2026 Tasmanian Council Counts: General And Councils Other Than Hobart

Numbers noted here based in scrutineering are reports of unofficial sampling and are not results.  For official results see the TEC website.

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Introduction

This is my general page for commentary on the 2026 Tasmanian council counts.  Specific comments on individual councils will be added where time permits below (my main focus being on the Hobart count) and there will also be some comments on general themes.  Don't expect to see much on this page on Tuesday; comments will be added on Wednesday especially on Wednesday night.  I will not necessarily cover all councils but expect to have brief comments at least on several.  

On Tuesday ballot papers will be removed from envelopes and there may be some computer data entry for some large councils but don't expect any official figures.  I may have some indications from scrutineers depending on the pace of counting but the main counting activity for Mayors followed by Deputies together with the start of data entry is on Wednesday and first figures are expected by Wednesday night. The TEC expects to have at least provisional 20% distributions for all councils and 50% distributions for smaller councils at some stage on Wednesday evening.  These provisional results are what would happen if only the votes entered to that point were used to decide the election.  Usually most of the candidates who are provisionally elected at the 20% stage end up winning, but often some of those elected to the last few positions change.  It is common to see media misreporting that candidates "elected" in these 20% and 50% interim counts have "won" but it is only when the final, 100%, count is done that the winners are official.   Mayor counts will occur at least to the first primaries stage before the Deputy counts.  

Where the final few seat results in the interim counts are within 100 votes or so (depending on council) then it's possible the winners will change by random sample error alone.  They can also change if a candidate's victory depends on which of two other candidates is excluded at a certain point.  But there is a more important reason why they can change, and it is this:

Stratification Alert!

It's very important to be aware that interim primary vote figures for the various Councils using automated data entry won't necessarily be unbiased samples of the whole count.  Votes do not reach the Electoral Commission in random order, but rather arrive on particular days, and within each day's sample they may be further stratified by post office of origin (for instance).  There will be political differences between the pool of voters who tend to vote early in the count and those who vote late in the count. Also, campaign events that happen during the postal voting period can have more impact during some parts of the count than others.  

The TEC may well make vigorous efforts to reduce this stratification, but nothing will get rid of it completely.  It's also hard to say how compulsory voting might affect it, since the pools of early and late voters will be different.  In 2018 (optional voting) a "green shift" was observed in many (not all) councils, with obviously green/left candidates tending to get a final percentage that was around 1.1 times their vote in the first interim count, and righties tending to drop back accordingly.  This wasn't noticeable however in 2022.

Hence when the TEC release primary figures for various percentages be aware that these are not true representative samples and that past experience shows that substantial changes may occur.  (For instance in 2014 one candidate for one council who was not getting elected on the 20% sample was elected in third place, though that's an extreme example.)  Any result that is even remotely close will therefore not be called on 20% of primaries. 

Please note that I only "call" a seat when I consider it virtually certain that the candidate in question has won.  I ask that people not describe me as having called any seat where I have not explicitly used the word "called" for it.

General Themes: Counting

Any general comments on counting will be added here.

General Themes: Results

Any general comments on results will be added here.

Specific Councils

Comments on specific councils will be added here, by council in alphabetical order. All mayoral results will be noted when I've seen them 

Break O'Day 

Brighton

Burnie

Central Coast

Central Highlands

Circular Head

Clarence

Derwent Valley

Devonport

Dorset

Flinders

George Town

Glamorgan-Spring Bay

Glenorchy

Huon Valley

Kentish

King Island

Kingborough

Latrobe

Launceston

Meander Valley

Northern Midlands

Sorell

Southern Midlands

Tasman

Waratah-Wynyard

West Coast

West Tamar