2025 Tasmanian Polling Aggregate V1

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TASMANIA 2025 POLLING AGGREGATE (NOT A PREDICTION) Lib 35.0 ALP 30.3 GRN 15.3 IND 14.9 NAT 2.5 SF+F 1.9

IND adjusted for design issues with polling independents

Seat Estimate for this aggregate (total of electorate estimates in brackets) Lib 13-14 (13) ALP 10-12 (12) GRN 5-7 (6) IND 4 (4) NAT 0-1 (0) SFF 0-1 (0)

This article is part of my 2025 Tasmanian election coverage. Click here for link to main guide page including links to seat guides and voting advice.  

Today's party polling reports

The Mercury today reported an EMRS Liberal Party poll with Liberals on 37 Labor 26 Green 14 IND 19 leaving just 4 for others, which I'm told by Brad Stansfield is based on c. 1000 unique interviews this week and last.  On these numbers if accurate I would expect Labor to roughly hold station on 10 or maybe gain one off the absence of JLN, Greens to hold station on five or perhaps gain Braddon, INDs to win the usual four (given that the 19 is likely to be an overestimate) and that leaves about 15 for the Liberals.  

Labor gave the media (but not to this stage me) some Pyxis findings about voters saying the government did not deserve re-election (34-53) and apparently some analysis claiming that various polls translated to a large two-party preferred lead for them (which would be interesting to examine since Tasmania has effective optional preferencing at party level).  However no voting intentions have been seen from this, and indeed no polling supporting the view that Labor is doing well has emerged to counter the Liberals' narrative that their position is improving.  The former finding isn't very useful alone because voters can think a government deserves to be chucked out and also that the Opposition isn't ready, and in these cases voters will often stick with what they know.  Also in Hare-Clark where some voters holding this view support parties that run away from attempting to form government when they could be able to, it doesn't necessarily lead to change. 

Most seats, does it matter?

Before I start this piece I should just say a few words about the current situation. There have been polls mostly suggesting that the Liberals will win the most seats, but there are also signs that that alone could be irrelevant.  In yesterday's leaders debate Dean Winter did not rule out accepting confidence and supply from the Greens without a deal or ministries, and even tried to say he couldn't say no (he can, Governors can be very persuasive but in the end nobody has to be Premier on terms they don't want).  He also said he would try to make the Parliament work out of respect for voters.  Unless denied, this looks like a strong sign that Labor is preparing if needed to accept confidence and supply from the Greens if offered without conditions, and hence go into government.  If Labor doesn't gain seats there would be some embarrassment involved but the line would be yes we didn't do it last time, but this time it's a Budget Emergency so we must accept the support of the Gr**ns.  It might not be that simple though - firstly they may need more than just the Greens.  

Secondly there is still a pathway if the Liberals do better than their polling for the Liberals to get to 18 seats they can work with - it's just that not a single poll has really supported that pathway so far, though some are close.  And it's always possible that if Labor has an in theory route to government but has done poorly they could concede again.  

Contra to a since corrected claim in the Conversation today this isn't Europe and a single party winning the most seats has no special status in the process of attempting to form government.  There is just a history of leaders saying it does, or setting other markers like most primary votes (which actually did formally matter in the 1950s!).  The question is really who can command confidence and supply, however many seats they have that are their own party.  In a no-majority situation the incumbent Premier has the call as to whether they wish to test their numbers, which they can do even if they don't have the most seats or there appears to be a deal to anoint someone else.  

About this aggregate

Late in the piece in any Tasmanian campaign these days I try to put together an aggregate of what the non-internal polls should be taken as saying collectively.  If the polls are broadly accurate, after adjusting them for any obvious reason why they might not be, what should we take them as pointing to?  This approach has had a great predictive record down the years (nailing the seat tally in 2004, 2010 and 2021 and being one seat off on two parties in each of 2006, 2018 and 2024) but every year lately I feel that its luck is about to run out  in view of limitations of the polling.  I am very dearly hoping for one more public poll (at least) so this year's might work better.  This particular election so far is not as sparsely polled as 2021, but it is less well polled than 2024.  The polls we've had since the election was called variously have little, no or a not very good track record in Tasmania and we're sorely lacking a public campaign period EMRS after they were hired by the Liberals.  

I define a public poll as a poll where the commissioning source is not a party and commissions the poll with the clear intention of always releasing it.  By this standard there have only been three public polls in recent months, an EMRS in mid-May, the YouGov poll in late June, and the Pulse Media DemosAU July 6-10.  Hopefully there will be more.  I know YouGov are in the field but am unsure if this is a public poll (I did expect one so maybe tonight or tomorrow).  I have put a "V1" on this article in hope that more polling will become available and I'll be putting some new aggregate numbers in a new article if so.  If that happens I will link to the new version here.  

In the greyer realms there have been a uComms June 10-11 (commissioned by an unknown source and not released but I've seen the results and briefly stated them here) and the first DemosAU that was commissioned by an unknown peak body.  

There have also been four three 500-550 vote waves of Liberal-commissioned EMRS samples, but I refuse to aggregate party polling (and after seeing how the federal Liberals' polling went at the federal election, I think people will understand why, though I suspect EMRS are doing the same things they always do and their numbers are more reliable.)  I might use seat breakdown data from the party polling if I had the full set, but the numbers that have been released have been cherrypicked. Labor has also referred to party polling, but not to voting intentions, only to numbers regarding voters wanting a change of government and to claims about two-party preferred support (none of which translates in Hare-Clark).  

Poll weightings

Because polls are scarce in Tasmania I will usually use several months of polls in an aggregate but with a very low weighting for the older ones.  I also don't want any single firm to dominate the aggregate especially if it hasn't been tested at an election here before.  I have applied a weighting formula that accounts for the recency of each poll and also my impression of the accuracy of the poll in the Tasmanian context (considering both Tasmanian and national track records and also how much we know about how accurate the poll is, eg we know a lot about EMRS in the Tasmanian situation but not a lot about DemosAU).   On this basis the weightings I came up with were:

February EMRS .05

May EMRS .09

June uComms .09

June YouGov .22

June DemosAU .19

July DemosAU .37

The EMRS and uComms polls included Jacqui Lambie Network, who then turned out not to be running.  JLN votes in general scatter in preference flows; using Franklin 2024 as a model (because it was a case where their whole ticket was excluded) and with an ambit figure for Nationals based on Nats running ex-JLN candidates I've come up with 25% Labor 23% IND 17% Lib 15% Nat 14% Green 6% SF+F as an estimated redistribution for them.  I have also done some redistributions of the Others vote for cases where neither Nationals or Shooters, or one and not the other, were included.

The Independent vote has been overestimated - severely - in polling at the past two elections.  It is difficult to say exactly how much by because some of the polls included Independent as a standalone while some lumped Independent with Others.  As best I can determine no poll at the last two elections has named all the candidates on the same footing, which I believe is the only way to avoid the problem.  My estimate of the average overestimation of the IND vote in five campaign period polls from the previous two elections is 3.8%.  I'm not sure the polls are still overestimating what independents will actually get, because there may be a surge to independents in the last weeks of the campaign (DemosAU as the youngest current poll will have an average data age of 11 days on election day) but I think that this is a serious design issue with Tasmanian polling that needs to be addressed, and that the solution is to poll online and list all a party's candidates after its name in brackets.  

After redistributing the overestimate proportionally (which may or may not be a good idea) what I get is Liberal 35 Labor 30.3 Green 15.4 IND 14.9 Nat 2.5 SF+F 1.9.  

Well I was certainly surprised by the 30.3 for Labor when their most recent public poll was just 24.7!  I would think that at the moment many election watchers agree with the narrative that Labor is doing badly and forcing the early election has backfired, and therefore would hold that even the early campaign polls are already totally irrelevant and that the Liberals' internal polling is more accurate.  

To explain this number, firstly I believe all the polls are overestimating the independent vote, so Labor's vote is likely to have been suppressed by a point or so in every poll.  Secondly with the exception of the two DemosAU polls, all the other polls in the aggregate had Labor well into the thirties - the YouGov outright and the others once I remove JLN from the mix.  If Labor has crashed then why did the YouGov taken at the same time as the previous DemosAU have them ahead, and does one or the other have a house effect?  (YouGov seat polling performed well in Tasmania at the federal election.)  It may well be that things have changed so much through the campaign that the older polls should now be totally ignored, but in that case we don't need an aggregate as we can look at the July DemosAU poll and see what it is pointing at.

