Victoria 2014 Archive

Apart from the extremely close count in Prahran, one of the most interesting races in the recent Victorian state election was the seat of Morwell in eastern Victoria.

The Nationals won Morwell off Labor in 2006, and leading in to the November election the Nationals held the seat by a 13.3% margin. Morwell was the only seat in Victoria where Labor seriously challenged the Nationals for a seat, and it experienced the largest two-party-preferred swing to Labor in the state. The swing to Labor after preferences was 11.5% – the swing was not over 9% in any other seat.

In addition, Morwell was home to a strong independent campaign from ‘Latrobe Valley First’, who conducted a community preselection and ran a campaign mostly focused on the town of Morwell.

One of the major political issues in the electorate was the ongoing effects of the Hazelwood mine fire, which shrouded Morwell in smoke for weeks earlier this year.

I was interested in finding out whether the results varied between the two main towns in the seat. While the seat is named after Morwell, only 14% of ordinary votes were cast at booths in Morwell, while 37% of the votes were cast at booths in Traralgon.

In my pre-election guide, I split booths in Morwell into four separate parts: the main towns of Morwell and Traralgon, and the booths to the north and south of those two main towns.

Firstly, it’s worth noting that there was a variation between the booth-level two-party-preferred counts and the final distribution. The final distribution increased the Nationals vote by two votes, and cut the Labor vote by 94 votes. Overall this increased the Nationals margin from 51.68% to 51.8%.

It’s also worth noting that the swing on ‘special votes’ (based on my estimated of the 2010 special votes on the new boundaries, which likely vary from other estimates) was substantially less than in the main towns of Traralgon and Morwell.

You can see in the above table that the ALP actually gained a larger swing in Traralgon than in Morwell. The Labor swing was bigger in both towns than in other parts of the seat. Overall, Labor won a 52% majority in the north, and 59.3% majority in the town of Morwell. The Nationals held on to 57.5% of the 2PP vote in Traralgon, but that was off a very high 2010 vote. In 2010, the Nationals won almost 75% of the 2PP vote in Traralgon.

While you don’t see a stronger pro-Labor swing in Morwell compared to Traralgon, you do see a difference in the vote for independent Tracie Lund. I understand that Lund’s campaign was much stronger in Morwell compared to Traralgon, and you can see that in the vote – 9.5% in Traralgon, and 10-11% in the north and south, compared to 16.7% in Morwell.

Earlier today, the Victorian Electoral Commission ‘pushed the button’ for the eight Legislative Council regions.

Overall the result is:

• 14 – Labor
• 14 – Liberal
• 5 – Greens
• 2 – Nationals
• 2 – Shooters and Fishers
• 1 – Sex Party
• 1 – Vote 1 Local Jobs
• 1 – Democratic Labour Party

In circumstances where the major parties disagree, Labor will need to pick up seven votes from the ten-seat crossbench to get legislation passed. This will need to include the five Greens, and two others. Those other two votes could come from the Shooters and Fishers, or from two out of three of the Sex Party, Vote 1 Local Jobs or the Democratic Labour Party. With the dissolution of the Liberal/National coalition, it’s also conceivable that the Nationals could help Labor pass legislation from time to time.

The result is a record result for the Victorian Greens. The party had previously held three seats in the Legislative Council since 2006, but have gained two other seats in Eastern Metropolitan and South-Eastern Metropolitan. Joined with their first two seats in the Legislative Assembly, this produces a Greens caucus of seven MPs – a record for any Australian state parliament, just ahead of the six Greens in New South Wales since the 2011 state election.

The DLP returns to Parliament after previously holding one seat from 2006 to 2010. This is the third seat the DLP has won since the party was wiped out in the 1970s – the other seat was won by John Madigan in the Senate in 2010, although Madigan has since left the party.

The result was a big success for the Shooters and Fishers. The party first won a seat in New South Wales in 1995, and then won a second seat in 2007. The party won its first seat in Western Australia in 2013, and has now increased their number of state MLCs to five with two wins in Victoria.

