ACT 2024 Postcount

Note: Analysis updates on Monday night may be delayed a few hours by a regular commitment.  

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Numbers in the form Labor-Liberal-Greens-I4C-others.  

BRINDABELLA: 2-2-0-0-0 plus contest for final seat Greens vs Liberals vs (apparently less likely) Labor.  Greens appear best placed, awaiting distributions to confirm.  

GINNINDERRA: 2-2-1-0-0 (no change)

KURRAJONG: 2-1-1-1-0 (Independents for Canberra gain from Greens)

MURRUMBIDGEE: 2-2-0-0-1 (Fiona Carrick gain from Greens)

YERRABI: Strongly expected 2-2-1-0-0 (no change)

Expected total 10-9-3-1-1 plus one Green or Liberal (ALP minority government with Green sole balance of power)

WARNING: ACT election analysis is highly technical.  This page is rated Wonk Factor 5/5.

The letter Q, where used without explanation, means the number of quotas.

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Welcome to my page that will follow the ACT postcount until all seats are resolved.  This year each seat has its own section with updates scrolling to the top for each seat.   Updates will be added frequently for the close and complex races in Brindabella (three party fight for one seat) and Murrumbidgee (within-party contest between two Liberals).  The other seats will only be updated if anything I consider notable happens.  

Last night Elections ACT were extremely fast at getting two provisional distributions out with the second arriving at 8:21.  I believe this was all the electronic votes available to include on the day and the reason there were no more afterwards is all remaining votes were paper ballots that still need to be scanned over coming days.

The current live vote totals include almost all votes cast on the day, with the exception of declaration votes and some votes cast outside the voter's electorate - these will total around 1000-1500 per electorate.  Each electorate will have something like 2500-4000 postals to go (last time Brindabella had the fewest) so the votes to add are likely to have a rightward lean, correcting for the leftward lean in the on the day votes.  In 2020 the final totals were significantly to the right of the votes used for the election-night distributions (by approaching 1%) but with a much larger on the day vote in 2020 I expect that effect to be muted if we see it at all.  

In 2024 the Monday distributions were well behind the live count so they may not be as useful as I have been hoping.  

Assessments in the header are all provisional til I have time to look at the seats in detail.  

Brindabella (2020 2 ALP, 2 Lib, 1 Green)

Expected winners: Mark Parton (Lib), Deborah Morris (Lib), Caitlin Tough (ALP), Taimus Werner-Gibbings (ALP)
Final seat: James Daniels (Lib) vs Laura Nuttall (Green) and Mick Gentleman (ALP).  Greens appear best placed.

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Monday night: Today's data entry for Brindabella is a fizzer as the numbers haven't changed very much (progressive quota is 5903 compared to 9084 in the live count) so we can ignore it and await the following days.  The votes added were postals and are not showing the break of on the day votes.   In the meantime in the live count, the Liberals are 2.58 Q Labor 2.04 Q Greens .55 Q and I4C are 0.45 Q, a very minimal improvement for the Liberals from yesterday.  As the live votes added include nearly 2500 postals, I would say that is unhelpful to their chances.  The postals are so far running only about 2.5 points better for the Liberals than the live count overall, 1.5 points worse for the Greens, 2.1 points worse for Labor.  

Intro (Sunday): As of Sunday Brindabella looks by far the messiest seat at party level.  In the second Saturday night distribution the Liberals have 2.72 quotas, Labor 2.02, Greens 0.50 and Independents for Canberra 0.41.  On the raw party totals it may look like this is an easy Liberal win barring very strong preference flows to the Greens but Hare-Clark is about candidates and not just parties.  Here it is significant that Labor starts with three well-polling candidates, Caitlin Tough (0.64 Q), Taimus Werner-Gibbings (0.48 Q) and Mick Gentleman (0.46 Q).  

