Legislative Council 2022: Huon

HUON (Vacant, 2020 margin ALP vs IND 7.31%)

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This is my second seat guide to the Tasmanian Legislative Council for this year.  My guide to Elwick is up and a guide to McIntyre has been added now that Tania Rattray has opponents.    

I hope to find time to update my voting patterns analysis for the Council before the election as well, though that may be difficult given that there is a federal election impending.

I will be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night, Saturday May 7.  

For several years the Liberal government has had a difficult upper house to deal with.  The current numbers are four Liberal, two mildly right of centre independents, four Labor, four left independents, and one ex-Labor vacancy.  The good news for the government is that unless Rattray somehow loses to someone to the left of her, this year is a free swing, and the pressure is on Labor.

Huon is a by-election.  The winner will serve the remainder of Bastian Seidel's six-year term and face the voters again in 2026.  

State Election Post-Count: Franklin

This is the second of my state election post-counting threads.  There will be one for each electorate and they will be updated frequently.  During the cutup (which starts in the middle of the week after next) I will be on remote fieldwork and will update nightly, but hope to take a day off during the cutup.  

SEAT OUTCOME: 3 LIB 1 ALP 1 GREEN (Count Finished)
WINNERS: Hodgman (Lib), Giddings (ALP), McKim (Green), Petrusma (Lib), Harriss (Lib)

This thread concerns the post-count and preference cut-up in the seat of Franklin (results here).

In Franklin, the Liberals are currently on 2.99 quotas, Labor on 1.74 quotas, the Greens on 1.00 quotas, PUP on 0.22 quotas, and the Tasmanian Nationals have disgraced themselves by losing to the Socialist Alliance for last place.  

Will Hodgman has been elected with 2.10 quotas in his own right, a slight increase on the 1.90 quotas he polled in 2010.  Lara Giddings and Nick McKim have been re-elected.  The only remaining interest in the count is whether David O'Byrne can pull back enough of the Liberal lead to beat either Paul Harriss or Jacquie Petrusma as the Liberal total declines after leakage from Will Hodgman's massive surplus.

Paul Harriss To Contest Franklin

A grenade has been tossed into the already explosive race for Franklin at next year's Tasmanian state election with the announcement that Paul Harriss MLC will (if preselected) resign his Upper House seat and run for Franklin for the Liberals.

The Electorate

Generally the signs from polling have been that the Liberals are on track to win three seats at least in each of Bass, Braddon and Lyons, are likely to only win two in Denison and may win either two or three in Franklin.  What makes Franklin so tight is that if the Liberals do win three seats they will need to unseat at least one of Premier Lara Giddings,  David O'Byrne or Greens Leader Nick McKim.  Yet my interpretation of recent polling is that the Liberals are running at very close to the support level needed to dislodge one of these three.

The difficulty for the Liberals in Franklin is leakage.  Will Hodgman polled 1.90 quotas in his own right out of a party total of 2.47 in 2010.  He may well poll even more this time around.  I will be surprised if any of Jacquie Petrusma, Paul Harriss or Bernadette Black poll close to a quota.  If two of them are going to win then they will be doing so from Will Hodgman's surplus, plus the votes of the unsuccessful Liberal candidates.  Between them the two potential Liberal winners might well be needing well over a quota in preferences to win.  This compares with McKim, Giddings and O'Byrne, who between them will poll nearly all the votes for their tickets, with probably very little opportunity for leakage.