Seats covered on this page
CALWELL ALP potentially vs IND, not even sure which IND yet, probably ALP but messy
FLINDERS LIB win (IND made final two but preference flow not enough to win)
FORREST LIB win as IND will not make the final two
GREY LIB win as IND will not make the final two
FISHER LNP win as IND will not make the final two
Click here for link to main Reps hub and summary page
MONASH has its own page - LIB win as IND will not make final two
This page covers seats which have the following property:
* An independent is in third or dicing for second/third on primaries (seats where an independent appears clearly second will be covered elsewhere)
* The independent may or may not make the final two after preferences
* If the independent makes the final two, it is not clear whether they win
Seats of this kind are increasingly common at state level, but until now have not been common federally. Some general properties of this seat type can be noted. Firstly in post-counting, the independent often falls backwards as a result of poor performance on postals and absent votes especially. Secondly, it is not that common for the independents to actually make the final two (although in 2022, Suzie Holt in Groom to widespread surprise did so from fourth!) Indeed it is easy to overestimate the flows to them, as occurred in the recent Werribee by-election where the major party primary vote was smashed in a large field, but both majors outperformed the leading independent on preferences received by the 3-candidate-preferred stage. Thirdly, the independent is usually way behind the primary-vote leading major party and has to get preferences at a high rate to win the seat, typically with the assistance of preferences that followed the other major party's how-to-vote cards.
At this stage it is hard to tell how many of the seats included in this list will be competitive, but it is easy to provide a broad starting overview of what is going on with them so I am putting up this thread as a starter. Some seats may be moved into their own threads if especially interesting.
Calwell (Vic, ALP 12.4%, vacant)
Calwell has been vacated by 24-year incumbent Maria Vamvakinou and the voters have given her service a tribute with a 13.5% primary vote swing against Labor in a field with 13 candidates, six of whom will be seeing their deposits again. The seat includes five independents and was one of those targeted by Muslim Vote style campaigners, but the independent of interest here is Carly Moore, the ex-Labor former Hume mayor. Although Moore is only on 13.5%, she is close enough to the Liberals to possibly move into the final two.
Current leaders are Basem Abdo (ALP) 31.6, Usman Ghani (Lib) 15.3, Moore (Ind) 13.5, Ravneet Garcha (GRN) 8.3, Joseph Youhana (Ind) 8.1 and Samim Mosleh (Ind) 7.8 - Mosleh was endorsed by Muslim Votes Matter. Remaining are PHON 3.7 LCP 3.3 Citizens 3.0 Family First 2.6 ToP 2.6 and another IND and a Socialist Equality Party candidate (unregistered party) on 0.5.
On current primaries if Moore made the top two she would need 66.5% of preferences over Labor to win. The other thing to note about Calwell is that at the time of writing the count is extremely incomplete with only 44.5% counted; the seat has several prepoll booths to report, the largest two of which took over 32000 votes. Moore has so far done worse than average in prepolls but OK on postals, of which there are also several thousand still to come.
Sunday 10 pm: The count in Calwell has advanced to 70.9% and thrown up a new species of weird - second independent Joseph Youhana has surged on prepolls and is now on 11.9% with Moore on 12.1% and the Liberals on 15.5%. This has unlocked the possibility that Youhana will jump Moore into third, either on primary votes or on preferences - it is now unclear which independent makes the 3CP. While they are both further behind the Liberals than Moore was earlier, a Groom style indie to indie flow might still put one over the Liberals into the top two. Abdo has done his part to maintain the suspense by dropping back to 30.7%. Welcome to Calwell, the seat where nobody has any votes.
Monday: I understand the AEC intends to do a 3CP count in this seat after adding more postals. (I am not sure how they'll decide which IND to include)
Wednesday: I understand that the Youhana charge has kyboshed that idea. It is mildly notable that Youhana is preferenced above Abdo on the Greens how to vote card, but Moore is not.
