2025 Senate Postcounts: National Thread

Discussion of counts that have finished or reached zero unapportioned votes now appears on the button press thread.  

FINAL WINS ALP 16 L-NP 13 GREEN 6 ON 3 POCOCK 1 JLN 1

CARRIED OVER ALP 12 L-NP 14 GRN 5 ON 1 UAP 1 defectors 3

IF PROJECTED LEADS HOLD ALP 28 L-NP 27 Grn 11 ON 4 Pocock 1 UAP 1 Lambie 1 defectors 3 (Payman, Tyrrell, Thorpe)

ALP/GRN will have combined outright majority.

ALP + non-Green others will have a blocking majority (38).  

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Welcome to my main thread for postcounts in the Senate, a day later starting than in 2022 because of the level of Reps chaos.  This page will include detail and updates for each state/territory but over time depending on how the races go and how much time I have I may break out the more complex and unclear races into their own threads.  This has already happened for Tasmania.  Some states will receive much higher detail level than others on account of the competitiveness of races.  Where races appear uncompetitive I won't be posting frequent updates.

On this page, a quota is c. 14.28% in the states and c. 33.33% in the territories.  A candidate will be elected if they reach quota, but in the case of the last seat or two may not need to get quota to be elected.  Votes are initially counted by party (whether above the line or below) and are then gradually sorted from "unapportioned" into ticket votes and candidate votes (BTLs).  This is a long and messy process.  Initially candidate below-the-lines will be much lower than where they eventually get to so please don't say "oh so-and-so only got 6 votes" until the unroll is finished.  (That said something I enjoy during this process is tracking the least successful candidates and watching to see who is slowest off the mark).  Previous elections have seen some significant below-the-line campaigns but this time it's all on party totals, except that in very very close races I will pay attention to leakage from surpluses and excluded minor candidates.  

As I start this thread, the Senate races are still quite undercounted, and the counts may not be geographically representative.  They are also often unrepresentative in terms of vote types counted, with booth votes tending to be high in the early count.  Working out how unrepresentative they are is very hard work, and outside Tasmania I won't be doing it until most of the Reps craziness goes away.  Small leads (especially those below 0.1 quotas) should not be relied upon to survive, and sometimes will fall over on preferences.  

Generally in the leadup it looked like if Labor won the election there would be a lot of 3-3 left-right splits and the new Senate might not be much different to the old one.  But the sheer scale of the win flowing through to the Senate has made the possible Labor threes very likely and the barely considered ones plausible.  I did consider Labor could win three in some states but NSW and Tasmania weren't on the menu!  The ball has also bounced badly for One Nation - with the growth in their vote another fairly close election could have seen them win everywhere.  But their vote hasn't gone up as much as polls for the Reps suggested, and the lopsided nature of the election sees them behind the third Labor candidate in four states, and on for yet more seventh place finishes to add to their large collection of such.

New South Wales

(Outgoing 2 Liberal 1 National 2 Labor 1 Green)

EXPECTED 3 LABOR 2 LIBERAL 1 GREEN

The NSW count is at 69.7% which ought to be quite representative.  The quota leaders are:

ALP 2.671 quotas L-NP 2.013 Green 0.812 One Nation 0.411 Legalise Cannabis 0.240  TOP 0.165 Libertarian 0.134 Family First 0.115

Perin Davey who was defending the third Coalition seat won in 2022 has lost.  The only possible question here is whether One Nation's Warwick Stacey can bridge a vast gap (currently 3.7%) to Labor's Emilija Beljic.  I have had a look at 2022 preference flows - it is a little tricky because of the entries of Family First and Australian Christians who are both friendly towards One Nation but didn't run in this state in 2022 - and I think on a very good day he might close a third of it, but probably not even that much.  So this will be a Labor gain barring something pretty unusual (I'd think) in terms of late count shifting.

Saturday 10th  The count in NSW is now at 80.7% completed but changes since I started the article have been minor.  Labor is down 0.02, the Coalition up 0.07 (some of which is helpful to One Nation as One Nation are on the Coalition's how to vote card this time), Greens are down 0.04, One Nation are up 0.01.  Possibly on these numbers One Nation would close closer to half the gap on preferences but hard to see it being more.  

Sunday 18th: The count is now at nearly 90% and changes continue to be trivial.  I see no reason not to expect that Labor wins the final seat.