Electorate breakdowns

The next step is to apply electorate breakdowns and here there is unfortunately not much to work with.  During the previous term EMRS ran a voting intentions dashboard with rich seat data but it ceased functioning some time late last year; I didn't scrape any of the post-election data from it but in any case anything from 2024 is probably irrelevant anyway.  This leaves me with just one YouGov seat by seat sample and two DemosAUs.  I could also use the results of the previous election but this is dangerous in view of the large changes in the fields of independents running, particularly in Franklin.  

I've merged these seat samples with more weighting to the recent DemosAU and less to the earlier one, and also applied a 2-point adjustment in Franklin where I suspect the Greens are being particularly disadvantaged by Peter George being named as a headline option but not their candidates.  As with 2024 there is then a lot of banging clanging and screaming of numbers as I force them to sum to the appropriate levels and what I eventually got was this estimate of how much the polls point to the parties underperforming or overperforming their state vote in each electorate:

Some of these may look and probably are wrong individually, but they are my read of "what the polls say".  As applied to the primary vote figures, these then produce this:

Bass: After accounting for independents being likely to be overestimated in the polls, there aren't any fourth forces sticking their head up for a seat here so the aggregate expects the big three to win all the seats.  Here Labor would probably beat the Greens, either on outright totals or via an even split between their candidates.  The way the Greens would win is if there were strong flows to them from excluded anti-stadium indies, which I suppose is possible.  But more likely 3 Labor - which I'm sceptical about firstly because no Michelle O'Byrne and secondly because it's hard to credit that Bass elects only one anti-stadium candidate.   It is possible in Bass that enough anti-stadium vote pools with some independent or National to get them over the line (eg if the IND vote is less overestimated in Bass than I think) but at this stage these numbers aren't showing it.

Braddon: Craig Garland hoovers up enough of the independent vote here that he would be expected to win - probably not with quota on primaries but we've seen what he does on preferences last time.  The lone Green would be trying to stay ahead of the fourth Liberal and the key question here would be the split in the Liberal ticket.  If it was reasonably pro-Jaensch so the Liberals could hold three candidates below quota for a long time they might be able to win the seat, especially as most preferences are bad for the Greens here.  However if Labor are well over two quotas the Greens have a preference source, provided that Labor doesn't manage to keep their second and third candidates ahead of them (in which case Labor could win three but it seems very remote).  On the aggregate numbers the Greens should win but with a worse Labor primary they may not.  (My view is four Liberal is still a real chance here.)

Clark: straightforward on these numbers  (Yes there is almost as much IND vote as Green but it will be heavily focused in Kristie Johnston and the rest will scatter).  

Franklin: Also appears straightforward on these numbers, though the majors are not that far off an extra seat between them.  David O'Byrne would probably be short of quota but not short enough that either of the majors would beat him.  Rosalie Woodruff is clear in this projection with the adjustment I made, but not by an enormous amount.  The Greens have polled remarkably badly in both YouGov and DemosAU samples in Franklin though much better in the small EMRS subsample the Liberals claimed.  While I don't doubt Peter George will knock a hole in the Greens vote I suspect they've struck a few coincidentally really bad samples here based on issues with sampling this electorate.  

Lyons: Labor probably just beats the Nationals (or SF+F but I understand their ground game barely exists) on these numbers with the assistance of Greens preferences assuming that the Greens really do that well.  However it is possible flows from SF+F and indies could be good enough to get the Nationals home, especially if Greens voters refuse to preference Labor over the stadium.  

Anyway, that is how my public-ish polling aggregate stands for now.  I hope to have a more data-informed version some time tomorrow!

Bradfield Court Of Disputed Returns Challenge

BRADFIELD (NSW, IND, 0.01)
Disputed Returns challenge to win by Nicolette Boele over Gisele Kapterian (Lib) by 26 votes

This is an ongoing thread to follow the challenge by Gisele Kapterian (Liberal) to Nicolette Boele's (IND) victory by 26 votes in the seat of Bradfield.  This is the first CDR challenge by a candidate to be based on the count, rather than eligibility or alleged misconduct issues, since Fran Bailey's (Liberal) win in McEwen 2007 was challenged by now MP for the seat Rob Mitchell (ALP).  On comments about the case available so far the case is likely to be very similar to McEwen in proceedings.

I previously covered the main part of the Bradfield postcount in a general teal seat postcount thread and the late postcount (distribution of preferences phase) and recount in a Bradfield specific thread.  I also covered the Goldstein partial recount and count history on a separate thread that may be useful for comparisons.  

Boele had been down for the count at times in the initial count but got back up again, mainly on a very strong batch of out of electorate prepolls followed by the very last batch of postals breaking strongly to her (not such an unusual thing).  She went into the distribution of preferences 40 votes ahead but dropped back through the distribution to finish it 8 votes behind.  This is not surprising because in the distribution the votes that get the most attention are votes for minor candidates, so the candidate more reliant on preferences is more likely to suffer if votes are found to be informal on further scrutiny.  The recount has the opposite dynamic - at this stage the primary votes of the leaders have been less checked than the preferences, and so this can hurt the primary vote leader.  Which it did.  Boele started very slowly in the recount and was still three votes behind and running out of booths when there was a big shift to her in the Turramurra PPVC, which was the last big prepoll to be recounted.  Boele also then made gains in other booths in the St Ives and Turramurra areas and finished 26 votes ahead.  

Unlike the Goldstein postcount which saw several large corrections and errors before the result was eventually established, the Bradfield postcount and recount was about as smooth to these outside eyes as these things get.  The corrections were generally small and on the scale of what is generally expected - changes of rulings on specific votes, very minor counting corrections and just one correction of slightly larger size (a 22 vote correction in Kapterian's favour).  The 15-vote swing to Kapterian in Turramurra PPVC was on formality rulings, not a counting error.

The Liberals floated a possible challenge on June 8 and I noted that none of the claimed grounds were convincing. Claimed reasons for concern were that the distribution of preferences and the recount had different winners (not surprising for the reasons stated above), that the number of informal votes increased (not surprising because sequence errors can easily be missed in the earlier counting stages) and that the number of total votes increased (not surprising because the AEC does not know for sure at the start of the count exactly how many ballot papers there are and some slight movement in this total is normal).  

There was not until now any public suggestion that the Liberals had issues with AEC interpretations of specific votes.  While there will always be some lineball votes that the losing side might object to, there has also not been any suggestion that there are systematic errors.  The Liberals will have to argue that there are a number of errors sufficient to overturn the margin so it will be interesting to see what those arguments are.  If there were persistent patterns of suspect rulings I would expect these to have come to notice by now and the lack of such seems unpromising for their chances of getting enough votes overturned.  

I have not yet seen the petition and will comment on it if/when available but the media reports so far indicate that is wholly about ballot paper interpretation; indeed Kapterian has stated that the petition does not seek a by-election (as could be the case if the Liberal Party was arguing voters were deprived of the ability to vote, or voted who should not have done.) The framing of the Liberal Party's decision to lodge the challenge is that this is about giving their candidate every chance by sending the reserved ballots to the "third umpire".  

The process

The 2008 McEwen case was referred by the High Court to the Federal Court and decided by a single judge; I expect this one will be so too, as it is a fact and evidence heavy matter involving the interpretation of electoral law, and not a constitutional matter.

Assuming that is so, the court will examine the reserved ballots (about 800 that were challenged and decided on by the Electoral Officer for NSW during the recount).  Following this the court can make the following decisions:

* The result stands.

* The result is reversed and Kapterian wins.  In this case Boele would lose her seat immediately and be replaced by Kapterian.

* The election is void.  In this case the seat is vacated and a by-election is held with a fresh nominations process; both Boele and Kapterian would presumably run again.  However, this would only occur if at the end of the process the court ruled the correct result was a tie, or perhaps so close to a tie that after taking multiple voting into account a winner could not be decided.  (The number of unexplained multiple markoffs in Bradfield is understood to be just two).

The court can also modify the margin.  This happened in the McEwen case twice with the court initially amending the margin from 12 to 27 votes then later giving a supplementary ruling that changed it to 31.

There may be procedural legal argument but I would expect that at some point the judge will end up examining all the reserved ballots and producing a table listing the results of the re-examination. 

The court is obliged to decide the case as quickly as it reasonably can.  In 2008 the Court took just over four months to dismiss the petition from its lodging.  This would take us to close to the end of the year.  It may be that this case can be faster if there is less preliminary argument than in 2008.