What happens in the second distribution is that from this ridiculous 0.7 quota deficit, Labor nearly wins 3 seats to the Liberals 2, which is possibly the most bizarre thing I have ever seen in a Hare-Clark cutup. The minor I4C and Greens candidates leak so many votes from their tickets that Gentleman is able to stay ahead of both their lead candidates, just, knocking out Nuttall by 89 votes (0.016 Q).  There is then a huge flow of preferences from the Greens to Labor ahead of the low-profile third Liberal.  At this point the Liberals have 2.81 quotas to Labor's 2.64 quotas, but because there are still two Labor candidates in the count, vote-splitting between Werner-Gibbings and Gentleman nearly saves Gentleman; he loses by just over 300 votes (0.055 quotas), thereby closing down over 90% of Labor's beginning deficit off preferences and candidate effects. And, if the Liberal total now comes down by 0.06 quotas (which it has done and then some) and stays there (which it could) then Labor can win three seats.  Not so much the Ginninderra effect as the Ginninderra elephant, if it occurs.  (The effect here mainly kicks in by keeping Labor alive long enough to get all those preferences.  If it was the Senate system where most voters vote in effect down a ticket order they would just elect two with the third candidate excluded very early in the count.)

The problem with this wild scenario is that while the Liberal vote has indeed gone down, the Greens vote has also gone up.  In the current live count, the Liberals are on 2.57 Q, Labor 2.05Q, Greens 0.55 Q and I4C 0.45 Q.  Although Nuttall does not get the full benefit of the Greens' gain because of leaks from minor candidates,  Gentleman doesn't get that much of the ALP benefit and he has actually personally dropped back to 0.43 quotas in the current live count.  So there doesn't seem to be any doubt that Nuttall is over Gentleman if the button is pressed on the current live count.  If that happens and Gentleman is excluded, his preferences elect Tough and Werner-Gibbings with a surplus that's currently about 1590 votes, some of which will exhaust because some voters vote 1-5 Labor and stop.  In the current distribution Nuttall is 878 (0.16 Q) behind Daniels at this point.  However in the current live count, the Greens are doing 0.05 Q better than in the distribution, and the Liberals are doing 0.15 Q worse, so Nuttall may not be really behind at all (or not much behind at that point) and looks like winning, though perhaps the Liberals can make it a bit harder if they now have two candidates below quota.

One might expect (and last night I did expect) postals to put paid to this, but Brindabella has fewer postals than the other seats.  In 2020 the combined effect of the remaining votes to be added (postals, amalgamated small total absents, declaration votes and overseas) in Brindabella was to my surprise negligible (the Liberals went up 0.01 Q and Labor down the same amount).  I would caution here that 2020 was a weird year for postal voting behaviour because of COVID.  It may be that the postals are more right-leaning this year than 2020.  (See also comment by John Goss that points out that they were not a massive benefit in 2016 either.)

But there's yet another possible sting in the tail here - the Liberals have done so badly on day votes that it is not clear they are not first out of the three battling parties.  In the distribution Daniels is only over Gentleman by about 700 (0.13 Q) and that's less than the Liberals have dropped in the live count, so there is some possibility that Daniels is out first and the seat is then decided between Nuttall and Gentleman on Liberal preferences - though I think that Gentleman dropping back in the live count counts against this.  In this case Nuttall is advantaged by the fact that Liberal preferences going to the Labor Party have three candidates to go to and despite likely weak preference flows for her low profile could win anyway.  

I need to see the Monday and probably Tuesday distributions to have a clearer idea where this one is going!

Ginninderra (2020 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green)

Expected winners: Yvette Berry (ALP), Tara Cheyne (ALP), Peter Cain (Lib), Chiaka Barry (Lib), Jo Clay (Green)

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Intro (Sunday)  As with Yerrabi there has been speculation that Independents for Canberra are in the hunt here but they are actually getting killed by leakage.  In this seat when their second-last candidate is excluded 40% of that candidate's votes leave the ticket.  (In Yerrabi it's even worse at 60%).  I guess this is the risk of the ticket-of-independents concept, there's no reason for voters who vote for one of your candidates to preference the others.

In the second distribution Labor is on 2.22 quotas, the Liberals on a predictably feeble 1.59, the Greens on 0.86 and Independents for Canberra 0.44.  But there are a lot of conservative preferences in Ginninderra, including from ex-Liberal Elizabeth Kikkert, who was disendorsed and ran for Family First who have bombed out with about 0.3 quotas.  

