2025 Senate Notes Part Two

This is part two of a detailed review that I write after each Senate election.  See part one for a general introduction and coverage of proportionality, winning vote shares, preferencing impacts and the curse of Inclusive Gregory.  This part covers Senate 2PP, How to Vote cards, just-voting-1, exhaust, informals, below the lines, and poor performances.

Senate 2PP

Senate 2PP is useful especially for looking at personal votes in the House of Representatives - how an MP does in Reps 2PP relative to their party's Senate 2PP in similar seats may give an insight into how popular they are.  I determine Senate 2PP by adding the above-the-line two-party preferred vote between the two major parties to the below-the-line two-candidate preferred vote between the lead candidates of the two parties.  It has only been a useful measure to calculate since Group Ticket Voting was abolished.

Because preferences in the Senate are semi-optional, Senate 2PP can tend to amplify a clear winner because of exhausted votes, and it also tends to favour Labor in that the 2PP exhaust rate off Greens votes is very low compared to other parties.  The previous election Senate 2PPs were: 2016 50.08 to Labor,  2019 52.66 to Coalition and 2022 52.93 to ALP.  At this election Labor won the Senate 2PP 56.76-43.24, a 3.83% swing.

NSW 56.54 (+5.34)
Vic 57.13 (+1.21)
Qld 52.12 (+4.55)
WA 58.16 (+0.96)
SA 60.42 (+6.67)
Tas 64.00 (+8.96)
ACT 72.34 (+6.00)
NT 54.97 (+2.16)

Senate 2PP doesn't gauge the performance of other parties; thus Labor won three seats in Victoria with a lower 2PP than WA where it missed out.

Labor won the Senate 2PP in the 94 seats it won in the Reps, the six seats where it is known to have won the Reps 2PP without winning the seat (Clark, Fowler, Mayo, Wentworth, Warringah and Ryan), and eleven seats where it did not win (or in the case of Bradfield, may or may not have won) the 2PP: Bradfield, Berowra, Lindsay, Bowman, Longman, Canning, Curtin, La Trobe, Forrest, Kooyong and Casey (the last three only after adding below the lines), for a total of 111 seats.

How To Vote Cards

Much is made of Senate how to vote cards but not that many major party voters follow them and hardly any minor party voters do. Nonetheless getting onto a major party how to vote card can bolster a minor party's success if that major party's third candidate gets excluded, especially if the surplus is substantial.

Measuring how well how to vote cards are followed is often difficult because of local variants and undocumented changes.  I kept records of some Labor variants in Qld, NSW and Victoria.  For well-known parties the variants are often obvious, but for lesser-known parties they can be hard to spot.  

The numbers are the proportion of above the line votes for the party that copied the card (or one of the cards where there were variants).  This in general slightly overestimates how many of the party's voters as a whole copied the card, but the overestimates become larger in the states with high BTL rates (Tasmania and ACT) and for certain parties (especially the Greens).  

Overall in the mainland states 16-20% of Labor above the line voters, 25-31% of Coalition voters and 8-13% of Greens voters copied the cards.  The Coalition rates are similar to 2022, Labor and the Greens lower, One Nation higher but stil very low, and Trumpet of Patriots much lower than United Australia in 2022.  Follow rates for left micro-parties were negligible (especially Legalise Cannabis whose card was followed by two voters in NT and four in Tasmania, I suspect these cards were not widely available).  However Gerard Rennick People First had quite high follow rates, as did Australian Christians in Western Australia.

It seems that non-party how to vote cards, especially on the minor right, may have more influence than those of minor parties!  In NSW over 13000 - this is most of Warwick Stacey's victory margin though many of those voters would have preferenced One Nation anyway - copied a how to vote card issued by a website called Turning Point.  Recommendations by Topher Field were also copied by over 1000 voters in each of NSW and Victoria.  

The Coalition's how to vote cards have been blamed for the narrow victories by One Nation in New South Wales and Western Australia, but the number of voters following these cards was below the victory margin in both cases.  In WA had the Liberal card recommended preferences to Labor, Labor would have won, but that was never going to happen, the question was only were One Nation on or off.  In NSW the Coalition's surplus was only 0.045 quotas of which at most 0.0115 quotas followed the how to vote card; One Nation's victory margin was 0.0243 quotas.  In WA both the Liberal and National how to vote card votes passed on to One Nation following the Liberal surplus on National preferences.  The value of the surplus was 0.138Q.  However the surplus included at least 495,000 ballot papers of which at most 124,249 copied either Liberal or National how to vote card even after including cases that juggled the two (and the WA Nationals aren't really part of the Coalition anyway), which is at most 25.1% of the surplus (0.0346 Q).  Tyron Whitten won by slightly more than that, 0.0362 Q.   

Of course, one can say that publicity about the Coalition's decision to preference One Nation had an educative impact on the choices of voters who didn't follow the Coalition's how to vote card, but it can also be argued that that decision by the Coalition damaged their vote reducing what they had to pass on at any rate.  These things are unknowable unknowns - what is clear is that voters who preferenced One Nation by following a Coalition card could have omitted them and One Nation would still have won both seats.  

I mention in passing that while researching how to vote card orders I discovered a depressing example of gimmick party name voting.  In NSW of those voters voting above the line 1 Legalise Cannabis 2 Animal Justice Party, the most popular choice for 3 by far, with 21.6% of such votes, was Family First!

Just Voting 1

If a voter numbers just one box above the line their vote, while contrary to the instructions, is saved by the savings provisions and counts for the party they have chosen only. Here are the percentages of just-1 votes at this election (percentages are the share of just-1s out of all votes, whether ATL or BTL):

The 1-only rate rose modestly in NSW but was still lower than in 2019 where there had recently been a state election; everywhere else it was unchanged or fell except for ACT where there was a rise in Liberal just-1s.  (In 2022 the Liberals actually issued a just-1 card; this time their card was open.)

As in 2019 the lowest just-1 divisions were Franklin (0.76%), Clark (0.80%) and Ryan (0.82%) but again as in both 2019 and 2022 Ryan had the lowest proportion of ATLs as just-1s because of Tasmania's higher below the line rate.

Exhaust

Impressively, the rate of vote value exhaust at this election fell from 5.7% in 2022 to 4.0% this year, the lowest level since Senate reform! An increase in voters numbering beyond six boxes and the Coalition including One Nation on its how to vote cards are among the factors here, rogether with reductions in the number of party columns.  Exhaust increased from 4.4% to 5.8% in Queensland where a final seat contest of One Nation vs Gerard Rennick may not have been of interest to many left voters, but it fell from 6.3 to 3.4 in NSW, 6.9 to 4.5 in Victoria, 5.7 to 3.5 in WA, 6.6 to 2.6 in SA, 3.4 to 1.9 in Tasmania, 1.8 to 0.1 in ACT and 0.5 to 0.1 in NT.  (Exhaust in the Territories is highly dependent on how quickly people get elected.)

Informal Votes

Informal voting rose slightly in the Reps at this election (up 0.41% to 5.6% which is too high) and I will have more to say about the Werriwa and Watson disasters on that front in due course.    It's clear some seats just cannot cope with having more than seven candidates.  In the Senate however the informal rate was largely static, rising 0.03% to 3.45% with small increases in NSW and SA and small declines in Victoria and WA.

Below the lines

Prior to this election I saw a fair bit of nonsense on social media with various accounts banging on about the supposed need for voters to vote below the line to control their own preferences.  Much of this was coming from people who didn't seem to understand that "the line" applied to the Senate only, and what some really seemed to mean was that one shouldn't follow how to vote cards.  While it is useful for some people to vote below the line, for most it's completely unnecessary, and the message that preference harvesting is dead in Senate elections is increasingly getting out there. At this election voting below the line fell in every race, and fell to its lowest level since Senate reform in all races except ACT.

The 2025 race was the first that lacked significant below the line campaigns for individual candidates.  In Tasmania, Lisa Singh and Richard Colbeck (2016), Singh again (2019) and Eric Abetz (2022) had been prominent BTL candidates while in 2019 there was a large Jim Molan BTL push in NSW.  This election, nothing really to see.  

Last!

Last and best, the bit about dud performances!  

Australia's lowest scoring Senate candidate both by raw votes and percentage was Kirti Alle (Group T, Vic) with 29 votes (0.00071%) however that is nonetheless again the highest such score since the 1984 introduction of above the line boxes.  