Mitchell v Bailey (2008 McEwen case)

The McEwen main judgement is well worth a read as background to this case for those interested; it is likely to be referred to frequently.  Many votes had been ruled informal where there was a reasonable interpretation that allowed them to be ruled formal.  For instance a ballot paper contains the numbers 1,2,3,4,6,7,8 and a figure that could plausibly in isolation be the letter S or the number 5.  Intuitively it is overwhelmingly likely the voter intended to write a 5 and happens to write their 5 in a way that could also look like an S.  Largely as a result of such issues the Court changed 141 ballots from informal to formal and only twelve from formal to informal.  The number of votes for Mitchell that were fished out of the informal pile easily exceeded the margin, but the judge did not only examine the votes Labor objected to but examined all the reserved votes and found that Bailey had been more disadvantaged by incorrect formality calls than Mitchell.

(It is not clear from the judgement text what became of the infamous "V8 Supercar" vote on which the voter according to Labor's petition had numbered all the boxes, crossed out the names of the candidates and replaced them with the names of motor racing drivers.)

The rulings made in the McEwen case are very well known and are reinforced in AEC practice so I would expect that the chance of blatant errors here is a lot lower and that the chance of a margin shift even of the size of that in McEwen isn't high.  But we will see.  

Updates will be added as the case proceeds and a link will remain in the sidebar in the Upcoming and Recent Elections section.  

Update 16 July

The ABC has reported some details of the petition, which I have not yet seen myself.  

"The petition claims the electoral officer wrongly rejected at least 56 ballots which favoured Ms Kapterian.

This includes 22 ballots where the officer concluded certain numbers were not distinguishable from other numbers, and 34 ballots where numbers were deemed illegible."

Distinguishability depends on whether the Electoral Officer can confidently conclude that of two similar numbers, for instance, one is a 1 and one is a 7 and not the other way round.  As concerns illegibility, for instance if a ballot is 1,2,(mysterious squiggle),4,5,6,7,8 it is not enough to assume that the mysterious squiggle is a 3 just for the sake of rendering the ballot formal.  The mysterious squiggle must reasonably resemble a 3.  Kapterian also claims 93 ballots favouring Boele were accepted that should have been rejected based on similar arguments (she alleges 49 with duplicate numbers and 44 cases with unclear numbering).  It's highly unlikely that the AEC would have both been too lax on one candidate and too harsh on another.  

"She argues a further two ballots favouring Ms Boele were admitted despite "having upon it a mark or writing … by which the voter could be identified.""

This depends on what the marks or writing are.  If they are initials (for instance where a voter crosses a number out, rewrites it and puts their initials to confirm the change) then the McEwen case has plenty of precedent regarding this.  The mere presence of initials does not identify the voter as there are likely to be many voters with any given combination.  Something like a name and address may be deemed to identify a voter.

17 July

Anne Twomey's video here is a good watch.  She mentions that in the McEwen case, although the candidates didn't object to all the reserved ballots between them in the case, the court nonetheless had to review all the ballots and invited submissions on six that neither side had objected to.  The reason for this was the court needs to determine whether the result could have been different after making necessary corrections.  Twomey also explains the term "illegal practices" that may be confusing in reading the McEwen case.

DemosAU: More Friendly Fire Than Seat Swing?

DemosAU Lib 34.9 ALP 24.7 Green 15.6 Nat 2.7 SF+F 1.8 IND 20.3
Total of projected individual seat breakdowns for this poll Lib 13 ALP 10 Green 7 IND 4 Nat 1

(IND vote likely to be inflated because of format limitations)

(Green vote distribution appears unusual so real seat tally for this statewide vote share could be lower)

This article is part of my 2025 Tasmanian election coverage.  Link to main guide page including seat guides and effective voting advice.

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One of the many remarkable elections in Tasmania was in 1986.  On the surface Robin Gray's first and only re-election sounds exremely dull; the Liberal Party won 19 seats just as it had in 1982, and Labor won 14, ditto.  Yet that election was a bloodbath with 15 incumbent MPs losing their seats, 13 in effect to their own party.  This sort of violence became less common in the 25-seat system, an especially tame case being 2006 when all 23 recontesting incumbents were returned.  (The only interesting thing about that was that nobody much thought it would occur).  Based on the recent Pulse Media DemosAU poll we could be heading for a milder case of this with at least six incumbents at serious risk of losing to their ticketmates but few clear signs of either major party gaining or losing more than the odd seat anywhere.

I have a copy of the full results of this poll [EDIT: which have now been posted publicly].  The full poll includes candidate breakdowns by electorate, which I have not seen since EMRS did it a few decades back.  While the writeup below is very detailed a reminder this is just one poll, and in the next few days I intend to produce my usual cross-poll aggregate.  

Overall the poll's results are even worse for Labor than the previous DemosAU and also the recent Liberal EMRS poll.  If this polling is correct it backs in the perception that voters don't like having their electoral sleep disrupted so soon after the federal election and are tending to blame Labor for doing so.  Sometimes Labor does a fair bit better than some of the polls suggest and this was certainly the case in 2024 when there were some very bleak polls late in the piece that proved to be not correct.  Nonetheless Labor needs to massively outperform its recent polling to have any path to governing without the Greens.  It may be that all the polls are underestimating the major party vote but at any rate it is not looking like a big surge back to the major parties after 2024, and it could even be a further swing against despite the absence of JLN.  

This particular poll is pointing to a state of things where the Liberals, unless they make major concessions to the crossbench, might continue in government but only for as long as a possibly chastened Labor wanted them to.  Even if the Liberals did a little better and got 15, they would still be likely to be dealing with a less friendly crossbench than the one they couldn't work with last time.  Labor in this poll aren't anywhere near more than 11, but even a few more would at best leave them depending on a bunch of indies who may as well be Greens.  Overall as with many recent polls the combined major party vote seems remarkably low, especially with no Lambie Network this year.  

I should unpack a few things about how the DemosAU poll works.  The poll used a combination of methods, with 76.3% IRV/robopoll, 20.2% internet panel and 3.5% random device engagement (a form of online polling that doesn't depend on membership of panels).  The robopoll component requires the respondent to be given a not too long list of options they can choose from at each step, which precludes offering the voter the list of all candidates at once.  So the poll was conducted at two stages.  The first stage gives the voter the list of the parties running and some of the key independents, who are named, and also an "Any other candidate" option.  If the voter picked a major party (or in some seats the Nationals or Greens) they were then given a follow-up to choose a candidate.  (Those undecided at this point were distributed equally across the group).  

The nine independents named were generally those with their own column, with some exceptions.  The only other candidates to be named in the first phase were the three Shooters, Fishers and Farmers lone candidates, and also Miriam Beswick (Nat) in Braddon.  (Andrew Roberts is also running as a National in Braddon but try telling that to his party who last acknowledged his existence on their official pages on July 27 2019 - there might be a reason for that).  In general I would expect the named independents to get a substantially higher response than if they were competing with named major party candidates in the same question.  If nothing else, the voter might hear the major party names and hear someone they liked who they did not realise was running in their electorate.  The crucial question is how large is this advantage.  

In my view the only way to avoid advantaging independents in current Tasmanian polling is to run an online survey that simulates the full ballot paper by listing all the candidates who are running together.  This could be done either by simulating the full ballot paper (for laptop/PC only as doing it on a mobile phone leads to exaggerated ballot order effects as shown with NSW iVote), or by offering the voter a list of parties and groups with the candidates running for each party or group shown in brackets after the party name.  I like the latter method and suggest pollsters use it in the future.

As well as the issues with the Independent vote, polling in Tasmania sometimes overestimates the Greens and sometimes doesn't.  I don't think this poll's overall figure for the Greens is implausible, but the breakdown between seats is rather polarised in their favour and the differences between some of the seats don't look quite right.  So it could be that they could get the vote suggested but not as many seats.  

Seat by seat

I give here the results for each seat in a compound form derived from the tables with my comments on the likely outcomes if the poll is broadly accurate.  I should note here that although the sample sizes are in the range 623-804 per electorate, individual electorate sampling is difficult and the individual candidate responses will often be a few dozen voters if that - some will be way off for sure.  But if one candidate's on 15% and another's on 2% that means something, and a lot of these breakdowns don't look wildly illogical.  

