Dunkley By-Election Live

DUNKLEY (ALP, Vic 6.27%)

Jodie Belyea (ALP) vs Nathan Conroy (Lib) and others
By-election caused by death of Peta Murphy (ALP)

CALLED 8:42 pm Labor retain

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Updates appear here, scrolling to the top.  When counting is underway refresh every 10-15 mins for new comments.  

Thursday: Labor is now very close to winning the postal count and the 2PP is now 52.71; it is likely to finish between that number and 53.  The Australian published an incorrect article today referring to a 10% drop in turnout; the count does not finish until all postals that can be admitted are received 13 days after polling day.  The turnout is currently 83.5% and there should be about 1% or so to come; the turnout decline will be smaller than at least 16 of the last 20 by-elections, potentially 18.  Media should not publish turnout doomery articles without consulting with the AEC or someone who has a clue.  

Tuesday: With vote totals unlikely to change by even 1% from here it's worth noting an outstanding performance by the uComms seat poll.  I've been critical of poor results from this pollster recently (especially Tasmania 2021) but this one is remarkably good by seat poll standards especially. uComms' numbers with undecided redistributed are below with the actual current numbers in brackets:

ALP 40.1 (41.1)

Lib 39.3 (39.3)

Grn 8.2 (6.3)

LTN 1.6 (2.5)

Ind/Other 10.8 (10.8)

2PP 52 (52.6)

n=626.

Voice Referendum: Turnout and Informal Votes

I haven't seen any other articles on these subjects so some coverage of turnout and informal votes in the Voice referendum.  

The most important thing to know about Voice turnout is that it was a lot higher than many people said it was going to be.  It indeed managed to just beat the 2022 House of Representatives turnout, but this is no great miracle alone given that the 2022 election was COVID-blighted.  What makes it more impressive was that it was acheived against the backdrop of an enrolment drive that made the roll more complete than ever before, putting more voters on the roll who had a relatively low chance of voting.  Another factor that makes the near-90% turnout commendable is that six years ago there was a mass voting type exercise that was voluntary, and there was some potential for confusion about whether voting in the referendum was required.

Just a disclaimer before I get much further: when I post graphs with low r-squared values (percentage of variation explained) I come across a few readers for whom a little knowledge of statistics is a dangerous thing and who will, sometimes irately, insist that anything below r-squared equals 0.3 or so is worthless.  In fact electoral statistics are very messy and even r-squared values of a few percent can be statistically significant if there are enough data points.  The important thing with such values is to be especially cautious about assuming causation since the causes of such patterns are often to be found elsewhere.  For instance, in the 1999 Republic referendum, seats with high Yes votes had low turnout, but that isn't because high support for Yes in an area caused people to not vote, it is mainly because inner city seats that tended naturally to vote Yes also have high numbers of transient young voters (who themselves would be likely to vote Yes if they voted at all).  

Marriage Law Survey Turnout Is High ... But Not That High!

(This article is being progressively updated through the survey - KB)

The first release of turnout estimates from the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the same-sex marriage postal survey has created some interest.  The ABS estimates that as of Friday 29 September, 9.2 million survey forms have already been received, 57.5% of all enrolled voters.

The ABS notes that this is an estimate only.  It may not represent the received yes/no vote as not every single one of the forms submitted will be valid (some small percentage may be posted back deliberately blank, for instance, or even with both boxes ticked.)  It is also unclear to me whether this estimate is based in some sense on a count of forms or on a count of envelopes, since there could well have been some cases of multiple forms being posted back in the same envelope, or of empty envelopes being posted (heck, I used to do this to junk-mailers who included a reply-paid all the time).  It also doesn't include anything that has been posted but was still on its way to ABS as of Friday.  So the figure is likely to be at least a few percent short of the number who have now voted.