2025 Tasmanian Postcount: Lyons

LYONS (2024 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN)

(At Election 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 Nat)

SEATS WON 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green

SEAT PARTY CONTEST: Carlo Di Falco (Shooters Fishers and Farmers) leads Stephanie Cameron or Richard Hallett (Lib).  Di Falco appears well placed but it's more complex than it looks.

SEAT WINNERS: Jane Howlett (Lib), Guy Barnett (Lib), Mark Shelton (Lib), Jen Butler (ALP), Brian Mitchell (ALP), Tabatha Badger (Green)

SEAT LOST: Andrew Jenner (Nat)

NOTE: The Lyons count involves a complex Hare-Clark scenario and has been rated Wonk Factor 5/5.  

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

Last and very far from least, Lyons, with an interesting final seat contest.  It will be one of the great stories of Tasmanian elections, whatever you think of his politics, if serial candidate Carlo Di Falco gets up for the battling but ever trying Shooters Fishers and Farmers at his 8th attempt at public office (that's even one more than Craig Garland).  The party's campaign was so bereft of visible presence that I thought they would have trouble getting over the far more visible Nationals, even though the Nats campaign was, putting it kindly, cow manure.  

I start this piece on Sunday night with 64.7% counted.  Lyons generally lags because of having a high out of electorate vote and is lagging even more this year, so this count is still very incomplete.

The Liberals have 3.319 quotas, Labor 2.301 quotas, the Greens 1.075, Di Falco 0.572 and the Nats 0.339.  There's also .394 quotas between eight colourful independents, of whom just one is clearly left-wing.  

On paper Di Falco has a whopping lead even if it may drop off somewhat in what's to come, and he also has the advantage of being a lone candidate.  His total cannot lose votes to leakage, he will just keep gaining preferences through the cutup.  

That sounds extremely callable but the potential issue that I see is the split within the Liberal ticket.  Yes it's the Ginninderra Effect again.  Jane Howlett has topped the poll with quota and her surplus will elect Guy Barnett if he doesn't end up getting a quota on primaries too.  But Mark Shelton has less than half a quota (currently .458) and leads the next Liberal Stephanie Cameron by just .17 of a quota.

To illustrate how this works, let's suppose the preferences coming from the other three Liberals and the small Howlett surplus split evenly between Shelton and Cameron and none of them leave the ticket.  On current numbers this would leave Shelton on 5039 votes, still well short of quota of 6768, and Cameron on 3888.  That puts Cameron almost level with Di Falco, who is on 3869.  These candidates would be the final three, they all wouldn't reach quota, and if the Liberals could get twice as many preferences between them as Di Falco they could both beat him,   

However, votes do leak out of tickets; the two Liberals will drop about 200 each to leakage from these numbers, some of which will go to Di Falco.  

A question is also how even the split between the Liberals will be.  In 2024 these same two candidates ended up as the last two Liberals standing and Shelton gained 2201 votes to Cameron's 1905.  Shelton especially gained on votes from outside the ticket (Tucker who is now a National and also the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers who won't be eliminated this time) but Cameron gained on two of the three Liberal exclusions, including Richard Hallett who is on the ballot again this year.  Cameron could do well on the Liberal exclusions this time because all three minor Liberals are fellow farmers and two of them are fellow female farmers.  Do the Lyons Liberals have any other sort of candidate?  

I haven't been able to find a 2 Liberals vs 1 SFF preference case that's really comparable; I did find that with 3 vs 1 SFF got 417 preferences to the Liberals' 755 off the preferences of John Tucker (then IND) in 2024.  This suggests it won't be easy for the Liberals to get a strong enough flow from Nationals or others to bother Di Falco.

Also I suspect the indie votes will help Di Falco.  Some of them are likeminded candidates (Bigg is a former SFF regular) and anti-stadium voting may strengthen the flow from the Nationals as well as minor indies.  

All up I think the Liberals have to at least improve their current position relative to Di Falco by several hundred votes before they're really in the hunt, and that while it is not as clear as the party totals suggest, Di Falco is currently very well placed.  

While Labor are close to the Liberals on raw total their vote is too concentrated in their two leading candidates Jen Butler and Brian Mitchell, so Labor have no ability to stay in touch with Di Falco on current figures.  The Nats will also at some point get reduced to just John Tucker, who will not get over Cameron and therefore won't be able to get Liberal preferences.