BASS 

Liberal 37.6 (Archer 19.6 Ferguson 7.5 Fairs 4.1 Wood 2.2 Gatenby 1.8 Sladden 1.5 Quaile 1.0)

Labor 26.0 (Finlay 9.4 Greene 5.1 Lyons 3.5 Moore 2.7 Anderson 2.1 Thomas 1.7 Gordon 1.5)

Greens 20.0

Nationals 3.5

Shooters Fishers and Farmers 0.5

IND Razay (named) 5.1

IND Pentland (named) 4.3

Any other 3.0

In this sample the Liberals have 3.01 quotas, Labor 2.08, the Greens an astonishing 1.60, Razay 0.41, Pentland 0.34. Nationals 0.28.  Obviously the Liberals get three, Labor two and the Greens one, the last one's rather messy ...

To place 20% for the Greens in context, they got 12.0% last time and have only got near 20% in their 2010 high water election where they got 21.0% there.  (The Greens were also high in the previous DemosAU wave with 18.8%).  It isn't easy to believe, and Tasmanian polls sometimes overestimate the Green vote.  But let's explore the case for this being anywhere near true: Bass hates the stadium, Labor has a Michelle O'Byrne sized hole in their ticket profile and there are no other prominent anti-stadium clearly left candidates to take votes from the Greens as there are in some other seats.  

Razay got 1.8% in 2024 having run in the 2022 federal election and been elected to Launceston council in 2022.  He has just run in another federal election as well and polled about the same as he did in 2022, so his 5.1% here gives some idea of how large I expect the advantage of being a named independent in this poll is. It's about what he got in the federal election where he was the only independent and I reckon he won't get that here though he may well do better than 2024.  If I'm right then polling 4.3% as a named independent is even worse for Pentland.  

The interesting threat to the Greens second seat here could actually be Labor.  With 2.08 quotas vs 1.6 Labor would lose, but it would not have to be much more of a gap before Labor had a path to three if they could keep their second and third candidates close to each other and ahead of the second Green - at, say, 2.3 vs 1.5 Labor would probably win.  This is especially so as the Greens suffered from high within-ticket leakage in 2024.  It's also not impossible here that the Nationals are ahead of Pentland and then there might be a fair flow from Pentland to Angela Armstrong (her former JLN ticketmate), so the Nationals might not be too far off competitive.

Estimate for this sample 3-2-2-0 (Liberal-Labor-Green-IND) but perhaps close to 3-3-1-0

BRADDON

Liberal 40.8 (Rockliff 24.6 Pearce 5.8 Ellis 5.4 Jaensch 2.4 Simpson 1.0 Parry 0.9 Wylie 0.6)

Labor 23.5 (Dow 10.4 Broad 3.4 Diprose 3.0 Hunt 2.3 Fuller 1.7 Luke 1.6 Woodhouse 1.1)

Greens 9.5

Nationals (Beswick named) 3.2

Shooters Fishers and Farmers 1.8

IND Garland (named) 13.7

IND Martin (named) 3.2

Any other 4.3

In Braddon the Liberals have 3.26 quotas, Labor 1.88, Garland 1.10, Greens 0.76 and the rest wouldn't be competitive.  This looks like a simple 3-2-1-1 with the disclaimer that the Liberals may not be far off four instead of the Greens if Roger Jaensch is close to Gavin Pearce and Felix Ellis after the distribution of the usual enormous Rockliff surplus.  Again, what they would need to do is have three candidates ahead of the lone Green, Even if he is well behind on primaries, as he is in the small Liberal sample in this poll, Jaensch has pulled this one off before, but it might be more difficult with Pearce in the mix because Pearce and Rockliff are both farmers.  It's a little surprising to be seeing polls where both Garland and the Greens might win in Braddon given there was not that much more than enough for a seat between them last time but I suspect a lot of the former JLN vote might be crossing to Garland, or to indies whose preferences will favour Garland if he needs them.  

Estimate for this sample 3-2-1-1 but perhaps close to 4-2-0-1

CLARK

Liberal 28.1 (Vermey 8.3 Behrakis 6.8 Ogilvie 6.2 Di Florio 3.4 Johnstone 1.5 Barnett 1.0 Wan 0.8)

Labor 25.6 (Willie 9.3 Haddad 7.0 McLaughlin 2.6 Martin 2.0 Kamara 1.8 Shirley 1.8 McLaren 1.2)

Greens 22.7 (Burnet 10.4 Bayley 7.1 other 5.2)

IND Johnston (named) 17.3

IND Archer (named) 4.3

Any other 2.1

In Clark the Liberals have 2.25 quotas, Labor 2.05 Greens 1.82 Johnston 1.38 Elise Archer 0.34.  Note that Johnston got 7.7% in 2024 so the high vote here could well be an overestimate from being named, but some potential vote for her was probably buried with independents not running this time (especially Sue Hickey).   There is interest here with the candidate breakdowns, which again suggest Marcus Vermey is competitive but don't show anything for Luke Martin (and also the Greens race could get spicy if their vote is lower than suggested)

Estimate for this sample 2-2-2-1

FRANKLIN

Liberal 31.7 (Abetz 10.8 Petrusma 7.6 Garvin 4.6 Street 4.4 Miller 2.0 Howlett 1.3 Young 1.0)

Labor 22.4 (Winter 10.1 Munday 4.2 Brown 4.0 Deane 2.0 Hannan 0.8 Di Virgilio 0.6 Meyers 0.6)

Greens 10.7

IND George (named) 18.2

IND O'Byrne (named) 13.7

Any other 3.4

Firstly as with the previous DemosAU poll I don't believe the Greens are getting only what they got in the seat at the federal election where their candidate was low profile and withdrew from active campaigning.  This is probably a sample pool issue.  

In this sample the Liberals are on 2.54 quotas, Labor 1.79, Greens 0.86 George 1.46 and O'Byrne 1.10.  Some of the major party candidate scores here look a bit wonky (Dean Young only 1% for instance) but the poll is consistent with Nic Street potentially struggling to keep up with Abetz and Petrusma.  An uneven split in the Liberal ticket would increase the risk of them dropping back to two; with an even split they can beat other contenders from slightly behind.  The poll also suggests that if Labor only wins two there will be a contest between Jessica Munday and Meg Brown for the second.  

I don't think George will get so close to his federal election vote and I suspect this is another case where the naming of an IND inflates their vote - but even with half of what he is polling here he would probably win.  With O'Byrne if the poll is over by, say, 5% he might come under some risk, but even that's not clear.   

Estimate for this sample 2-2-1-2 

LYONS

Liberal 35.5 (Howlett 13.5 Barnett 8.5 Shelton 4.9 Cameron 3.9 Hallett 3.0 Lyne 1.1 Groves 0.7)

Labor 26.2 (Butler 11.1 Mitchell 5.3 Farrell 2.8 Goss 2.5 Batt 1.6 Campbell 1.5 O'Donnell 1.4)

Greens 16.3

Nationals 6.1 (Tucker 3.8 Jenner 1.1 other 0.9)

Shooters Fishers and Farmers 4.1

IND Offord (named) 6.2

Any other 5.6

Note that there is a slight difference between these figures and the ones previously published - there's a minor inconsistency between two sections of the report but I believe the above are correct.  (Edit: yes, the previous headline breakdowns for Lyons had an error).

In this Lyons sample the Liberals have 2.84 Labor 2.10 Greens 1.30 Nats 0.49 Offord 0.50 (supposedly) others 0.45.  This is another example of the issue with naming some INDs and not others since Offord polled 0.3% with her own column in 2024, and would be somewhat more prominent now from having run in the federal election but is not likely to get anything like 6.2%, especially not if the Greens are getting quota.  What I think would actually happen with this sample is that John Tucker would get a pretty strong flow of preferences from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and win the final seat.  Neither major party spreads their vote evenly enough to stop him.  Here we see more potential within-party carnage with Andrew Jenner likely to lose to Tucker if the Nationals get a seat at all, and Casey Farrell at risk against Brian Mitchell.

Estimate for this sample 3-2-1-0-1 (Tucker)

Other comments

The Preferred Premier score is 40.7=31.1 to Rockliff.  Goven the skew to incumbents such questions contain this isn't a bad result for Dean Winter but it's another reading that suggests that Labor haven't put a serious dent in Rockliff by bringing down his government.  If the Liberals were heading for a thrashing I would expect to see even a relatively new Opposition Leader closer than this.  

The poll has a surprisingly large gender gap.  The Liberal vote is 8.2 points higher with male voters and the Labor vote is 8.6 points higher with female voters.  The poll has age/gender breakdowns which suggest this difference is especially strong among young voters.  