Group T in Victoria was also the worst performed group with an above the line box, polling 0.05%.  Generally obscure non-party groups (of which there were thankfully few this election) poll poorly.  But plenty of recognised parties did poorly too.  The most consistent tailender was Australian Citizens which failed to reach 0.4% in any state and finished last among the named party groups everywhere except Western Australia (where it beat Socialist Alliance and FUSION).  FUSION didn't crack 0.5% at four attempts, nor Australian Democrats at three, and Socialist Alliance, Indigenous-Aboriginal, Great Australians and Australia's Voice all failed to get 1% in a single state.  Sustainable Australia somehow managed 1.2% in Tasmania (the donkey vote and the lack of choice on the left of the Tasmanian ballot would have helped there) but didn't get 0.5% in any other states.  The Libertarians also did far worse than under their old Liberal Democrats name, except in NSW where their joint ticket with GRPF and HEART held most of their previous vote.  

The issue of who below-the-line voters put last on their ballots if voting all the way through wasn't the same this year without Eric Abetz and Zed Seselja but for what it's worth the bottom-most Trumpet of Patriots candidates scored the most BTL lasts in every state except Queensland, which stopped a perfect sweep by giving the raspberry to the lowest Green.  The last One Nation and Libertarian candidates in NT and ACT respectively had the most BTL lasts in the absence of TOP.

A special dud performance award must surely go to the Liberals for their result in the ACT (I'm not saying it should go specifically to the Canberra Liberals either, it was far from being solely their faulr).  After Zed Seselja lost in 2022 there was some speculation the Liberals might be able to get their seat back if David Pocock took enough votes off Labor (and not, that said, on any kind of merit).  But the Canberra Liberals' campaign was disastrous, with the preselected candidate being accused of branch-stacking, which led to a vote by preselectors on whether to sack him, with 40% supporting doing so but he still continued.  Worse was to come in the campaign in the form of the federal Liberals' proposed public service cuts, which their candidate ended up trying to run against.  

Not only did the ACT Liberals lose the Senate 2PP to Labor 72.3-27.7 but they lost the 2CP to David Pocock even more heavily (75.6-24.4) and to the Greens (60.4-39.6), and even to ... the Animal Justice Party! (50.06-49.94).  (They did ward off Sustainable Australia by a massive 50.6-49.4, and we've seen above how Sustainable Australia went elsewhere!)

Yes it's Canberra, I know, but it's always been Canberra, and the Liberals have lost 45% of their primary vote in two cycles!  Had either Pocock or Labor not stood the Liberals still would not have won a seat in the ACT  Their performance here was so bad that it's not immediately obvious that they would have got a seat if there were four seats up for grabs.  (I believe they would thanks especially to below the line leakage from Pocock and Gallagher, but it's tricky enough to require detailed simulation - I'll add a firmer note on that when able.)  

I also mention that the Tasmanian Liberals' Senate performance was so bad that they lost the Senate 2CP vs Jacqui Lambie Network narrowly in every division, having never lost it in a single division before - but at least they managed to save their second seat with some breathing space in the end.  

That's all for another incredible Senate election, one that I wished I'd been able to do something closer to justice to in the postcount phase but the Reps was just far too distracting!  Huge thanks again to David Barry for his Senate Preference Explorer,  Andrew Conway for his ConcreteSTV Server, which allows simulations of outcomes with candidates removed or rules changed, and to the ABC for their archiving of most of the Senate How To Vote Cards.  Responsibility for any errors in using these fine tools is mine.

2025 Senate Notes Part One

This is the latest in a string of articles that I write after each Senate election tracking certain themes in the Senate races.  Previous volumes in the series were called Senate Reform Performance Review, referring to the 2016 Senate changes that got rid of Group Ticket Voting.  I think now we've reached the point after four elections where it's very clear that the new system works very well indeed and needs no longer to be considered on probation, hence the shorter title.  For previous instalments see 2016 part one, 2016 part two, 2019 (single article) and 2022 (single article).  On the agenda for this issue are:  proportionality, winning vote shares (with a focus on the One Nation wins from behind), preferencing impacts, and the curse of Inclusive Gregory.  Part two covers Senate 2PP, How to Vote cards, just-voting-1, exhaust, informals, below the lines,  and the fun bit about people who we wonder why they bother.   And yes that includes the ACT Liberals! 

I've decided again to split the article into two because the volume of material this time is a bit much for one go.  At least for my own feeling that I'm spending a lot of time on a single article that I haven't released anything from yet.  

In this article I treat Labor, Greens and Pocock as comprising the left of the Senate (in relative terms, this should not be taken as me declaring Labor to be an outright left-wing party) and Coalition, One Nation and UAP as the right (with Jacqui Lambie treated as neither though these days there is a case for treating her as left if anything).  

Proportionality

The late wins by One Nation were great for proportionality!  As usual, firstly here is the national votes to seats conversion (though this is a silly yardstick because the state-based malapportionment and the territories having only two-seat contests):

There were several joint minor right party tickets involving Libertarians, GRPF, Heart and Great Australians.  I have lumped these by lead party since obviously nobody else was getting a seat.  

Overall on a national basis this one shows Labor, the Greens, Coalition and to a lesser degree One Nation punching above their weight as a result of collecting preferences from parties with too little support to be in the fight anywhere.  Legalise Cannabis is hard done by because its support was too even to manage a win anywhere and there were not the same favourable preference sources available to One Nation.  On a simplified left-right basis the primaries are something like 56-44 depending on how one treats a few debatable cases and the left has done a little better but not much.  Even on this basis this is hardly a disproportionate outcome.

Now, the average of primaries in the six state contests compared to state wins (a better yardstick):

With this thrown in, disregarding the not very classifiable Lambie, there is basically no left-right imbalance; Labor and the Greens combined overperform on average by virtually the same amount as the Coalition and One Nation.  

Obviously the right holding only 15/36 state seats will be a big problem for the Coalition should it somehow win the next election and I expect it would be in an even bigger rush to a double dissolution in its first term than it would have been had it won this one.  

Had this election been a double dissolution I very roughly estimate the seat results at Labor 31 Coalition 24 Green 11 One Nation 6 and one each for Legalise Cannabis, Rennick, Lambie and Pocock.  However Legalise Cannabis were very narrowly behind Labor in NSW and Vic on my projection so might do better. My DD estimates by state are below. (Note that one cannot use ConcreteSTV when available to reliably simulate DD results because the major parties run out of seats.)  

Even in this landslide election, a DD would only give Labor an extra route to passing things that goes through One Nation and others.  For Labor the only plausible point in a DD in this term could be to use the joint sitting mechanism to resolve bills blocked by the Coalition and Greens. I'll be surprised if we see that.  

I don't see a need to again state in much detail the point that if we still had the Group Ticket Voting nightmare, close to a third of the seats at this election could have been won by unaccountable randoms, and the Greens and One Nation with a combined 17.4% of the vote between them would only be guaranteed one seat in a supposedly proportional system!  

Nor do I need to take too long pointing out that under the Senate system that was supposed by Sam Dastyari and co to deliver a permanently blocked Senate, the right (Coalition/One Nation/UAP) now has only 32/76 seats, six short of being able to block things care of Pocock, two JLN wins in Tasmania and left-right 4-2s in WA 2022 and Vic and SA 2025.  In fairness even the hack faction of 2016 federal Labor should not have been expected to think their party would ever have a win like this.  

Winning Vote Shares 

Of the 36 state seats, 22 (down 1) were won on raw quotas.  All seven leading candidates (in the top six after surpluses) with 0.7 quotas or more won easily.  Everyone with below 0.4 quotas lost.  In the range 0.4-0.7 quotas there were ten candidates of whom seven won and three lost.  The breakdown here was:

Labor: two wins and three losses (leading in both wins and two of the losses)

One Nation: three wins (leading in one)

Liberal: one win (leading)

JLN: one win (leading)

The two wins were by One Nation, beating Labor after starting with 0.411 Q vs 0.53 Q in WA and, more incredibly, 0.422 quotas vs 0.630 quotas in NSW.  They were not by any means low vote shares (5.87% and 6.06%), and indeed were similar to Labor's winning excess in Victoria and higher than Ralph Babet's 4% primary in 2022, though Babet was also elected fair and square. Which brings me to...

Preferencing Impacts

The big story of this Senate election was the improved performance of One Nation on preferences, even above their strong performances in previous elections.  Prior to this election based on the Reps polling I thought One Nation were a serious chance to win in all five mainland states.  Labor massively overperformed their Reps polling and One Nation underperformed theirs but One Nation were still able to grab two new seats from behind anyway - in the same two states where they had previously only won off lower vote shares at the 2016 double dissolution.

