24 October 2008

Election Count - feeling a bit Green about the gills?

| jimbocool
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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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Tetranitrate
I think you’re right about the greens facing problems once ‘in government’ and if they’re clever they won’t touch it.

I have to agree, the Greens will gain nothing from jumping into the electoral cot with the ALP or the Clibs.

Passy said :

(Passy) ‘The swing to the Greens was I think a rejection of Labor, ie a move to the Left, plus increasing concern about the environment.’l

I have to disagree with you there Passy, I think it’s the other way around.
I am constantly amazed at the number of people who think ‘The Greens’ are basically fuzzy tree-huggers and have no idea how far to the left their social policies are.

Tetranitrate9:24 pm 24 Oct 08

The balance in both the ALP and libs has indeed moved to the right, though the extent that it does will be determined in part by the way this last seat goes (a few liberals might be hoping the greens get it).

I think you’re right about the greens facing problems once ‘in government’ and if they’re clever they won’t touch it.
It’s drawing a very wide bow, but the situation New Zealand first faced after the 1996 New Zealand election is quite similar. By the end of the term they realized well and truly that they got the most support when they were being confrontational toward the government as opposed being *in* the government. (they went into coalition with National even though everyone expected them to go with labour, including a hell of a lot of the folks who voted for them).

The possibility of 4 Greens is pretty amazing.

The swing to the Greens was I think a rejection of Labor, ie a move to the Left, plus increasing concern about the environment. Not sure of the split in this but I suspect the former reason explains most of the 6% swing to the Greens. There was also a swing to the Right in the form of the CAP, AMP, Mark Parton and other independents of about 6% (although they in toto fielded 45 candidates against the Greens 7).

Interestingly CAP preferences were all over the place. And from what some have reported even some preferences from Jacqui Burke went to the Greens. I suppose this may not be such a surprise since some Liberals have a real environmental concern (eg Liberals for Forests etc).

But the balance in the ALP and the Libs has moved to the right, I think. (Maybe someone in the Liberals can confirm this?) certainly that is true of the ALP.

So at the next election, assuming no major stuff-ups, the swing we saw to CAP, AMP, Mark Parton etc may return to the Liberals, while the ALP might see a further swing against them to the Greens because of the domination of the right faction in the ALP.

The problem for the Greens will be, I think, retaining and attracting support since the exercise of power, even in an indirect way, exposes a party to contradictory forces of support and disgust. Indeed the Greens may choose not to enter Government but support a Labor government in terms only of confidence and supply. To me that appears to be their best long term strategy.

Jonathon Reynolds said :

Remember you can’t vote against anyone, but you have the right NOT to vote for them. By putting any number against a candidate, even if you number every box and they are the last preference on your ballot paper you are effectively stating that you potentially endorse them as your (least) favoured choice.

Sure then you can’t bitch when someone is choosing between to parties you refused to differentiate by assign preferences to. The Motorist Party coming out and saying the greens should choose the libs over the ALP (or even that their voters would prefer a liberal government) is rubbish. If they thought that they should have put their money where there mouth was and asked people to preference the liberals. As it was they removed themselves from the voting pool where they could have saved the seemingly lost third liberal seat in molongolo and maybe won them a third in Brindabela. Good riddance.

Jonathon Reynolds8:25 pm 24 Oct 08

@Gungahlin Al

Gungahlin Al said :

Any Molonglo voter who exhausted part way has really abdicated their right to have a bitch about this Lib/Lib/Green outcome.

No, it only indicates that they have indicated which individuals they would genuinely like to see get elected.

By not preferencing a candidate you are effectively sending a message that you simply don’t wish to see those individuals in the Assembly.

Remember you can’t vote against anyone, but you have the right NOT to vote for them. By putting any number against a candidate, even if you number every box and they are the last preference on your ballot paper you are effectively stating that you potentially endorse them as your (least) favoured choice.

Gungahlin Al7:30 pm 24 Oct 08

“On the booths counted, 42% go to Jones, 40% to Hanson, 3% to the Greens and a whopping 11% exhuast (the remainder go to Labor and don’t affect things). Those exhausted votes would have been easily enough to tip the balance.”

Caf: if the preferences go to Labor but they are unable to use them, then they go on down the ballot paper to someone else who may use them no?

All of this really is underlining the point I made before election day that exhausting your vote rather than numbering all boxes is giving up your right to have a say on the outcomes all the way down to knife-edge outcomes like this. So everyone whose preferences are still being counted played a much bigger role in the outcome of the assembly than just one vote.