The poll also shows that the non-majors vote is highest at both ends of the age spectrum, with voters more likely to support independents with age.  The Liberal vote falls with rising education and the Greens and independent votes rise (save that there is a high Greens vote among "Completed year 12", presumably because this catches students and workers who haven't yet collected other qualifications.)

I am not sure how many other polls we may get - this looks like a less richly polled election than the previous -  though I do know YouGov have been in the field for what I presume to be a public poll that will be an interesting sequel to their previous.  To this stage the previous YouGov is the only poll to have Labor ahead since the election was called, but its average data age is nearly a month now.  

A reminder that I'll be live blogging from the tally room for Pulse Media on election night and the coverage will not be paywalled!  A link will be posted on this site on the night.  

2025 Federal Post-Election Pendulum

13/7 Note for Tasmanian audiences: detailed comments on the Pulse Media DemosAU poll will be posted late tonight/tomorrow.

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As in 2022 I've decided to issue my own post-election pendulum for the 2025 federal election.  I've done this partly because post-election pendulums seem thinner on the ground than usual this year, but mainly for the same reason - pendulums like the Wikipedia version miss the point of what the pendulum is for by putting classic ALP vs Coalition marginal seats on the same axis as contests between the majors and the crossbench.  The seat of Wills is now very marginal on a two-candidate preferred basis between Labor and the Greens, but a swing against Labor in two-party polling (should one occur) will not predict whether that seat might fall. 

Also in doing 2PP pendulums one finds out things - such as that the Coalition is in even bigger trouble for the next election than the scale of the 2PP disaster makes obvious.  The inflated swings to Labor in marginal seats at this election have created a skewed pendulum where Labor could lose the 2PP and still win a majority.  

At this election claims of the demise of 2PP swing as a predictive tool were even harder to get away from than in 2022 ... and even less correct!  The overwhelming story of the election was the 13 classic seats that switched from the Coalition (ignoring defections) to Labor.  The six seats switching from a major party to a non-major candidate or vice versa were a sideshow, especially as for totals purposes two of them cancelled out.  There is a lot of hype about how "no seat is safe any more" but for all of that no safe seat held by a major party fell and the only 2CP-safe seat that fell at all was a Greens seat (Griffith) that was clearly marginal on a three-candidate basis.  And the odd 2CP-safe seat falling is nothing new.

Nonetheless in this day and age the story of what seats are marginal and how they are marginal is getting more and more complicated.  A decade or two ago preparing a pendulum that noted the most relevant non-classic stuff was twenty minutes' work to do a cut and paste from the official results and annotate the few edge cases.  This year I've put notes on 33 of the 137 seats won by major parties, a massive jump from 16 out of 135 in 2022.  I've also added in a Coalition vs tealoids side pendulum with some comments about such an endeavour.

The following are the conventions I use in the main pendulum:

1. If a seat was won by a major party it is shown on that major party's side and primarily by its 2PP margin, even if somebody else made the final two.  The margin vs the 2CP loser is then noted in brackets.

2. If a seat was won by a non-major candidate it is excluded from the main section of the pendulum and appears below the Opposition seats.  The 2PP winner and margin is shown in brackets.

3. Three-candidate margins are shown in the following categories, designed to shed light on all the brave new forms of marginality we have to think about these days:

* 3CP: Where a 3CP swing of 6% or less from the seat winner to some other force would be expected or known to result in that other force winning the seat instead.

* L3CP (losing 3CP): Where a 3CP swing of 6% or less from the 2CP loser to some other force would be expected or known to result in a different 2CP loser who would probably lose the 2CP by less than 6%.  

* S3CP (survival 3CP): Where a 3CP swing of 6% or less from the 2CP winner to some other force would result in that other force making the 2CP but being expected to lose by less than 6%

* E3CP (escape 3CP): Where a 3CP swing of 6% or less from the 2CP loser to some other force would result in that other force making the 2CP and being likely to win the seat.  This means that the seat winner appears to have been lucky that the 2CP opponent they actually faced was not the one who could have beaten them.

* K3CP (knockout 3CP): Where a 3CP swing of 6% or less from the 2CP winner to another force would knock out the winner by them failing to make the 2CP, but the replacement in the 2CP would not be competitive.

(There's also the case where a 3CP swing within the marginal range would replace a competitive 2CP loser with an uncompetitive one, but I haven't annotated those 

4. In the case of Bradfield, for this article I use my own 2PP estimate of 50.64 to Labor, pending any actual 2PP number the AEC will I hope sooner or later produce.  The AEC was forced to use an impartial but inaccurate estimation method to finalise the 2025 Tally Room for archiving without disturbing the ballot papers ahead of a possible court challenge, but I expect Labor did substantially better than their method.  My method is based on the national swing in independent preferences to Labor (after removing Bradfield from both 2022 and 2025 flows as best I can).  Ben Raue gets 51.1 to Labor based on the average flow change in Wentworth, Warringah and Mackellar which is another reasonable method.  

Here 'tis then (Click and open image in new tab if needed for larger clearer version).  (May still contain some typos or other errors, I'm posting a new version as they are spotted).

The seats of Forrest and Grey have attracted attention as seats where an independent narrowly missed the final two and might have won had they made the final two, suggesting that these indies may have been beaten Condorcet winners.  (Labor were beaten Condorcet winners in Ryan.) During the Grey postcount I received some detailed impressions from a scrutineer whose view was that Anita Kuss would have won the 2CP against the Liberals.  Ben Raue's estimates have the independent winning the 2CP for both seats, albeit very narrowly.  I have therefore marked both seats as E3CP.  

Pending any scrutineering information I have also so marked a third that has received less attention: Bullwinkel.  Labor barely won this three-cornered seat against the Liberals, and Liberal to National preference flows are frequently much stronger than National to Liberal.  In Bullwinkel, the Liberals received 80.7% of 1 Nationals preferences, and got 74.9% of 3CP preferences on the Nationals exclusion.  The Nationals' Mia Davies would have needed 80.8% of preferences on the Liberal exclusion to win the 2CP vs Labor if the Liberals were excluded first.  I suspect this could have happened and that Labor were lucky to face the Liberals and not Davies in the final two.

Calare saw two independents finish in the top three.  At the 3CP stage Kate Hook would have needed 66% of Andrew Gee's distribution to win the 2CP against the Nationals.  The 3CP flow from Hook to Gee was 80.8% but I've assumed it would have been much weaker the other way around, with Gee being a defecting former National.  

One of the uses of a pendulum is looking at what numbers, with a uniform swing and no change in the non-classic seats, the loser would have needed for a different result.  Here Labor won 94 seats to the Coalition's 43, off a 2PP (using my Bradfield estimate) of 55.26 to ALP.  On this basis:

* Labor loses its majority at its 19th least safe seat, Whitlam (6.25% swing, 49.01% 2PP by uniform swing, so Coalition needs 50.99%)

* The Coalition becomes the largest party on gaining Labor's 26th least safe seat, Braddon (7.2% swing, 48.06% 2PP, Coalition needs 51.94%)

* The Coalition wins a majority on gaining Labor's 33rd seat, Brisbane (8.96% swing, 46.3% 2PP, Coalition needs 53.7%).

The comparable figures for Labor 2PPs in the 2025 pre-election pendulum, treating Aston as on an average of its 2022 and by-election results, were 51.21, 48.78 and 46.13.    The Coalition's two-party vote in 2025, abysmal as it was, was even less efficiently distributed in 2025 than it was in 2022.  With a uniform swing from the actual results Labor could actually have lost the 2PP and still retained majority government!  In fact the threshhold for that to occur turned out to be more than two points lower than it appeared to be, and on that basis Labor has won this election by even more than the two-party thumping suggests.  There are similarities with Victoria 2022 in terms of just how bad the resulting pendulum is for the opposition.  

While this is just the post-election pendulum and redistributions will have an impact, I suspect the overall pattern of the pendulum strongly favouring Labor will still be with us, though the Coalition can counter that if it does a better job of appealling to a wider range of voter types across a wider range of seats.  

Teals Side Pendulum!

There are now so many Coalition vs tealish Independent 2CP seats that it's possible to construct a side-pendulum including just these seats and to look at how swings on this side-pendulum behave.  Ten seats that finished as Coalition vs such an independent in 2022 did so again in 2025 (in all ten cases the same independent; here I exclude Calare).  Another three joined them.  Here's the post-election side pendulum showing these seats.

