Last night’s distribution sees the second Green, in this instance Elena Kirshbaum, elected to the last spot – a margin of 58 votes at the crucial point where Jones is excluded. Given that we haven’t hit the Greens’ strongest booths yet and that over half the votes have been counted, things are getting very interesting indeed.
Over on Pollbludger Antony suggested that a big factor in whether the Green gets up is whether Hanson opens up a big lead on Jones – yesterday was the first time this had happened and the result is indeed a Green elected! Looking at the upcoming booths I think Hanson will maintain his lead. Antony thinks the Libs preferences favour Jones, I think they favour Hanson – if Antony is right, I don’t think it’s enough for her to get ahead of him or to narrow the gap enough. The reason the gap is important is that at the crucial point of this count Kirshbaum is on 4960, Jones 4902, Hanson 5693 – if the two libs were more even, say 5200 and 5395, they’d both be ahead of Elena and she’d be excluded.
Having had another look my calculations of yesterday I discovered an error that overstated the Pangallo effect, Antony Green also helpfully demolished the argument in a more general sense so I’m giving up on that for now – however, I reserve the right to come back to it if the result is decided on less than 300 votes.
As today’s count should include some interesting booths – Lyneham and Ngunnawal – I won’t do anything other than very basic analysis today, but will do some serious number crunching over the weekend and make a Fearless Prediction. In the meantime I think it’s probably time for the Libs to panic.
UPDATED: Caf has also sent in his analysis:
- As noted elsewhere, the AEC’s latest interim preference distribution for Molonglo contains a few changes (it now includes all votes from these polling places: Ainslie, Ainslie North, Amaroo, Aranda, Baker Gardens, Barton, Belconnen, Bonython, Calvary Hospital, Calwell, Campbell, Chapman, Chisholm, Curtin, Conder, Deakin, Dickson, Downer, Duffy, Farrer, Griffith, Gungahlin, Holder, Hughes, and all pre-poll electronic votes).
The Greens’ Caroline Le Couteur and Elena Kirschbaum are now in a literal dead heat – tied at count 88 on 0.39 quotas each. I’m not sure how the AEC decides who to exclude in that case, but in the interim count they’ve knocked out Le Couteur (possibly on the basis that she had one (!) less primary vote that Kirschbaum). The distribution of Shane Rattenbury’s excess, along with preferences from Mike Hettinger and Frank Pangallo ends up with Kirschbaum on 0.81 quotas against the three remaining Liberals: Giulia Jones on 0.59 quotas, Jacqui Burke on 0.55 and Jeremy Hanson on 0.73.
Jacqui Burke is next to be excluded, which puts the three remaining contenders at Kirschbaum on 0.82, Jones on 0.81 and Hanson on 0.95. Yes, that’s right – some of Burke’s preferences flowed to the Greens over her fellow Liberals – enough, in fact to tip the balance in Kirschbaum’s favour. Jones is now excluded, leaving the last 4 spots to Hanson, Barr, Corbell and Kirschbaum, for a 3/2/2 split between Labour, Liberal and Greens.
With the race so tight, the outcome could change with every extra booth that’s counted. The last spot in Molonglo is pretty much line-ball between Le Couteur, Kirschbaum and Jones.
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