Thursday: At the AEC briefing today the AEC advised that the complexities of this count were such that they had no sound method to find the winner other than to wait for the full distribution of preferences, and that because of the length of the distribution it is possible this could even take into the fifth week after the count (on a par with the Senate races!) to wrap up.
Tuesday 13th: Just keeping an eye on the primaries - Abdo is now at 30.8% Ghani 15.6 Moore 12.1 Youhana 11.3.
Wednesday: Latest word from the AEC is that distribution of preferences will take about two weeks, starting next week.
Flinders (Vic, Liberal 6.2%)
Flinders is held by first term Liberal Zoe McKenzie, who had the luxury of having two different teal candidates create confusion by running against her in 2022, but no such luck this time - she's up against Climate 200 funded pastor Ben Smith. As I start this section Smith is in third place on primaries but only by 0.06%. McKenzie has 40.80%, Sarah Race (ALP) 22.37, Smith 22.31, Greens 5.9, PHON 5.3, TOP 2.6 and anarchist Joseph Toscano has 0.8%. The seat is quite well counted at 77.2% with all the prepolls in; most of the rest will be postals of which there may be 13000. The postals so far have been very strong for Liberals and weak for Smith, and this is likely to continue on the rest but to a lesser degree. At present Smith needs 75.1% of preferences to beat McKenzie. Kylea Tink got 75.4% in North Sydney in 2022 off a similar primary but that was with a much lower minor right vote. I expect the asking rate will increase significantly and that McKenzie will retain.
Monday: I understand the AEC intends to do a 3CP count in this seat after adding more postals.
Wednesday 12:40: I have seen a partial AEC 3CP count in which Smith is narrowly in the final two but McKenzie's vote is too high to catch; I don't know how representative it is.
Wednesday 8:30: The AEC 3CP count continues to bear out that it is irrelevant who makes the 3CP as McKenzie is too close to 50.
Tuesday 13th: With pretty much all votes counted to 3CP, it looks a lot like Smith is going to make the 2CP but need at least 87% of Labor exclusion preferences, which is too much. At least we get to see a realignment! In the state seat of Mornington Kate Lardner got 83.8% in 2022 which is at the higher end of these results, and that was with Labor, Green and AJP votes being a higher proportion of the preference pool. I have heard that scrutineers are seeing about an 80% flow.
Tuesday 7:00 The realignment of Flinders to McKenzie vs Smith has commenced. Smith needs 76.7% of preferences and may well get that in some of the booths; the AEC 2CP count will bounce around wildly and best to disregard it for now. The fact that he needs 87% on the Labor exclusion (which is way above what he needs overall) is a very strong sign that it isn't happening. Some absent and out of division prepolls have been realigned. If they are representative of those vote types then Smith is getting 71.1% and 64.3% of preferences in these votes overall.
Wednesday: The realignment is proceeding quickly. McKenzie has a large live lead partly because the postals are mostly or all done, her lead will probably come down substantially as more booths are added.
Wednesday 5:16 The ABC is for some reason projecting only 51-49 for this seat, I am projecting 52.3 to McKenzie.
Forrest (WA, Liberal 4.2%, vacant)
Forrest, a once safe Coalition seat, moved into marginal territory in 2022 as part of the big swing to Labor in WA. On the retirement of 16-year incumbent Nola Marino, former Senator Ben Small has done OK on the 2PP which is currently showing as 52.5 to him vs Labor's Tabitha Dowding, but the possible issue is another Climate 200 - supported independent, Sue Chapman. At present Small has 31.75% (an 11.1% swing against), Dowding 22.69, Chapman 18.45. One Nation has a chunky 8.6%, Greens 7.4, LCP 5.0, Nationals 4.8, ToP 1.4%. Forrest looks set to follow Lyne and Groom 2022 as the only previous seats where seven candidates have reached 4% (I suspect there are others like that this election but haven't checked).