Four races (NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia) finished as Labor vs One Nation contests with Labor leading in all but holding on only in Victoria and SA.  However these contests varied in structure because the Coalition was short of its second quota in SA (and also in WA though there not if one includes WA Nationals) and because the Greens had further to go to reach quota in NSW.  

Here is a chart that shows how these counts fared, albeit in very wonky quota numbers form:

ALP, ON: ALP and ON start quotas

ALP+, ON+, GRN+,L-NP+: quotas gained by each of these in the count (set to 0 if already over quota)

EXH: exhaust

LW, RW: quotas held by left wing and right wing preference sources (RW includes Coalition in NSW and Victoria)

LG: quotas gained in count by Labor + Greens

RG: quotas gained in count by One Nation + Coalition (Coalition loss of surplus ignored as they are treated as a right preference source.

What happened in these contests overall was:

New South Wales:  There were slightly more right preferences than left and the gain by One Nation on these was only slightly better than Labor and the Greens combined, but Labor and the Greens were splitting votes two ways almost all the way, which made it easier for One Nation to catch up.  On 2022 preference flows One Nation wouldn't have got nearly so much as the Greens and Labor combined but this time the flows from minor right parties to them in this three-way split were much stronger and they did.

One of the factors here is the Libertarian/HEART/GRPF ticket, which replaced the Liberal Democrats.  In 2022 Liberal Democrats preferences split 32.8-16.5-29.6 Labor/Greens/One Nation.  In 2025 the Libertarian/HEART/GRPF ticket headed by Craig Kelly did far better than the Libertarian tickets outside NSW (which crashed and burned losing more than half their 2022 vote) and its preference split was radically different:  6.8-6.6-75.0. Similar flows were seen in other states with GRPF tickets, but Libertarian tickets were generally not quite that strong.  There has been a lot of talk about the weak flow off Legalise Cannabis to Labor at the end (partly a result of weaker Legalise Cannabis preferences in the 3CP split compared to 2022 and more strongly as a result of other votes that reached Legalise Cannabis) but by the time Legalise Cannabis were excluded, even a repeat of 2022 flows off them would not have quite saved Labor.  

In NSW the ALP primary was incredibly high, with a swing to Labor of 7.2% although the Reps primary vote swing was only 1.8% and even the Reps 2PP swing was only 4.3%.  There were Senate primary vote swings to Labor in the low double digits in the teal vs Coalition seats.  However, on a 3CP split with the Greens and One Nation, Labor's performance relative to One Nation weakened off all eleven parties that recontested from 2022. Labor was also underwater on this split off all four new parties added in 2025, whereas in 2022 it had benefited from four of the eight that did not recontest.  It is as if Labor so succeeded in maxing out its primary vote that there was nobody left to get preferences from. (Here I have treated UAP as the same as Trumpet of Patriots, and Liberal Democrats and Libertarians the same).  

Victoria: The difference between right wing and left wing preference sources was enough to beat Labor if the flow to One Nation was strong enough given that the Greens were soaking up votes, but the flow to One Nation was too weak; indeed the combined left parties held their side's votes as preferences much better than One Nation did.

Western Australia: Here the Greens and Liberals were almost equally short of quota and there were a lot more right-wing than left-wing preferences; the question being would the flow be strong enough for One Nation to close the gap.  It was, and enough spare to deal with the Liberals being slightly shorter of quota than the Greens.  A key shift here was the Australian Christians' preferences, which were far more favourable to One Nation than in 2022.  However, there were also shifts in the opposite direction with Trumpet of Patriots and especially Great Australians being less strong for One Nation than last time.  There were also new players like Gerard Rennick People First who were very strong for One Nation, so it's not clear that shifts in preferencing behaviour among recontesting parties alone caused this result.  

South Australia:  Again the Greens and Coalition were about equally short of quota.  The preference sources were more right wing than left wing but not massively.  The right didn't gain that much on preferences and the primary vote gap was too large for One Nation with the Greens close to quota.

The other interesting preferencing contest was in Tasmania, with a three-way race between the Liberals, Jacqui Lambie and Labor for the final seat.  The Liberals started well ahead of the others.  On 2022 preference flows Lambie was expected to overtake the Liberals who would have a relatively narrow win over Labor.  Lambie performed accordingly despite some expectations she might not, but the Liberals won far more easily over Labor than projected (more than 0.2 of a quota) largely because the One Nation preferences benefited the Liberals far more in Lambie/Liberal/Labor split than in 2022.

Inclusive Gregory Must Go!

Australia's Senate voting system is excellent and the counting system is mostly excellent but has a relic defect called unweighted Inclusive Gregory distortion that will someday elect a Senator who is not the voter's choice.  Parliament needs to stop this before it happens and not after!  For more on this problem that has been known for many years see Antony Green here.  

Under the system for distributing surplus votes in Senate elections, each vote that has reached a candidate who goes over quota during the count is given the same value going out, irrespective of the value it had going in.  In NSW votes that flowed through the surpluses of both Andrew Bragg and Jessica Collins had a value going forwards of about 0.022, meaning nearly all their value had been used electing Liberals.  There were 1.45 million of these votes.  About 90,000 of these that reached Mehreen Faruqi (Green) were given the same weight in her surplus as votes that had to that point never reached anyone. This meant that the Coalition surplus votes that had contributed about 0.26% of the value of Faruqi's total suddenly became worth over 10% of her 0.069 quota surplus and actually more than doubled in ongoing value!  These votes would have flowed more weakly to Labor than Faruqi's own votes and help explain why the flow off Faruqi's surplus was as weak as it was - though a better system would not have stopped One Nation winning.  When I'm in a position to quantify the exact impact of this distortion on the NSW and also WA counts I will add a note on it here.  

The Inclusive Gregory system for surplus transfers must be replaced with Weighted Inclusive Gregory before the next election.  It is way past time.  I don't want to ever have to say "we told you so" about this one.  

I expect to post part two in the next few days.  In advance I can say that voters following the Coalition's how to vote cards did not cause One Nation's win in either NSW or WA, although contributing in both cases. 

Goldstein Count History And Partial Recount

GOLDSTEIN (Vic, IND vs Lib est 3.9%)
Tim Wilson (Lib) has provisionally won by 260 votes
AEC has authorised a partial recount

Wilson will win unless large errors are found during partial recount

RESULT: Wilson won by 175 votes.   

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Updates

Updates will be posted here scrolling to the top.

Saturday 1:55: It's finally over, Wilson has won by 175 votes and the seat will be declared.  

Saturday 31st 11:35 am: The end cannot be far away as corrections are now showing to absents, dec prepolls and all booths except Hampton PPVC where only minor changes are expected though I do not know how many postals are to be checked.  Wilson leads by 164 following the expected Brighton corrections which actually cut his lead by 65.

Friday 7:30: Further confirmation sighted that there is a correction of at least 50 votes coming in the Brighton PPVC booth tomorrow as a result of a bundle of 50 being double counted previously.  Also that the PPVC checking is close to done and the partial recount should end tomorrow, possibly by mid-afternoon.

Friday 5:30:  I have heard that there are still plenty of postals to be recounted tomorrow, and also that there is another substantial but not decisive correction that may occur in Daniel's favour (pending further checking) - Wilson would still have a lead well in three figures. 

Friday 30th 3:10: Wilson drops another 13 on postals, apparently 7 to informal and 6 didn't exist.  (Means a slight miscount in the number of votes in his pile). Lead now 233.  Not known to me if this is all the postal checking and especially whether all Daniel's postals have been checked too.  Still two large PPVCs outstanding - one of them Hampton which had issues earlier - and no movement in other declaration votes.  

Friday 30th 11:45: A larger than usual correction in the Moorabin West booth where Wilson has lost 11 primary votes and Daniel has gained 2.  Wilson lead down to 246 but only four ordinary booths unchecked (plus non-ordinaries).  Two of the remaining booths to be rechecked are large prepolls.   

Thursday 29th 7:30 pm: Another 20 booths are showing with updates from today and the net change from those booths was ... zero! Wilson's lead remains at 263.  There are only nine booths yet to be reviewed; also I am seeing no changes in figures for any kind of non-ordinary votes so I suspect they are still to be done as well.  The lead went as low as 259 and as high as 269 in what passed for fluctuations according to one T Wilson who was paying more attention through the day than I was.  

