Victoria 2022: Lower House Results, Poll Performance And Pendulum Tilt

 LABOR 56 (+1) COALITION 28* (+1*) GREENS 4 (+1) IND 0 (-3)

(Changes are compared to last election)

(* Assuming Narracan is retained)
Current 2PP excluding Narracan 55.00 to ALP 

Projected 2PP treating Narracan as uniform swing 54.83 to ALP
Current 2PP swing accounting for 2PP-uncontested seats 2.70% to Coalition

Following the fast release of 2PP results for every seat it's time to do my usual wrapup of the Victorian lower house election.  The election isn't actually over yet, because of the supplementary election in Narracan to be held early in the new year (and in case there are any further minor changes to the figures), but I think it's best to put it out now with the obligatory cautions.  Throughout this article any use of an asterisk (*) means "subject to Narracan".

Eden-Monaro Late Live Comments And Post-Count

Eden-Monaro (ALP 0.85%) McBain (ALP) retains with 50.41% 2PP (-0.44)

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Recount?

Some people are speculating about a recount.  A recount is automatic if the final margin lands below 100 votes, but that is now very unlikely.  For margins above this, recount calls are typically rejected.

Nationals And Shooters Preference Factors

There is a lot of speculation about whether Nationals preferences have caused Kotvojs to lose.  Estimates of the Nationals to Liberals preference flow have varied from 70% to nearly 90%.  Scrutineering of this flow across a large electorate is extremely difficult; it's best to wait until the AEC comes out with the final preference flow.

On figures current as of Tuesday morning, McBain leads by 775 and there are 5924 Nationals votes.  This means that unless the flow from the Nationals to Kotvojs exceeds 93.5%, Kotvojs would be now leading had she got every Nationals preference.  But that's not interesting, because 100% preference flows never occur and the Nationals running is not the cause of the "leakers" preferencing Labor (most would have done so anyway).  What is interesting is whether the flow has weakened since 2019 and done so by enough that the weakening of the flow becomes the cause of Kotvojs' defeat.  At the moment this is the case if the flow from the Nationals has shifted to below 80.7%.

Another question is whether the Shooters preferences have caused the outcome.  Estimates of the Shooters flow vary with some claims as high as two to one to Labor, but Liberal scrutineers have said 50-50.  As of Tuesday morning, for Shooters preferences to have alone determined the outcome, they would have to break 57.8% to Labor.  However, the flow of Shooters preferences to Labor will be boosted by the donkey vote, meaning that if even, say, 55% of genuine Shooters voters have preferenced Labor then that will have decided the seat.  For the Shooters how to vote card to have decided the seat, it would currently have to be the case that the flow from the Shooters (whatever it is) would have been 15.7 points weaker had the Shooters preferenced the other way.  Limited evidence does not support Shooters how to vote cards making that much difference.  This number may drop with further counting, but I'm not sure that it will.

A further possibility is that some combination of Shooters preferences and weakening in the Nationals flow could account for the result, with neither factor decisive by itself.

I will analyse preference flows fully when they are available.

Count Updates - comments scroll to top below the line

How Did The Super Saturday Seat Polls Go?

With final results for the Super Saturday by-elections now available, including preference flows, it is worthwhile reviewing the accuracy of the seat polling for these by-elections.  Recently I have posted a few times here about seat polling - see Is Seat Polling Utterly Useless? and Why Is Seat Polling So Inaccurate?  The preferencing results of the Longman by-election are also of special interest to the debate about Newspoll preferences, as the first test of Newspoll's changed methods at any federal election.

We can put that one to bed right away: the preference flow from One Nation to the Coalition in Longman was a massive 67.74%.  This should not be taken as a sign of quite how strongly One Nation preferences would flow nationally, since they did preference the LNP in this seat but would not necessarily do so in every seat, and since LNP preferences flowed strongly to One Nation in the area at the Queensland election even in the seat where the party preferenced Labor.  But it does show that it is entirely reasonable for pollsters to assume that 2016-election preferences can't be trusted in the case of One Nation.