It is not trivial for Chapman to get into second across the 4.2% gap, especially as the Greens have recommended preferences to Labor ahead of Forrest for the few voters who will follow their card. If she does, she currently needs only 63.4% of preferences over Small - but the Nationals preferences will help Small, and Chapman might currently need over 67% of the rest. (One might expect One Nation would too, as per their how-to-vote card, but there have been cases of One Nation prefs flowing to pretty much any independent in cases like this, especially in the SA 2023 state election.) If the One Nation preferences split 50-50 then the asking rate is in the low 70s, which is achievable. I think Chapman probably won't make the final two but if she does it could yet be rather close, and noting a micro-close projection by Poll Bludger I prefer to leave the seat in minor doubt. The count in Forrest is nicely advanced on 81.8% with only a few thousand postals, absents and the usual scraps to come. So far postals have had little impact.
Monday: I understand the AEC intends to do a 3CP count in this seat after adding more postals.
Tuesday: We really need a 3CP here but worth noting Poll Bludger projection currently has Chapman ahead.
Wednesday 12:40: I have seen a partial AEC 3CP count in which Chapman is narrowly outside the final two but do not know how representative it is.
Wednesday 10 am: Poll Bludger has the news that the booths included in the 3CP are Bunbury, Busselton PPVC, Carbanup River, Margaret River, Busselton West, Brunswick, Burdekup and Boyanup. Collectively these booths are very strong for the Liberals but they are about 1.8 points weaker for Labor and 1.8 points weaker for Chapman than the seat average - which is nicely representative as concerns the two fighting for a 3CP spot. The booths selected have slightly more Greens votes as a proportion of preferences than the booth total but it's hard to predict who out of Chapman and Dowding that might help at the 3CP stage.
Wednesday 8:30 Chapman is very close to making the 3CP in the live incomplete 3CP count. If she does she currently needs 72.2% of the Labor exclusion (which includes votes flowing to Labor from others) to win.
Thursday night Chapman continues to very narrowly miss the 3CP in the live count, currently by 0.62%. If she misses by such a small margin it will put heat on the Greens for their how to vote decision in this seat.
Friday night: Rinse and repeat, Chapman currently missing by just 0.32%. (But out of division votes are likely to make it harder.)
Saturday: In today's update Chapman is missing by 528 vores (0.58%). The AEC has unmashed the 2CP count signalling that Chapman will miss the final two, and Small will win the seat.
Grey (SA, Liberal 10.1%, vacant)
A similar story to Forrest. South Australia's giant seat has been crossbench bait for a while now and the retirement of 18-year incumbent Rowan Ramsey has seen replacement Tom Venning cop a 10.6% primary vote swing. Venning has 34.72%, Labor's Karin Bolton 22.50 and Climate 200 supported independent Anita Kuss has 18.20. One Nation has 9.7, Greens 5.7, Family First 3.6, Nats 3.2 and ToP 2.4%. Kuss would need to gain 4.3% off mostly right-wing preferences (a gain rate around 0.17 preferences per vote in a three-way split) because there isn't a lot of Green vote here.
Currently Kuss would need a 67.5% preference flow vs Liberals to win if in second place after preferences. Given the proportion of the preferences that are from right-wing sources that seems very difficult and I also doubt that Kuss will make the top two anyway. Postals of which there may be 9000 to come will not help either (those counted so far have been somewhat poor for Kuss) and I am expecting that Venning should win the seat some way or other, but I'm by no means absolutely calling it. It's worth noting that in Grey 2016 the flow of Labor and Greens preferences to Nick Xenophon Team vs Liberal was in the low to mid 70s, though in that case the seat wasn't vacant. (Edit: this was because Labor ran an open HTV, see comments.)
Wednesday 8:30 / Thursday The AEC has commenced a 3CP count in this seat, but the booths counted so far are very unrepresentative. If the preference shares for them are applied across the whole of the seat then Kuss misses the top two by 1.3%. That said the booths counted so far are better for Labor than for Kuss, but not by much - so Labor may be doing slightly worse on preferences elsewhere.