The election is the first time the Sex Party has ever won a seat, with its leader Fiona Patten winning a seat, and likely a key position in the balance of power.

The biggest unknown comes from the Vote 1 Local Jobs party. Their new MLC, James Purcell, is the outgoing Mayor of Moyne Shire in the south-west of Victoria. If Purcell can work with the Sex Party and the Greens in passing government legislation, he will be a key powerbroker in the Legislative Council.

Yesterday, I ran through the key races that were still undecided.

At that point, there were six seats in five regions considered undecided.

In Northern Victoria, the Shooters and Fishers won one of the two undecided seats, and Labor defeated the Country Alliance for the other seat. It appears that Labor was only successful because Victorian elections used the ‘Inclusive Gregory’ system instead of the fairer ‘Weighted Inclusive Gregory’ used in Western Australia. Antony Green explains. This variation pushed Labor ahead of the Greens, and so Labor won on Greens preferences instead of Country Alliance winning on Labor preferences. The gap between Labor and the Greens at the key point was only 161 votes.

In Southern Metropolitan, the final seat was a race between the third Liberal and the Sex Party candidate, and it was won by the Liberal Party. The Sex Party needed to stay ahead of the Liberal Democrats at the key point in order to win, but actually fell behind by 5,252 votes.

In South Eastern Metropolitan, the final seat was a race between the Greens and the Sex Party, and was won by the Greens. If the Sex Party stayed ahead of Labor, they would have won on Labor preferences. Instead, the Sex Party fell behind Labor by 223 votes, and elected the Greens.

In Western Metropolitan, the Democratic Labour Party were the clear favourites, but there was a small chance the DLP would lose. The DLP did actually win their seat.

In Western Victoria, the final seat was a very complicated race. Vote 1 Local Jobs won the seat, but they would have lost to the Shooters and Fishers if the Shooters had managed to overtake the Liberal Democrats, but the LDP stayed ahead by 1,230 votes.

More than two weeks after the Victorian state election, all 88 Legislative Assembly seats have been finalised, but there are a number of undecided Legislative Council seats.

Last Thursday, William Bowe at Poll Bludger produced a good summary, drawing on Antony Green’s calculator and Geeklections analysis.

Bowe splits up the possible winners into broad “left” and “right” groupings to have a sense of who will held the balance of power.

On the left, Labor has won 13 seats, the Greens have won 4 seats, and the Sex Party has won one. A nineteenth seat will definitely be won by one of those ‘left’ parties.

On the right, the Coalition has won 15 seats, and the Shooters and Fishers have won one. Two other seats will definitely go to parties of the right.

This gives the left 19 seats, and the right 18 seats. The remaining seats could be won by either the left or the right. If the left win two out of these three seats, then it will be possible for Labor to pass legislation with the support of the Greens and the Sex Party. If the right win two out of these three seats, Labor will need the support of both the Greens and at least one minor right-wing MLC to pass legislation: a much more difficult task.

At the moment, the most likely outcome would see the ‘left’ stay on nineteen seats, and the ‘right’ winning a combined 21 seats.

In this post, I will run through each region, focusing in particular on the six seats left to be decided.

We’re expecting these Legislative Council counts to be finalised later this week.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Victorian Greens appear to have won a second seat in the Legislative Assembly after the distribution of preferences in Prahran last night. Prahran was the last seat to be decided in the lower house (although quite a lot of the races in the Legislative Council remain undecided), and pending a recount appears to have gone to the Greens.

It’s always remarkable when the Greens win a single-member electorate. By my count, the Greens have only ever won two federal electorates and four state electorates, and only four of those six seats were won at general elections.