This oversimplifies the Coalition vs teals story because of another eight seats where such independents would have been marginal on 2CP but didn't make the final two.  But it will be interesting to watch if this continues to be a common 2CP pairing.  

What's interesting here is that this side-pendulum did behave so much like an actual pendulum in 2025.  The effective 2CP swing in the ten repeat pairing seats was about 0.2% from Coalition to tealoids, using Ben Raue's post-redistribution estimates.  For whatever reasons - possibly including the impact of redistributions - there was not a Coalition to tealoids swing. The expected outcome was no change and this is what happened in terms of the total, although each side very narrowly gained one seat from the other (pending any challenge in Bradfield).  The low standard deviation on the swings (2.2%) is interesting.  There was only one with a swing as large as 4%, but unluckily for the teal side that was just enough to account for Goldstein.  The challenge with a Coalition vs tealoids pendulum is how do we find a method of projecting what is going on in these seats from national primary vote figures?  I would have expected with such a terrible national primary vote the Coalition would have struggled in these seats but it was not so much the case.  

One can do the same thing for Labor vs Greens seats as well but it's not so informative as only a few seats on that one are close (most of the close Labor vs Greens contests were the Brisbane seats that depended on 3CP exclusions).  In the six repeat Labor vs Greens 2CP contests the average swing was 3.3% to Labor but with a very high standard deviation of 4.9%.  In the same election the Greens lost Melbourne on 6.9% and came pretty close to winning Wills on 4.6% to Labor.  

This is one of a large number of goodies I'll be rolling out from the 2025 Reps election results as time permits.  

What Can We Really Draw From The Liberal EMRS Poll?

EMRS JUNE 15-17/JUNE 29-JULY 1
FIRST WAVE LIB 32.3 ALP 28.7 GREEN 14 IND 19.2 NAT 1.8 OTHER 3.9
SECOND WAVE LIB 34.5 ALP 28.2 GREEN 13.9 IND 17.8 NAT 2.1 OTHER 3.5

The two waves are statistically more or less identical

Combined they suggest a roughly unchanged parliament 

Today's Mercury saw some numbers from a Liberal Party commissioned EMRS poll taken in two waves of 550 voters ahead of the 2025 election.  I don't include party-commissioned polls in my aggregates (it's bad enough to have to include polls commissioned by unknown forces within Tasmania's perennially bashful brown paper bag "industry groups").  In general parties will make strategic decisions on whether to release polls they have commissioned based on whether they like the results or not, and there is a lot of evidence (cf Freshwater Strategy at the federal election) that internal polls can show parties doing better than they are.  

The Liberal Party might not be delighted with the results of this EMRS polling, but it is much worse for Labor as it shows Labor making no progress towards even being the largest party.  A voter who accepts that will also most likely accept that Labor have sent us to an early election without any real prospect of forming a workable government themselves, and might well want to punish them for that.  But the Liberals are also using the figures to argue that they are in the hunt for four seats in Bass and Braddon and also that Labor might be squeezed to one in Franklin.  (Yep, 3-1-1-2.  It is a set of numbers, I suppose.)

It would be interesting to see what the breakdowns in Bass and Braddon in this two-wave poll are because the Liberal number in Franklin (39.2%, presumably from both polls combined) is 5.8 points above the Liberals's state primary vote.  One might ask when the last time the Liberal Party or even a precursor beat their statewide average by 5.8 points in Franklin and the answer is that the Anti-Socialist Party secured this triumph once in 1909!  In recent decades normally Franklin runs below the state average; it did run 2.2% ahead in 2010 but that's not easy to repeat; Will Hodgmans do not grow on trees.  If the Liberals are getting a 5.1% swing in Franklin and genuinely pushing for four in Bass and Braddon but facing a 3.3% swing against overall then their numbers in the Clark and/or Lyons subsamples would be hideous.

Placing any serious weight on EMRS subsamples of a few hundred votes is a game for mugs at the best of times but the media will never stop playing it ever.  What we most likely have here is simply a randomly off-kilter sample.  Even if we accept the numbers for Franklin at face value (Lib 39.2 ALP 23 Green 16.1 IND 21.6) the IND vote is likely to be somewhat overstated (based on experience from 2024) and even if it isn't it's doubtful that Peter George and David O'Byrne would both win from that anyway.  Perhaps they would if George was only just behind O'Byrne and they ended up more or less even and both short of quota after preferences.  But more likely off those numbers both Labor and independents would leak votes (because there are so many INDs in Franklin) but it could be neither would leak that much since Dean Winter would be somewhere around quota.  Green preferences would probably not flow strongly enough for George to overtake Labor on that.  (The weak flow of Green preferences to George over Labor was a surprise at the federal election, federal Labor's pro-salmon-industry position notwithstanding.)

I've continued to praise and often link to The Mercury's coverage when they do a good job, although they most certainly don't deserve it, but there was sad to say a fair bit wrong with the reporting of this poll and as a result I've decided no linky this time.  For starters it showed no awareness whatsoever of the concept of statistical significance.  Thus, between two waves with a sample size of only 550 each, "the Greens saw a minor 0.1 per cent decrease" (try absolutely trivial), the independent vote "softened" from 19.2 to 17.8 and the Others vote "sank" from 3.9% to 3.5%.  The in-theory margins of error on these and other changes are such that none of the changes are even remotely statistically meaningful; the chance that there was actually no real voting intention change between the two waves is high.  It's this sort of reporting of changes of, in cases, a fraction of a percent that makes many pollsters reluctant to release data to one decimal even though it would be good if more pollsters did so.  The report contained no mention of pollster-supplied margins of error (which would be 4.2% for the samples of 550 and probably around 6.6% for Franklin) despite Australian Press Council guidance that margin of error should be reported or at least taken into account.  

The bigger issue was that the report uncritically reported Liberal Party claims about the poll but there was no independent analysis of the poll and not even a he said she said from the ALP in response.  This smacks of the tendancy that I call "the unhealthy synergy" - commissioned polls that should be reported critically often manage to get compliantly written up by the media they are provided to as free stories.

The poll overall

What I can say about the poll numbers overall is they are within the ballpark of other recent polling, albeit toward the worse end for Labor.   Combined figures of Liberal 33.4 Labor 28.45 Green 13.95 IND 18.5 NAT 1.95 other 3.7 are quite similar to the DemosAU poll with Labor leading 34-26.3 that I analysed here.  If accurate the poll points towards a more or less status quo result where the majors could make small net gains from the non-Greens crossbench (simply because it is less focused in one party with a high degree of internal preference flow) but might not.  I don't expect the independent vote to be as high as 18.5 but even a similar degree of overestimation to 2024 would still put it solidly into the teens (I think something like 14% could happen), and at that level there's strong scope for more than the three independents who won last time to get up, though six combined non-Greens crossbenchers might be a stretch.  The poll also backs in DemosAU in having the Nationals polling badly.  This is, however, party-commissioned polling and only one of the four results I've seen so far was actually a public poll.

The Liberals have been effective in using commissioned polling to shape campaign narratives before, most notably in the 2018 campaign where they used a long string of MediaReach robopolls to paint a picture that only they could win a majority, which over time proved to be true.  It will be interesting to see if anything emerges to counter this one.  So far I'm not seeing this poll's state picture being met with howls of disbelief by election-watchers.  

Update Monday 7th: Seven News has reported that EMRS has projected this poll as 15-16 Liberal, 8-10 ALP, 5 Green and 4-6 Others.  While 15-10 is possible off the overall numbers, in my view it is very unlikely off the overall numbers that the Liberals would gain seats with Labor losing seats.  

Upadate Thursday 10th: The Mercury has reported another wave (the sample size a mere 518) July 6-8 with Liberals 37 Labor 26 Greens 15 IND 18 Nats 3.  I don't like to analyse samples this small in isolation however on these sorts of numbers it is likely the Liberals would increase their seat tally (for instance perhaps winning four in Braddon) while Labor may not.  

2025 Federal Election Pollster Performance Review

NOTE FOR TASMANIAN READERS: Comments re the Liberal-commissioned EMRS poll will be added tonight (Sunday 6th), possibly around 8 pm.

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Oh no, not again ...

On the day after the 2019 federal election I did the most media interviews I have ever done in one day, eleven.  Eight of those were entirely about the same thing: the polls being wrong.  That day and in the coming days journos from as far afield as Japan and from vague memory Switzerland wanted to know how Australia had gone into an election with Labor unanimously ahead about 51.5-48.5 and come out with the Coalition winning by the same amount. Was this part of a global pattern of polls being increasingly broken and underestimating the right?  (Answers: no and no - it was just a shocker by Australia's high standards).  