Wednesday 28th 6:30 pm: A rather impressive 17 booths are showing with updates already from today but not much seems to have happened.  Wilson's lead went at least as high as 267 votes but has now dropped back to 263.

Main Article (28 May 9 am)

It's my policy here to start a new thread when a federal seat qualifies for a recount.   In this case it's a partial recount, but I also feel that it's useful at this point to write a fresh narrative of the history of this unusual count which has caused a great degree of interest (and been the subject also of a lot of incorrect claims).

Goldstein stands to be the only Coalition gain in an otherwise terrible election result.  The seat was considered vulnerable in the leadup to the election but received less attention than Kooyong, which was often considered at greater risk and saw an even scruffier campaign but has been retained by Monique Ryan.  

The election night count started well for Zoe Daniel who was projecting as ahead early in the night.  A screenshot of the ABC website possibly taken around 10:30 shows an ABC projection of "IND Retain" with 52.2% projected 2CP based off 65.3% counted.  Around 10:40 with 70.4% counted the seat came up on screen with the primary votes and the projected win showing but no projected 2CP.  However Antony Green was more cautious in his verbal commentary saying "we're giving it away" (based I believe on an automated calling system) but that he thought Daniel had won the seat and would have a look at the figures later.  Shortly after this Daniel celebrated victory. I am not aware if there was any basis for doing so at that point other than the ABC projection.  

Overall projection issues with this seat included the within-electorate prepolls having a bigger primary vote swing to Wilson than the day booth votes and the postals having a bigger one, but I suspect there were other problems with the early figures caused by the handling of booths that had been brought into the electorate.  In any case by the end of the night the ABC had the seat back in doubt.

It became clear over coming days that early postals were terrible for Daniel whose lead rapidly disappeared.  Wilson took the lead on the Tuesday after election day at which point I moved the seat to expected win status.  Many networks called it around that point and on Wednesday Wilson declared victory.

By the end of the first week Wilson's lead had blown out to well over 1000 and it looked highly unlikely to even be close.  But in the second week Daniel started closing rapidly, though she was seldom if ever closing quite fast enough.  This closing was possible because although there was a (non-redistribution-adjusted) 2.8% two-candidate-preferred (2CP) swing against her on ordinary votes (day booth and prepoll votes within the electorate combined) and a 4.8% swing against her on postals, on absents the swing against her was only 1.6% and on out of division prepolls the swing was to her, by 0.8%.  A factor in the latter was that for whatever reason the Liberal primary vote on out of division prepolls was poor.  There also seemed to be a late absents/early absents dynamic where the later batches of absents were better for Daniel, perhaps because of where they were from.  

The postal shift spawned many conspiracy theories (frankly if anyone has evidence of anything untoward in nursing homes, take it to the AEC and the police rather than posting baseless claims on social media).  In fact there are many possible explanations for what ended up being a moderate 2.4 point difference in swings from the ordinary votes, including:

1. The postal voting pool generally contains fewer COVID-concerned voters than in 2022. Voters choosing to vote by post in 2022 to reduce their COVID risk are likely to have been to the left of the average postal voter.  There is a general national trend that postals,relative to ordinary votes, were somewhat worse for Independents and Greens in 2025 compared to 2022.

2. Orthodox Jewish voters, who vote heavily by post, were probably more likely than other voters to change their vote/preference away from Zoe Daniel and Monique Ryan over Israel/Gaza/antisemitism issues.

3. I understand the Coalition stepped up or refined postal vote targeting in Victorian seats.

4. There may have been late swing in voting behaviour (though indicators from other vote types in this seat are mixed).  

Whatever its causes the postals pattern plus a minor correction (see below) saw the lead shrink rapidly with Wilson 128 ahead at the end of the indicative 2CP count.  At this point Daniel made some media comments suggesting she was considering requesting a recount citing some comments about the count by Simon Jackman.  I dismissed those arguments (at least in the form reported by media) on my Goldstein page.  Firstly these arguments referred to a change in the Hampton prepoll booth, but this was an obvious error that had been corrected.  Secondly they referred to the idea that a larger voting population since the under-100-vote recount guideline was formalised justified a higher recount threshhold of say 140 (the margin is almost twice that now), but as turnout increases, the chance of an error that is a fixed percentage of turnout does not remain the same.  Thirdly there was reference to "lumpiness" in the count, but corrections in early stages of counting are not unusual.  

Some other support for a recount on social media came from the leaking of some group chat messages by Wilson in which he seemed stressed about the rate at which Daniel's scrutineers were"knocking out" his votes and suggesting he needed more scrutineers to do the same for informal votes in Daniel's pile.  Aside from showing that Wilson still needed to work to make sure of a win he had already claimed (or at least to make it easier to get it declared faster), there wasn't anything to see here - a  normal candidate to scrutineers type conversation.  Scrutineers don't decide whether votes are formal, the AEC does; the "knocking out" referred to is simply challenging apparently informal votes so the AEC can make a ruling on them.

Things were, however, to become unusual later.  

Corrections in this count

This count has seen an unusual number of corrections.  Before running through these I should explain the stages that all counts go through.

Each vote is first counted in an initial primary vote count for its booth (or for declaration votes these will occur in batches - eg the postals will be counted in several goes, usually starting with batches of around 2000 but becoming smaller later in the count).  Then each vote is counted in an indicative two-candidate preferred count, which forms the running 2CP count for the leaders for the seat.  Subsequently the initial primary and 2CP counts are reviewed in a second round of counting called fresh scrutiny. The initial count and the first indicative 2CP count are mostly done under great time pressure by casual workers on election night and errors in this process are pretty common  Fresh scrutiny tends to fix nearly all of them.  

The indicative 2CP count is a shortcut for election watchers to have an idea who is winning and also to help tell the AEC when it is safe to formally declare the seat because it is mathematically certain who will win.  But it does not itself supply the winner.  The winner is the person who wins at the end of the next stage, the distribution of preferences.  In this stage candidates are eliminated starting with the candidate in last place, and as each candidate is excluded the votes they were holding when excluded are passed on to whoever the voter put next of those candidates still in the race.  This is the standard process that all seats go through at some stage.  At the end of the distribution of preferences the AEC can choose to declare the count finished or to conduct a full or partial recount.

Some errors in this count (not an unusual number) were picked up and fixed by the end of the fresh scrutiny phase:

* In the Hampton prepoll Daniel had been credited with about 500 primary votes that were actually primary votes for the Greens (many of which flow to her as preferences anyway).  This was an obvious error because the Greens' share of the primary vote in the booth prior to fixing it was only 2.5%.  (Most often this error occurs when a bundle of 500 votes gets tallied to the wrong candidate - it's not super-rare and a similar thing happened in Solomon with far greater impact on the 2PP there.)

* In the Malvern prepoll Daniel's share of preferences on the initial count appeared impossibly weak.  This was corrected.

* In the Hampton day polling place Ben Raue noticed that there was an issue with preference flows in the Hampton day booth; it appeared the numbers had been inverted on second data entry.  This was fixed before the distribution of preferences started.  

It is possible, particularly in seats that haven't had much attention from scrutineers, for mistakes to happen even after the fresh scrutiny phase.  However in close seats with a heavy scrutineering presence, mistakes are nearly always caught and corrected, and most of the changes that go on in the distribution phase involve tiny numbers of votes being decided to be informal that were previously formal, because a repetition or omission of a number had been missed early in the process.  Now and then one sees a change with a double-figure impact on the lead resulting from some other error, for instance in Bradfield there was just one of these, worth 22 votes - one change of a few dozen is similar to other casess.  

The Goldstein distribution of preferences saw at least five significant margin changes that weren't just the usual trickle of a vote or a few votes here and there.  Wilson's margin increased by 96 votes in the Oakleigh prepoll and 172 votes in the Hampton prepoll (on top of the previous correction there).  The margin then decreased by 274 votes on postals before increasing again by 44 votes on absents and 38 at Beaumaris Central.  (My thanks to Ben Raue for keeping a list of all these and their exact sizes).  All up the margin had gone up to 444, down to about 170 before finishing the distribution at 260.  There was also a small correction in Wilson's favour before any of these five that may have been unusual too but I have not determined the details yet.

My understanding is none of these five larger corrections involved votes physically in the wrong pile.  All involved data entry errors - in one case a failure to overwrite the initial 2CP split from a postal batch with the new one, and in at least some of the others the 2CP split being entered incorrectly.  Unusual in a close count and I think the AEC will need to review its data entry checking processes to work out what happened here.