But Prahran is all the more remarkable because the candidate in third place managed to win on preferences. This is very rare, but it has happened, mostly in cases involving both a Liberal and National running, or the DLP running. A bunch of examples were posted in comments on my previous post. The most recent examples include Blair in 1998, when the Liberal came third and defeated Pauline Hanson, and Denison in 2010, when Andrew Wilkie came third, overtook the Liberal Party on Greens preferences and then beat Labor on Liberal preferences. There was also the 2009 Frome by-election in South Australia where an independent won from third.

When the news first broke yesterday, it was reported that the Greens had overtaken Labor by a 38-vote margin, and then appeared to have beaten the Liberal Party by a 128-vote margin. When the official VEC distribution was released, these numbers were revised upwards to 41 votes and 262 votes respectively.

The Liberal-Green margin, while slim, should be solid enough to withstand a recount. A recount is beginning this morning, and Labor will be hoping to overturn that 41-vote margin at the point where Labor’s Neil Pharaoh was eliminated. That will be very tough, but not quite impossible.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the two-party-preferred vote (which in all cases is between Labor and the Coalition) still shows incumbent Liberal MP Clem Newton-Brown beating Pharaoh by 25 votes. This shows that the Greens benefited from stronger preference flows than Labor. Most of these preferences would have come from the other main progressive party, but the Greens also appear to have done slightly better from minor candidates, and this could partly explain them being in a stronger position in a head-to-head contest with the Liberal.

If Labor somehow were to overturn the Greens’ 41-vote margin, this could, therefore, result in Newton-Brown winning. If Labor were to win by finding another batch of Labor votes not correctly counted, then that would result in their 2PP position improving and their party winning. But if Labor were to take the lead over the Greens by knocking out Greens votes (most of which would have flowed to Labor as preferences) then this would improve Newton-Brown’s position and give him the seat.

So, how did the preference distribution work out?

The following chart allows you to click through to each stage.

On primary votes, Labor led the Greens by 408 votes.

First of all, preferences from the three independents and Family First were distributed. The Greens gained 28.6% of these preferences, Liberal 30.5%, Labor 21.55% and Animal Justice 19.3%. In raw numbers, this narrowed Labor’s lead over the Greens by 60 votes, from 408 to 348.

Then Animal Justice was excluded. 57.8% of their preferences flowed to the Greens, with 23.4% flowing to the Liberal and 18.8% to Labor. In raw numbers, the Greens gained 389 more preferences than Labor, and this overturned Labor’s 348-vote lead and gave the Greens a 41-vote lead.

Following this turnaround, Labor’s 9,950 preferences were distributed. The Greens needed about 85.7% of these preferences to win, and they gained just over 87%. The Greens won 8,659 Labor preferences and the Liberal Party won only 1,291 preferences.

And that’s how they did it.

Update: We now have widespread reports that the Greens have won the distribution of preferences by a 128-vote margin over sitting Liberal MP Clem Newton-Brown.

I think it’s reasonable to assume there will need to be a recount, in particular to confirm that the Greens outpolled the ALP’s Neil Pharaoh, since the 38-vote margin is very slim.

Pending that recount, it’s a historic result. Prior to this election, the Greens had only ever won two single-member seats at a general election – federal Melbourne in 2010 and 2013, and Balmain at the 2011 NSW state election. The Victorian Greens have now won two seats in their breakthrough, including one seat being won off a Liberal, and from third place.

Original post: The Victorian Electoral Commission has been distributed preferences in Prahran today to determine which of the two progressive parties will be pitted against the Liberal Party for the final seat.

The VEC has just completed distributing preferences from the fourth-placed Animal Justice Party producing the following result:

• 17,097 – Clem Newton Brown (LIB)
• 9,991 – Sam Hibbins (GRN)
• 9,953 – Neil Pharaoh (ALP)

On these numbers, there will surely need to be some kind of recount, but we will also now be waiting for some kind of distribution of preferences between Hibbins and Newton-Brown to work out if the Greens can gain enough preferences to win.

Hibbins will need to gain 85.7% of Labor preferences (including votes from minor candidates that flowed to Labor) to win the seat. That’s a very high proportion, but it is possible.

