2024 Tasmanian Postcount: Braddon

BRADDON (2021 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor)
Notional 2021 7-seat result 4 Liberal 2 Labor 1 IND or 5-2

SEATS WON 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 JLN 
CALLED WINNERS Jeremy Rockliff (Lib), Felix Ellis (Lib), Anita Dow (ALP), Shane Broad (ALP), Roger Jaensch (Lib), Miriam Beswick (JLN)
EXPECTED: Craig Garland (IND) to beat Giovanna Simpson (Lib) after preferences.  Greens eliminated.

Caution: The Braddon count involves some complicated if seemingly unlikely scenarios, this postcount is rated Wonk Factor 4/5

(Links to other seat postcount pages Bass  Clark Franklin Lyons Summary)

INTRODUCTORY NOTE: What Is Leakage?

Leakage is very important in the Braddon result.  Leakage occurs when a candidate is excluded or elected and some of their votes instead of flowing to other candidates within their party flow to candidates from outside the party or exhaust.  Parties are more prone to leakage when they have candidates who are way over quota or when they have several candidates to be excluded with substantial vote numbers between them.  Independents cannot leak and will often gain on parties through the count.  

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Welcome to Braddon where as expected the swing is not so bad as in Bass but it is still in double digits and as a result the Rockliff government is still not yet completely home and hosed in its quest to bank a four-seat slate.  It seems the Liberals should win easily but it is not as clearcut as it looks, for more read on ...

Braddon has a whopping 86.9% counted with only remaining postals, provisionals and absent votes to come.  So what we're seeing in the primary count is pretty much it!  The Liberals have 3.66 quotas, Labor 1.99, Lambie Network 0.91, Greens 0.50, Shooters 0.23, Craig Garland 0.41, AJP 0.10 and other independents 0.19 (mostly Peter Freshney).  

Jeremy Rockliff has 2.21 quotas.  If 2021 is any guide his surplus will flow strongly to Roger Jaensch and guarantee Jaensch's election, but as Jaensch's primary vote is again quite low I am holding off calling that one until that occurs or I see scrutineering reports.  Giovanna Simpson has a clear lead as the fourth Liberal but the challenge for the Liberals is that they are a long way short of a fourth quota and can drop back further on leakage.  Rockliff had a miserly leak rate of 4.5% in 2021 but a repeat of that would drop 0.055 quotas out of the Liberals' lead over Garland straightaway.  They also have .36 Q in minor candidate votes that will leak at about 8-9%, so another 0.03 Q gone, meaning that their real lead over Garland is more like 0.17 than the notional 0.254 quotas.  And that's not counting anything from that leakage that Garland gets himself, so say 0.16.

An important question for Garland is whether he can get over the Greens and get their preferences.  He is currently 811 votes behind the Greens, but 2020 votes in the Green camp is in minor candidate votes which based on 2021 experience will leak at about 13%.  That closes the gap down to about 500 (0.06 Q) assuming Garland gets some.  Unfortunately there were few exclusions of other parties based on which we could guess how Garland might go on their preferences in past elections.  The total preference pool for Garland to catch the Greens off is only about 0.52Q, but given that Freshney is a fellow independent perhaps there might be some IND to IND flow.   It's definitely not easy for Garland to get over the Greens but he might do it.  If he does, in 2021 he got close to a third of Green preferences to very low numbers for each of the remaining Liberals in that count.  That sort of flow repeated would erase most of the 0.16 Q gap suggested above - but it may depend on whether the other Liberals get across the line allowing any Green-Liberal votes to pool with Simpson.  There is also the matter of Shooters preferences - in 2021 Garland did well on these compared to individual Liberals but there were a lot of Liberals in the count.

If Garland doesn't get over the Greens, could he put the Greens' Darren Briggs in with a show?  I think this is unlikely as I'd assume the Garland to Greens flow will be weaker than Greens to Garland.  At a first look it seems Garland is struggling to quite get over the Greens but this needs to be looked at carefully when more awake!  Something also to bear in mind is that around this stage of the count the second JLN candidate will be excluded.  If either Garland or the Greens goes out before that happens, then that's a problem for the other one because preferences will flow to the two JLN candidates.  That's especially a problem for the Greens because Garland voters will quite often preference JLN (the other way around not so much). Finally (and see comments) there's a reservation about whether the Greens to Garland flow is likely to be as strong as in past elections.  

On the JLN side Miriam Beswick is a surprising leader over James Redgrave but not by much.  Craig Cutts - who appeared to be the notional lead candidate - will almost certainly be cut out and his votes may favour Redgrave for gender voting reasons, but one to keep an eye on especially to see how the candidates do on leakage.  

