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

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

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Live comments (scrolls to top)

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

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

Legislative Council 2019: Nelson, Pembroke and Montgomery Live And Post-Count

Montgomery: CALLED 8:30 pm Hiscutt (Lib) retains
Nelson: CALLED 4:45 pm Tues Webb (IND) defeats Street on preferences by a large margin
Pembroke: CALLED 8:37 pm Siejka (ALP) retains

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Donations welcome!

If you find my coverage useful please consider donating to support the large amount of time I spend working on this site.  Donations can be made by the Paypal button in the sidebar or email me via the address in my profile for my account details.  Please only donate if you are sure you can afford to do so.
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Legislative Council 2019: Montgomery

Montgomery (Lib vs IND 5.49% - pre-redistribution margin)
Incumbent: Leonie Hiscutt (Liberal)

Welcome to the third of my three Legislative Council guide pages this year.  The one for the most interesting-looking contest, the Nelson vacancy, has been doing business for some time, and Pembroke was posted a few days back.  I will be updating my voting patterns assessment as well but am waiting for the upcoming session to complete in view of the lack of data in the last 12 months so far, so I expect to do that update in the third week of April. [EDIT: I ran out of time to do this before the election!]

And there will be live coverage here of all three seats on the night of the election,  Saturday May 4th.

This piece will be edited through the campaign from time to time for updates, campaign information, added candidates and changed assessments.

(Note: candidates may contact me once only to request a change to the link their name goes to, or additional links which will be added, or not, at my discretion.  No other changes will be made on request except to correct clear factual errors.  Candidates are welcome to comment in the comment section. Differences in the length of different candidate sections reflect differences in amount of available/(in my view) interesting material.)

LegCo Live Comments And Post-Poll Discussion

Pembroke: CALLED: Vanessa Goodwin (Lib) re-elected on first preferences
Nelson: CALLED: Jim Wilkinson re-elected
Montgomery: CALLED: Leonie Hiscutt (Lib) elected

The live comments appear below and updates are being added from the top.  To see TEC results pages go here.  Thanks to all for the interest on Saturday night; at one stage had nearly 2000 hits including close to 1000 link clicks-in (so not just the same five people obsessively hitting refresh) in three hours.   This is what the hit spike (figures are hits per hour) looked like:

LegCo Spending Limits Create Confusion

This site will have live election-night comments on all three electorates, from 6 pm 4 May.

(For election night, comments will still be subject to clearance but registration will not be required to post comments.)

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This is another in a series of articles about the 2013 Tasmanian Legislative Council elections.   Existing instalments include:

My Legislative Council Candidate Guide

Nelson LegCo Polling

I also have articles about the forestry peace deal, LegCo voting patterns and same-sex marriage.

Upcoming articles include my comments on the Nelson debate (see Simon de Little's video here if you missed it or want to relive it) with a roundup of other Nelson issues, which may be released in the next week or so.  These were originally in this article but I have held them back because it was too long and the Nelson-specific remarks did not mesh well with this issue, which involves all the electorates.  I will also have detailed projection attempts for at least Nelson and Pembroke which will be released sometime during election week.  To save the suspense in the case of Pembroke, I expect Vanessa Goodwin to win, and that it won't be close.  In Nelson there is a strong modelling and polling based case that Jim Wilkinson should win easily, but the nature of the contest is distinctive, and I don't consider it to yet be cut and dried.  This article explores one of the reasons why the fight for this seat could yet be competitive. 

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Over the last fortnight, the lobby group Tasmanians United for Marriage Equality (TUME) has been letterboxing the Legislative Council electorates of Montgomery, Pembroke and Nelson with leaflets.  These leaflets, versions of which are currently available on the TUME website,implore voters to "vote for marriage equality".  The initial versions contained pictures and names of most of the then-known intending candidates and ticks and crosses indicating their perceived positions on the issue.  The current versions indicate the three candidates who are known to be opposed to state-based same-sex marriage (Jim Wilkinson (Ind, Nelson), Vanessa Goodwin (Lib, Pembroke) and Leonie Hiscutt (Lib, Montgomery)) simply with large red crosses and wording such as "The current representative" or "The Liberal Party candidate", as well as ticks for two supportive candidates in each electorate.

LegCo: Pembroke, Nelson and Montgomery Candidates

(Most recent updates:  9 April Nelson ReachTEL comments removed and new link added, 11 April Willink added, 19 April Willink update.)

Legislative Council nominations close noon, 11 April.  Election day is Saturday 4 May. 

The field is set: Apart from the last-day nomination of Hans Willink there were no surprises and the eleven candidates below are all who are contesting.  I will post in detail on my views of the chances of the candidates during the campaign.

Additional articles: I have other articles on the LegCo elections:
Nelson polling
LegCo Spending Limits Create Confusion
The Nelson LegCo Debate (Wilkinson/Richardson/Baxter)
What is an independent liberal? (Liberal Party attacks Willink)

ABC survey: The ABC has surveyed the social-issue views of candidates here.

I also have LegCo related articles about the forestry peace deal, LegCo voting patterns and same-sex marriage.

 Advance summary

1. This article initially discussed the early Legislative Council candidacy announcements of Allison Ritchie (Pembroke, Ind) and Tom Baxter (Nelson, Green), and has since been updated to include all Legislative Council candidates.

2. The Mercury's coverage of Allison Ritchie's past, either following the lead of or coincidentally resembling an error on Wikipedia,  has oversimplified official findings about past nepotism claims against her.  The Auditor-General's report on the matter was actually quite unfavourable.

3. Attempts by the Liberal Party to attack the Labor Party over the Ritchie candidacy are unsurprising but also unconvincing.

4. Tom Baxter is one of the better Legislative Council candidates the Greens have fielded for some time, but the Greens are currently experiencing a slump in polled support that will make it difficult for him to poll a high vote. 

5. While Nelson is probably the more interesting seat, neither challenger is likely to win.

6. The seat of Montgomery is an open seat which at the last state election had a slight lean to Labor and a comparatively low Green vote. The Liberals and various independents are contesting the seat.  There is no clear favorite.

This article will be updated as more candidate news comes to hand.

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