Either way, it seems likely that the final Liberal-vs-Green count will be tight, and may trigger some kind of recount, as will the narrowness of the count between Hibbins and Pharoah. This race will drag on for a number of days.

Prahran has been the stand-out seat in terms of late counting for the Victorian state election. While every other seat has now been decided, Prahran remains too close to call – with three different candidates still in the running.

At first glance, it appears that Liberal MP Clem Newton-Brown is narrowly leading Labor candidate Neil Pharoah after preferences by 41 votes. While that is extremely close, most votes have now been counted on a ‘two-party-preferred’ basis between Labor and Liberal, so this in normal circumstances would have put Newton-Brown in a strong position to win.

But Pharoah is only 426 votes ahead of the Greens’ Sam Hibbins on primary votes, and is in serious danger of falling behind the Greens based on preferences from minor parties.

In terms of primary votes counted, it appears that most votes have been counted. A Greens scrutineer told me that they expect approximately 100 more votes to be added to the count. It is worth noting that on Sunday another sixteen Greens votes were found, which will narrow the Labor lead over the Greens slightly further.

With a gap of 410 votes, there are then another batch of votes for candidates other than Labor, Liberal or Green. At the time of writing, there are 1,669 votes cast either for the Animal Justice Party, Family First or one of three independents. Almost half of these votes are for the Animal Justice Party, who preferenced the Greens.

The Greens have had a large team of scrutineers covering the count, with a more limited presence from Labor and Liberal. The Greens have tracked preferences from those minor candidates, and believe that they will gain enough preferences to overtake Labor.

If the Greens overtake Labor, there will be a lot more uncertainty about the result, since the VEC has not been undertaking an indicative Liberal-Green count in the way they have for Liberal-Labor. The Greens will need to gain about 83% of preferences from Labor and the minor candidates, which is a big ask, but evidence from scrutineers suggests that the Greens have a chance of winning.

Later today, the VEC will be undertaking the distribution of preferences, which will determine who out of Labor or the Greens will come second and challenge the Liberal MP for the seat. It’s certainly worth watching.

If the Greens manage to win despite coming third on primary votes, it will be a rare result without many precedents. In recent years, the only examples I am aware of were the 2009 Frome by-election in South Australia and Denison at the 2010 federal election – in both cases an independent won from third place. Prahran would also be the first time in Australia that the Greens have won a seat off the Liberal Party.

In the meantime, continue reading below the fold for some analysis of the booth results in Prahran.

Read the rest of this entry »

The last week has been painfully slow as we wait for the final figures from the Victorian state election.

At the moment, there are a small number of seats still in contention. Labor holds slim leads in Bentleigh and Frankston, but this is probably enough to hold on in those two seats. In Prahran, it still remains unclear whether Labor or the Greens will come second. If Labor comes second, they are trailing the Liberal Party by a small margin and could well take the lead when all votes are counted. If the Greens come second, we have no idea if they will do better or worse than Labor after preferences.

The VEC still has not counted a lot of absentee votes in most seats, and before completing that process they have moved on to doing a ‘recheck’ of all votes cast.

This process is important, but frustratingly the VEC has decided to take down all vote data from before the rechecking. In contrast, the AEC only replaces original data with rechecked data when it comes available. The VEC’s decision means that in some seats the number of votes in the results on the website (and on websites such as ABC Elections that rely on the VEC for data) dropped from 30-40,000 to less than 10,000 overnight.

This makes it particularly difficult to assess what is going on in the Legislative Council. There are two different tools which usefully convert the VEC results data into a prediction of results – Antony Green’s calculator and Tom Clement’s analysis at Geeklections. But both rely on the VEC results, and huge chunks of the upper house results are missing. Sometimes the pattern of results is biased, with particular towns or electorates counted in whole and others not counted at all. As an example, the VEC’s website lists less than 20% turnout for Western Metro region, but speaking to a local Greens scrutineer they had data for 70% turnout, which entirely changes the results.