Labor incumbents Berry and Cheyne get elected easily, as does Liberal incumbent Cain, and Independents for Canberra wind up in 6th place.  In the distribution when they are cut out Mark Richardson has 3077 votes vs 4461 for Chiaka Barry and 4371 for Jo Clay.

In the current live count Labor is up to 2.26 quotas, Greens 0,89, I4C 0.45 and the Liberals are down to 1.52, a similar story to the other seats.   These changes mean Clay is currently notionally ahead of Barry and the last seat is between Barry and Richardson.  But while the gap has closed somewhat, the starting gap in the distribution is 0.27 quotas, only about a third of which would have been closed on the vote changes since.  And there's no reason to expect further changes to much hurt the Liberals because they do well on postals.  So as best I can tell there is nothing to see here, with Barry replacing Kikkert and all the re-endorsed incumbents returning. 

Kurrajong (2020 2 Labor 1 Liberal 2 Green)

Expected winners: Andrew Barr (ALP), Elizabeth Lee (Lib), Rachel Stephen-Smith (ALP), Shane Rattenbury (Green), Thomas Emerson (Independents for Canberra)

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Intro (Sunday) In 2020 Kurrajong saw the Greens win two seats.  In 2024 all the big four parties' leaders are running in this seat, including Independents for Canberra leader Thomas Emerson.  

In the second distribution Labor has 2.23 quotas, Liberals 1.51, Greens 0.99 and Independents for Canberra 0.80.  Unlike in other seats the I4C vote is nicely concentrated with the leader Emerson.  The second Green Rebecca Vassarotti finishes seventh, 1674 votes behind Emerson at the time.  She is 301 behind the Liberals' Patrick Pentony at this point but outlasting him wouldn't make any difference.  Emerson goes on to win by 1735.  The quota in the provisional distribution is quite small at only 4314 as Kurrajong has a lot of non-electronic votes to come. 

The current live count has Labor on 2.20 quotas, Liberals 1.41, Greens 1.08 and Independents for Canberra 0.82.  The Greens have improved by 0.07 quotas relative to I4C compared to the distribution but this is trivial in the context of a gap of 0.39 quotas (and the benefit is split between two candidates anyway).  The Liberals have gone backwards.  There is clearly zero doubt about the outcome of this seat.  

Murrumbidgee (2020 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green)

Expected winners: Jeremy Hanson (Lib), Chris Steel (ALP), Marisa Paterson (ALP), Fiona Carrick (FCI) + 1 Liberal TBD

Internal seat battle: Amardeep Singh (Lib) vs Ed Cocks (Lib) - currently a tossup

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Monday night: It doesn't look like there is any new counting in this seat today.

Intro (Sunday)  In the Murrumbidgee second distribution Labor is on 2.00 quotas, Liberals 2.18, Fiona Carrick Independents 0.73, Greens 0.55 and Independents for Canberra 0.30.  In the live count Labor is on 2.02, the Liberals have dropped back to 2.06, FCI are 0.78, Greens 0.57 and I4C 0.30.  The party situation is clear as the Greens are 0.30 quotas behind Labor and Carrick at the point of exclusion.  The Greens can survive for one more exclusion if they get over the third Liberal, which on the live numbers they would do.  But it doesn't do them any good if they do, because they are 0.3 quotas behind Labor and further behind Carrick in the distribution, and it is impossible for them to close this massive gap on remaining primaries, so Fiona Carrick has gained the seat from Emma Davidson.  

The interest in this seat is in the rematch between Liberals Amardeep Singh and Ed Cocks.  At the 2020 election Singh outpolled Cocks and there was some expectation that he would win the recount when Giulia Jones resigned.  But the recount was determined by the next preferences of Jones' voters and it happened that they preferred Cocks as Singh was drawing his primaries from a somewhat different voter base to Jones; Singh was also disadvantaged by a common structure issue with Hare-Clark recounts.  

In the current distribution Singh beats Cocks by 188 votes after starting with a primary lead of 139 votes.  But there is a point where Singh is 0.6 of a vote (that is not a misprint) ahead of Cocks and 114.5 (0.023 Q) clear of Davidson.  What happens then in the distribution is that Davidson's preferences elect Paterson and Carrick with surpluses, and these surpluses that started with Davidson favour Singh over Cocks and cause Singh to win.  