Thursday night: Kuss has fallen to third in the live 3CP as it continues, albeit very narrowly.
Friday: Kuss is still in third in the live 3CP. Venning is over 50 which is presumably not representative (in the opposite direction to Wednesday). [EDIT: it was actually a calculation error.]
Saturday: Kuss is now in second in the live 3CP (Venning 41.54 Kuss 30.03 Bolton 28.43). It's not possible for me to map this to even a properly estimated primary set as the count now includes three different types of declaration votes and I don't know the number of votes in each one, though I could perhaps assume all the absents and dec prepolls are in and ... nah, probably not worth the effort since my postal estimate could be off anyway. What I have determined is that in the within-electorate booths that are in the count, which I have as 78.5% of the current 3CP, Kuss's primary vote is 2.9 points higher than her electorate total for ordinary votes, and Venning's is 2.2 points lower. On this basis I doubt that Kuss makes the final two and also suspect that if she does she will be chasing something like 78% of the Labor exclusion preferences, which is hard with such a high One Nation vote.
Sunday overnight: I have heard that major party scrutineers are confident that Kuss won't make the top two though Kuss team remain optimistic. Also that Kuss actually does very well on One Nation preferences (similar to a lot of indies in the SA election, there seemed to be a pattern there that One Nation voters would like pretty much any independent over the majors.)
Monday: I'm advised and have seen supporting 3CP figures that some booths including the very pro-Labor Whyalla PPVC that were counted to 3CP did not make it into the most recent 3CP update. Once these booths are included Kuss drops out of the live final two by over 1000.
Tuesday: I understand the 3CP gap won't be even close and is likely to blow out to over 2000.
Wednesday: The AEC has unmasked the 2CP count indicating that Kuss has definitely missed the final two.
Thursday: Kuss performed better on later absents and declaration votes than expected and was trailing 35323-25626-24466 when the 3CP count was halted, so just 1160 behind though that is still likely to increase by hundreds on remaining votes.
Fisher (Qld, Liberal 8.7%)
I've added Fisher because there's some interesting stuff going on with this one though I believe the LNP's Andrew Wallace will retain it. Fisher didn't receive as much attention in the leadup as McPherson but Climate 200 backed independent Keryn Jones is threatening to get into the final two against Andrew Wallace (LNP). At the moment with 79.8% counted Wallace has 37.73%, Morrison Lakey (Labor) 22.21, Jones 16.61, the Greens have 9.16, One Nation 5.96, Gerard Rennick People First have 4.19, Trumpet of Patriots 2.49, Family First 1.66. Wallace wins the 2PP vs Labor by miles (currently 57-43), the interest is whether Jones can make the final two.
The AEC's ongoing three-candidate count currently has Jones in second place after the counting of 6 booths to 3CP. And not by a small margin either - Jones is in front of Lakey by 10.62%. But these are booths that are very favourable to Jones compared to the count as a whole, she's running 5.38 points above her Fisher-wide vote in them and Lakey is running 2.16 below. If the 3CP preference flows from these booths are applied to the current primary totals, Jones still makes the 3CP, but the margin is only 1.73% (28.64-26.91). Furthermore, since these are good booths for Jones that are weak for both major parties it is likely that the 3CP preference flows to her are stronger in these booths than in the rest of the electorate, and furthermore to the furthermore the Greens have a higher share of the preference pool in the booths counted (43.2% vs 39%) which may be slightly boosting the flow to Jones (she is getting 51% 3CP in these booths). On this basis, I don't have much trust in Jones remaining in the top two, but she might.