Thursday: After addition of out of division and telephone votes the main change is the Greens are up to 0.52 quotas (making it more difficult for Garland to get over them.)  It should be noted here that the Liberals are way more susceptible to leakage than the Greens having 13859 votes that can leak compared to 2195.  The leak rate on Liberal votes in this division tends to be very small as noted above, so I don't think there's much doubt that the Liberals are ahead of the Greens in a way that makes it hard for the Greens to catch up unless they do especially well on the Garland preferences (they will probably do badly off Shooters).  Another thing important here is what is the Liberal spread like between Jaensch, Ellis and Simpson (or Mead) off the Rockliff surplus as if the Liberals can manage to keep two candidates from going over quota then that will most likely make it impossible for anyone else to catch them.  Beswick leads Redgrave by 179.  

Sunday:  Some more analysis while waiting for fresh figures - looking at this seat I only see further what a complex and hard to predict count this is.  After accounting for likely leakage from both tickets the Greens might be about 650 ahead of JLN#2, and a similar amount ahead of Garland.  But both these parties will make gains on the Greens from Shooters preferences; indeed in 2021 Garland gained 635 off the Greens when the final Shooter was cut out (but this time JLN will be a Shooters preference option).  Animal Justice should help a single Green candidate by more than each of two JLNs.  My feeling is that either JLN 2 or Garland will be cut before the Greens, perhaps more likely the former.  It still seems plausible to me that Garland overtakes the Greens but if so then it is likely to be by a very small margin.  

The current quota totals are Liberals 3.652 Greens 0.527 Garland 0.410. I'm estimating the Liberals lose 0.083 to leakage Greens .032; Garland cannot lose votes to leakage.  If Garland is cut, then assuming the Greens and Liberals had no net changes off other exclusions or preference bundles, the Greens would need to gain at about .18 votes/vote off Garland's own preferences.  It's quite likely at this stage that Chris Lynch (ALP 3) will be out and that JLN will be quite close to quota, meaning that this is somewhere near a straight fight.  I think there is a lot of room for doubt about whether the Liberal lead survives the preference flow. 

Tuesday: The preference distribution starts tonight and at some stage we will get final figures; tonight's action will be the Rockliff surplus which will be very important in terms of leakage rates and also for the split between Ellis, Jaensch, Simpson and Mead.  

9:40 Rockliff's surplus has been thrown and the leakage rate was significantly higher than in 2021 at 6.5% (still pretty low though).  This has put Ellis over quota and assured Jaensch of victory as well as he is now thousands ahead of the other Liberals.  However the higher leakage rate compared to 2021 means that the Liberals are now just 381 ahead of the Greens on raw primaries (1401 up on leakage) and still much more exposed to leakage with 5379 votes that could leak compared to 2237 for the Greens.  They could easily lose if there is any kind of flow between Garland and the Greens at all here.    On the JLN side Beswick leads by 172.  Also any prospect of using within-ticket splits for the Liberals seems gone here.  

Also just saw this - some earlier comments from Green scrutineering.

Wednesday: First up today is the distribution of Felix Ellis's surplus and then it will be on with minor candidate exclusions.  

1:15: A major update just went up with the Ellis surplus and two minor exclusions; I don't have the leakage rate exactly but it seems it was low (edit: yes, 7.3%).  The Liberals lead the Greens by 310 votes and the Greens lead Garland by 1030 (5079 after third quota-4769-3735).  Votes that can leak are Liberals 5170, Greens 2249, Garland 0.  The gap between Simpson and Mead is only 229 votes so Mead is not out of the contest either.  

1:30: Minor exclusions are continuing now and it looks like the leak rate on the first Green exclusion was nothing unusual.  We will now see a bunch of minor Greens exclusions with the occasional exclusion of a Shooter or someone else - through this process the Greens will be dropping back from the Liberals and towards Garland.  The Greens' lead over Garland is already down to 947.  

2:40: Two more minor Greens out and Garland is closing in on them; he's only 773 behind now and they still have nearly 1800 that can leak as a lot of votes are slopping around in the Greens ticket instead of going directly to Briggs.  Garland has a great ballot position here, as the groups on the right side of the ballot are Shooters, AJP, Garland, ungrouped (Freshney) and those are the preferences that will mainly decide whether he can catch the Greens.  

