2025 Tasmanian Postcount: Franklin

 FRANKLIN (2024 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 IND)

SEATS WON: 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 2 IND

SEAT WINNERS: Eric Abetz (Lib), Jacquie Petrusma (Lib), Dean Winter (ALP), , Peter George (Ind), David O'Byrne (Ind), Rosalie Woodruff (Grn)

WITHIN PARTY BATTLE: Meg Brown (ALP) vs Jess Munday (ALP) - Brown well ahead

SEAT LOST: Nic Street (Liberal)

IND (Peter George) gain from Liberal

Click here for link to tallyboard page with links to other postcounts as written

Franklin looked like the most exciting seat in the leadup with two strong independents, the Liberals fighting to hold their three seats, Labor fighting to gain one and the Greens having come quite close to two in 2024.  Nobody expected the latter to repeat.  Towards election day the view that the Liberals would drop a seat to Peter George strengthened and this is what appears to have occurred.

On Sunday night with 72.3% of enrolment counted, the Liberals have 2.726 quotas, Labor 1.822, the Peter George ticket 1.389, the Greens 1.078 and O'Byrne 0.911.  Peter George has polled exceptionally well, holding nearly three-quarters of his federal election vote.  He and Kristie Johnston are the first non-proto-Green independents to top the poll in a seat since Reg Turnbull in Bass 1959.  

George's preferences will be very leaky - I have heard about a third go straight to Rosalie Woodruff, bypassing George's low-profile support cast.  Eric Abetz will either reach a quota on primaries or very early in the cutup (perhaps even off George's surplus) and then a long series of cuts from the bottom up will eventually elect in some order Winter, O'Byrne, Woodruff and Petrusma.  The final act of any significance is likely to be the exclusion of the third Labor candidate, at which point the second Labor candidate should go well clear of the Liberals' Nic Street,

Even if the primary vote gap between the parties disappears, the problem for the Liberals is preferences.  They are slightly more exposed to leakage from their ticket but this will probably be cancelled out by the Labor ticket being slightly leakier.  The big problem is the .467 quotas that at some stage will leave the Greens and George tickets.  While some of this will exhaust, what of it doesn't exhaust (probably at least two-thirds) will greatly help Labor against the Liberals.  If the gap between Petrusma and Street stays where it is then the Liberals have a slight advantage by being able to hold two candidates below quota, but that disappears once they get even 0.1 of a quota in preferences, and if they don't get that they can't win anyway.  So the only way a ticket split could help the Liberals is if Street catches up to Petrusma and past experience suggests if anything that she will pull away.  The Liberals have absolutely nowhere to get a preference advantage from and I don't think they could win from even stevens let alone from (notionally) 691 votes behind.  

There is a 749 vote gap for Labor's second seat between first-term incumbent Meg Brown and high-profile unionist Jess Munday, whose campaign was marked by unconvincing claims she was ineligible.  Such gaps are generally not closed.  There will be a large volume of Greens and George ticket preferences flowing into this battle however so I will keep an eye on what happens here, and am holding off calling this contest for the moment.  

The real tension here is that party outcast David O'Byrne is 135 votes ahead of the ALP leader Dean Winter, and could outpoll him.  There is no love lost between these two and we could be in for heavy duty trolling if the lead survives.  O'Byrne has been overshadowed a little by George here but 11.4% is a strong number in its own right and the combined major party vote has been even lower in Franklin than in Clark.