Cassy O'Connor Resignation, Recount And Run For Hobart

Clark recount for seat of Cassy O'Connor (Green)
Vica Bayley (GRN) wins recount but it has been closer than expected.

1:01 Bayley wins 5380-4649 (53.6% to 46.4%) with 592 exhausted (mostly on the final exclusion).  That result highlights some problems for the Greens in terms of fracturing of candidate preferences among their voters, with so many preferring Taylor (who has run for Council but is far from a household name) but it is also an opportunity: if they can split their vote this evenly it will improve their chances of winning two!

12:11 I have heard that Bayley is going OK on the final exclusion and should survive. (Update: more than OK, he will gain by over 200 here and win by several hundred.)

11:56 A huge flow from Smith to Taylor and the asking rate has come down - Taylor now needs 66.9% off Hickey assuming no votes exhaust but there will probably be a lot of exhaust on this count.  How many of the O'Connor - Hickey voters voted all the way through and will return to the ticket, and of those that do how many are gender-based?

There are 1454 to throw and Bayley leads by 496.

10:55 Dutta excluded and Taylor made only a 5-vote gain this time and now needs 67.7% which is increasingly unrealistic.  Two exclusions remaining, Smith and Hickey.

10:30 The pattern was the same on the Westcott exclusion - gains but not enough.  Taylor now needs 65.8% assuming no exhaust.  Now we have the Dutta exclusion then the Smith exclusion.  Unless there is a substantial split to Taylor off the Smith exclusion, Bayley will be too far ahead to be caught off the remaining Hickey exclusion.  The bug with the absolute majority figure is now fixed.  

Tuesday 9:50 On the Ewin exclusion Taylor again made a gain but it was smaller than it might have been and Taylor now needs 65.3% assuming no exhaust.  

9:00 On the third exclusion (Carnes), Taylor did not get very much, and now needs 64.9% assuming no exhaust (but there will be quite a bit).  There is a minor bug with the TEC's absolute majority figure which has not reduced as it should have on the last two counts.  Next exclusion in the morning is Ewin (these might be good for Taylor).

5:50 After the first two exclusions, Taylor is getting votes much faster than Bayley and now needs 64.4% of preferences!

5:00 A bit of a surprise here, Bayley has not done particularly well in the first phase of the recount and is substantially short of 50% so we do have to wait on the preference throw:

Bayley 37.6%

Bec Taylor (Green) 27.4%

Tim Smith (Green) 10.6%

Sue Hickey (IND) 10.4%

Tim Westcott (AJP) 3.8%

Jax Ewin (IND) 3.2%

Mike Dutta (IND) 3.2%

Deb Carnes (ALP) 2.1%

Sam Mitchell (ALP) 1.4%

Lorraine Bennett (SFF) 0.3%

Taylor would need a 64.5% split of preferences to win if no votes exhausted, but some votes will exhaust, especially among those that have left the Greens ticket (which is most of the preferences that will be thrown).  There's no reason to think that will occur but Bayley would not want it to be much closer.

Recount updates Monday 31st: Have heard most of the way through counting that Bayley is winning as expected.

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There's a lot going on in Tasmanian politics at the moment.  I hardly had time to deal with the news of Dorset Mayor Greg Howard's resignation from the Liberal Party before something requiring more urgent attention came along - Tasmanian Greens Leader Cassy O'Connor is resigning from parliament mid-term and, in an extra twist, will run for the Legislative Council seat of Hobart in May next year.  This is the fifth resignation from the Lower House this term, equalling the number in the 2018-21 term.

O'Connor was herself elected on a mid-term recount in 2008 when Peg Putt resigned.  She was re-elected comfortably four times in the state's Greenest division, narrowly topping the poll among individual candidates in both 2010 and 2021.  She served as a Minister (Human Services, Community Development, Climate Change, Aboriginal Affairs) in the 2010-2014 Labor-Greens government and then became party leader in 2015 on the resignation of Kim Booth.