So I won’t focus on the Legislative Council today, and instead look at the pattern of swings in the Legislative Assembly.

Out of the 82 ‘classic’ seats where Labor and Coalition candidates both came in the top two, Labor gained a positive swing after preferences in 72 seats, and suffered small negative swings in ten seats.

The largest swing to Labor was in Morwell, where Labor’s vote after preferences jumped by 11.5%. Labor gained swings of over 6% in another 11 seats.

Looking at swing by upper house region, the Labor two-party-preferred vote went up the most in Eastern Victoria (an average 4.8% swing) and Southern Metropolitan (4.2%): both regions dominated by the Coalition. In South-Eastern Metropolitan, Labor’s vote only went up by an average of 1.6%, despite gaining three extra seats. This is partly due to Labor’s vote falling in Dandenong, Narre Warren North and Narre Warren South.

Labor also competed with the Greens for four seats in the inner city (not counting Prahran, where the Liberal Party will come in the top two). The Greens gained a large 6.8% swing in Melbourne, and smaller swings of 2.1% and 2.7% in Richmond and Northcote respectively.

The result was a good one for the Greens, winning their first lower house seat and on track to increase their number of MLCs. At the moment it looks likely that the Greens will win five upper house seats, one lower house seat, and still have a chance in Prahran. But this result did not come about due to a general rise in the Greens vote. At the moment, the Greens vote looks steady at 11.2% in the lower house, after earlier appearing to have dropped.

In fact, the Greens have managed to increase their vote in the inner city (particularly in Melbourne), while the vote dropped in other suburbs. Despite campaigning hard in the four key seats at the southern end of the North Metro region, the Greens experienced an average swing of only 0.6% across the region, thanks to big drops in the Greens votes in the outer north of Melbourne. The Greens lower house vote also dropped in West Metro and increased in Western Victoria.

Labor is set to form government, but the results have proven to be extremely complicated. At the moment, Labor is only guaranteed to win 44 out of 88 seats, although they are leading in three other seats. In this post, I run through the breakdown of seats that are still close, and which seats Labor regained.

If you’re interested in the results of the Victorian election, you might want to listen to the podcast of the Election Nerds show on 2SER from Saturday evening. I joined the program towards the end of the hour to discuss the results.

At the time of writing, there are still a number of seats where the result has not been locked down.

The ALP has effectively ‘regained’ four of the five seats that were held by Labor MPs but redistributed into Liberal seats: Bellarine, Monbulk, Wendouree and Yan Yean. In addition, Labor has gained Mordialloc.

At the moment the only Labor seat the party has not retained is Melbourne – the Greens are leading, but are not currently certain of victory.

This brings Labor to a total of 44 seats, which is one short of a majority.

Labor is then leading in three other seats on the Frankston line: Bentleigh, Carrum and Frankston.

After early scares, the Coalition appears to have held on in Morwell, Ripon and South Barwon. In Ripon, the Liberal Party has in practice gained the seat, which was redistributed from a Labor seat into a Liberal seat.

The Greens’ chances in Northcote, Richmond and Brunswick have disappeared, but the race is still entirely up in the air in Prahran. The Labor candidate is 52 votes ahead of the Greens candidate, with 912 votes for other candidates that could change the balance. The Liberal Party is leading the ALP after preferences by only 178 votes, assuming Labor comes second.

In the following table, I’ve run through the eight closest seats. In each seat, I’ve estimated how many votes are left to count, based on the 2010 turnout figures, and then used that to calculate what two-candidate-preferred (2CP) vote would be needed by the party coming second for them to overturn the current outcome.

Update Monday 10:40pm

I’ve added in updated figures. I’ve also added in an assumption that some of the remaining votes will be informally (obviously) which makes it slightly harder for the trailing candidate to win. There has been no update in Carrum, but in every other seat a large proportion of the remaining votes have been counted.