But Singh has a few challenges here.  Firstly if Davidson is over him at this point he could be excluded, and the fact that his primary vote lead has dropped back to 86 votes now suggests that that is a serious threat.  In the live count the Liberals have dropped back enough (even though their losses are split between two candidates) that it looks like they would be out first and that it could well be Singh who goes, handing the seat to Cocks who clearly cannot get enough lottery tickets. 

There is another minor possible issue for Singh which is that if the Liberals come up too much against the Greens, Carrick and Labor (above the provisional distribution) then that pushes down the size of the Labor and Carrick surpluses (currently worth a combined 0.23 quotas) and decreases his benefit from these surpluses.  So ideally what he wants is the numbers to finish like the second distribution.  The third issue is that Cocks might gain enough on remaining primaries to beat him anyway, but in 2020 there was no real difference between them on the votes to come.  

In 2020 the combined effect of remaining votes in this seat at party level was minor (Labor dropped 0.03 Q with small gains for the Liberals, Greens and Carrick) and if that repeats then it is likely one of the Liberals will be out before Davidson meaning the race between Cocks and Singh will be extremely close.  But again noting that 2020 was a weird year for postal vote behaviour because of COVID, it could be there will be more of a break back to the Liberals on postals this time.  Since the Greens on current numbers are probably only something like 200 clear ot Cocks and Singh it would not take much of a difference for the Liberals to beat them.  At this stage we can only wait and see how this race develops in the coming days as it is too close and messy to call.

Yerrabi (2020 ALP 2 Liberal 2 Green 1)

Expected winners: Leanne Castley (Lib), Michael Pettersson (ALP), Suzanne Orr (ALP), James Milligan (Lib), Andrew Braddock (Green)

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Intro (Sunday) There has been some interest in this one based around a theory that Independents for Canberra's David Pollard can beat the Greens' Andrew Braddock for the final seat.  I have looked at this theory and I do not think a lot of it but I will explain what is going on here and some possible changes in the structure of this count.

In the second distribution Labor has 1.84 quotas, Liberals 2.27, Greens 0.69 and Independents for Canberra 0.555.  In the current live count Labor is on 1.86, Liberals 2.19. Greens 0.71 and Independents for Canberra 0.58.  

The second distribution isn't at all close.  Labor and the Liberals accumulate preferences from the remaining two thirds of a quota of unsuccessful parties plus leakage, and both climb well over two quotas, and ultimately elect two seats apiece.  At the point where David Pollard is cut out he is 1077 votes behind Braddock, which is actually further behind in quota terms than he started (0.19 Q).  However Pollard is only 106 votes behind Labor's Mallika Raj (.02 Q) and 452 (0.08 Q) behind the Liberals' John Mikita at this point.  The latter is bound to be an overestimate of the current count since the Liberals have actually dropped about that much since the distribution - but note that they have two candidates left so each candidate only drops about half of it.  

If Raj is excluded first her preferences elect Petterson with surplus, which elects Orr with surplus, and then votes leave the Labor ticket.  If Mikita is excluded his preferences elect Milligan with surplus, which then leave the Liberal ticket.  Votes leaving the major tickets are then free to go to Greens, Pollard or the other major.  Conceivably Pollard gets over one of the majors' spare candidates, then on their preferences gets over the other one, and then goes head to head with Braddock with .55 quotas of major party surpluses to chase him with.

But firstly I'm not that convinced Pollard quite gets over either candidate here anyway on the live count let alone after postals as Labor has come up alongside I4C (and Raj has come up slightly in the primaries) while the swing against the Liberals splits between two candidates meaning Mikita is probably only going to be down about 0.04 Q.  

Even if he does, the Greens' lead is very large.  Pollard would need something like a 63-37 split if all the major party preferences stayed in play and would probably not get that off Labor at least, but a lot of the preferences will be Liberal and a lot of Liberal voters will have voted 1-5 and stopped.  So I don't see how it is realistic for Independents for Canberra to win this seat.