Victoria

(Outgoing 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 ex-Coalition IND)

2 LABOR 2 LIBERAL 1 GREEN, FINAL SEAT LABOR NARROWLY LEADS ONE NATION 

Wednesday: The Victorian count is at 60%.  The quota leaders are:

ALP 2.447 L-NP 2.140 GRN 0.914 ON 0.304 LCP 0.262 TOP 0.173 FF 0.128 Vic Socialists 0.115 AJP 0.104

Labor and the Coalition win two, the Greens one and the contenders for the last seat are potentially Labor's Michelle Ananda-Rajah, who might not have thought so much at the time of this consolation ticket after her seat of Higgins was abolished, One Nation's Warren Pickering and Legalise Cannabis star candidate Fiona Patten, former two-term Sex Party/Reason MLC.  

Currently Labor has a 2% lead over One Nation and a 2.6% lead over Legalise Cannabis.  While the Coalition might come up into this mix at least as a possible spoiler, if it just comes down to those three then it's hard to see Legalise Cannabis surviving as One Nation will be taking a good share of the micro right preferences while the micro left will be splitting two ways.  Also hard to see Legalise Cannabis catching Labor as big parties tend to do well on Senate flows and the preferences of minor left parties will never break that strongly between the two anyway.  

I have had a look at a posssible preference fight between Labor and One Nation on the current primaries and my rough estimate is One Nation might (or might not) pull back half the current gap on preferences but not the whole lot.  Factors in One Nation's favour include Family First and GRPF, new additions whose .2 of a quota combined should be some use to them, and also being on the Coalition's how to vote card.  In 2022 the Coalition HTV left both Labor and One Nation off.   On the Labor side it is possible the LCP vote will be more inner-city and the preference flows might be better for Labor but I have not checked whether the premise here is true.  Also Trumpet of Patriots preferences will be weaker for One Nation courtesy of the spat between the parties and TOP   It is worthwhile noting that above the line Victorian Socialists preferences broke very strongly (73.8-4.7) to Labor in a 2CP split with One Nation last time.

At the moment this seems close enough to be competitive and to monitor how Labor and One Nation (and LCP as well) track through the postcount.  

Saturday: The Victorian count is still slower than NSW at 73.1% of enrolment.  Since Wednesday Labor has dropped about 0.008 Q, Coalition is up 0.06, Greens down 0.045, One Nation up 0.003, LCP down 0.012.  These changes benefit One Nation and suggest they could now pull back more than half of the 0.132 Q gap on preferences and are still competitive.  The other thing to keep an eye on here is the possibility that the Coalition gets back ahead of One Nation though I would expect minor right preferences to favour One Nation strongly anyway.

Saturday night: In view of the Victorian count projecting as close I've had a look at the count completeness in various seats.  As I would expect the count is relatively slow in urban seats, often those with high absent rates (particularly Melbourne and Macnamara even after accounting for low turnout, but also a lot of the north-western Melbourne seats.)  These seats overall are good for Labor and slightly below average for One Nation, though one of them is Hawke where One Nation is doing well.  On the other hand the seats with high completion rates include rural/regional seats with very low absent rates, eg Gippsland Mallee and Wannon.  These tend to have very low Labor primaries and in some cases very high One Nation votes.  So tthe electorate breakdown suggests Labor would improve.  On the other hand the votes added so far are about 94.8% ordinary and 5.2% postals with less than 0.1% absents.  One might think adding absents and out of division prepolls would advantage Labor over One Nation but the reverse is true.  In 2022 Labor actually did better on postals than ordinary votes for Victorian Senate and worse on out of electorate votes than either.  That said absent votes boost the Greens and reduce the number of preferences they need to suck up.  All up I don't see strong signs that the count is unrepresentative overall.

Sunday: The Poll Bludger model just released projects One Nation will actually pull back nothing,   While this doesn't take into account the change in the Coalition's how to vote recommendation (which I have as worth around 0.05 Q), it is notable that my view above could still be a little generous to One Nation's position. 

Wednesday 14th: Current leaders are Labor 2.438 Q Coalition 2.229 Green 0.852 One Nation 0.310 Legalise Cannabis 0.247 with a high 84.7% counted.  The changes since my last update are minor and in the same direction as the changes late last week, but some drift back to the left would not surprise especially with inner-city seats with high absents still undercounted.  The current count looks somewhat postals-heavy at 16.67% postals with absent and out of division prepolls still below 3%, but Victoria did have a very high postals rate this year.  

Friday 23rd: Again very little change from my previous update.   Legalise Cannabis have been talking up their chances but they are 2.5% behind Labor so I don't see how they win.  Also very hard to see the Coalition getting over One Nation from 1.6% behind, so most likely it is just Labor vs One Nation. 