The Coalition has strongly solidified their holds on Morwell, Ripon and South Barwon. This gives the Coalition 38 seats in the Legislative Assembly.

Labor has also solidified their hold on Bentleigh, Carrum and Frankston – none of these seats are completely out of the reach of the Liberal Party, but the gap is widening substantially. It’s also likely that the next update from Carrum will push that seat out of reach. These three seats bring Labor to 47 seats.

Today’s updates in Melbourne have also made it much harder for Labor to win that seat, and it’s hard to see Labor winning.

Prahran remains extremely close. Labor has regained the two-party-preferred lead by the slimmest of margins. In addition, Labor is not certain of coming second after preferences. Labor’s lead over the Greens is now over 600 votes, but will likely shrink with the addition of absentee votes. This is not likely to be enough to put the Greens in second place on primary votes, but the Greens are also likely to benefit from Animal Justice Party preferences that could still push them into second place.

It’s almost impossible, without a Liberal-Green two-candidate-preferred count, to predict whether Labor’s preferences would break to the Greens in sufficient numbers to give them the seat.

The current count in the Legislative Council is extremely complicated, with both major parties falling a long way short of a majority. In this post, I run through the latest in each region’s count.

But first, a summary. Labor is going to find it very hard to construct a majority. It is possible that they will require both the Greens and an alliance of small right-wingers. However it’s also possible that extra gains by Labor and vaguely progressive groups like the Sex Party and Vote 1 Local Jobs will make it slightly easier, but still very complicated.

Overall, the ALP is on track to win at least 13 seats, with the Liberal Party winning 13, the Greens winning four, and the Shooters, Sex Party and DLP each winning one.

In addition there are five races that are too close to call. In short, these are:

• East Metro – Labor vs Greens
• North Vic – Labor vs Country Alliance vs Shooters (two seats)
• South Metro – Liberal vs Sex Party
• West Vic – Shooters vs Palmer United vs Vote 1 Local Jobs (one seat)

At the moment, the combined vote of Labor and the Greens adds up to eighteen seats, with 21 needed to pass legislation. Labor could win a nineteenth centre-left seat in North Vic. If they do so, they will still need two other minor party votes. If the Shooters win in Western Victoria or Northern Victoria they would be able to bring the government up to 21 votes, but it would be hard to get the Greens and Shooters to work together.

However there is an alternative scenario where Labor and the Greens could govern with the Sex Party if they hold on to their lead in North Metro and overtake the Liberal Party in South Metro, or possibly by working with Vote 1 Local Jobs if they win a seat in Western Victoria and Labor or the Sex Party fails in Northern Victoria or South Metro respectively.

Please come along for the ride.

Eastern Metropolitan

The Liberal Party has retained their three seats, and Labor has retained one of their two seats. The final seat is a race between Labor MLC Brian Tee and Greens candidate Samantha Dunn.

In the count, the first two Liberals and the first Labor candidate were elected on primary votes, with the third Liberal and the second Labor on about 75% of a quota and the Greens on about 65% of a quota. Through most of the count, minor party preferences funnel into the Australian Christians and the Voluntary Euthanasia Party.

Voluntary Euthanasia preferences mostly flow to the Greens, taking Dunn close to a quota, with some going to the Liberal Party. The exclusion of the Christians elects both the Liberal Party and the Greens. The Greens just narrowly pass a quota, and presumably most of the 0.2 quota surplus sitting with the Liberal Party would flow to the ALP, so the margin of victory for the Greens on current votes is about 2.5% of a quota, which is definitely vulnerable.

Eastern Victoria

The result in Eastern Victoria seems reasonably clear – the ALP has retained both of their seats, while the Coalition has retained two of their three seats. The third Coalition candidate – Liberal MLC Andrew Ronalds – has lost his seat to the Shooters and Fishers candidate Jeffrey Bourman.

The second Labor candidate’s margin of victory over the Greens is 25% of a quota – which is probably enough to not change.