Partial Recount Background

The AEC has a standing policy, formalised following the 2007 election, to automatically grant a recount request if the margin at the end of the count is 100 or less.  In the years from 1984 to 2007 this policy had been applied informally except for Bowman 2007 (64 votes) where a request was rejected.  There had been three rejections in the 101-120 vote range, but Hinkler 1984 (237 votes) was accepted for recount for reasons unknown to me at this stage.  

For Goldstein 2025, Daniel requested a full recount citing the fluctuations seen in the distribution of preferences.  If there were so many data entry errors in the distribution, does this show potential for similar errors in the primary vote counts?  It may be that it doesn't, but even if so it's a very hard sell in optics terms.  What the AEC has done is to allow a partial recount that will check the primary votes for both candidates and the informal votes.  These are the votes for which the fresh scrutiny numbers have not yet been further reviewed - the votes moved in the distribution of preferences are not going to still contain significant errors.  In my view this decision by the AEC is very sensible.

The partial recount is expected to take around four days and I will post comments on it as it goes.  Generally recounts do not change the margin much (see Bradfield thread).

One of the common questions I have had is what happens if the partial recount now moves the margin below 100 votes, does this trigger a further automatic full recount?  The answer is no; in this case most of the votes will have already been recounted and the potential for a move of anything near 100 votes if the remaining votes were recounted is negligible.  However if the result after the partial recount was extremely close (I would think especially 20 votes or less), the AEC could decide to extend the recount.  This has been left open.

At some point a winner will be declared ("what if it's a tie?" has been dealt with on the Bradfield thread) and the declared winner will be seated; the loser will then be able to challenge in the Court of Disputed Returns if they can find any basis to do so.  

Partial Recount updates

Partial recount updates will be posted at the top.  The recount starts 9 am Wednesday but I am on fieldwork for that day so updates will be scarce barring anything sensational.  

Before I start here's a graph showing how Daniel's preference share in booths in Goldstein relates to how she stands on primary votes relative to Wilson (small special hospital booths have been deleted):

There are no massive outliers here (the nearest thing to one in the top left is Caulfield South) but the relationship isn't particularly strong and Daniel's preference share is reasonably flat across the different booths.  If a booth is above the best fit line, Daniel is doing well on preferences relative to where she stands on primaries, so any significant correction that might happen in primaries would more likely favour her.  If a booth is below the line, Daniel's preference flow is weak relative to the primary votes, so a correction is more likely to favour Wilson.  

2025 Senate Button Press Thread

Welcome to my 2025 thread to cover the so-called "button presses" (in fact the execution of a computer routine) that distribute preferences for the Senate and determines the Senate results.  

I have not had nearly as much time to work on projecting the Senate counts this election as in the past because it's been impossible to get away from the complexity and number of the in-doubt House of Reps counts for long and because of other work commitments.  In particular I probably would have been able to call Tasmania if I had had the time to do a few days scrutineering (and had been able to find anyone willing to appoint me) but such things were not to be.  

On this thread states/territories will appear once there are no unapportioned votes shown as awaiting data entry.  Normally based on past practice the button press follows a few days after that with the declaration shortly after (in the absence of any recount request that might be caused by a micro-close margin).  Until I have seen a state reach zero unapportioned votes, commentary about it continues on the previous National Senate postcount thread.  

Each section on this thread will firstly include details of the count reaching zero unapportioned votes and button press timing once known.  As I start this article I do not have detail of any button press times. This will be followed by a brief summary of prospects in the count, plus any late-breaking analysis of prospects, and once the result is known, the result itself with analysis of the preference flows and outcome.  For this year it is expected distributions will generally appear the day after.   See the 2022 button press thread for what to expect.  Far more detailed discussion will be posted down the track (2022 example here).  

The AEC has stated all Senate counts are expected to complete in the next two weeks with smaller states and territories ahead of larger states.  

In the article below Q stands for quota.  In the larger states quota is one-seventh of the votes rounded down plus one.  In the Territories it is one-third rounded down plus one.  Reaching quota means a candidate wins but it is also possible to win one of the final seats short of quota by being ahead when all bar six candidates have been eliminated.  

In four states (NSW, Victoria, WA and SA) the contest appears to be most likely a straight fight between Labor and One Nation with One Nation likely to add to their already large collection of seventh place finishes.  However in some of these they still have a chance of winning.  Labor and the Greens will have an outright combined majority in the Senate.  The Coalition and Greens will have a "blocking majority" (50%, not really a majority, but that's the term) if the Liberals hold their second seat in Tasmania.  

New South Wales

NSW has reached zero unapportioned as of May 28. 

Primary vote leaders are Labor 2.634 Q Coalition 2.061 Greens 0.783 One Nation 0.425 Legalise Cannabis 0.245 Trumpet of Patriots 0.168 Libertarian-led minor right allsorts ticket 0.130 Family First 0.113.  

The first count will elect Tony Sheldon (Labor) and Andrew Bragg (Liberal) and their surpluses will elect Tim Ayres (Labor) and Jessica Collins (Liberal).  At some point late in the long string of minor party exclusions Mehreen Faruqi (Greens) will get across the line and this will leave the last seat between Emilija Beljic (Labor) and Warwick Stacey (One Nation).  The gap should close substantially (probably slightly more than half) but a .209 Q primary vote lead (2.99%) is too much gun and Labor will win the final seat.  Even when Labor surged in late polling this one was never on my radar; how on earth did Labor get a 7.2% swing?  

RESULT:  2 Coalition 2 Labor 1 Green 1 One Nation.  Warwick Stacey has won the final seat.  

Well I was absolutely wrong about that one, One Nation has won the final seat from 3% behind!  Stacey in the end won by 0.024 Q which is reasonably comfortable.  In general One Nation did better on preferences than expected off 2022 and Labor much worse.  The Legalise Cannabis exclusion favouring One Nation over Labor at the end has had some attention but by that time the seat was gone even if 2022 preference flows were maintained.

One Nation did generally better across the board than 2022 on preferences from anywhere (especially the Coalition on account of their how to vote card, but the Coalition how to vote card had little impact since their surplus was tiny).  However the decisive factor compared to 2022 was the preferences coming from the Libertarian/GRPF/HEART ticket.  In every state besides NSW the Libertarian ticket failed compared to the 2022 Liberal Democrats, shedding between 54% and 77% of their 2022 vote, but in NSW this joint ticket held 88% of its previous vote and its preferences shifted overwhelmingly to One Nation in spite of Craig Kelly's fights with one of his former parties.  The value of the preference shift from Liberal Democrats to Libertarian/Rennick/HEART was itself .077 quotas in terms of the gap between Labor and One Nation, more than three times the margin.  In 2022 the three-way split ALP/Green/ON off Lib Dems was 32.8-16.5-29.6 and in 2025 off the Libertarian-headed ticket it was 6.8-6.6-75.0.

Victoria

The count reached zero unapportioned votes on 26 May - 23 days is very fast for a large state.  The button press will occur on the morning of 28 May 9:30 am.

Primary vote leaders are Labor 2.427 Q Coalition 2.199 Greens 0.872 One Nation 0.311 Legalise Cannabis 0.254 ToP 0.177 Family First 0.127 Animal Justice 0.110 Vic Socialists 0.108.

Raffaele Ciccone (Labor) and James Patterson (Liberal) will be elected on primaries.  Their surpluses will elect Jess Walsh (Labor) and Jane Hume (Liberal).  Eventually Steph Hodgins-May (Green) will cross on minor party preferences, leaving what looks like a race between Labor's Michelle Ananda-Rajah and One Nation's Warren Pickering for the final seat.  The gap in Labor's favour starts at a large 2.31%.  The argument that One Nation can at least make some inroads is that the left preferences are split between Labor and the Greens until the Greens get quota, while once the Coalition are eliminated One Nation are on their own.  However it doesn't seem like this difference will be enough.  There have been thoughts that either the Coalition or Legalise Cannabis (Fiona Patten) might get over One Nation but this seems very unlikely, and it wouldn't be enough for either to win anyway.

Tuesday night: We'll know soon enough!  I have been looking at the SA distribution where, on a 2CP gap basis, Liberal preferences are 46 points more favourable to One Nation vs Labor than in 2022 (when they were actually more favourable to Labor), a split that handily exceeds the 26% of Liberal ATV voters who followed the Coalition how to vote card. Trumpet of Patriots are 13 points less favourable, Sustainable Australia is 17 points more favourable and other changes are minor.  If similar shifts apply in Victoria, and also considering primary votes, things could be about 0.023 Q closer than the PB model, so it's not impossible for One Nation to get this, but they're still underdogs.   

