2024 Tasmanian Postcount: Franklin

FRANKLIN (2021 Result 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green - At election 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 IND)
Notional 2021 7-Seat Result 3 Liberal 3 Labor 1 Green

SEATS WON: 3  LIB 2 ALP 1 IND 1 GRN

CALLED WINNERS: Eric Abetz (Lib), Jacqui Petrusma (Lib), Dean Winter (ALP), Rosalie Woodruff (Grn), David O'Byrne (IND), Meg Brown (ALP), Nic Street (Lib)

SEAT LOST: Dean Young (Lib)

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

Warning: The Franklin count involves some complicated weirdness and this page has been rated Wonk Factor 4/5

Franklin has reached a glorious 84.5% counted with no further counting to occur this weekend.  The Liberals have 2.73 quotas, Labor 2.20, the Greens 1.55, JLN 0.39, David O'Byrne 0.72, AJP 0.12 and the rest is minor indies and Local Network.  Rosalie Woodruff has topped the poll and is the only candidate with quota.  

There is no doubt now that David O'Byrne has won as he is an independent and cannot leak votes (unlike the Liberals and Greens), and I suspect he will draw leakage from the Labor ticket as well.   The remaining suspense at party level is whether there is any chance at all for the second Green to beat the Liberals and this appears to be highly unlikely.  On current numbers the Liberals have an effective 1500 vote lead, but are more exposed to leakage with about 6400 potentially leaking votes vs 3800 for the Greens.  I'd expect a higher share of the Greens' votes to leak than the Liberals, such that the differences in leakage rates between the two are probably only worth 200 votes.  Animal Justice preferences will knock another few hundred off the lead but it's extremely difficult to see the Greens winning unless there is a large counting error in their favour.  I am pretty much sure the result will be 3-2-1-1 but want to check it further when more awake.

On the Labor side Meg Brown (who until recently worked for O'Byrne, which could make things interesting!) has a healthy 648 vote lead over Toby Thorpe.  Thorpe might benefit from preferences from Kaspar Deane on a "same side of the river" basis but the gap may not be easy to close.  

Eric Abetz has as expected bolted in [edit: maybe not so fast, see below].  We have no figures on how many last place votes he got.

Tuesday: A few things that need to be added to my very late night reading of the count from election night.  Firstly, although the Greens endorsed a linear 1-7 ticket order with Kingborough Councillor Gideon Cordover at 2 and Clarence Councillor Jade Darko at 3, Rosalie Woodruff is currently only 692 votes over quota, and a lot of Greens voters will not follow the linear order.  Jade Darko is currently around 205 votes ahead of Cordover making it seriously possible that Darko will stay above Cordover and be the second Green left in the run to the flag against the three Liberals.  Secondly I have one report from scrutineers that Abetz is doing very poorly on preferences within the Liberal ticket and could be overtaken by Petrusma at least.  This actually helps the Liberals within reason, they want their final three or at least last two to be as close together as possible and preferably all avoid crossing quota to ward off the Greens.  Two Liberals crossing leaving one in the race is their worst outcome.  

For the Greens to win the seat they need to run down whoever is the final Liberal from a starting deficit of maybe about .3 of quota.  The available preferences are currently Labor .20 quotas (expect about half to exhaust), JLN .39 quotas (these should not exhaust as much because JLN ran only three candidates, but some will go to Labor then exhaust), centrish independents Glade-Wright and Mulder .20 quotas and left minor candidates who could be very helpful to the Greens (AJP, Local Network, minor independents) 0.23 quotas.  These preferences will also for a long time be going to O'Byrne as well.  An advantage for the Greens is that eventually all the Greens votes will pool with a single contender, but votes going into the Liberal ticket are splitting three ways (or maybe two if one of them hits quota, which seems unlikely).   There is also a question in this one whether the Greens are over Labor or not to get their preferences, because the Greens start on about 0.55 ignoring leakage but the third Labor candidate could be on about .5 Q to .6 Q ignoring leakage.  This could depend on whether Lambie Network preferences favour Labor compared to the Greens but I also suspect leakage to O'Byrne will be substantial and Labor's third candidate is likely to be cut before the Greens.

(There isn't a possibility of Labor winning three off the Greens preferences if ahead of them because the Green preferences going into the Labor ticket have to split two ways for that to occur and Labor is just too far behind especially with O'Byrne also soaking preferences.)    

Tuesday evening: I have heard that: 1. the flow from Woodruff appears not strong enough to put Cordover over Darko, though other Green preferences might have an impact there 2. the flow from JLN to Greens is pretty good 3. the flow from Glade-Wright to Greens is excellent.  I may have a go at this tomorrow.

