ACT Election 2024: Counting Day Live

Startline from 2020 election: 10 Labor 9 Liberal 6 Greens 

Likely result 10 Labor 9 Liberal 3 Green 1 Ind for Canberra 1 Carrick 1 undecided

In doubt: Labor vs Liberal vs Greens (Brindabella) - Liberal appears likely 

(some others not fully confirmed)

Labor/Greens combined majority (as opposed to shared balance of power) looks extremely likely.

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Comments will appear here scrolling to the top from 6 pm

11:15 End of night wrap: What we have seen in the ACT election is no major change for the major parties, with Labor, Liberals and Greens all down a bit on vote share at the moment with the emergence of Independents for Canberra.  The Greens were extremely lucky to win six seats in 2020 and an unsurprising but small decline in their vote was always a risk of costing them three.  While 10-10-3-1-1 still looks like the most likely scenario there remain some different scenarios in Brindabella where the flow of preferences between the left parties could still see the Greens retain against the odds, or there is a very weird scenario in which Labor gets three, but more likely is that postals snuff all this out with the Liberals winning.  A further distribution is needed here.

The two most likely fourth-party chances, Thomas Emerson and Fiona Carrick, appear to have won convincingly, but there has not been a wave of "independents" as some expected. Still, these are good breakthroughs after decades of only three parties winning.

Not much really changes in the ACT in terms of the majors.  If the Liberals do manage to tie Labor's seat count that will be another tick in the box for federal drag, but nothing like the tick seen in the Northern Territory.  I am not sure the question "how can the Canberra Liberals win?" really has an answer yet, until Labor really screw things up the place is simply too left-wing,  

ACT Election 2024 Preview

2020 BASELINE: ALP 10 Lib 9 Green 6 (ALP-Green coalition government)

At election ALP 10 Lib 8 Green 6 FF1 (1 Liberal incumbent disendorsed and joined FF)

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This is my preview page for the 2024 ACT election.  In the absence of any reputable polling whatsoever for the entire term (seriously!) there is not too much of use I can say about outcomes, beyond pointing to some possibilities.  What I can do is look at the nature of the contests based on the 2020 result and the history of ACT elections.  The ACT is of special interest to me because it uses a variant of Hare-Clark, the system also used in Tasmania.  I may get around to writing a special effective voting article but in case I don't here's one I prepared earlier.  Firstly, I've revised my view on something about the theory of ACT elections.

Well Yes There May Be A Bit Of Federal Drag In The ACT

Federal drag is the theory and fact that it is harder for state and territory governments to do well at elections when the same party is also in power federally, especially if the federal government is not that popular.  We saw this effect in spades in the recent NT election when the first of Labor's mainland dominos fell back with a drubbing that reduced Labor to 4 seats out of 25.  One could hardly blame the feds for all of that - though one could also blame them for more than some might like to.  (There was a lot of talk about how the Voice helped Labor hold up in the majority First Nations seat, the corollary of that is that it helped them get smashed everywhere else).  

Previously when I have looked at the federal drag effect in the very left-wing ACT I have not found anything to see - there just isn't a corellation between federal drag and government seat share change.  However, on a careful look at the history of ACT elections there seems to be something - you just need to ignore the swing from 1989 and 1992, and also looking at the balance of seats between the majors shows the effect up more strongly than whether a government gains or loses seat share, because the proportional size of the crossbench fluctuates a lot more than elsewhere.  The reason for ignoring 1989-1992 is that the 1989 ACT election saw a massive and largely once-off protest vote against self-government with the major parties managing only 37.7% of the vote between them.  Labor increased from 5 of 17 seats to 8 of 17 in 1992 in the face of federal drag, but this was mostly really about a protest vote in the 1989 election disappearing.