Recount

O'Connor's recount, to be held on July 31, will elect former Wilderness Society campaign manager Vica Bayley, who has stated he will nominate.  Tasmanian Hare-Clark recounts are based solely on the votes that the vacating member had when they were elected, and how candidates fared overall in the original count is irrelevant.  The vote-values that will make up O'Connor's recount are as follows:

89.1% 1 O'Connor (Green)
5.1% Preferences arriving from minor Greens candidates Taylor (2.5%), Smith (2.2%) and Volf (0.4%)
2.0% Preferences arriving from Westcott (Animal Justice)
3.8% Preferences arriving from other candidates, mostly minor left-wing independents

Vica Bayley was the Greens' most promoted support candidate and was by far the highest polling minor Green (though the latter is not directly relevant to this recount, only the former).  He doesn't get any of his own primary votes back in this recount but it will not matter because the share that other candidates get back will be so small.  It's likely more than half of the 1 O'Connor votes will be 2 Bayley, or even if it is somewhat less than half he will still lead by enough to win the countback easily no matter who else contests.

Run for Hobart

The news that O'Connor is to run for Hobart adds interest to what was already an intriguing contest.  Hobart is the most conspicuously left-leaning of the state's 15 Legislative Council seats, and one of the greenest.  It is currently held by former Hobart Lord Mayor Rob Valentine, who has been reported as retiring after holding the seat for two terms.  

Prior to Valentine's tenure, Hobart (then called Wellington) was held by Labor's Doug Parkinson, and at that time it was easy to run modelling to predict that Parkinson would beat the Greens 60-40 or so.  But that was before the days of Andrew Wilkie and before the calamitous 19.8% swing against Labor in Clark at the 2021 state election.

Even if Labor's stocks have recovered at state level in Clark since, Valentine's grip on the seat has shown that a sufficiently high-profile left independent can still stop them from winning and maybe even keep them out of the top two.  

In 2021 the voting at on the day booths in Hobart at the state election was Greens 31.8%, Liberal 24.5, Labor 18.5, Johnston (IND) 9.7, Hickey (IND) 9.3 others 6.2.  If the Hobart prepoll booth is included it becomes Greens 30.3 Liberal 26.8 Labor 17.8 Johnston 9.8 Hickey 9.8 others 5.5.  

This shows that Greens support is high enough to pretty much guarantee they make the final two unless there is competition from an independent who is green enough and high-profile enough to take more votes from O'Connor than Kristie Johnston and Sue Hickey did.  So my suspicion is that Hobart will be either an IND vs Green or a Labor vs Green seat as the final two next year.  

Any left to centre independent strong enough to make the final two really should beat any Green on major party preferences, but on the state election results the Greens could well beat Labor and would easily beat the Liberals (though I don't think the Liberals will be making the top two if Labor runs).  Note that the Greens do not get any bonus for running O'Connor as she is already the candidate in the baseline election above, but it's possible the novelty value of electing a first Green MLC would attract some votes.  O'Connor is also going to be campaigning for eight months, which is not to be ignored.

In the 2022 Senate race without the distraction of significant independents the Greens polled 41% in Hobart at booth votes compared to 26.1% for Labor and 17.5% for the Liberals, and topped every booth but one.  

The most obvious subject for speculation (indeed it's started already) about a possible Independent challenger is Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds, a former Green with broad left appeal who would take votes away from the Greens (much as Valentine did in 2012 when they polled 22.6%).  But I have no idea if Reynolds would be interested and will update here if she rules it out.  I expect that with the general support level for indies in the area recently and in the Legislative Council as a whole, an independent need not be terribly high profile to be competitive - but they will have to pull enough of a primary vote to get over at least one major party assuming that the major parties run.  I would expect that a number of potential independent runners will be canvassing support.  

It should not be assumed that the Greens are necessarily set for a great performance just because a high profile former MP is running.  Bob Brown's run for Denison (federal) in 1993 was a fizzer by the standards of the hype about it and Gerry Bates didn't make the final two in Queenborough 1995.  While there is talk about O'Connor's resignation being a risk I think it is more a case that it was a good time to move on anyway and the Hobart tilt and whatever chances may exist of a first ever Greens MLC is a bonus.