This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
South Australian election, plus Batman byelection results – live
Batman byelection a nailbiter as South Australian election results come in – live
(35 minutes later)
Some live images of #Batman by-election counting. Over 25 polling places returned on first preferences so far. See results at https://t.co/IUbNs5V6cw #auspol pic.twitter.com/mlYIQhv6O0
Labor’s social media team is on it in South Australia
I'm at the Batman Labor function st the Thornbury Theatre ... they're feeling pretty confident on early results #BatmanVotes
#prayforCalla
It is an absolute heart stopper/cliffhanger/nail biter in Melbourne. Right now Ged Kearney is pulling ahead of Alex Bhatal– fascinatingly Kearney is doing well in the south of the electorate, which is Greens heartland, and comparatively less well in the north, particularly Reservoir.
Labor will be daring to dream right now, but we’ve still got a fair whack of the Northcote vote to come. Two days ago I reported that Labor’s private polling had the contest absolutely neck and neck. Looks like they were right.
At least three independents look set to retain their seats in South Australia (not including any SA Best candidates).
Labor pulling ahead in Batman, but there are some big Northcote booths to come #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
Sitting independent Geoff Brock looks set to win a third full term in Frome. Liberal-turned-Independent Troy Bell has a substantial lead in Mount Gambier, while ex-Labor MP Frances Bedford has a substantial lead in Florey.
You would have to say that one of the biggest things in Labor’s favour in batman is David Feeney is no longer the candidate. Ged Kearney may have some of the *celebrity* candidate about her, but she also has a proven track record with core Labor values. It is still too early to call, but at this stage, it means Labor has a fighting chance to hold the seat.
The larger the crossbench, the more likely we will end up with a hung parliament, so these results improve the chances we won’t see a clear result.
Antony Green is warning us he does not expect to call the South Australian election early tonight.
Antony Green is predicting a Labor win in Batman. (50 per cent of the vote has been counted and Labor is ahead)
Batman is coming in faster than South Australia at the moment, where just under 2% of the vote has been counted.
Reaction at the Labor party to @AntonyGreenABC predicting Ged to win. #batmanvotes @AmyRemeikis pic.twitter.com/qlF6KFzoTJ
In Melbourne, Ben Raue tells us:
Ben Raue is still crunching the Batman numbers -
There’s been a few more very good results for Labor in the south of Batman. They are up 7.9% after preferences in Clifton Hill, 4.7% in Collingwood North and 3.6% in Westgarth – all medium-sized southern booths in the Greens heartland. Overall the Labor swing after preferences is sitting on 0.7%.
28 booths have reported two-candidate-preferred votes in Batman and the vote is ticking up slowly for Labor. Their swing is now 0.69%.
Greens volunteers and members at Tallboy and Moose, the hipster pub where Alex Bhathal is holding her election party, are nervously refreshing the AEC website on their phones and sharing photos of vandalised campaign signs, which have been variously attributed to Labor or to “anti-Alex Greens”.
I’ve divided up polling booths into three areas: the centre, north and south. The swing to Labor in the south is running at just over 5%, with a swing of 2.6% in the centre. Meanwhile the Greens vote is up 2.5% in the north.
One Greens watcher tells me there will be “a reckoning” within the party if Bhathal is elected to clamp down on dissenting voices. They say there has almost been a “willingness to lose” among some Greens.
29 of 46 polling places returned and 40.06% votes counted, Labor 52% Greens 48% #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
Bhathal herself has been dropped off at home after campaigning past 6pm (I have been told it took some effort to usher her into a car) and will not turn up here until the result is known.
On the issue of postal votes, Stephen Murray, who really enjoys this kind of thing (and thank goodness he does) crunched the numbers a little earlier:
For those looking for the results as they come in, you will find Batman here and South Australia here.
There were 14,631 applications for postal votes - with 8149 (55.7%) of these coming through the ALP; 3927 (26.8%) made to the AEC online;2141 (14.6%) to general ("permanently" registered) postal voters396 (2.7%) paper applications to the AEC18 (0.12%) made otherwise
Quick jump to international politics, because this is important:
Our intrepid Melbourne reporter Calla Wahlquist has headed over to Ged Kearney’s party
#BREAKING: Russia has expelled 23 British diplomats and halted the British Council in response to the UK's actions over a nerve agent attack. pic.twitter.com/8nMa3QVSMy
Labor MUCH more positive. cc @AmyRemeikis #batman votes pic.twitter.com/ezWojLmTG1
Labor tells us they are happy with what is happening in the southern part of the seat. But this is a very fast-moving beast.
There are a lot of seats in South Australia yet to be called (some are too close, others just don’t have any data), but it is clear that SA Best won’t be challenging the major parties across a vast swathe of seats.
With 18 of 46 polling places, both Labor and the Greens have a +5% swing #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
SA Best is only competing in a handful of seats so far, with Labor and Liberal retaining a substantial number of their safer seats.
