2025: House of Reps Postcount: Ryan

RYAN (Grn vs LNP 2.65, Grn vs ALP 3CP 4.75)

Whichever of Elizabeth Watson-Brown (GRN) and Rebecca Hack (ALP) makes final two wins seat.

Watson-Brown makes final two - Green retain

Click here for link to Reps postcount hub and tallyboard page 

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I've been slow getting onto the count for Ryan firstly because there are so many weird seats at this election and secondly because on election night it seemed to be a reasonably easy hold for the Greens.  But Greens and teals have been copping a savage wrath from postal voters in the Melbourne inner city seats so it's time to check in on Ryan - it is interesting even if it turns out not to be close.  Through much of the term Elizabeth Watson-Brown was seen as the most endangered of the four Greens MHRs, now with Adam Bandt in a dodgy situation in Melbourne it's possible if she wins she'll be the last one standing.  The Greens have clearly lost Brisbane where they have fallen to third and have clearly lost Griffith where the LNP appears to be third at the three-candidate point (or failing that, they are).  They also appear not to be gaining Wills though I am still to check that in detail, and won't get there in Richmond where Justine Elliot is making the final two which guarantees her victory.  

The count for Ryan has much in common with Brisbane 2022.

As I start this article the primary votes with 78.0% counted are:

Maggie Forrest (LNP) 34.84
Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Grn) 29.11
Rebecca Hack (ALP) 28.20

N De Lapp (GRPF) 2.31

Robbie Elsom (ON) 2.14

Donna Gallehawk (FF) 1.25

Ryan Hunt (TOP) 1.24

Gina Masterton (FUSION) 0.92

Currently Watson-Brown leads Hack on primary votes by 655.

The minor parties are mostly right-wing, except for FUSION that was left but is now best described as confused (more here). 

Forrest cannot win; in the figures available before the Liberal/Green preference count was pulled Watson-Brown was getting close to 70% of preferences and the preference flow by booth was strongly corellated with what share of the other votes in each booth were Labor.  Applied across the current live count I project Watson-Brown to get 70.2% of preferences if she remains in second which translates to a 54.4% win on current numbers.  If Hack makes the final two instead the flow will at least be similar and may even be slightly stronger.  The question is only which of Watson-Brown and Hack goes through to this contest.

At present Watson-Brown has a 0.99% lead with 7.86% in minor right preferences.  One might think that the minor right voters would prefer Labor to the Greens and therefore Hack is a good chance to pull in this gap.  But the catch here is that the votes will be splitting three ways between LNP, Labor and Greens at this point.  Furthermore, while one might still think that Labor would get more than the Greens, in the past this has not been the case.  On the distribution of One Nation candidates in 2022, the Greens outperformed Labor by 6% in Griffith, 8% in Ryan, 15% in Brisbane (this includes votes received by ON from other sources).  UAP preferences also slightly favoured the Greens over Labor at this stage. Once you take out the actually conservative One Nation voters in an inner-city seat where One Nation gets no votes, those who are left tend to be random and major-party-haters and few would see a logical reason to put Labor above both the LNP and Greens.

Perhaps given the strength of Labor's performance at this election and the weakness of the LNP (and to a lesser extent the Greens in these inner-city seats) the pattern will be different this time and the Greens will not gain on Labor off the minor party preferences, and I would welcome any scrutineering estimates on that.  If past patterns hold up the Greens would be likely to gain, say, half a point off the four minor right parties.  In the 2022 Senate Ryan FUSION voters who didn't exhaust their ballot split Greens 68 ALP 21 LNP 11.  A Reps flow might not be so strong because it would include some random votes but I'll say the Greens pick up at least a 0.3 point gain here.  So if things go as they have in the past Watson-Brown's effective live count lead is approaching 2%, but it is possible that they will not.  A lot would have to change in the preferencing behaviour of the 

In 2022 in ordinary votes (booth votes within electorate on the day and prepoll combined) the Greens got 31.7% in Ryan and Labor 22.4%.  There were 70877 formal ordinary votes. The relationship for the other groups was

