortage of spare time in this unusually election-packed year (especially after losing two months of work time to moving house and another to a non-serious but somewhat prolonged encounter with COVID). I have just today I've learned that within the next three and a half months I'll have to move house again, so things don't look like getting better there in a hurry.  

On that matter I hope to find time to send thankyous to everyone who has donated money to my site since 20 April (the last time I was up to date with the thankyou emails run), but it may yet take a while! I'm very committed to continuing to supply a public open resource provided I can manage to keep avoiding any employment constraints that would require me to stop doing it.  Thanks greatly to all of you whose support helps me to keep doing so, and to everyone reading this site for your interest.

Coverage of Tasmanian council counts will start from tomorrow with one article for Hobart and one less detailed article for various other councils.

Have Tasmanian Local Council Attrition Rates Increased?

While looking at a few of the larger Tasmanian councils in preparation for an interview I was surprised by how few incumbents were recontesting in some of the councils.  Launceston, with only seven out of 12 recontesting, and Glenorchy with only five out of ten, especially caught my eye.  Hobart with 11 out of 12 recontesting started to look unusual.  I couldn't help wondering if the proportion of councillors throwing in the towel in Tasmanian local government elections was rising, and as if I didn't have enough to do, I couldn't resist investigating it.

This is what I found.  The following numbers may have some slight errors (eg if I have been tripped up by a councillor's name changing without my knowledge) but any errors won't greatly affect the overall picture.

The 2014-8 term was the first four-year term for councils that was formed by all-in-all-out elections.  The 2018-22 term has also featured all-in-all-out elections but a noticeable difference is that in the 2022 election, voting is compulsory.  One council (Glenorchy) had its 2014-8 term shortened by several months and its 2018-22 term lengthened after an election was called early to fix a council that had become dysfunctional.  

Victorian Party Policies On Fixing Group Ticket Voting

The Scoreboard - Victorian Election 2022

The following parties have a publicly documented commitment to, or position of support for, scrapping Group Ticket Voting:

* Victorian Socialists (longstanding)

* Australian Greens (longstanding)

* Animal Justice Party (added 16/11 - conditional on single statewide electorate)

* Pauline Hanson's One Nation (added 17/11)

* Legalise Cannabis (added 22/11)

See comments below for what these parties have said about the issue.  

Other parties will be listed here when I become aware that they qualify.  Parties that have publicly documented commitments to policies that would clearly significantly reduce the Group Ticket Voting problem may also be noted in this section.  

Don't take too much notice of how short this list is in the early stages of the campaigbn - but if a party has not been listed in this Scoreboard section by voting time and electoral reform is important to you, please don't vote 1 for it. 

Some voters may wish to specifically avoid parties that are part of Glenn Druery's preferencing network.  All such parties are marked with a (D) after their name for the benefit of voters who may want to put them last.

How To Make Best Use Of Your Vote In The Tasmanian Council Elections

I had a request for information about this, so here is a quick primer on how I think voters should make best use of their votes in the current Tasmanian council elections.

Note that I have a very detailed guide to Hobart City Council and a slightly less detailed one for Clarence.  Kingborough voters may find this guide to party affiliations prepared by Lara van Raay (recent Local Party candidate) and based on responses from an impressive 15/16 candidates useful.

How many boxes to number?

For the Councillor elections, you are required to number the boxes from 1 to 5 (exception: King Island) each once and once only for a valid vote.  If that's all you feel you can do, fine.  But if you want your vote to be more powerful then the more boxes you can number the better.  If two candidates are competing for a position and your vote numbers neither, then your vote can't help decide between them and the decision will be made by other voters.  If you have numbered one ahead of the other, or one and not the other, then your vote may help if it happens to be still active in the preference process at that time.

Clarence City Council Candidate Guide And Preview 2022

All candidates are directed to the note for candidates at the bottom of this page. 

Introductory Waffle

To see how it goes this year I've decided to expand my detailed coverage of Tasmanian council elections from just one to two, adding Clarence to Hobart.  If it is successful and I have far more time on my hands in 2026 than in this mess of a year I may do even more councils next time.  This guide is similar to my Hobart guide but, partly for time reasons and partly because I don't live there, will be a lot less detailed.  My core aim here is to ensure voters who want to be aware of the past party involvements of candidates have that awareness.  

During the campaign period voters will get official statements by the candidates, with photos supplied by them.  The online version includes web links for those candidates who have submitted them, but surprisingly that's only 17 out of 27.  At the start of this guide I will be including an official web link where a candidate has given one in their TEC statement, and failing that a social media or other web link if I can find one.  Unlike my Hobart guide, I will start with only one link for each candidate, but may add others.

Clarence City Council Voting Patterns 2018-22

(Note: Clarence council guide will be available from about 2 pm  Monday)

Advance Summary

1. This article presents some statistics and comments concerning voting patterns in the Clarence City Council 2018-22.

2. Voting on contested matters on Clarence council has been significantly less factionalised than on Hobart City Council in the same period.

3. While all councillors vote independently and only tend to vote more or less with other councillors, there has been a recognisable "right" grouping of Brendan Blomeley, Dean Ewington and Mayor Doug Chipman. 

4. The most frequent opponent of the "right" grouping is Richard James, followed at some distance by Beth Warren.  James also has a very high proportion of lone-dissent votes.

5. Many of the Clarence councillors do not side especially strongly with one side or the other and some are more or less centrists.

6. The relationship of Clarence council voting patterns with known party memberships or associations is quite weak.

7. A possible "left-to-right" ordering of the 2018-22 Clarence council was James, Warren, Kennedy, Mulder, Edmunds*, Peers (centre), Walker, von Bertouch, Chong, Chipman*, Ewington*, Blomeley.

(* = not recontesting.)