Any Molonglo voter who exhausted part way has really abdicated their right to have a bitch about this Lib/Lib/Green outcome.

And it has also led to this situation where we look to be going to have elected members without a full quota even after preference allocation.

The Motorists Party banging on today about what the Greens should and should not do also abdicated their right to say any such thing when they encouraged their voters to exhaust their votes. No preference allocation = shuddup I reckon.

Oh I get it . . .I guess these are the away votes??? (It’s Friday arvo folks . . .)

Why is Chisholm appearing on both Molonglo and Brindabella at the website cited above (entitled ‘interim preference distribution’)?

This is the URL – http://www.elections.act.gov.au/ENS/pref/preflist.html

Does this mean there is a double counting error?

Bruce K said :

jakez said :

Skidbladnir said :

Whatever happened with the donkey punching Liberals, Jakez?

Or is an ejection still not off the table?

I think it was just some bozo flapping their mouth behind the anonymity of a computer screen. I certainly haven’t heard anything. I’ll be sure to let you all know though.

Brave Jakez. They should start with you jske and move through through the whole liberal party election committee, for the liberals out there it was an absolute disgrace, how much TV did Zed need to get elected – obviously all of their campaign funds:

Start with me? All I did was help Matt Watts. I wasn’t involved with the campaign committee.

“I will not be donating to them again unless I see some new talent and management.”

I hope to see you as a candidate next time 🙂

verbalkint said :

So the difference between 7 seats and 5 seats may well be less than 500 votes.

500 votes is probably what the TV campaign was worth.

If they’d put out some regular media releases making some (or indeed any) points rebutting Labor in the public debate they’d have gone much better for far less cost.

jakez said :

Skidbladnir said :

Whatever happened with the donkey punching Liberals, Jakez?

Or is an ejection still not off the table?

I think it was just some bozo flapping their mouth behind the anonymity of a computer screen. I certainly haven’t heard anything. I’ll be sure to let you all know though.

Brave Jakez. They should start with you jske and move through through the whole liberal party election committee, for the liberals out there it was an absolute disgrace, how much TV did Zed need to get elected – obviously all of their campaign funds:

Heads should roll starting with:
Gary Kent – all labor negative TV ads he was responsible for
Andrew Heath, Campaign Director – Let the Campaign and the campaign team get out of his control
Steven Doyle – Zed’s chief of Staff and brother in law – bully boy and hot head – thought he knew everything
Zed – If there was someone else, he should go as well, maybe Hanson down the track
Brendan – He agreed to this, back to the back bench – Hanson or Coe should get his job
Winnifred Rosser – Had the wool pulled over her eyes – tireless worker but
You may as well wipe out the Management Committe for giving these idiots the power to do what they liked.

I will not be donating to them again unless I see some new talent and management.

Also, keep in mind that the libs were about 300-400 votes away from dropping a seat in Gininderra as well.

So the difference between 7 seats and 5 seats may well be less than 500 votes.

> Virginia seemed well out of her depth

& she pointed out when Katy & Brendan had had a bit of a blow up off camera. There was no need for that.

In total agreement justbands.. Antony’s a such valuable resource to ABC, without him the coverage of the ACT election would have been abysmal…

Virginia seemed well out of her depth, bumbled through her teleprompter/notes and threw unnecessarily bitchy comments at both Katy and Brendan throughout the entire evening. No wonder they were both looking uncomfortable, I cringed so many times..

Oh yeah, we used to have ‘Aunty’s Being Crushed’ stickers in the 70s. Poor Aunty ….

Granny said :

There should be a law against Antony Green dying, in fact.

Would be great, but may stretch Aunty’s budget a bit… No more Sunday Arts on the tele!

There should be a law against Antony Green dying, in fact.

; )

No election would be the same without Antony Green, he’s the best.

> This is really quite exciting! come on Greens!

Second that….come on Greens!

Ross Solly reckons Antony Green is boring, but I’ve had sake with the man – he’s a hoot when on the piss!

Skidbladnir said :

Whatever happened with the donkey punching Liberals, Jakez?

Or is an ejection still not off the table?

I think it was just some bozo flapping their mouth behind the anonymity of a computer screen. I certainly haven’t heard anything. I’ll be sure to let you all know though.

ant said :

This is really quite exciting! come on Greens!