RESULT: 3 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green. Ananda-Rajah has landed on her feet, winning what must have seemed like just a consolation prize run after Higgins was abolished. 

The final margin was 0.055 quotas, pretty much as expected. Of interest is that Labor dropped behind and were pushed over One Nation by the Legalise Cannabis exclusion. Fiona Patten was nowhere near winning, over 100000 behind at exclusion. More comments later (out on fieldwork!)

Queensland

Qld has reached zero unapportioned as of May 28. Button press is 3:30 on May 29th.  

Primary vote leaders are LNP 2.165 Labor 2.134 Green 0.733 One Nation 0.499 Gerard Rennick People First 0.329 Trumpet of Patriots 0.256 Legalise Cannabis 0.246 Family First 0.126 JLN 0.119

Paul Scarr (LNP) and Nita Green (ALP) will be elected on primaries and their surpluses will elect Susan McDonald (LNP) and Corinne Mulholland (ALP).  A long series of exclusions will eventually elect in some order Larissa Waters (Green) and Malcolm Roberts (ON).   Waters may or may not get quota while Roberts shouldn't because Rennick will not be excluded.  Despite Rennick's impressive result I've never seen any reason to believe he could chase down a gap of 2.4% vs One Nation who generally perform well on preferences. 

RESULT: 2 Labor 2 LNP 1 Green 1 One Nation as expected

Malcolm Roberts actually did well enough to cross quota on the final exclusion!  He beat Rennick extremely easily by 0.458 Q continuing One Nation's record of doing very well on preferences in Queensland.  

Western Australia

WA has reached zero unapportioned as of May 28. Button press is 1:00 pm (3:00 eastern) on May 29th.  

Primary vote leaders are Labor 2.532 Q Liberal 1.863 Greens 0.894 One Nation 0.411 Legalise Cannabis 0.282 Nationals 0.252 Aus Christians 0.187 Trumpet of Patriots 0.117 Gerard Rennick People First 0.104.

Ellie Whiteaker (ALP) and Slade Brockman (Lib) will be elected on primaries with Whiteaker's surplus electing Varun Ghosh (ALP).  At some point in the string of minor candidate exclusions both Matt O'Sullivan (Lib) and Jordon Steele-John (Grn) will cross and it is then a question of whether Tyron Whitten (One Nation) can catch Deep Singh (ALP) from .121 Q (1.73%) behind.  It looks likely One Nation will gain here as there is .768 Q of preferences that are likely to be right-wing vs .500 that break left.  However, Senate preferences break relatively weakly compared to Reps preferences, and also the Greens are .031 Q closer to quota than the Liberals, so it's challenging for One Nation to quite bridge .121 Q, though it could well be very close.  

I made a rough attempt at modelling this count using a range of Senate preference flows including from past WA elections and SA 2025 (to put some of the new parties in the mix) and in my model a fairly favourable scenario for One Nation occurred - Liberals were elected on Nationals preferences with a substantial surplus (around .17 Q).  In this case the finish was very similar to Victoria with One Nation passing Labor but then being repassed on the Legalise Cannabis surplus, I had a margin of 0.046 Q at the end.  This is slightly less close than the Poll Bludger version but I think that in the PB model the batching of Liberals and Nationals gives One Nation an advantage.  The roughness of mine may mean that it makes other errors.  Anyway it is certainly close enough that if One Nation does better on preferences across the board than expected they could win.  Something to note from the SA count is that Australia's Voice preferences are very favourable to the Greens, which if repeated (and I think it will be) will put the Greens over quota substantially before the Liberals.  

Thursday: I reran this model using purely WA 2019 Nats preference flows (raising the Liberal surplus to .20 Q) and Labor still won but only by 0.030 Q which is very close.  If the Liberals can cross quota before the Nationals are excluded that might be an advantage to One Nation, however I think this won't happen. Another thing that could well help them is if the Nationals flow is stronger to One Nation and weaker to Liberals, which is possible.  I note that the Poll Bludger model as of today predicts a One Nation win.

Thursday 3:20 One Nation wins the distribution! RESULT 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green 1 One Nation

Whitten has won reasonably comfortably in the end by 0.036 quotas.  Looking through the distribution one thing that has happened here is that the Australian Christians exclusion was far more favourable to One Nation relative to Labor than in 2022, with One Nation doing about 21 points better than Labor cf about 8 points better on purely Christians preferences, but this seems to also flow through to parties feeding into Christians before their exclusion.  Gerard Rennick People First preferences flowed extremely strongly to One Nation - not all instantly but further down the line.  

South Australia

The count reached zero unapportioned votes on or about 23 May.  The SA declaration has been scheduled for 3 pm 27 May.  The button press is at a similar time on the 26th.

Primary vote leaders are Labor 2.664 Q, Liberals 1.930 Greens 0.903 One Nation 0.374 Legalise Cannabis 0.200 Trumpet of Patriots 0.199 Jacqui Lambie Network (Rex Patrick) 0.190 Family First 0.142.

The button press will elect Marielle Smith (Labor) and Alex Antic (Liberal as of 6:18 pm 25 May 2025) and Smith's surplus will elect Karen Grogan (Labor).  A long series of minor candidate and party exclusions will eventually see Anne Ruston (Liberal) and Sarah Hanson-Young (Green) cross quota leaving Charlotte Walker (Labor) with a large lead over Jennifer Game (One Nation on the ballot papers but has since quit the party) for the final seat.  There is no reason whatsoever to believe Game can gain 0.29 Q (4.1%) out of what will only be an available 0.963 Q after excluding the preferences soaked by the Liberals and Greens, especially with preferences exhausting, though it's fairly likely the gap will reduce modestly.  

RESULT: 3 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green as expected. 

The distribution has finished up somewhat closer than the Poll Bludger model with Labor winning 1.002 Q to 0.803 Q with 0.009 Q not distributed.  That means the gap was 0.199 Q compared to the model's 0.246 Q.  However of this difference of 0.047 Q, 0.029 Q is explained by changes in the relative primary votes of Labor and One Nation meaning the model was actually very close when done, overestimating Labor's margin by less than 0.02 Q.  There is a suggestion here that exhaust may have gone down.  Direct comparisons with the PB model are made difficult by Legalise Cannabis passing Trumpet of Patriots for eighth position, but before these exclusions Labor are about where they would be expected to be given the primary vote changes while One Nation are about 0.04 Q better.  One place this seems to have come from is that One Nation did well off the preferences of Rex Patrick (JLN) gaining 0.06 Q compared to the model's 0.034 Q - this alone accounts for the small difference in the margin after considering primary votes.  One Nation also have a somewhat larger than expected share of the small Coalition surplus.  

Tasmania

The count reached zero unapportioned votes on or about 23 May.  The button press which I intended in person after half-running from Mt Stuart to the AEC in 19 minutes was at 10:30 am Tuesday 27 May.  

This is the most complex of the counts - one where the winners are predictable if past preferencing patterns are followed but there are many reasons for caution re whether they will be.  It's a major shock that the Liberal vote in Tasmania has been so awful that their second seat is even button pending.  Primary vote leaders are Labor 2.466 Q Liberal 1.648 Greens 1.141 Jacqui Lambie Network 0.509 One Nation 0.362 Legalise Cannabis 0.238 Trumpet of Patriots 0.227 Shooters Fishers + Farmers 0.159

The button press will immediately elect Carol Brown (Labor), Claire Chandler (Liberal) and Nick McKim (Green) and Brown's surplus will elect new Labor Senator Richard Dowling.  This then turns into a three-way fight for two seats between Richard Colbeck (Liberal), Jacqui Lambie (JLN) and Bailey Falls (Labor).  Lee Hanson (ON) is 2.1% behind Lambie and 1.4% behind Labor and doesn't seem to be a realistic threat - an outside chance perhaps of spoiling one of the three, but even if doing so would not seem likely to win.  