Northern Metropolitan

In Northern Metropolitan, the ALP has retained their two seats, the Greens have retained their one seat and the Liberal Party has held one of their two seats. The fifth seat is likely to go to the Sex Party, with an outside chance for Family First. The Sex Party’s current margin over Family First for the final seat is about 17% of a quota, which will likely be enough to hold on.

Northern Victoria

The ALP, Liberal Party and Nationals have all retained one seat in this region. The final two seats are a race between the Shooters and Fishers, the Australian Country Alliance and Labor.

On the current count, the Shooters are elected on Coalition preferences, and then Labor preferences elect the Country Alliance over the Greens. If Labor overtakes the Greens they would win on Greens preferences. This gap currently is about 0.8% of the total vote.

South Eastern Metropolitan

The ALP and the Liberal Party have each retained two seats. The fifth seat (currently held by sitting Labor MLC Lee Tarlamis) is up for grabs. That seat is likely to go to the Greens’ Nina Springle, with small chances for the Sex Party or Labor.

At the key count, the Greens are on 52% of a quota, with Labor on 47% and the Sex Party on 37%. The Sex Party’s preferences then push the Greens well ahead of Labor, and the Greens then win on Labor’s preferences.

Southern Metropolitan

The Liberal Party has definitely won two seats, and Labor and the Greens one each. The Liberal Party is likely to win the final seat, but it could go to the Sex Party.

Western Metropolitan

Western Metropolitan looks set to produce a clear result: two Labor, one Liberal, one Green, one DLP.

Western Victoria

The ALP and the Liberal Party have each retained their two seats, with the third Coalition candidate, Nationals MLC David O’Brien, definitely losing his seat.

The race for the final seat is wide open. Tom Clement’s calculator gives a 57.5% chance to the Shooters, a 19.2% chance to Vote 1 Local Jobs and a 17.1% chance to the Palmer United Party. Currently Antony Green’s calculator is predicting a win for Vote 1 Local Jobs, as the Shooters are currently on track to fall behind the LDP by 38 votes in a key round and not make it far enough to win. If the Shooters overtake the LDP, that will change.

10:52pm – My last comment is about the Legislative Council. As it currently stands, the Legislative Council will include 14 Liberals and 2 Nationals, 13 Labor MLCs, five Greens, three Shooters and one member each for Family First, Country Alliance and the Democratic Labour Party.

I will return tomorrow with a focus on the upper house, but for now it’s worth noting that, while the ALP will hold a majority in the lower house, they will face a very difficult upper house. Labor will need to gain eight additional votes. Unless they win over the Coalition, they will need the Greens plus three of the small right-wing MLCs – which could either be the Shooters or all three of the other right-wingers. The six right-wingers are not enough on their own, nor are the Greens. Have a good night.

10:46pm – You’ll find here maps of the Victorian electoral map (both regional and metropolitan) – seats that have changed hands are shown in darker colours, and the three undecided seats are in white.

9:56pm – This adds up to 46 Labor seats, 37 Coalition seats, 1 Green, 1 Independent and three undecided seats.

9:52pm – I’d like to quickly revisit the Legislative Assembly. Despite a close race, it looks like Labor has retained Brunswick. In South Barwon, the Liberal Party has held on, and they look likely to win Ripon, which was Labor-held but notionally Liberal. This leaves three seats undecided: Morwell, Richmond and Prahran.

9:50pm – In Western Victoria, the Coalition and Labor have each retained two seats, with the final seat looking likely to go to a minor party – with the most likely winner being the Shooters. There’s a small chance for either the Greens, Palmer United, Vote 1 Local Jobs or the DLP.

9:49pm – In Western Metropolitan, the ALP has retained two seats and the Liberal Party has retained one seat. Tom at Geeklections gives the DLP and the Greens both a good chance to win, but Labor has a chance of winning a third seat instead of one of those two parties.

9:42pm – In South Metropolitan, the Liberal Party has won two seats, and probably three seats, and Labor has won one seat. The final seat is a race between Labor, the Greens and the Sex Party.