Wednesday: I am scutineering this count today.  It takes a long time to see enough votes for a meaningful pattern to emerge but some things I am seeing are (i) the flow from other Liberals to Abetz is indeed weak but not disastrously weak (in fact it's the sort of weak that helps them)  (ii) the Green votes both for Woodruff and minor candidates are quite leaky, there are some pretty wild votes in their piles in general (iii) flow from Woodruff to Cordover varies by booth; in some booths it is very strong to Cordover so it's still possible Cordover will overtake Darko.  Understanding from other scrutineers is that Brown is doing well in the contest with Thorpe and should win.

12 pm:  Very roughly so far I am seeing that the Liberal ticket split is about 20/40/40 Abetz-Petrusma-Street but my samples are very small and from smallish booths and I have no sample of Antolli yet.  Current quotas by candidate in the ticket are Abetz .747 Petrusma .673 Street .535 others .775, so that would notionally mean Abetz .902 Petrusma .983 Street .845 (ignoring leakage and there is some), which would have Petrusma hitting quota at some stage on minor candidate preferences and two Liberals likely to sit short of quota for the Greens to try to catch.  

Wednesday 2pm: On what I'm seeing from other parties, the Labor preferences (that said I've sampled mainly Thorpe because with other Labor candidates you have to be quick to see which of Thorpe and Brown it goes to first and therefore whether it will go any further) are nearly half exhausting, with half the rest going to O'Byrne.  Also the Lambie preferences are splatty and if anything probably going to the majors more than the Greens.  Animal Justice are helping the Greens to about the extent expected but it's really hard to see how the Greens can make up enough especially since flow to Labor from other parties is just swelling the Labor surplus, half of which is going to the bin.  Something I am seeing quite often is Lambie voters who are voting 1-3, then 4-7 for four candidates from another ticket then stopping; often with the Greens this means the vote is not hitting the right candidate.  

Wednesday 4 pm: my latest estimate for the Liberal ticket split is 21/36/43 based on a sample of over 200 preferences from various minor Liberals at sundry exotic locales. So that would mean Abetz .91 Petrusma .95 Street .868 which is better for the Liberals than my early sample.  As for the Lambie prefs the hold rate within the ticket is about 83% (this has implications for Lyons).  The flow differs by candidate, eg Hannan flows more to O'Byrne and the Greens than Callaghan.  I don't think the Greens are making significant gains on the Liberal total here (they are on Glade-Wright, AJP etc but not the sort of huge gain that would be needed).  

Should also add here: O'Byrne is drawing preferences from everywhere, at percentages between low teens and low 20s off minor candidates, close to 20 off JLN and 25% off Labor bearing in mind most of the rest of Labor's exhaust.  O'Byrne's own preferences won't be distributed but go mainly to the major parties with quite a weak break to Labor (probably less than 60-40 on a 2PP basis).  

Thursday: On added out of division votes and so on the Liberals have come down a little to 2.72 quotas, Labor 2.19, Greens up to 1.58 O'Byrne 0.71 but the changes are not enough if what I saw in scrutineering yesterday is representative.  

Tuesday: We will get final primaries tonight but nothing more.  

6:50 Final primaries are up, Labor have dropped to 2.18 and O'Byrne to 0.70 quotas to two decimals.  Darko leads Cordover by 272, Brown leads Thorpe by 705 votes.

Wednesday 12:30 pm Woodruff's surplus has been distributed and Jade Darko leads Gideon Cordover in the Greens race by 50 votes - the exclusions of minor Greens will gradually determine which of the two goes forward in the count.  There has been a massive 22.2% leakage off this surplus out of the Greens' ticket.  

3:40 One Green excluded and some minor candidates, Darko leads Cordover by 41.  An interesting Greens exclusion will be Cambers-Smith because she is a local councillor from the municipality adjacent to Cordover, which might help him.  

5:15 Two Greens excluded and Darko leads Cordover by 90.  It is looking academic as the Greens are only 342 ahead of Street who will get thousands from c 7000 minor Liberal votes, and they will lose more on leakage, meaning they would have to get huge flows off Labor, AJP, JLN and Glade-Wright.

5:50 The first Liberal (Garvin) is excluded with a 10% leak rate, but also with the main beneficiaries being lower-end ticketmates Antolli and McGregor whose votes will need to be thrown again (this is a problem that's been hurting the Greens very badly in Braddon though at this stage the Liberals are far enough ahead for it not to matter).  On the Labor side Brown leads by 593.  

Thursday 10:10 am:  We've reached an interesting point with the first exclusion of a JLN candidate statewide.  Going into this exclusion Hallahan (JLN) has 1102 votes and his ticketmates Callaghan and Hannan have 1156 and 1528 respectively.  