We don’t have much in from South Australia (hence the focus on Batman) but there are a few marginal Liberal seats where Labor is doing quite well and could be on track to gain seats, including:
The best prospect for SA Best will be to win a handful of crossbench seats. This outcome has become obvious over the last few weeks, but it’s worth stating that the actual results confirm this prediction.
Adelaide – Labor up 5% with 3.9% counted
In Hartley, the Liberals are still ahead on 40 per cent, (Vincent Tarzia is the incumbent) and Nick Xenophon is on 25 per cent.
Waite – Labor up almost 10% with 1.7% counted
Labor’s candidate Grace Portolesi looks like coming second though, if the Greens preferences flow through to her, meaning Tarzia would hold on.
This would be enough of a swing for Labor to win Adelaide and would leave Waite as a virtual tie.
At the SA-Best party function at Palace Nova cinemas in the Adelaide city centre, a few dozen campaign volunteers are watching Nick Xenophon being interviewed by ABC News on the big screen.
Just for the record, the Liberals have said they would not govern with SA Best in the event of a hung parliament.
There’s plenty of grumbling about the questions – the campaign extras feel the media haven’t been fair on their leading man over the past few weeks, and are worried this will torpedo their chances.
Labor got across the line in the last state election in 2014 with the support of a couple of independents but we have seen boundary redistributions since then.
All the volunteers who spoke to Guardian Australia had joined the SA-Best campaign because they’d been personally helped at some point by Xenophon, from a nurse at the aged care facility at the centre of the Oakden abuse scandal to someone who’d been helped in a family matter.
The ALP has not ruled out working with the crossbench to stay in government, but you have to ask (and I say this as a Queenslander who saw Labor win an election it really should have lost and then get wiped out at the following election) would you want to?
A typical example is Kanmantoo labourer Bryan Cunnington, watching the silver screen with a Coopers pale ale in hand and wearing a luminous orange “Grab a stick and stick it up em” shirt (he also has a spare one in white).
Silly question, I know.
Cunnington been volunteering with Xenophon since the 2007 federal senate run, because the candidate had helped him find a job when he was unemployed.
We have six booths reporting preferences now. Labor has dropped by over 4% in Reservoir but are gaining small swings in the five other booths.
“I like Nick because he’s sensible, and working for the people, not the one percent,” he says.
The overall swing to the Greens sits at 0.55%, short of what they need to win. The trend in those booths doesn’t look good for the Greens but the swings to Labor aren’t big enough to close the door.
With 169 of South Australia’s 701 booths counted, Labor looks like having won 11 seats, the Liberal party looks like claiming 12 and the crossbench is looking at one seat.
Speaking to Sky News, Nick Xenophon said he was trying to “defy political gravity” by running in Hartley, but “that is where I live” so that is where he wanted to run.
But that is a very early count.
As for what will happen if SA Best wins seats but he fails in his own bid?
Another factor to keep in mind with Batman: 30% of the vote still to come from postals and pre-poll #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
Don’t write me off just yet, but I will be around to be a mentor, supporter to those who are elected, if I don’t get across the line, but at this stage, I am not conceding anything.
The overall Batman result isn’t shifting. Labor is leading but not by enough to call the seat. But there have been been some remarkable results.
He said he was hoping for a handful of seats in the lower house and between two and four in the upper house.
Labor polled over 60% after preferences in Bundoora South in 2016. The result is a perfect tie this year – 513 votes each.
With 14.6% of the vote counted, Antony Green’s computer is predicting a Labor win in Batman, but the man himself stresses this will continue to go back and forth for a while.
That’s a swing of 10.3%.
Or, as the expert Ben Raue tells us:
Labor folks on the ground in Batman telling me there are big movements their way across the south of the electorate #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
The primary vote figures from Batman are all over the place, with Labor gaining a much bigger primary vote swing in the southern booths of Alphington North and Collingwood North.
Speaking to Sky, Adam Bandt said he was hearing “a lot of people were caught on the hop and caught out of state”, with turnout an issue for the Greens (as it is for Labor) .
We will have to wait for the preferences to be distributed to know more.
He now says “all going well” this will be the last time he speaks as the only Greens lower house MP.
So it is very close in Batman at this stage. We are still waiting on results from South Australia but so far in the Melbourne byelection there has been a swing to the Greens in the north and swings to Labor in the south.
Word from the Greens: the party is “still optimistic”.
This is getting interesting.
Word from Labor party: it’s “cautiously optimistic”.
Those booths are starting to pile in for Batman.
At this stage, Antony Green’s computer is predicting a Labor win, with a slight swing.
With six of 46 polling places counted, Greens +7% and Labor +4% #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
2PP with half the polling places counted, Labor 51.46% Greens 48.54% #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
So we now have five booths reporting primary votes in Batman, and three booths reporting two-candidate-preferred votes.
Labor’s vote after preferences has dropped 4.4% in Reservoir, and gone up 1.6% in Reservoir West, and has gone up 1.8% in the small booth of Murray in the centre of the seat.
Overall this translates into a swing of 0.88% to the Greens. The Greens need a swing of 1.03%, so it’s extremely close.