The day after the 2025 federal election it was obvious something had gone astray with polling again, and by something near the same amount, but the media reception was muted.  I think I did only one interview where the polling was even part of the report's initial focus.  The ABC did an article about the polling, but it was so quarter-arsed that it omitted four final polls, initially got the 2PPs of four others wrong, and even when "corrected" continues to this day to contain errors about what the final poll 2PPs were.  There were a few other articles that were better.

What Happens If An Ineligible Candidate Wins In A Tasmanian State Election?

This article is part of my 2025 Tasmanian election coverage.  Link to main guide page including links to seat guides and voting advice.

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Something bubbling away in the state election campaign which I have so far avoided writing a full article on is the alleged controversy (and I don't believe the claims really have any merit) about Franklin Labor candidate Jessica Munday's eligibility to be elected.  However the appearance in today's Mercury (and also now Pulse) of a claim that the entire election might have to be voided and rerun over this is something that I think I should comment about.  Advance summary: no.  I also thought this was a good opportunity for a general article about ineligibility in Hare-Clark elections and what can be done about it if it occurs.  

There Must Be Some Way Out Of Here: YouGov and DemosAU Tasmanian Polls

YouGov Liberal 31 Labor 34 Green 13 IND 18 other 4

DemosAU Liberal 34 Labor 26.3 Green 15.1 IND 19.3 other 5.3

IND vote likely overstated in both polls

Seat estimate if YouGov poll close to accurate 13-14-4-4 (Lib-ALP-Grn-IND)

Seat estimate for DemosAU 13-11-5-4, 2 unclear 

This article is part of my 2025 Tasmanian election coverage.  Link to main guide page containing link to other articles including electorate guides.  

At the 2024 Tasmanian election, voters elected a parliament where it wasn't easy to form a government at all, and the one that was formed didn't last for long.  Labor was unwilling to even try to form a government that would have involved the dreaded Greens, and the Liberals were only willing to form a government with what was left if it was basically a Liberal government with relatively minor concessions to others.  When that ceased to be a viable option upon the loss of the key vote of Andrew Jenner, the government was unable or unwilling to adjust to the fact that it was hanging by Craig Garland's fishing line, and here we are.

How To Best Use Your Vote In The 2025 Tasmanian Election

This piece is part of my Tasmanian 2025 election coverage - link to 2025 guide page including links to electorate guides and other articles.

This piece is written to explain to voters how to vote in the 2025 Tasmanian election so their vote will be most powerful.  It is not written for those who just want to do the bare minimum - if you just want to vote as quickly as possible and don't care how effective your vote is then this guide is not for you.  It is for those who care about voting as effectively as possible and are willing to put some time into understanding how to do so.  This is very near to being a carbon copy of my 2024 guide but I have put it out as a 2025 edition with some very minor changes tailored to this year's election.  

Please feel free to share or forward this guide or use points from it to educate confused voters.  If doing the latter, just make sure you've understood those points first!  I may edit in more sections later.

Please do not ask me what is the most effective way to vote for a specific party, candidate or set of goals as opposed to in general terms.

Oh, and one other thing.  Some people really agonise about their votes, spend many hours over them and get deeply worried about doing the wrong thing.  Voting well is worth some effort, but it's not worth that.  The chance that your vote will actually change the outcome is low.  

Effective Voting Matters!

I'll give a recent example of why effective voting matters.  In 2021 the final seat in Clark finished with 10145 votes for Liberal Madeleine Ogilvie, 9970 votes for independent Kristie Johnston and 8716 votes for independent Sue Hickey.  As there were no more candidates to exclude at this point Hickey finished sixth while Ogilvie and Johnston took the last two seats.  Had the two independents had 1606 more votes in the right combination, Ogilvie would have lost instead, and the Liberals would not have won a majority.  But during the count, 2701 votes had been transferred from Labor and Green candidates to "exhaust".  All these were voters who did not number any of Ogilvie, Johnston and Hickey.  Many would have voted 1-5 for Labor and Green candidates (mostly Labor) and then stopped.  There were enough votes that left the system because voters stopped numbering that the outcome could have been different.

That's not to say it would have been had everyone kept numbering - the voters would have had to somehow sense that Hickey needed preferences more than Johnston, or else the flow to the two independents would have had to be extremely strong (which wouldn't happen).  But it is possible for voters who choose to stop numbering to cause the election of parties they would not want to win.  And now we have seven seats per electorate, it's probably more of a risk than it was in the old five-seat system.

Some of these voters would have stopped because they didn't care about other candidates - but I suspect most really would have had a preference.  Most of those stopping most likely stopped because they didn't realise they had the potential to do more with their vote, or because they couldn't be bothered.  

There Is No Above The Line / Below The Line

Tasmania does not have above the line party boxes in state elections.  All voters vote for individual candidates and decide how many preferences (if any) to give beyond the required seven, and which parties or candidates if any to give their preferences to.  There are no how to vote cards.  Your most preferred party may recommend you put its candidates in a particular order but you don't have to follow that.  While a lot of voters will vote 1-7 all for the same party, plenty of voters vote across party lines for a mix of different candidates.  

Your Party/Candidate Doesn't Direct Preferences

Your preferences go only where you send them. There is no such thing as your candidate giving preferences to other candidates.  You do not have to worry about the candidates you vote for possibly "sending" preferences to someone you don't like because you say where your vote goes.

If you vote 1 to 7 for a party and stop, your party does not decide what your vote does next once all your party's candidates have either won or lost.  At this point your vote plays no further role in the election.  Your vote can only even potentially play a role between other parties if you make it do so.  The same applies if you vote for seven candidates across party lines, or for seven independent candidates.  Your vote can only do the work you tell it to do.  If you just vote for one party but think some other candidates are OK while some are terrible, your vote does not reflect that.  

There Is No Party Ticket 

Unlike the Senate, candidates do not appear in a specific order on the ballot; the parties appear in a specific order for each seat but the candidates within each party's column are rotated.  There is therefore no number 1 Liberal or Labor candidate in each seat.  The Greens put out recommended how to vote orders but these are only a recommendation and the voter can just as easily put the candidates in their own preferred order.  

You Cannot Waste Your Vote! (Sort-Of)

The idea that voting for minor parties or independents that won't get in or form government is a "wasted vote" is an evil and pervasive myth smuggled in from bad voting systems where it's actually true (like first past the post).  Some major party supporters spread this myth, including in Hare-Clark, to try to scare voters off voting for anyone else.   In Tasmanian elections if you vote for a candidate who is not elected, your vote flows at full value to the next on your list and so on.  You can't waste your primary vote except by not casting a formal vote - but you can waste your preferencing power by stopping early.  If your vote only numbers a limited number of candidates then once all those are excluded or elected, your vote might hit the exhaust pile and be a spectator for all the remaining choices.  If the candidate you like the most is from a minor party or is an independent, ignore anyone who tells you voting for that person is a "wasted vote".  They're wrong.

Make Sure Your Vote Counts - No Mistakes In First 7

A vote must include at least the numbers 1 through 7 without mistake because our politicians are not committed to protecting voters from losing their votes as a result of unintended errors. Do not use ticks or crosses.  If you number six boxes and think you just can't find a seventh candidate and stop, your vote won't count at all.  If you're one of those people who starts at the top then goes to the bottom to number all the boxes and works up, and you accidentally end up with two 6s, that will not count either.  When you have finished your vote check carefully to make sure you have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 each once and once only.  (Also check that you have not doubled or omitted any later numbers, but that's less critical, as if you have your vote will still count up to the point of the mistake.)  If you make a mistake while voting at a booth you can ask for another ballot paper.  

Some voters try to number the candidates from each party column separately, so they rank the Labor candidates from 1-7, the Liberal candidates from 1-7, the Green candidates from 1-7 etc.  If you do this your vote does not count.  You are ranking all the candidates together.  Each number you use should appear once only on the whole ballot paper.

Voters for the Nationals in Lyons and the Martin independent group in Braddon should be especially careful here.  If you vote 1-5 for the Nationals in Lyons, or 1-6 for the Martin group in Braddon, and then stop, your vote will not be counted.

Be especially careful with keeping numbers in sequence when moving from one column to another as that is when mistakes often occur.  

The Gold Standard - Number Every Box

The most effective way to vote is to number every box.  That means that your vote has explained where you stand on every possible choice between two candidates and there is no way that your vote can ever leave the count while there are still choices to be made.  