Modelling based off the assumption that 2022 Senate preference flows will be maintained suggests that Lambie leads Colbeck leads Falls for the final seat, but the projected margins are tight enough that given the backdrop of their weak performances on primary votes it's possible at least one of Lambie and Colbeck will be beaten by Falls.  On the other hand Colbeck could plausibly benefit from stronger flows from One Nation, and flows to Lambie may well be stronger below the line than in 2022 when the then (and still) much less well known Tammy Tyrrell was their lead candidate.  So it will be an impressive feat if Labor pulls it off.  William Bowe's model had Lambie finishing with 1.001 Q Colbeck 0.922 Q Falls 0.874 Q on its latest run.  My own has 0.989 Q/0.922 Q/0.860 Q.  I should stress these models are not predictions - they rely on an assumption that we both know could be wrong - but they show that a substantial preference shift is needed for Falls to win, especially at the expense of Lambie.   I am not particularly convinced by a common argument that Lambie will lose specifically because of right-wing voters supporting salmon farming as I don't think minor right voters in Tasmania care that much about it.  Whether the fighting between One Nation and JLN has succeeded in convincing ON voters that Lambie is too left generally is another matter.  

If Labor does win it's possible it could be very close, and will be interesting to see the distributions in any case.

Tuesday 10:30 Here we go... Watching at AEC

Lambie and Colbeck win 5 and 6.

RESULT: 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green 1 JLN.

The distribution has finished much less close than expected with both Lambie and Colbeck crossing quota on the One Nation exclusion to win with 1.046 and 1.014 Q to Labor's 0.799 Q.  The major cause of the blowout compared to 2022 preference flows is that the One Nation exclusion three-way split was way more polarised between the major parties.  Lambie (38.7% of the One Nation split) was slightly higher than expected but Colbeck got 37.3% (about 22% projected) and Falls only 11.7% (about 19% projected).  This was mostly not caused by increased following of the One Nation how to vote card (which had the Liberals at 6) - the follow rate increased only from 2.4% to 4.1%, though the Liberals were left off in 2022 so that 4.1% is effectively for nothing.  The how to vote card accounts for about one sixth of the total rise in the Liberals' share of the One Nation votes on a Lambie/Labor/Liberal split, close to half being accounted for by One Nation voters choosing themselves to put the Liberals 2.

Australian Capital Territory

ACT reached zero unapportioned votes on May 26.  The button press will occur mid-morning on 28 May.

David Pocock's ticket has a massive 1.175 quotas and Labor's has 0.952 with the Liberals on a dismal 0.533.  It's quite likely (based off 2022 prefs almost certain in the absence of Kim Rubenstein) that Katy Gallagher will get the 31.5% of Pocock's surplus she needs to cross quota and that will be the end of the count!  If not Gallagher will soon get there anyway off minor candidate preferences.  

RESULT: 1 Pocock 1 Labor.  

Bzzzt!  Silly mistake; I forgot of course that Pocock has a running mate whose surplus would sit with until they were excluded rather than flowing straight to Labor.  In fact after the exclusion of all the other second candidates, and the lead Sustainable Australia, HEART and Animal Justice candidates, it was the exclusion of Pocock's running mate that put Labor across the line by 46378 votes (.474 quotas) with the Greens still holding .317 quotas that would have also flowed strongly to Labor.  

I have calculated Senate 2CPs (excluding exhaust) and get that Pocock won the Senate 2CP vs the Liberals 75.6-24.4, and Labor beat the Liberals 72.3-27.2 with Pocock beating Labor 60.0-40.0.  What the first two mean is that the Liberal performance was so terrible that even had either Pocock or Labor not run, the Liberals still would not have recovered their seat!  The Liberals even lost the 2CP vs Animal Justice Party (50.06-49.94) and may well have lost it vs Sustainable Australia too (50.6-49.4 to Liberal) if the Senate had compulsory full preferencing.

There has been speculation about what the result would have been with four Senators and whether the Liberals would have even won then.  This requires detailed simulation, noting that there is a large BTL leak off David Pocock to other candidates.  

Northern Territory

I do not know exactly when the count reached zero unapportioned votes but I first noted it had done so on May 21.  The NT declaration has been scheduled for 11 am 28 May so I expect the button press is around 24 hours before (and was).  

After some interest caused by dumped CLP Senator Sam McMahon's run for the Liberal Democrats in 2022, the NT Senate has returned to normal.  Labor (1.049 quotas) has overtaken the CLP (0.982 Q) during the postcount and the button when pressed will re-elect Senator Malandirri McCarthy with a small surplus.  This will be followed by a number of exclusions of support candidates and at some point - probably a few exclusions into the lead minor party candidates - Jacinta Nampijinpa Price will have racked up the 814 preferences she needs to get across the line.  The Greens (0.332 Q) will finish a very distant third.  

RESULT: 1 Labor 1 CLP

Amusingly Price crossed the line on preferences from Labor's #2 candidate (these were mostly second preferences from McCarthy's surplus).  Eliminated prior to that point were all the other #2 candidates, the lead Australian Citizens candidate and the ungrouped independent Kenny Ong (who actually did rather well).  

Legislative Council 2025: Montgomery, Nelson and Pembroke Live And Post-Count

Montgomery: Casey Hiscutt (IND) won after preferences as expected
Nelson: CALLED (7:09 pm) Meg Webb (IND) re-elected
Pembroke: CALLED (7:33 pm) Luke Edmunds (ALP) re-elected

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Live comments (scrolls to top)

All updates are unofficial, check the TEC site for official figures

Thursday 29th:  Unsurprisingly Hiscutt has done better than the Liberals on preferences; in fact he has won massively, 61.7-38.3 getting 76.9% of preferences that flowed to the two leaders (these figures are still subject to very minor change).   In Pembroke Ritchie snuck into second late in the primary count and moved 6.9% clear of Allan after preferences but still lost to Edmunds 58.2-41.8.  In all Ritchie got 59.2% of preferences.  In Nelson there will be no preferences; Meg Webb has 51.7%.  

Monday 26th night:  Today' counting saw a negligible narrowing of Hiscutt's lead in Montgomery.  The TEC will conduct provisional distributions on Thursday afternoon which should establish the result beyond doubt (and also who is second in Pembroke!)

Monday:  I have heard from scrutineers that the flow of Greens preferences to Webb was the small matter of 90% (possibly an all-time LegCo record flow though they probably won't get distributed), which puts the live count 2CP at 64.5 to Webb (a 5.2% swing).  

Sunday: Graph of the Day

The Nelson vote for the Liberals was virtually exactly what they got in the state election, in every booth.  The only substantial differences were that they beat their state election vote by 5.7 points in Kingston (possibly High Performance Centre related) and were 4.8 points below at Mt Nelson (Webb's home booth).  Subject to the usual churn of voters back and forth, the voters who normally vote Liberal in state elections voted Liberal and everybody else voted for Meg Webb or Greens, and a very high proportion of the Greens vote would flow to Webb as preferences anyway.  Even without a Labor candidate and even running a well known local (albeit non-Nelson-resident) name the Liberals almost completely failed to attract support outside their base.  

END OF NIGHT WRAP: I don't think we've seen any huge surprises tonight, assuming the scale of what I expect to be a comfy win for Casey Hiscutt is a little bit buried in the preference flows.  Unless Stephen Parry does better on preferences than I expect, the government has nothing to be happy about here.  The way Meg Webb won in 2019 was unusual enough that the government could get away with treating it as an oddity (they could have lost to several others in that field), and when they decided to run against her there may have been some actual optimism.  I suspect they are now wishing they had never turned the rock over as Webb has been returned with a decisive mandate from every booth in a formerly blue seat to carry on holding them to account, including by voting against them nearly all of the time.   

Labor will be pleased with an easy retain for Luke Edmunds who has worked the electorate hard and has taken little if any net damage from his party's pro-stadium stance.  His high vote in the south end of the seat stands out to me, particularly the Tranmere booth which is a stronghold for the absent Liberals.  The tealer end of the electorate is more divided with high 20s Green votes in several booths.  

The Greens, who sometimes struggle in Council elections, have done well in all three seats, picking up much more of the Labor vote than I thought they would in Montgomery and benefiting I suspect from a clear position against the Macquarie Point stadium.  Many voters will have voted Green here who have never done so before in their lives and this may help the party on the long road to rebuilding on the coast.

It looks like the independent majority will be back in the Legislative Council.  It remains to be seen just what kind of independent the fourth Hiscutt to reach the red couches will be.  

9:24 Burnie prepoll is in and Hiscutt's lead that I reckon he doesn't need anyway is out to 2.45%.  All seats are final for night.  

9:00 Burnie prepoll not in yet for Montgomery, the other two are final for night.  By the way Briggs won another tiny booth there, Wilmot.  

8:44 We don't get 2CP counts by booth in LegCo elections.  In 2019 based on the preference flows it's possible Webb would have beaten the Liberals in every booth on 2CP but some of them would have been closer than this.  I'm estimating her 2CP at about 63-37 (a 4% swing) but it could be higher than that if the Green preference flow exceeds 80%.  2CP estimates from 54-55 at Lower Sandy Bay and Sandy Bay Beach to around 75 at Taroona and Mt Nelson.   