Sunday 25th: A specific claim regarding Legalise Cannabis that is circulating is that they might get ahead of One Nation and thereby defeat Labor.  In particular Antony Green has written "An outside possibility is that Legalise Cannabis gets ahead of One Nation. Based on past elections Legalise Cannabis would pick up preferences from across the political spectrum and would be better placed to defeat Labor."  However here there are two scenarios.  The first is that the Coalition is knocked out before One Nation (as in the Poll Bludger model) in which case the flow of preferences from the Coalition to One Nation makes it impossible for Legalise Cannabis to get over One Nation.  The second is that One Nation is overtaken by both the Coalition and Legalise Cannabis, which in itself appears very unlikely.  In this case the One Nation preferences are splitting three ways between Labor, Legalise Cannabis and Coalition, and LCP gained on Labor at only a rate of 0.042 votes per vote on ON ATLs in this split in 2022., which is only 0.013 quotas.  There was thought that Patten would be a big star for Legalise Cannabis but their Victorian vote is actually only up 0.62%.  The swing is notably higher in the North Metro footprint where Patten is the former local member.  It is also worth noting that in the event that there was a head-to-head between Labor and Patten for the final seat, in 2022 Labor beat Legalise Cannabis on the preferences of every single party in Victoria except for One Nation, Shooters Fishers and Farmers and (very marginally) Great Australians, many of these were by very large margins.  

Queensland

(Outgoing 2 LNP 1 Labor 1 Green 1 One Nation 1 ex-LNP GRPF)

EXPECTED  2 LNP 2 LABOR 1 GREEN 1 ONE NATION

Labor suffered a shock result in Queensland 2019 winning only one seat to the LNP's three but has won that seat back here.  As I start the count is 48.7% complete and the quota leaders are

ALP 2.188 L-NP 2.032 Green 0.794 One Nation 0.488 Rennick 0.331 Legalise Cannabis 0.261 TOP 0.256 Family First 0.134 JLN 0.107 Indigenous-Aboriginal 0.100 

One Nation's primary vote here is at around the same modest level as in 2022 (the 0.5% swing may go away with more counting based on what happened then) and Gerard Rennick has done very well but he's not going to catch Malcolm Roberts on these numbers.  Preferences spray very messily in the Senate, perhaps Rennick will do well on some of them but One Nation are noted for racing on preferences.  I've held off calling it having not had time to check how representative the votes are but they would need to be quite wildly not so for anything to change.  

Western Australia

(Outgoing 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green)

2 LABOR 2 LIBERAL 1 GREEN, ALP LEADS ONE NATION FOR LAST SEAT

WARNING The WA count is highly complex to project and is rated Wonk Factor 5/5

Wednesday: As I start, WA is at 56.3% completed. Quota leaders are:

ALP 2.564 Liberal 1.785 Green 0.942 One Nation 0.411 Legalise Cannabis 0.295 Nationals WA 0.226 Aus Christians 0.195 TOP 0.120 GRPF 0.105

The Liberals have lost their third seat, but have not lost a sitting Senator as Linda Reynolds retired at the election.  The contest is between Labor's Deep Singh (who is media advisor to Anne Aly) and One Nation's Tyron Whitten.

In some respects this closely resembles the movie we saw in 2022 when Labor with 2.418 quotas beat One Nation with 0.244 although preferences knocked the gap down from .174 Q to a final .108 Q.   That was seen as a freak win for Labor (Fatima Payman) but the strength of Labor's performance is such that they could do it again.  

At the moment the gap is 0.153 Q on primaries, so a little bit closer.  However there are some reasons to believe One Nation won't do as well on preferences if the music were to stop right now.  Firstly in 2022 the Liberal ticket had a surplus .217 Q that slightly helped One Nation (though not as much as might be thought); this year the Liberals are well short of second quota and will be soaking up right-wing preferences in competition with One Nation til they get there (the Nationals will be a signficant source though).  Secondly while the total for minor right parties is roughly the same, Legalise Cannabis whose preferences assist Labor are up by 0.06 Q.   The Greens are currently slightly weaker so will soak some of the left preferences, but not that much (and Greens can come up in late Senate counting anyway).

There is also the question of the strength of flows within the minor right movement given its infighting and the declining COVID issues mix that fuelled strong flows in 2022.  

All up if the count finishes like this, Labor wins.  For One Nation to have any chance the gap on primaries needs to narrow.

Saturday: The live count is at 70.5%.  Both Labor and One Nation have dropped back but the gap has closed very slightly to .150 Q.  The Liberal vote has come up to 1.852 Q and the Greens are down to 0.909.  So that speeds up the Liberals getting to two quotas so they no longer soak up minor right preferences, and slows down the Greens getting to two meaning they will take more minor left preferences.  These changes help One Nation but not nearly enough at this stage.

