I haven’t put much online since the rather hurried piece on the night of the election and quite a deal has changed since then. This is my impression of the count based on figures available as of 6pm Tuesday.

Lyons

This seat is no longer of interest. The Greens have firmed by about 0.03 quotas or 300 votes compared to the Liberals as primaries have been added, and may firm slightly more before the primary count is completed. Tim Morris will be re-elected.

Franklin (Based on update 4:41 pm)

On election night I modelled a 450-vote win to Goodwin, later changed to a 290-vote win after I found a mistake in my assumptions. I have been using a spreadsheet created by a friend (who I don’t think I can name for employment sensitivity reasons but thanks, you know who you are, and I now owe you beer!) to explore the figures based on preference distributions from past polls.

Some interesting aspects of past Franklin preferences, that are not always reflected statewide, are that Green preferences favour Labor very strongly, as do Socialist Alliance preferences, and most importantly the Liberal Party leaks more to Labor than vice versa (which is odd). During the counting of primaries the Greens firmed by about 0.02 quotas compared to polling night, which gives Labor more potential preferences.

All things considered, the spreadsheet was last night (based on Friday figures) forecasting a 200-vote win to Labor. It is now obvious that leakage from Will Hodgman has been far more severe than leakage from Paul Lennon — this was always the great unknown in Franklin but makes sense in view of the relatively low profile of Vanessa Goodwin compared to Paula Wriedt. Labor now trails by only 259 votes and there are still 1915 Green votes and 983 from Ian Hall to go, plus Labor is less exposed to leakage (2434 votes compared to 5085) than the Liberals.

On this basis this seat is now a very likely win to Wriedt, and the spreadsheet mentioned is now putting her 700 votes ahead, though I would not call it just yet.

Bass (based on update 5:13 pm)

The final primary figures showed Kim Booth notionally 1525 votes (0.150 quotas) behind Labor, having picked up on pre-poll votes from his election night position of 0.175 quotas behind. (About 150 votes of that pickup was in the last day of counting.) He could reasonably expect a pickup of maybe 500 votes from Les Rochester and would then need to make up the remaining 1000 or so from leakage. With Labor’s leakage exposure much greater (7952 votes to the Greens’ 2578) and with Labor leakage tending historically to go to the Liberals rather than the Greens in that seat, that looked like a tall order – Labor would need to leak an average of about 13-14% for it to happen.

Booth’s position now after the distribution of O’Byrne’s surplus is actually not too bad. It appears O’Byrne’s surplus has leaked considerably as Labor has dropped 427 votes despite the exclusion of 700 votes worth of minor candidates. Booth is now only 1093 votes behind. Assuming Booth’s gain from Rochester is still around the same he will need to pick up c. 600 votes on Labor from leakage. This is plausible as Labor has 5644 votes that may leak as opposed to only 1696 for the Greens. An average Labor leak (to all other sources including the Liberals and exhaust) of around 12% could now see Booth home, and that is plausible.

An added factor is the likely small Liberal surplus but most of that will exhaust and what is left should not advantage Labor by more than 50 votes. I think this seat is now right on the line and have no firm feeling about which way it will go. It is typically easier for the sitting candidate with profile and primaries in the bag to hold off the challenger in cases like this provided they can get close enough to have a chance. This is now the really close seat in this election, and many papers were wrong to prematurely call it when it still remained in doubt.

The outcome

After all that, the most likely distributions are now 14-7-4 (no change at all — wonder what that would do to the parliamentary arrangement debate) or 15-7-3 (Labor winning Bass off the Greens). If Goodwin gets up, 13-8-4 and 14-8-3 remain possible, but that is not looking likely. It will be most remarkable if Booth wins and after everything that has happened in this campaign the net result is no change in the parliament or in any seat apart from the replacement of old members with new in some parties.

Kevin Bonham wishes to use the bio space to shamelessly advertise his interest in finding a defamation lawyer willing to fire off a nasty letter to one of his adversaries, for no fee in return for future scrutineering assistance, beer, ecological advice or anything else he can provide of use at any time. Nothing to do with psephology or this site!