8:32 Hiscutt has done well out of the second lot of prepolls (we have had Sheffield and Montgomery) and now leads by 2%.  I don't see any reason to doubt he will win and probably comfortably but am holding off on calling it pending any data on preference flows.  

8:22 Big prepoll in in Pembroke and the Greens are much less likely to make the final two now after  being outpolled by Ritchie in it 24-16 though they are still ahead of Ritchie slightly.  That may well not survive postals.  

8:20 What looks like one prepoll in Montgomery is in and Parry made a small gain, but not significant.

8:06 Kingston has reported, and Meg Webb has won Every. Single. Booth. Yes this used to be a conservative electorate.  

8:00 They're not going to win but I think the Greens would be more than a little bit happy with their showing in Pembroke where they are a chance to make the final two, though that will be unresolved for several days and they will need their lead over Ritchie to hold on prepolls.   Previously from memory they have only made the final two in competitive contests (as opposed to cases where they were the sole opposition) in Hobart/Wellington (which they now hold) and Nelson (2013).  

7:41 I am advised that there will be a significant delay (at least half an hour) in the very fast to this point Montgomery count as a result of a fire alarm!  

7:37 In Montgomery, the day booths are in and Hiscutt has picked up on primaries to lead by 1.8%.  The only way he can lose here is if there is for some reason a very weak flow on Greens preferences but a very strong flow to Parry off Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (which I'm not expecting).  I would like to see the prepolls in case Parry can get any kind of lead off those.  

7:34 In case anyone was wondering if it would get better for the Liberals in prepoll in Nelson, no, it got even worse. It loos like Webb is going to win on primaries and save the Liberals the humiliation of seeing the 2CP margin.  

7:32 Ritchie might get 60% of preferences (I doubt it, only one sample that good) if she makes the final two, but she needs over 804% on current numbers so Edmunds would be looking at a 2CP of over 58 on current numbers if she even makes it and gets that.  Allan if second is needing about 82% but no way, there will be a lot of Liberal voters in the Ritchie vote.  Over half of enrolment is counted now and Edmunds is at over 44%.  Called. 

7:22 I've seen a second scrutineering sample from Pembroke that is a little more positive for Ritchie's preference flows in the event that she is making the top two ... but not nearly high enough (and her making the top two is very doubtful anyway)  Edmunds has also polled extremely well in Tranmere.

7:12 Parry continues to lead Hiscutt by around 1%.  I would think that that is completely inadequate as Briggs' preferences are likely to favour Hiscutt and Pickin's preferences may not do very much.   Would welcome any scrutineering evidence.  

7:09 Nelson called.

7:06 A very strong booth for the Greens in Pembroke in Lindisfarne Primary.  I have seen some scrutineering figures from one booth that suggest that if Allan is second then Edmunds gets a large slab of preferences, while if Ritchie is second then Edmunds is favoured somewhat off Allan but Ritchie does well off Mulder.  Mulder is not getting much so far.  It looks a lot like Edmunds is winning and I am considering calling this seat too.  

7:03 Webb continuing to rise in my projection, now to over 60 2CP.  

7:00 I note the Lower Sandy Bay booth has lost half its voters since 2019; this booth also did something odd in the state election because it had moved.  

6:54 Vermey has failed to win the Lower Sandy Bay booth on primaries let alone preferences, an extremely bad sign for him,  This is the second best Liberal booth in the electorate,  I am considering calling the seat for Webb.  

6:53 Parry is doing well now on primaries, this one looks closer than expected.

6:50 Votes are pouring in in Montgomery and Parry is coming up towards Hiscutt on primaries.  It is looking like these should be the top two on primaries though Briggs has a fairly high vote (especially for the Greens in this area!) presumably based on the absence of a Labor candidate.  

6:45 Numerous booths have come in in Montgomery and for now Hiscutt is leading 32.8-26.2.  The preferences of Briggs are likely to favour Hiscutt over the Liberals and the SF+F preferences are not likely to break hugely either way so for now Hiscutt is very well placed.  I'm doubtful that he even needs to lead.   

6:43 Webb wins another booth at Dynnyrne.  If Vermey is not winning booths on primaries he's not winning; I currently project Webb to finish up with about a 43-37 lead coming out to about 58-42 after preferences.  

6:40  Edmunds has a huge lead (28% over the Greens) after the first booth in Pembroke (Mornington).  This is a favourable booth for Labor but would still project to something well into the 40s seat-wide, which would be very comfortable.

6:36 A booth called Kingston West is in in Nelson; never heard of it before.  Anyway a good start for Webb as she leads on primaries and would gain more on Green preferences.   If she is near 50 primary anywhere in Kingston that's very good.

6:31 The third booth in, Preston (topped by Briggs!), was not nearly so good for Hiscutt.  I don't have a projection on this booth from past elections, it's a remote bush booth near the Gunns Plains tourist cave.  Pickin (SF+F) is currently on nearly 20%, I suspect that will drop when we get to the urban booths.  

6:26 Hiscutt has a large lead in a couple of early rural booths in Montgomery.  The Liberal vote is way down on the state election in these.  

6:07 Prepolls will be counted in batches by prepoll centre.  Montgomery has three prepoll centres.  Nelson and Pembroke each have one but there is also a Hobart prepoll centre which I suspect will report for all three (we'll see).  Please note that I aim to be cautious about calling seats before prepolls have reported unless things are extremely lopsided (which they may be in some seats).  Phone voting will be added as postals on Monday, ahead of (and probably unrepresentative of) the main batches of postals.

5:30 Projectinator ready ... I think ...

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Intro (12:30)

When too many elections are never enough, tonight we have the Tasmanian Legislative Council elections for the seats of Montgomery (Lib vs ALP 10.2%, vacant), Nelson (IND vs Lib 9.3%) and Pembroke (ALP vs Lib 13.3%).  These elections were delayed three weeks by a direct clash with the federal election (the first time this has happened) and have been much overshadowed by it.  These seats are important as the Rockliff Government seeks to improve its numbers for legislation to fast-track the proposed Macquarie Point AFL stadium, but after the party got wiped at the federal election and with the Liberals' polled lower house primary vote at a 21-year low, ambition for their prospects is in very short supply.  They've not contested Pembroke after three consecutive drubbings by Labor in the seat.  In Nelson it's generally expected that Meg Webb will retain and in Montgomery Casey Hiscutt (IND) is given a strong chance of succeeding his mother Leonie, who held the seat for two terms as a Liberal.  He is up against a former Senator in Stephen Parry.  

At stake is the current 8-7 edge for party members in the Council; a win by Hiscutt could restore the historically normal independent majority assuming no changes in other seats.  The balance of the Council between IND/Green members and Lib/Lab members has lately been of far more interest than the major party balance given the booming frequency of the major parties voting together (they did this in 90% of cases where someone could be bothered asking for a division in the last year).  

Live coverage of the counts will appear here from 6 pm and the TEC can be very fast; the first rural booths in Montgomery appeared at 6:24 in 2019.  A summary appears at the top of the page, seats will only be CALLED when I consider that there is no realistic doubt who has won.   For all seats I will, subject to getting the rusty old Projectinator working in time, be projecting votes for certain candidates as follows:

- Montgomery: Parry (Lib) and Briggs (Green) off the state election.

- Nelson: Volf (Green) off 2019 (I am suspecting Webb will devour a lot of the normal Greens vote at state level), Vermey (Lib) off the state election and the 2019 LegCo election, and Meg Webb gets the rest.  It is pointless to project Webb off 2019 because of the large number of candidates that year and her low primary vote.  

- Pembroke: Edmunds (ALP) and Allan (Grn) off Pembroke 2022 and Mulder (IND) off Pembroke 2019.  I can't see a valid basis to project Ritchie given her most recent run was against the Liberals not Labor.

The TEC announced as of early in the week that about 8800 voters had at that stage voted at prepoll centres and about 1600 by post.  I have not seen an update to these figures since.  

A change introduced this year is that "votes received by post before polling day will no longer be counted on polling night" because "The counting process now requires the Commission to verify that no elector has already voted through other means before counting postal votes, which is scheduled to commence on Thursday 29 May."    (I am hoping that means the counting of postal votes, not the verification).  So no postals til Thursday, hopefully we will see a good number of prepolls tonight.