There’s a lot of outstanding questions in the Legislative Council count. We know that the current vote shares will shift, and as they shift, these could have a significant impact on the chances of any party to win a seat.
Using estimates of how many votes are outstanding, and looking at how parties performed in those vote types at the last election, it’s possible to make a projection of how the vote percentages for each party will shift, with the addition of absentee, postal and below-the-line votes over the next few weeks.
There are two main affects that will change the votes for each of the candidates:
- Proportion of the vote received in the ‘special votes’ – mostly postal and absentee votes.
- Proportion of the ‘below-the-line’ vote received for each party.
It is reasonably clear who will win the first twenty seats: nine Coalition, seven Labor, two Greens, one Shooter, and Fred Nile of the CDP.
When factoring in current trends, I can make the following projection for where each party will stand at the end of the count.
| Party |
Current votes |
Current % |
Current quotas |
Projected % |
Projected quotas |
| Liberal/National |
1,633,722 |
43.42% |
9.5431 |
42.81% |
9.4092 |
| Labor |
1,185,060 |
31.50% |
6.9223 |
31.17% |
6.8499 |
| Greens |
357,345 |
9.50% |
2.0874 |
10.15% |
2.2310 |
| Shooters |
143,300 |
3.81% |
0.8371 |
3.77% |
0.8289 |
| Christian Dem. |
103,653 |
2.75% |
0.6055 |
2.74% |
0.6022 |
| No Land Tax |
66,054 |
1.76% |
0.3858 |
1.76% |
0.3870 |
| Animal Justice |
63,060 |
1.68% |
0.3684 |
1.66% |
0.3657 |
| Others |
210,307 |
5.59% |
|
5.93% |
|
On current figures, it seems like #10 Coalition candidate Hollie Hughes (a Liberal) is well in front of her main rivals, Peter Jones of No Land Tax and Mark Pearson of Animal Justice.
Yet when you look at the prediction, the Liberal vote drops from 54% of a quota to 41% of a quota, only 0.0222 quota ahead of Jones and 0.0435 quota ahead of Animal Justice.
While the Greens vote picks up substantially, #3 Greens candidate Justin Field would be well behind the leading candidates in this scenario, which already assumes a significant increase in the Greens vote on late counting.
If this projection proved true, the best-case scenario for the left would be that Greens preferences would flow to Animal Justice (as indicated on their how-to-vote) and elected Mark Pearson ahead of Hollie Hughes or Peter Jones.
Of course, if Animal Justice falls just short of winning, it’s possible there could be a legal challenge to the result, because of the 19,000 iVotes which didn’t have an ‘above-the-line’ box for Animal Justice or Outdoor Recreation.
As the count proceeds, most of the above-the-line votes will be counted and the NSWEC will begin conducting their data entry of below-the-line votes, and we will be able to make more precise projections over the coming weeks.
Hopefully it will also be possible, through scrutineers, to get a sense of how preferences are flowing, to determine whether the primary vote figures could be overturned by preferences, in particular whether Animal Justice can win on Greens preferences.
Below the fold, I will run through a bunch of stats I’ve been able to pull together, and explain how I have used these figures to produce my projection.
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