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Australian Election — too close to call, and Labor minority government is possible

The Tally updates have just stopped for tonight, but things have shifted in the last hour.  Welcome to holidayville-Australia, no one is going to count votes tomorrow. Bizarrely, they’re not even counting on Monday either — (that must be a misprint?)

Apparently we can pay double-triple-overtime for people to work til 2am on a Saturday, but then we all need two days off.

*UPDATE: The delay is probably due to waiting for postal votes to come in. Because of Australia’s preference system, preferences can’t be allocated until all the votes are in. h/t Analitik

Delcons mattered

Turnbull has taken a historic win in 2013 and converted it into a historic mash. Abbott knew what he stood for and carried a lot of people with him. Turnbull stood for nothing-much and communicated that exactly.

Everyone except Bill Shorten said Turnbull was likely to win, tracking to win, or has “won”. Andrew Bolt thought this win was likely to be so weak, so pathetic, even a minority-hobbled-government, that Turnbull should resign. But based on these newer numbers, it might be Shorten doing the minority government thing. Check it out: the magic number is 76 seats — and while 77 percent of the vote is counted, a lot of what’s left is prepoll and preferences, and who knows?

The AEC (Australian Electoral Commission) site calls it LIB-NAT  67 seats,  LABOR 71 Seats, 5 others, and only 7 undecided seats.  UPDATE: Now 66 : 72. One more seat to Labor?

The ABC site uses a different model of preference flows (presumably) and has it as LIB-NAT 67 : LABOR 67 :  5 others, and 11 undecided.

AEC election count Sat 2nd July 2016

….

What kind of minority government is calling?

Of the five independents, only one – Katter — leans more conservatively. Three lean leftish: Xenophon, Greens, and Wilkie. One other, McGowan holds a long conservative seat — probably more in an Oakshott and Windsor spirit methinks — (see her policies here). Oakshott and Windsor lead the career path for MP’s in conservative seats who “lean left”. Good for one term, and gone the next. But then she can hardly betray a Liberal-Base-vote, if the Liberal base didn’t have a Liberal choice to vote for. Voters could get very grumpy when a Gillard was substituted for an Abbott. But there’s not so much to care about if Turnbull is switched for Shorten.

Of the 11 undecided seats on the ABC site they have Labor ahead in 6 seats.

Prepoll voting usually favours the conservative side of politics. But more people are prepoll voting than ever before and the old rules do not apply. Prepoll voting is the “new normal” in all kinds of places.

 “Nationally, the number of early voters has increased by 44 percent since 2013 with 2.15 million votes cast compared to 1.49 million.”

Everything depends on the prepoll votes. Does it take an organized conservative type person to vote ahead of time? If so, Turnbull may cling on.

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