Sunday: The Poll Bludger model just released has the race for the final seat extremely close, but this is based partly on assuming the Nationals preferences pass entirely to the Liberals.  The Nationals ran in 2019 with only 62% of their ATL preferences having the Liberals at number 2 and those that did then spraying, though they polled more poorly than this year so their vote may be more how-to-votey this time.  Actually what the Nationals voters do with their preferences beyond the share sent to the Liberals is only really relevant in the event that the Nationals are cut out after the Liberals cross their second quota, and it will require a model of the full count to estimate when the Liberals might do that.  At present, to cross before the Nationals were thrown the Liberals would need to gain .148 quota out of .7478 quotas of preferences (just under 20%) that were being thrown between themselves, Greens, Labor, One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and exhaust. 

An interesting question is not just when the Liberals cross quota but by how much on the specific exclusion where they cross.  The reason for this is when the Coalition crosses quota, whatever surplus they have will be dominated by Coalition votes - in fact over-dominated because the undemocratic Inclusive Gregory system for surplus transfers will treat Coalition votes that had already used part of their value electing Slade Brockman as if they hadn't.   Probably this won't have a big impact on the count.  If the Coalition cross by a little bit on an unfavourable preference source then their surplus will be small anyway, and if they cross by a substantial amount then that will probably be on a favourable preference source (like the Nationals) whose preferences would have flowed in a fairly similar way.

Something else I didn't mention is that in 2022 the Liberals omitted One Nation from their preference card in six inner-city seats, but that has not been repeated, so the Liberal to One Nation flow may be slightly stronger.  

Wednesday 14th: The count is still only at 81.1%.  Labor's lead is out slightly to 0.156 Q, the Liberals are up to 1.874 and the Greens down to 0.891.  However as noted with Victoria from here it is quite common for counts to drift back to the left, especially as absents tend to be undercounted.  

Monday 19th:  Noting quickly that William Bowe's model has the last seat as very close between Labor and One Nation.  

South Australia

(Outgoing 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green)

EXPECTED 3 LABOR 2 LIBERAL 1 GREEN

Wednesday: The Senate count in SA is quite advanced at 72.4%.  Quota leaders are:

Labor 2.698 Liberal 1.908 Green 0.920 One Nation 0.360 TOP 0.197 Legalise Cannabis 0.195 JLN (Rex Patrick) 0.184 Family First 0.141

David Fawcett (Liberal) loses his seat and there is something we might on current numbers pretend is a fight between Labor's Charlotte Walker and One Nation's Jennifer Game.  The current gap is 4.8% and given how much of the count is in I'm treating that for now as an expected win for Labor.  The count is most advanced in Mayo and least in Makin and Grey, the latter suggesting the gap should close slightly.  

Saturday: Count is now at 80.0% and virtually nothing has changed.  

Tasmania

(Outgoing 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN)

2 LABOR 1 LIBERAL 1 GREEN 2 UNDECIDED (JLN vs LIBERAL vs LABOR)

The catastrophic collapse of the Liberal vote in the Reps in Tasmania, particularly northern Tasmania, has flowed through to the Senate and made what looked in all probability a boring race much more exciting.  Lee Hanson (ON) is also not that far off the pace but in my view isn't going to get out of eighth.  At at my most recent check, my model projects that Lambie followed by the Liberals are narrowly leading Labor for the final two seats.  See separate page.

Australian Capital Territory

(Outgoing 1 Labor 1 Pocock)

CALLED RESULT 1 POCOCK 1 LABOR

David Pocock has absolutely smashed it on his re-election attempt and is currently on 1.18 quotas with a swing to him of a staggering 18%, what a brilliant performance by Pocock.  I am reminded of the 17% primary swing to Andrew Wilkie on his first Reps re-election in Denison 2013 and suggest the reasons are much the same.  There was a lot of thought that if Pocock outperformed Labor might be at risk but the Liberals' attacks on the Canberra public service, not to mention a lead candidate who 40% of preselectors wanted to dump, have seen the Liberals poll a miserable 17.1%, meaning they would not have a quota in their own right if there were four ACT seats let alone two!  Labor is on 31.7% and the preference distribution should go like this: Pocock elected 1, surplus distributed, Gallagher elected 2, all over! 

Northern Territory

(Outgoing 1 Labor 1 CLP)

CALLED RESULT 1 LABOR 1 CLP

Despite some ridiculous speculation in drip twitter circles about Jacinta Price losing her seat (which would have required a c. 15% 2PP swing - where do they think this is, Braddon?) Price has in fact pulled quota in her own right; she is currently on 1.07 quotas to Labor's 0.96.  The reason for the swing to the CLP is that in 2022 Sam McMahon ran as a Liberal Democrat and bit into their vote; in the Reps there is a large swing to Labor in Lingiari but a large swing to the CLP in Solomon, roughly cancelling out.  Labor will cross on minor party preferences with nobody else remotely near them.