If Jones does make the top two she currently needs 73.1% of all preferences to flow to her over Wallace. That seems very difficult to me given the proportion of the preference pool that is right-wing minor parties. Also if the 3CP split is the same across Fisher as it is in the booths so far then she would need 79% of the Labor exclusion, but I expect that what will actually happen is that the LNP share of the 3CP vote across the electorate will be higher and Jones' share will be lower, even if Jones does manage to keep getting enough relative to Labor to make the final two. So I suspect Jones will end up needing something well over an 80 share of the Labor exclusion and that is unlikely. There are also still several thousand postals to go, as well as absents which are often difficult for independents (though perhaps not so in this case because Jones will get Labor and Green preference flows from them).
All up I think it is very likely indeed that Wallace will retain but I thought it was worth spelling this seat out in detail and keeping an eye on it.
Thursday night: Today's 3CP counting indeed saw Jones' 3CP lead rapidly fall in the incomplete count (down to 2.4% after 15 booths). I have not yet had time to try to determine the representativeness of the new lot but may do so tomorrow if time permits - it's also difficult because they include Postal 7 which is presumably a recently received postal set that is perhaps lefter than the others.
Friday morning: Ben Raue has projected that based on the current preference flow Jones just makes the top three and then needs 81% of Labor exclusion preferences to win. Asssuming a variable relationship between Jones' primary votes and her 3CP preference flows I suspect there's still a good chance that she misses the top three but in any case 81% seems very unlikely given the minor party mix. Alex Dyson got about that in Wannon 2022 but that was with the Greens vote only slightly below the minor right vote; in this case the Labor exclusion will have more random voters.
Friday 8:20 Ben will probably do a better one as I think he might have access to more postal data but on my projection when all the votes are in Jones' current 1.39 point lead on the 3CP becomes more or less tied - I have both her and Lakey on a projected final 3CP of 27.71. The issue is that the remaining votes, especially the Budina and Caloundra East prepolls, are good for Wallace which takes away votes that can potentially go to Jones as preferences (I suspect it also means Wallace gets more of them). I suspect on this basis Jones is a little more likely than not to miss the 3CP but it's extremely close and she might do it. I also still think the mountain's probably too steep if she does. [EDIT: Ben's projection is almost identical to mine with Jones ahead 27.76-27.64]
Saturday: With more booths added, in the live count Jones' lead has only come down slightly to 1.27 points, and projected across all the primary votes I have her ahead 27.63-27.55. I still think she could well miss the 3CP because of weak preference flows on votes where she does worse that are not yet included in the 3CP count, and also because of yet-to-be-added out of division prepolls, but it is very close and she still could make it. If she does I project the target of ALP-exclusion prefs at 81.1% which seems too high and will probably increase further, but Jones' excellent performance in getting 3CP prefs does suggest some doubt about that.
Monday: I previously noted Ben Raue had a much more optimistic projection off Saturday's data but he says it was in error and his actually had Jones missing by 0.07. Would be interesting if one of these indies would actually make the final two just so we could see the preference flow but not looking good!
Monday 10:20 pm: A couple of large prepolls are now in the 3CP but it is light on for postals and lacking any absents with out of division prepolls still to come. In the live count Jones now is still in second but the margin is falling, now 44.2-28.29-27.51. On my estimate which takes into account the votes that have been counted to primaries but not 3CPs she is in very narrowly, 44.57-27.79-27.65, however while that's slightly better than before I still don't expect it to survive out of division prepolls and further absents. In the event that it does, the target share of ALP exclusion prefs is down in my model to 80.3.
Tuesday 5:00 pm: With nearly all votes received now in the 3CP Jones has now fallen out of the 2CP by 187 votes, 44.67 (Wallace)-27.75 (Lakey)-27.58 (Jones), so Lakey 0.1 better and Jones 0.21 worse than my projection yesterday, probably reflecting a worse preference share for Jones in votes she did worse on. With more vote types that Jones does badly on to come it is clear now Jones is not going to make the 2CP and Wallace will win the seat.
Wednesday: The 3CP gap from Labor to Jones continues to widen, now at 480 votes; we may see the unmasking of the 2PP count soon.