4:11: Four Greens done now and Garland is 680 behind but the Greens still have 1622 that can leak before it turns into a straight preference fight between Garland and Briggs. The Liberal lead over the Greens is 633 but soon it will be the Liberals' turn to start leaking.   Not much is happening in the JLN battle with Beswick currently 178 ahead.  

4:30: Five Greens done now and Garland is 539 behind and the remaining minor Green still has 1140.  The Liberals notionally lead the Greens by 780 but that is exaggerated because of leakage.  

5:25 Briggs to Garland down to 513 as Garland makes a pickup on Shooters leakage.  A point I have mentioned above is which of Briggs, Garland and the second JLN candidate goes out first.  Currently with an even split of their preferences and 20% leaking, JLN are dead level with Garland.  It may be better than that for JLN (the split could slightly favour Redgrave or the leak could be lower) but also they are two candidates splitting whatever comes to their ticket while Garland is one.  There's a fair chance Garland gets over that mark.  In the 2022 federal election, for what it's worth, AJP votes in Braddon went 24.7% JLN 24.2% Green 18.9% Garland, so the Greens might gain a little on Garland on those.  

6:25 Final for Wednesday and the fun resumes tomorrow with a very important Animal Justice Party exclusion.  This may be followed by the final Greens exclusion after which Briggs will be on his own against Garland.  The Greens are having issues with high leakage almost everywhere in Tasmania except Clark and this put Garland much closer to them than would have been expected on past patterns.

Thursday 10:15 The Animal Justice exclusion is complete.  Gains were Greens 236 Garland 140 Liberals 89 Labor 125 JLN 192 Shooters 175 (AJP/Shooters flows are common and indicate that some voters voting for AJP actually have no idea).   So now Briggs leads Garland by 606 while the Liberal to Greens gap is 697.  We now have the final Greens exclusion where I expect Greens over Garland to drop back to something like 350-420.  After that only the Liberals can lose votes to leakage in this race.

11:24 All minor Greens are excluded and Briggs is on his own with a lead of 363.  He needs to stay ahead of Garland with the Freshney and Shooters exclusions the biggest parcels but leakage from other party minor candidates will also have a role.

12:26 On leakage from Adrian Luke (ALP) Garland makes another little gain to 359 behind.  There will be several chances to pick up little dribs and drabs along the way.  There is now a Liberal exclusion (Fabian) which might be followed by another (Laidler) or by Freshney. 

1:47 Laidler out now to be followed by Freshney ... and Garland closes by another three votes.

3:09 Sarina Laidler excluded and now we have the crucial exclusion of Latrobe Mayor Peter Freshney, with Craig Garland 350 behind Darren Briggs.  Freshney has 1621 votes.  Garland doesn't need to do it all on this one - maybe he doesn't need to do anything - as he also has the Shooters exclusion but would be looking to gain at minimum 100 here, preferably 150.  The Liberals are a mere 549 ahead of the Greens; another interesting thing here is that Mead has almost overtaken Simpson, now a mere 54 behind. Mead is the Deputy Mayor of Latrobe where Freshney is Mayor so could be passing Simpson on this count.

(By the way someone from the Shooters complained about me calling them Shooters.  If you put the word "Shooters" in your party name don't be surprised if people call you that.)

4:33 A massive gain for Garland off Freshney!  He is now just 114 votes behind Briggs and 944 behind the Liberals.  Mead leads Simpson by 50 votes but it could be that both Liberals are just drawing dead here anyway, especially when they will lose a few hundred of that lead to leakage.  On the JLN side Miriam Beswick is slowly drawing further ahead, now by 279.  We now have the exclusion of Sam Facey (ALP) and it's possible Garland could pick up more leaks here (another Circular Head area candidate).

5:44 Another small gain for Garland here, now just 101 behind and we have the exclusion of Dale Marshall (SF+FP) with 2343 votes.  This is a critical one for the Liberals who would want to put some votes into Garland or else it is too easy for him.  

7:10 Garland smacked that one out of the park and is now 466 votes ahead of Briggs, eliminating Briggs from contention (although he is not formally excluded here).  In party totals terms it should be easy for Garland to beat the Liberals from here, but what might save the Liberals is that their two remaining candidates are female.  If there is a strong flow between the two and not so much to Roger Jaensch they might be able to keep both candidates ahead of Garland.  That won't be easy though - the flow would need to be more than two to one to even start to work and a lot more than that to work well, and even then Garland might still catch whatever it is.  Note that around a third of the Greens votes are likely to exhaust based on past experience. The Liberal ticket lead over Garland stands at 841 and that looks hopelessly fragile given that a few hundred at least will leak. 