Absents (3756) Greens 3.7% better than ordinaries, Labor 0.6% better

Provisionals (271) Greens +6.7 Labor -2.1

Out Of Div Prepolls (3875) Greens -2.2 Labor +0.1

Postals (20557) Greens -7.4 Labor -0.7

For 2022 there have been 77435 ordinary votes (that tally should be reasonably final), in which the Greens polled 30.34% to Labor's 28.31%.  There have so far been 11818 postals counted and in those the Greens are running at 10.62 below their ordinary vote while Labor is running at 0.83 below.  So so far Labor's performance on postals relative to booth votes in competition with the Greens is better (9.8 points gap compared to 6.7 points) but there is a dynamic where early-counted postals tend to be worse for the Greens than later ones.  I would not be surprised if by the end of the postal count this difference has entirely or at least mostly disappeared.  

An important factor here is that the postal vote in Ryan is down.  21099 postals were issued but not all postals come back, and a small number get rejected.  In Brisbane 2022 for which I have figures readily available, 81.1% of issued postals were returned, accepted and formal.  If that is repeated there are about 5300 postals to be added to the count.  At the current rate of gain, Hack will gain 411 votes on the remaining postals.  That's not enough to overturn Watson-Brown's lead but furthermore the rate of gain will slow.  The postals so far are not particularly bad for the Greens suggesting that what is happening to the Greens and teals with inner Melbourne postals may be specific to that area.  

On absents the above patterns project the Greens to get 34% to Labor's 28.9%, on provisionals 38% to Labor's 26.2%, on out of division prepolls 28.1% to 28.4%.  If the numbers of these votes did not change the Greens would gain by about 212 votes on these categories combined.  All up I think Watson-Brown is likely to finish up with a similar primary lead to her current lead, perhaps slightly reduced if the late postals dynamic does not do its normal thing, but I don't see Labor making large gains here if any.

On my numbers the threat to Watson-Brown is only if the preferencing behaviour of minor right parties at the 3CP stage dramatically reverses with more of their preferences now going to Labor than to the Greens, and even then Labor would probably also need the FUSION flow to Greens to weaken.  On past patterns I would expect the Greens to make a 10% gain rate on the combined minor party preferences (maybe more depending on FUSION, not that one wants to depend on FUSION for anything); Labor probably needs to turn this into something like a 6% gain rate to them.  

I am expecting the AEC to realign this booth with a 3CP count which when it occurs should give a much clearer idea whether Labor is competitive here.  

Wednesday 12 pm: The AEC is in the process of conducting a 3CP count which currently has Forrest 17070 (40.8%), Watson-Brown 12327 (29.47), Hack 12438 (29.73) .  On these numbers Watson-Brown would just lose.  However I have also seen a list of the booths included.  I am at this stage unable to match to an exact primary total for the booths because the count includes five tranches of postals that are not broken out in results, but at an estimate I have the primaries for these votes at 35.71-27.77-28.10 compares with the main count at 35.17-28.82-28.14 and suggests preferences from minors in this large sample are flowing approximately 60-20.5-19.5.  If this rate is applied to the live count Watson-Brown very slightly increases her primary vote lead at the 3CP point, by about 70 votes - which is lower than 2022 form for the Greens in these seats would suggest, but not low enough to lose.  In the live count, Watson-Brown now leads by 612.  

Wednesday 8:40  The AEC 3CP is now missing only three booths - Ferny Grove South, Toowong and The Gap PPVC.  I believe it doesn't yet have all the postals.  Watson-Brown leads in the 3CP by 1618.  The Gap PPVC is bad for Watson-Brown but Toowong partly makes up for it.  I can't see Labor closing this 3CP gap completely and I am now more confidently expecting Watson-Brown to win this seat.  The only one of the four Greens standing - what were the odds on that?

Thursday: The 3CP now virtually matches the total postal count at Forrest 36908 Watson-Brown 28241 Hack 27642.  So Watson-Brown leads by 599.  Also some absents came in today and did virtually nothing, confirming that Watson-Brown is home barring something extremely unusual.

Thursday week: Stopped updating this article but there was little change and the AEC eventually wound up the 3CP and reverted to the 2CP with Watson-Brown clearly winning the seat.