9:37pm – In South Eastern Metropolitan, the Labor and Liberal parties have each won two seats. The final seat is a race between Labor, the Greens and the Sex Party.

9:35pm – In Northern Victoria, the Coalition has held on to two seats and Labor one, with the final two seats a race between Labor, Coalition and the Country Alliance with chances for the Sex Party or the Shooters and Fishers.

9:29pm – In Northern Metropolitan, the ALP has retained two seats, with the Liberal Party and the Greens retaining one seat each. The final seat is a race between Labor, Liberal, Family First and the Sex Party.

9:27pm – In Eastern Victoria, the Shooters and Fishers are in a strong position to win one seat off the Liberal/National coalition. The ALP is likely to retain both of their seats, but could lose one of their seats to the Greens.

9:19pm – I’m trying to understand what’s going on in the Legislative Council now but unfortunately I can’t get ABC Elections to work. So I’m looking at Geeklections. In East Metro, the Liberal Party is likely to retain their three seats and the ALP is in a race with the Greens for one of their two seats.

9:14pm – The Greens are now 25 votes ahead of Labor in Prahran.

9:00pm – Here’s a quick summary of the current situation. Labor has held on to the five seats where the redistribution flipped a Labor seat into a notional Liberal seat – these five seats are Bellarine, Monbulk, Ripon, Yan Yean and Wendouree. Labor has also gained Bentleigh, Carrum, Mordialloc and Frankston in south-eastern Melbourne. The Greens have gained one Labor seat in Melbourne and has a chance of gaining Richmond and Brunswick from Labor. The Liberal Party looks likely to lose Prahran, but there is an extremely close race between Labor and Greens for second place, which will determine who wins.

7:57pm – For the Greens, they are looking very good to win in Melbourne, with possibilities in Prahran, Northcote and Brunswick, but there appears to be a swing against the Greens in Richmond.

7:50pm – I’m confident in calling that Labor has won the election. At the moment, Labor is on track to win Bellarine, Bentleigh, Carrum, Frankston, Mordialloc, Prahran and Wendouree, and is ahead in another six seats. While Labor is in danger of losing some seats to the Greens, they would still be on track to win a majority.

7:37pm – I count seven seats where Labor is definitely in the lead which are notional Liberal seats: Bentleigh, Mordialloc, Carrum, Monbulk, Bellarine, Wendouree and Yan Yean. If Labor can hold on in five of these seats they will win (excluding any losses to the Greens).

7:34pm – The Greens are currently ahead in Brunswick, but it’s far too early. I should point out that the very large swing to the Greens on primary votes is mostly due to the absence of independent candidate Phil Cleary, who ran for Brunswick in 2010 but is running for the upper house in 2014.

7:32pm – Labor is in a very strong position to win.

7:24pm – Independent Suzanna Sheed is on 33% off a substantial number of booths in Shepparton – the ABC is projecting a safe Nationals win but I’m not sure about that.

7:20pm – Big swing against the Liberal Party in Prahran – about 2/3s to Greens and 1/3 to Labor. The Greens targetted Prahran despite being in third place – if the swings in these first two booths is maintained, the Greens will gain ground but still come third.

7:17pm – Substantial swing to Labor in marginal seats of Bentleigh, Wendouree, Yan Yean, Carrum, Mordialloc, Monbulk and Bellarine. Those six seats would be enough to put Labor in power.

7:12pm – There’s a big swing to Labor in Eildon in northern Victoria.

7:10pm – At the moment the ALP is up about 3% on the two-party-preferred vote – that’s easily enough for Labor to win if it is a uniform swing.

7:08pm – The ABC has given away a large number of seats but none of them particularly marginal.

6:31pm – We’re getting the usual early figures in, but nothing that tells us anything interesting.

6:00pm – Polls have just closed in Victoria’s state election. We should start getting some solid results around 6:45pm.