NSW Legislative Council 2019: Button Press Day

Button press from 11 am Monday

Won off raw quotas: Coalition 7 ALP 6 Green 2 PHON 1 SFF 1
Coalition will win 8th seat

Labor 7, One Nation 2, CDP, LDP, AJP, KSO for final 3 seats

Labor very likely to win seat, One Nation likely but not so clear, CDP/LDP/AJP who knows, KSO remote chance only

Result

The result will be added here once known.  The count is expected to take a gruelling 45 minutes to one hour.  See https://twitter.com/nsw_upperhouse for updates and doubtless other #nswvotes sources.

2019 New South Wales Postcount: Legislative Council

Legislative Council NSW Summary:

Seats assumed won based on incomplete count Coalition 8 Labor 6 Green 2 One Nation 1 Shooters Fishers and Farmers 1

(2015 results and continuing MLCs were Coalition 9 Labor 7 Green 2 Shooters 1 Christian Dems 1 Animal Justice 1).

Summary of contest:

Close multi-party contest for remaining three seats.  Count is extremely complex.  The ABC website has been projecting seats as won directly off the check count and this is very unreliable.

Labor (#7) and One Nation (#2) currently appear well placed for two of these seats after preferences, though One Nation is vulnerable to leakage.

A preference race will occur between four parties for the final seat: Christian Democrats (now leading), Liberal Democrats, Animal Justice, Keep Sydney Open.   Keep Sydney Open appears to be struggling to catch Animal Justice.  Animal Justice appear to have at least realistic prospects of beating the other two after preferences.

Sustainable Australia was competitive earlier in the count but its primary vote does not appear to be sufficient.

The Senate: Button Press Week

This week if all goes according to plan, the buttons will be pressed on the remaining Senate races in ACT, WA, SA (Tuesday), Victoria (Wednesday), Queensland and finally NSW, and the makeup of the Senate should be known.  I'll be posting some comments about these races and the results as time permits, but I'm rather busy this week, so feel free to add thoughts about any of the races in comments.

I haven't had the time I would have liked to analyse these races in detail, and really you have to sample preferences in scrutineering to have a really confident handle on what's going on in a given state under the new Senate system.  You also can't do it on the night, as you have to know what the main races are to know what you need to look for.  I used scrutineering-based modelling to successfully predict the result in Tasmania (though there was very nearly an upset for the final seat) and it surprises me that I have not seen any detailed public attempt at a scrutineering-based model for any other state.

Slow Crawl On The Senate Reform Front

Advance Summary

1. This article discusses various aspects of the Senate reform debate, which currently appears to be progressing slowly and badly.

2. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's claim that Ricky Muir is as democratically elected as he is is false, because had enough voters wanted to ensure Senator Muir was not elected, it would have been unreasonably hard for them to do so.

3. Micro-party threats to run candidates against the Coalition and Greens in key seats are toothless.

4. Claims that the performance of the current crossbench in blocking Coalition policies vindicates the current system are wrong, because the crossbench elected under any alternative system would also have done so.

5. Senator Sam Dastyari continues to claim the proposed reforms are a recipe for Coalition control of the Senate but has presented no detailed evidence for this claim. 

6. Attempts by Senator Bob Day to claim that left and right parties preferencing each other is not a problem are disproven, among other things, by the preferences that flowed to him.

7. While many crossbenchers support the current system because it elected them, that does not mean they would have a high chance of re-election under it; indeed, crossbenchers who develop a stronger primary vote following should support reform.

8. This article suggests a minimum acceptable model for Senate reform (which is not the author's preferred option).  At minimum, even if group ticket preferencing is retained, below-the-line voting must be liberalised so that voters have a reasonable alternative to following party preferences.