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 2025: Pembroke

PEMBROKE (2022 margin ALP vs Lib 13.3%)

Slightly delayed by a three-week bump to avoid a clash with the federal election, the Tasmanian Legislative Council elections will be upon us soon enough and I need to get cracking on my Pembroke guide because the fur is flying and things are gettin dirrrrty!  Recently I released my usual survey of the Council's voting patterns.  Link to Nelson guide is here and link to Montgomery here.  Nominations close on May 1.  There will be live coverage of all three seats here on the night of May 24 and as required through the postcount.

The current numbers in the Council are four Liberal, three Labor, one Green and seven independents, with the independents ranging fairly evenly across the political spectrum.  Labor gives up one vote on the floor and in the committee stages because it holds the Presidency, and as a result there are currently fine balances between major party and other MLCs (6-8 on the floor) and party and non-party MLCs (7-7 on the floor).  The balance between the major parties could be interesting if Labor actually opposes anything, but in the last year that happened only twice in contested divisions, leading me to classify the party's voting pattern as "Right" for the first time ever.  

This year sees a vacancy for the retirement of Leonie Hiscutt (Liberal), the first defence for left-wing independent Meg Webb, and the subject of this article, the first defence for Labor's Luke Edmunds.

Legislative Council 2022: Pembroke By-Election Live

Pembroke: CALLED (7:23 pm) Edmunds wins (Labor retain) 

Approx 4.6% 2PP swing to Labor after preferences

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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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Live Comments (Scrolls to top)

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

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Tuesday: The provisional preference distribution is underway and Edmunds has 43.84% to Brown's 33.29% with Brewer 22.87% to throw; Edmunds will be declared the winner after Brewer's preferences sometime later today.  Brown gained 50 off preferences from di Falco but lost 25 back off Willink so as expected the preferences of those two candidates had little impact.  

Legislative Council 2022: Pembroke By-Election

PEMBROKE (ALP vs Lib 8.65%)
Retiring Incumbent: Jo Siejka (ALP)

This is my guide page for the 2022 Legislative Council by-election in Pembroke.  I will be covering the by-election count live on the night of Saturday 10 September.  If time permits I may also update my analysis of Legislative Council voting patterns before the day.

Earlier this year Huon, which Labor had won in 2020, had its own by-election and was won by independent Dean Harriss.  This shifted the numbers in the Council to four Labor, four Liberal and seven independents.  Of the seven independents, three are left-wing and one is lately (like Labor) slightly left of centre, while three are either known, or in Harriss's case expected, to be somewhat right of centre.  

Both the Council's left-plus-centre majority, which has existed since Siejka won Pembroke in the 2017 by-election, and the combined major party majority, which has existed since 2020, are at risk in this by-election.  While the current left-plus-centre majority is not realised on anywhere near every issue, and indeed the government has had a fairly easy time of things upstairs lately, it would be a great result for the government if its own candidate won the seat.   For more detail see my latest assessment of Legislative Council voting patterns, which finds Labor and independent Ruth Forrest to have moved into the centre of council voting after previously being placed on the left.

The winner will serve until May 2025.

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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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: Pembroke

PEMBROKE (ALP vs Lib 7.45% - pre-redistribution by-election margin)
Incumbent: Jo Siejka (ALP)

Welcome to the second 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 the guide for Montgomery is now up too.  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, expected to be 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.)

Pembroke By-Election: Live And/Or Post-Count

CALLED: Reliable scrutineering reports on Sunday that Siejka (ALP) will win easily with Walker narrowly beating Chipman for 2nd.

Sunday

Analysis: Still awaiting margins for the two scenarios. As Brad Stansfield has said on Twitter, it's a bit much to be saying first that the Liberals' attack on Chipman wouldn't work at all, then after the result that it worked too well. But if working means getting near winning, it was only a pyrrhic success. It seems that far from generate a sympathy vote for Chipman, the tactic actually worked in driving votes away from him and to Walker, but at the cost of driving Chipman preferences (in droves as predicted by Pete Lawler on Twitter last night) and possibly primaries to Siejka. The Liberals needed to make the final two to have any on-paper chance, but did they cause enough voters to switch their preference from Chipman ahead of Siejka to the other way around to the extent that they caused Siejka rather than Chipman to win ? 

Legislative Council 2017: Pembroke By-Election

This is my preview article for the by-election for the Legislative Council seat of Pembroke.  Incumbent Vanessa Goodwin resigned the seat today, Monday 2 October, and already we have two declared candidates, one possible candidate and at least one party likely to endorse a candidate.  The by-election will be held on Saturday November 4, with nominations closing on October 12 and announced the next day.  The winner will have the seat for just 18 months before they will need to defend it.  (I am unsure yet if I will have live coverage of this by-election on the night, as it clashes with a field trip.)

My most recent piece about the voting balance in the Legislative Council was here, but since that was written, Labor's Sarah Lovell unseated "independent liberal" Tony Mulder in Rumney.  As a result, three Labor MLCs and four left-wing independents now have a blocking majority in the Legislative Council.  Throw in a couple of relatively centrist MLCs who only vote with the government a shade more often than not, and the government is having great trouble getting its most contentious legislation through.  It's not all doom, gloom and obstruction for them though, with a bill to speed up the kunanyi/Mt Wellington cable car assessment process recently sailing through with only one vote against.  

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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