The Tally Room

Last night’s result was extremely bad for the Liberal Party. We won’t know who has won for sure for a few days or even a week, but it looks most likely that independent candidate Joe McGirr has won, and Labor probably has the next best shot at winning.

I’ve got a piece going up in the Guardian today analysing the broader significance of the result, but I’d just quickly note that this result follows up on large double-digit swings from the Nationals to the Shooters at by-elections in Orange, Cootamundra and Murray, which saw one of those seats fall. We have to assume that the coalition is on track for a big thumping in its rural heartland in March.

In this post I want to cover what the voting patterns were (including a map and a booth breakdown) and then how the preferences could shake out.

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Primary votes

Two-party-preferred votes

12:11 – Okay, not long ago we got the primary votes for the Wagga Wagga pre-poll centre. Following this point the NSWEC took down the two-party-preferred count, presumably because they’ll be running a Liberal vs McGirr 2CP count. While there is no guarantee that Labor couldn’t jump from third into second on minor candidate preferences, that 2CP count would give us a good sense of who will win. It seems likely McGirr will win that count.

That’s it for tonight, I’ll return tomorrow with some maps and analysis.

11:00 – If you found this work useful, please consider signing up as a donor on Patreon. It helps fund the work I do on this website as well as the podcast, which will cover this result in our next episode.

10:21 – We’re just waiting for one more booth tonight – Antony Green estimates there’s 12,000 votes at the Wagga pre-poll centre, and we should see these votes tonight. They’ll give us a much better idea of the result.

9:09 – We now have 2748 pre-poll votes reported for both primary and two-party-preferred votes. I expect more pre-poll votes, whereas my projection model compares these votes to the total pre-poll vote from 2015, so I’ve turned off the projections. The pre-poll swings so far have been slightly less bad for the Liberal Party than the election-day votes.

8:52 – We now have all ordinary election-day primary votes and are close to having two-party-preferred votes from all of the same booths (just two outstanding). Labor has taken a small but clear lead on the two-party-preferred vote, but that doesn’t tell us anything about how preferences would flow in a McGirr vs Liberal or McGirr vs Labor count.

8:41 – Labor has now taken a narrow lead on the 2PP count, but McGirr remains the favourite to win. Let’s wait for the pre-poll and iVotes before making any further conclusions about McGirr’s chances.

8:25 – If Labor were to come third and the final count was a Liberal vs McGirr race, it’s hard to see McGirr losing. He will be attracting Labor, Greens, Shooters and Funnell preferences, with only the CDP (on 1.9%) favouring the Liberal candidate.

8:11 – The two-party-preferred count remains close with the Liberal Party leading, but it seems pointless since McGirr seems set to make the top two.

7:58 – Nick Casmirri has pointed me to the ABC Elections website which includes the how-to-votes. Independent Paul Funnell has directed preferences to Joe McGirr. The Shooters have directed preferences to Labor, then McGirr, with the Liberal Party last. This would suggest that the Liberals are likely to stay in third place with most preferences splitting between Labor and McGirr, and then Liberal preferences will decide the outcome. The Liberal how-to-vote advises a ‘just vote 1’, but you’d assume they would favour McGirr, who has to be considered the favourite now.

7:53 – And the Liberals have now fallen into third. If the Liberals stay in third, I would presume that McGirr would do better than Labor from Shooters/Liberal preferences, but it won’t get resolved tonight.

7:47 – Alright we now have a lot more of the vote, including a lot of votes from urban Wagga Wagga, and the Liberal Party is in serious danger of falling into third place. The anti-Liberal primary vote swing is now over 30%, while the swing to Labor on the 2PP vote is up to 12.1%, which is almost enough for Labor to win. It appears that urban Wagga Wagga has swung particularly severely against the Liberal Party, with only 21% of the vote in these booths so far.

7:21 – We now have a lot more votes, and it’s clear that the Liberal Party will poll under 30%, and quite possibly falling behind McGirr on the primary vote. We have five booths reporting 2PP figures, and Labor is managing a swing of only 8% which isn’t close to enough to win, so it seems like the Liberal Party will face more danger if McGirr can make it to the top two.

7:04 – I’ll be away for a minute, but we’ve just got our third 3PP booth, suggesting that Labor isn’t doing well enough to win if they end up facing off against the Liberals, but the primary vote swing against the Liberals remains around 28.7%, which is brutal. We still have nothing at all from urban Wagga Wagga.

7:00 – You think you’ve seen the worst anti-Liberal swings and then your expectations are exceeded. There’s a 36% primary vote swing against the Liberal Party at Lockhart Central. We still have no results from urban Wagga.

6:58 – The Liberal primary vote is looking a bit better after Pleasant Hills and Collingullie, where they only suffered swings around 21%, so they are currently projected to top the primary vote, but not much ahead of Labor or McGirr.

6:55 – Pleasant Hills looked better for the Liberal Party on the 2PP, which has pushed the 2PP swing to Labor under 10%. Again, samples are too small.

6:52 – 21% swing against the Liberal Party at Pleasant Hills, which is their best result so far. Worth noting that we have no results from the Wagga Wagga urban area yet.

6:48 – Booth #3 is Uranquinty. The Liberal primary vote dropped from 53.3% to 20.6% – a swing of over 30%. Joe McGirr polled almost 30%.

6:46 – We now have a two-party-preferred count from Talbingo and Labor has won the booth narrowly – 50 votes to 48, with 22 votes exhausting. This translates into a 15% swing, which would translate into a Labor win if this applied to the whole electorate (which you shouldn’t do). Of course we don’t know who will make the top two – if McGirr comes in the top two the 2PP count won’t matter.

6:40 – The second booth – another small one – is Yerong Creek. We’ve seen another swing of over 28%, with McGirr polling 26.5%. Far too early to say whether McGirr or Labor’s Hayes is a contender but the Liberals are doing very poorly. These two booths are both relatively good booths for the Liberal Party so the projected result pushes down the Liberal vote and lifts the Labor vote.

6:30 – We have one small booth (Talbingo) where there was a 28% swing against the Liberal candidate.

6:00 – Polls have just closed in the Wagga Wagga by-election. I’ll be updating this occasionally through the night.