9:40 Assuming the Liberal lead is, say, 500,  Garland will need only about a .11 vote/preference gain rate on the Liberals to win, which even with a third or so exhausting shouldn't be too hard - conflict between him and the Greens over COVID issues notwithstanding.  He did get less than that in the 2022 federal election but that was with the Liberals getting preferences via the donkey vote, and also with many voters voting Green-ALP who would have flowed on to Garland.  

To look at how the count goes from here, after Diprose (ALP) will come Cutts (JLN) then probably Lynch (ALP).  Lynch will probably put Dow over with Broad just short.  Next out is either Simpson or Mead, which may put Jaensch over quota.  This leaves Redgrave, Beswick, Briggs, Garland and the final Liberal, apart from a few votes to be soaked up by Broad and maybe Jaensch.  

One possibility here is that Briggs is out first and his votes are flowing between two JLN candidates, Garland and the Liberals (and Labor a little bit), followed by a JLN surplus.  That one's a bit easier for the Liberals to survive in.  However it requires the JLN votes to split in Redgrave's favour, something like 45-35 for instance.  They haven't been doing that in other exclusions.  The more likely one is JLN 2 is out first, putting JLN 1 in or nearly so, and creating a more or less straight fight between the last Liberal and Garland on Greens preferences.  

Friday: Good morning and welcome to day four.  With the Diprose exclusion out of the way we now have the Cutts exclusion which in all likelihood decides who wins the JLN seat, and which also decides whether the second JLN candidate is over Briggs or not.   The Liberals' combined lead over Garland actually increased by 60 votes on the Diprose exclusion and is now 901.  Mead leads Simpson by 46 in the battle to avoid exclusion, with only leakage from Cutts and Lynch capable of saving Simpson.  The leakage from the Labor ticket helping the Liberals might happen again as a few hundred votes must leave the Labor ticket.

12:00 After the Cutts exclusion Beswick still leads by 221 so it very much looks like Miriam Beswick is going to parliament!  The Liberals again increased their lead on leakage, now to 948.  Mead over Simpson is now 29 votes.  Also it is pretty clear now that JLN will be cut out before the Greens with Redgrave needing to gain 193 off the small Labor excess.  (This seems the best scenario for Garland.) 611 votes must now leave the Labor ticket either as excess or leakage and Vonette Mead is 29 ahead of Simpson.  But Lynch and Simpson are on the same council so is it possible she could catch up?  

2:40 Simpson jumps back ahead of Mead by 55 off Chris Lynch!  There are about 1000 votes to throw as a surplus from Anita Dow off Lynch before Mead (presumably) is excluded.  The Liberal lead over Garland has swollen to 1076 but will go down on leakage.  

3:00 Vonette Mead is excluded!  The Liberal lead is 1097 but that will come down to something like 650 after Mead's exclusion and a very likely surplus for Roger Jaensch.  If the Liberals could take all of Mead's pile and give it to Simpson that would assist them greatly but that's not allowed.  

5:20 Big leakage off the Mead exclusion!  The Liberal ticket is only 421 ahead and there are still another 337 votes to throw on the surplus of Roger Jaensch that can still leak.  

6:30 Final for the night and tomorrow will start with the Redgrave exclusion which will elect Beswick or nearly so, with votes leaking to Broad, Briggs, Garland and Simpson.  This will elect Broad too.  It should then be a more or less straight throw from Briggs between Garland, Simpson and exhaust though it is possible Beswick will still be in the count and cross with a surplus off Briggs.  The Liberal lead is 391 votes, and that should not be nearly enough.  

Saturday 11:00 Redgrave is excluded and Shane Broad has crossed with a small surplus.  Now that there is only one remaining Liberal, Garland gained on leakage and is only 259 votes behind.  He could be elected by quite a lot here.  

11:25  The final act, almost: Briggs 5016 Garland 5765 Simpson 6017.  (Beswick is 21 short of quota). The Liberals started the count on 3.65 quotas and have advanced only to 3.67.  Garland started on 0.40 and is now 0.64. Briggs will put Beswick over quota, there will be a Beswick surplus but by that stage the result may be mathematically decided anyway.  

3:10 Garland wins! The margin is currently just below 1000. Garland's 5.1% is the lowest winning primary for any lone independent or group ever, the previous lowest I could find being 7.2% for Benjamin Pearsall in 1934.

4:05 The final margin: 1380.  Garland started 2140 behind and made a net gain of nearly 0.4 of a quota vs the Liberal ticket off leakage and better preference performances.  Amazing.