But doesn't this help candidates you dislike?  This is a common myth about the system.  By numbering all the way through, if you've numbered a candidate you dislike and your vote reaches them, it can only help beat candidates you dislike even more!  The reason for this is that every candidate you put above the mildly disliked candidate must have already won or lost before your vote can get there.  If your vote reaches that point then one of the candidates you dislike is going to win no matter what you do.  You may as well make it the more bearable one and use your vote to speak for the lesser evil. 

In terms of the primary election you can stop when you've numbered every box but one, and it makes no difference.  But because of a weird quirk in the recount system, numbering every box could help your vote to have a say in a recount for your worst enemy's seat!  

Numbering every box takes some preparation - it is best to plan your vote before you go to the booth,  There are sometimes automatic tools to help with this and if I see any I'll link to them here.  

The Silver Standard - Number Everyone You Can Stand

If you don't want to number every box then a lower-effort alternative that is still better than numbering 1-7 and stopping is to number all the candidates/parties who you think are good or on balance OK and that you have some idea about. That at least means your vote will never leave the count while candidates or parties who you think are at least so-so are still fighting with the baddies.  

I Don't Care Who Wins But I Want Someone To Lose!

Then number all the boxes and put that party and/or person last.  You may also find the strategic voting section interesting in this case. You can never help a candidate to win by putting them last.

Minor Exceptions

An exception to the gold standard is if you reach a point where of the candidates you have not numbered, your response to any choice between them is that you absolutely do not care.  If you get to that point, and you've numbered at least 7, it's safe to stop. (That said I would keep going and randomise my remaining preferences at this point, for potential recount reasons.)

Another one is if you slightly prefer one party to another but are so disappointed with the first party that you want to send it a message by not preferencing it, in the hope it fights harder for your preference next time.  In that case you can also stop (if you've numbered at least 7 boxes), but in this case you should tell the first party that that's your view (anonymously if you prefer); otherwise they will have no idea you felt that way.

Who Are These People?

Numbering every box is hard work - who are all these people?  I write guides about elections and even I know nothing about lots of them!  If you've never heard of a candidate and they're not running for a party that you like, I'd recommend putting them between the candidates you dislike slightly and those you're sure you cannot stand.  Even if they're running for a party you like, it may be worth doing some research because sometimes parties preselect candidates they shouldn't.  Ultimately it is up to the candidates to make themselves known to you.  If they haven't done that, you are entitled to penalise them.

What Is Group B, Group E and So On?

Some independent candidates have registered their own columns so they stand out on the ballot paper, while others are just listed in the ungrouped column on the far right of the ballot.  In this year's election both these kinds of candidates have the same status, it's just that some of them have lodged 100 signatures either by themselves or as a group to stand out more.  If a candidate is a party candidate you will see their party name.  The group letter names for some independents just refer to their position on the ballot paper; the "Group B" independents in various electorates are not connected to each other just because they have the same group letter.  

Are These Candidates In This Group That Isn't A Party Connected?

There are two non-party groups running multiple candidates this year - the group including Adam Martin (Group B) in Braddon and the group including Peter George (Group C) in Franklin.  The Braddon group are a bunch of independents who have chosen to run together, who have some common viewpoints but may have quite different views on many things.  The Franklin group are not a formal party but are said to be much more tightly aligned to each other based on a set of common principles.  

Then there are the ungrouped columns on the right hand side of the paper. In general, the candidates in the ungrouped column are independents who do not have anything to do with each other (an exception is Gatty Burnett and Mellissa Wells in Braddon who are running together).  A few ungrouped independents are actually members of parties that are not registered to run in state elections.  Independents in the ungrouped column may have very different views to each other.

How Does Your Vote Work?  Why Your Number 1 Matters

This is not the place for a full account of how Hare-Clark voting works, there's one here.  There's a common misconception that when you vote for seven candidates the order doesn't matter much because your vote will help them all.  In fact, that's often not true and your vote only helps one candidate at a time, and helps them in the order you put them in.  Who you vote 1 for can be very important.  If your number 1 candidate is excluded then your vote flows on to the next candidate who is still fighting for a spot at that stage at full value.  If your number 1 candidate is elected straightaway with over 12.5% of the vote in their own right, part of your vote's value is used on helping them to win, and part flows on to other candidates you have numbered.  If your number 1 candidate doesn't win off the first ballot but never gets excluded, then all your vote's value goes to helping your number 1 candidate either eventually win or at least try to (if they finish eighth).  For this reason it's not just who you choose as your first seven that matters, but also the order that you put them in.

That ends the main part of this article, and the rest is something specialised I threw in because ... people do ask. 

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Special Sealed Section: Strategic Voting (Advanced Players Only!)

This section is an optional extra and is rated Wonk Factor 4/5.  If you read it and are not sure you understood it, pretend you never read it and certainly don't try explaining it to anyone else! 

Most voting systems are prone to tactical voting of some kind; indeed, in some it's necessary.  Under the first-past-the-post system in the UK it is often necessary for voters to vote tactically for their second or third preference party to ensure their vote isn't "wasted".  In the 2022 federal election, some left-wing voters voted 1 for teal independents because they were more likely to win from second than Labor or the Greens were.  Our preferential systems are much fairer than first-past-the-post, of course, but there are still ways of voting that can make your vote less than optimally powerful, and ways to get around that if you want.  

In this case I am not arguing that voters should vote tactically - I'm just explaining how they can do it if they want to.  The ethical decision involved (since voting tactically effectively reduces the value of other voters' votes) is up to them.  There's also a problem with tactical voting in that if everyone did it it would stop working and create bizarre outcomes.  (But no one should let that alone stop them, because that will not actually happen.  Immanuel Kant was wrong about everything.)

The scope for tactical voting in Hare-Clark is mainly around quotas and the way the system lets votes get stuck.  One simple principle of effective tactical voting for those who want to do it is to not vote 1 for any candidate who you know or strongly suspect will be elected straightaway.   

Suppose I am weighing up between these three candidates, whose surnames indicate their voting prospects: Morgan Megastar, Nico Nohoper and Lee Lineball.  And I decide they are my equal favourites.  Morgan always polls a bucketload of votes and will probably be elected in their own right, or at least will surely win.  Lee might get in off the first count, on a good day, but I don't really know if they'll win at all, and Nico has run in 17 elections and got two deposits back but I like them anyway.  Now in this situation I will vote 1 Nico 2 Lee 3 Morgan (and I will then number all the other boxes).  

Why?  Because I know Morgan doesn't need my #1 vote.  If they get it and they're elected at the first count, the value of their excess votes is one vote greater, but that vote won't all be mine.  A part of the value of my vote stays with them and the rest of it flows on to other candidates, but I've also slightly increased the value of all their other votes to make up the difference.  And these could be votes cast by Hung Parliament Club op-ed writers or other witless philistines. I'd rather have my vote flow on at full value!  Also, Morgan might not quite get quota on the first count, and in that case my vote never goes anywhere else, and I might be boosting whatever vote detritus does put them across the line (shudder!) There is even an extremely rare scenario here where by voting 1 for Morgan I could boost the votes of Lee's key opponents to the point that it actually harms Lee.

So I vote 1 for Nico Nohoper.  A few counts in Nico will be excluded, again, by this stage Morgan is already over the line, or will be soon, and now my vote flows at full value to Lee who may need it.  And if Lee eventually gets eliminated, it will flow on at full value to #4, and so on.   I do this sort of thing a lot - among my top five or six candidates I will often put them in order from least promising to most, so that my vote will hang around a while and might even be able to flow on past all those candidates at full value.  But it takes a lot of knowledge of who is likely to poll well (or not) to pull it off.  

One can get carried away with this idea and try to thread the needle in an order one doesn't support (eg candidates one dislikes above candidates one likes) to try to get one's vote still on the table at full value at #30 in Franklin trying to defeat You Know Who.  I call this "quota running" and I really don't recommend it.  It's too easy to fail to predict something that happens in the count and wind up with your vote doing something that you don't want.  Most likely your vote will never get that far anyway.  

And there's another thing worth knowing here.  Suppose I'm tossing up at some point between two similar candidates who I think will both be contenders, but I really do not have a view between them.  This could happen if I was a major party voter, but it could also be two leading indies.  Now in this case I could go for the one I think will poll less well.  Why?  Because this increases the chance that both of them stay in the count and can both beat a single candidate from some other force (aka the Ginninderra Effect).

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