10:55 A modest (no worse than a lot of Labor/Greens exclusions) 15% leak off Hallahan with a very even split 473-464 to Hannan.  We are now onto the Animal Justice exclusion which is the Greens' best chance to get a move on up for any chance they might have if Street's flow within the Liberal ticket is weaker than sampled.  

12:05 The Animal Justice exclusion favoured the Greens, but not that much: Liberals 166 Labor 277 Greens 445 JLN 183 O'Byrne 140 Glade-Wright 162.  Cordover overtook Darko on the exclusion of Cambers-Smith earlier and now leads Darko by 77.  There is one more Greens exclusion on now.

1:40 Darko is the last Green standing gaining by hundreds on that transfer.  But the Greens are now 0.20 quotas behind the Liberals (never mind the individual candidates) and once the current Glade-Wright transfer is over I will probably call this one on the grounds that they cannot catch Street.

2:50 After the Glade-Wright exclusion the Greens have 5607 but will drop back to at best 5200 when Cordover goes out.  Street will get to at least 7000 probably more off his three ticketmates.  The Labor surplus is unlikely to be worth more than a gain of several hundred for the Greens because half of it will exhaust and the rest is splitting to O'Byrne.  At the very best Darko might be trying to catch something like 900 off JLN.  She is one candidate against three meaning that if there's an even party split she gains faster but there will be a lot of exhaust.  Extremely difficult.

4:00 Antolli is out and Abetz gained 352, Petrusma 623, Street 463.  This may seem odd as Antolli is similar to Abetz but if you like politics flavour "Eric" you may as well vote 1 for the orginal.  Street is already effectively ahead of the Greens once leakage is taken into account and there are still 5467 Liberal votes to come.  

5:55 With the exclusion of Kaspar Deane (ALP) Meg Brown now leads Toby Thorpe by 620.  Ebony Altimira's preferences will further assist Brown.  However there is first a surplus of 629 votes from Dean Winter off Deane.  This might put Altimira ahead of Cordover.  

7:26 That was fast!  The TEC have got through the Altimira exclusion as well as the Winter surplus, confirming that Meg Brown has won the second Labor seat.

Friday 11:25 Cordover's exclusion is complete with a 21.6% leak.  Street leads Darko by 959 votes and now we have the exclusion of Young which I expect to increase that lead to about 2300, which would have to be caught on about 2400 votes leaving the Labor ticket and about 4000 JLN votes, with O'Byrne still having about 1200 to soak up before hitting quota.  Around half the Labor votes will exhaust so nearly all of it would have to be done off JLN.  

1:10 After Dean Young's throw Nic Street is 2501 ahead of Darko although the Liberal ticket as a whole is only 1580 ahead of the Greens.  Jacqui Petrusma is likely to hit quota on Chris Hannan's exclusion, O'Byrne might do so off the Thorpe exclusion and Brown surplus.  Abetz and Street could be elected without quota.  

2:05 After Hannan's preferences Street leads Darko by 2119 and Petrusma is over quota by 253.  As well as those 253 which should further help the Liberals there is 3598 to come out of the Labor ticket, but so many of those will exhaust that even a 100% split to Darko of those that do not would be unlikely to be enough (O'Byrne is nearly home so votes splitting to him are no longer a factor).  The remaining suspense is ... will Eric Abetz get a quota?

A reader has told me that the split in JLN preferences was about ALP 27% O'Byrne 24 Lib 19 Green 15 exhaust 15.  This is the only meaningful final throw of that sort from JLN we'll get, so that is useful.  

3:20 Note that O'Byrne is just 46 votes from quota so Thorpe is going to put both Brown and (on leakage) O'Byrne over quota with their own surpluses. Assuming O'Byrne gets at least a few hundred his will continue on at nearly full value.  Both will then be thrown as Green vs 2 Libs vs exhaust.  

6:00 Meg Brown's surplus is thrown with O'Byrne's to come, and the margin from Street to Darko has closed only slightly to 1598.  The result is now mathematically certain with about 400 David O'Byrne votes to throw to complete the election with Eric Abetz and Nic Street to be elected without quota. 

6:22 Franklin is finished!  Nic Street won the final seat by 1562 (2.2%).   O'Byrne (ALP to Ind ALP to Ind) is the sixth MP to be re-elected after one or more changes of party status since World War 2, following Carrol Bramich (ALP to Lib), Reg Turnbull (ALP to Ind), Kevin Lyons (Lib to Ind to Centre Party), Doug Lowe (ALP to Ind) and Madeleine Ogilvie (ALP (defeated) to Ind (post recount) to Lib).