I wonder if the liberals will start up about ABC bias, given that Antony sometimes is on the ABC, and his surname is…. not Mr Liberal.

Antony Green is a national treasure.

This is really quite exciting! come on Greens!

I wonder if the liberals will start up about ABC bias, given that Antony sometimes is on the ABC, and his surname is…. not Mr Liberal.

Whatever happened with the donkey punching Liberals, Jakez?

Or is an ejection still not off the table?

apologies, yes, Liberals 7 last time, I stand corrected on that.

I still think a swing against was unacceptable in the anti-incumbent climate.

Skidbladnir said :

jakez said :

6 and 7 seats for the Liberals… In terms of conclusions over the running of the campaign, and whether it was a ‘success’ it’s a gigantic gap.

I wouldn’t consider a campaign for which the end result was either ‘holding on to the number of seats we already had by the skin of their teeth’ or losing a seat as a Success…

The amount of resources it required to achieve that outcome would still make it a net loss.

Thus the “” in “success”.

However as a Party member, considering where we were 12 months ago 7 seats is quite frankly a dream result.

Didn’t they elect 7 last time? 9 Labour, 7 Liberal, 1 Green.

Actually they only got 7 last time (3,2,2,), it was 6 when Mulcahy bailed.

Sorry JB, There were seven Libs elected last time – Smyth, Seselja, Burke, Dunne, Pratt, Stefaniak and Mulcahy. This was a success of a kind as they reclaimed a seat from Helen Cross.

Liberals elected 8 last time (Mulcahy wandering off the reservation later is not relevant). So moving to between 6-7 is already a dismal showing.

As I’ve said before, to suffer this loss amidst a 10% swing against the government is failure of the highest order.

jakez said :

6 and 7 seats for the Liberals… In terms of conclusions over the running of the campaign, and whether it was a ‘success’ it’s a gigantic gap.

I wouldn’t consider a campaign for which the end result was either ‘holding on to the number of seats we already had by the skin of their teeth’ or losing a seat as a Success…

The amount of resources it required to achieve that outcome would still make it a net loss.

Caf – there is quite a bit of leakage from the Libs to the Greens throughout the count – symptomatic of their lack of discipline! The Gods of Irony will be amused if it is this leakage that gets the green over the line

What’s interesting is looking where Jacqui Burke’s votes flow when she’s excluded. On the booths counted, 42% go to Jones, 40% to Hanson, 3% to the Greens and a whopping 11% exhuast (the remainder go to Labor and don’t affect things). Those exhausted votes would have been easily enough to tip the balance.

The gap between 6 and 7 seats for the Liberals. In terms of votes, it is a very small gap. In terms of conclusions over the running of the campaign, and whether it was a ‘success’ it’s a gigantic gap.

Ngunnawal is a very good booth for Jones, but after that it’s better for Hanson – the question is how the preferences in the remaining booths are split up between the two. You could use either mine or Antony’s ratios of preference flows to get a rough idea of how that cookie’s going to crumble.

Jonathon Reynolds11:40 am 24 Oct 08

@amarooresident:
You’ll probably see a concentration of preferences for the two candidates in their “home” territories.

Jone’s emphasis on Gungahlin and lack of coverage in the southern booths will probably work against her given that the only remaining pure “Gungahlin” booths are Palmerston, Ngunnawal and Ngunnawal South (Aprox 4.5K ballots cast).

The Weston/Woden area appears as if it has more available uncounted ballots and this is the natural “home” territory of Hanson. (Though though he was directly competing with other “locals” Kent, Barnier [resident of Farrer] and White in this “home” territory area for a higher preference).

Yeah amarooresident, with only three smaller Gungahlin booths left to count it’s not looking like Jones will improve her marign. She’s got 66% of her vote in, with only 55% of the total counted.

Having a really quick look at the numbers the Oct 23 sample has Hanson up 600 over jones with about 55% of the vote, so he’s doing slightly better than he should be. The entire liber vote is about 1% (or 480 votes in this sample) higher than it it will finish at, so that would eat up any help Jones willget by hanson falling.

So yeah the Libs shoud be worried.

The greens concern should be that Le Couteur might not get as many preferences when she replaces Kirschbaum as the second green.

amarooresident11:15 am 24 Oct 08

I haven’t looked at the booths closely but I wonder if Jones might suffer because she concentrated so much of her campaign in Gungahlin, where she did quite well, at the expense of the rest of the electorate.

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