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Batman byelection a nailbiter as South Australian election results come in – live Labor claims victory in Batman byelection as Liberals edge ahead in South Australia – live
(35 minutes later)
Labor’s social media team is on it in South Australia The Greens have not conceded as yet but Labor is confident enough to declare Ged Kearney as the winner of the Batman byelection contest.
And they tell me, they look like doing it with a slight swing to them to boot.
BREAKING: Labor has just called it. They have claimed Batman #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
And from my feverish, tea-stained throne, this is also what I am hearing:
Labor still a bit cautious about pre-poll, but braver souls are now prepared to say they've got this #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
We now have all but two election-day booths reporting results in Batman and the swing to Labor has blown out to 1.7%.
We are still waiting for up to 30,000 pre-poll and postal votes, with Labor leading by about 3,000 votes. The Greens would need about 55% of the remaining votes, which would be quite remarkable.
I’m not calling Batman for Labor quite yet but we’re getting close.
Nick Xenophon has not conceded but he has admitted he is not having the night he thought he would be having when he announced his campaign:
This is, this is not the beginning of the end, it’s actually the end of the beginning. Because I think we’re going to see some very interesting things happening. We’ll have a presence in the state parliament and we’ll build on that presence and build on it, so that every day, for the next four years, we’ll hold the government, the next government of South Australia, to account. We’ll hold the opposition to account, we’ll make the parliament a work house, not the rocking horse it is now. Let’s wait and see what happens. It will be a long night. We won’t have an idea for three or four days as to what is happening. It could be some issues about some of the misleading material put out by the major parties and the hotels association. My final remarks to you is thank you to the bottom of your heart, to the campaign team, to all the candidates who did a very brave thing. It takes a lot of courage to run for parliament and it’s been pretty nerve-wracking for a lot of people, pretty daunting. But every one of the candidates I ran with did SA Best proud and did the state proud for the way they conducted themselves.
The South Australian result is looking fairly dismal for SA Best at the moment. By my quick count, I have the Liberals on 19 seats, Labor on 17 seats, three independents, and Labor and Liberal still competing for five close seats (with no data from two other marginal seats).
SA Best only appears to have a good shot at winning a single seat – the Adelaide Hills district of Heysen, in the heart of the federal seat of Mayo.
It has come in the top two in quite a few seats but in most of them it is not polling enough to have a chance of winning. It is sitting on just under 15% of the statewide vote right now.
SA Best’s leader, Nick Xenophon, is sitting on a primary vote of 26% in Hartley. That’s about 15 percentage points behind the Liberal MP, Vincent Tarzia. He’s only managing 42% of the vote after preferences. Unless there is a dramatic shift in the remaining booths, Xenophon will be without a seat at the end of the night.
I’m listening to a lot of commentary, and it might be the fact that I am still slightly feverish, but I’m a little shocked at the number of people pointing out that the primary vote for the major parties in the South Australian election looks like being fairly low.
If anyone has been paying attention to politics at any time in the last few years, a low primary vote for the majors is nothing new. The Liberals primary vote is traditionally higher than Labor’s but even that has been dropping. Because, and I know this probably shouldn’t be the newsflash it seems to be, people are sort of sick of politics.
And so they lodge their votes with the third-party choices. Which we are seeing growing. And the biggest problem the Liberals will have moving forwards is there seems to be more third-party choices emerging among its voters, cannibalising its vote, then there is on the Labor side of the political fence.
And the biggest issue for both major parties there is those preference flows can go anywhere. One Nation, SA Best and to a lesser extent, Australian Conservative voters do not follow how-to-vote cards.
There is a trend towards voters changing how they view elections. But the political parties still seem a little behind that -– it is going to be a very interesting time ahead of us.
“It has been quite an election campaign,” Nick Xenophon tells his party, acknowledging that the results “have been mixed”.
“We have come second in a whole swag of seats … so that is a pretty good foundation to build on,” he says, adding: “This has been an incredible campaign, when you consider we did this on a shoestring, when you consider the major parties spent more time fighting SA Best [than each other].”
He also mentions the campaign the hotels industry ran against his party in “a brutal and bruising campaign”.
The swing to Labor is now up over 1% in Batman, which would double their margin in the seat from 1% to 2%.
Labor has gained a swing of almost 11% in the Northcote South booth in the Greens’ heartland. The Greens polled about 66% after preferences at this booth in 2016 but this has dropped to about 55%.
There are a bunch of quite strong swings to the Greens at the northern end of the seat, gaining 5.1% in Kingsbury and 4.6% in Burbank.
But these booths are being outweighed by a lot of small swings to Labor in the centre of the seat and some whacking big swings to Labor at the southern end.
The longtime Labor strategist Bruce Hawker just told the Sky News panel he is sitting on that “obviously, they are not going to win” in relation to Labor’s chances in South Australia.
He thinks it is an “extraordinary result” though, that Labor has held on to some core seats, given the Queensland experience in 2012 (which he has intimate knowledge of) which saw the party there wiped out to just seven seats after 14 years in power.
Take from that what you will.
Christopher Pyne is counting 22 seats for the Liberals – you need 24 to win in SA. He is basing his count on what his people are reporting from the vote.
Red-clad volunteers at the event at Thornbury theatre erupted intocheers at the ABC election analyst Antony Green’s prediction of a Labor win.
They are now handing out party poppers in anticipation of Ged Kearney’s arrival, which is expected imminently. Everyone here sees it as a solid Labor victory, despite nearly 30% of the vote being in pre-poll or postal.
Labor’s social media team is on it in South Australia.
Congratulations @JayWeatherill! pic.twitter.com/12RXQbj0iKCongratulations @JayWeatherill! pic.twitter.com/12RXQbj0iK
#prayforCalla#prayforCalla
Terrible songs though. @AmyRemeikis pic.twitter.com/EaGN1krC7CTerrible songs though. @AmyRemeikis pic.twitter.com/EaGN1krC7C
At least three independents look set to retain their seats in South Australia (not including any SA Best candidates).At least three independents look set to retain their seats in South Australia (not including any SA Best candidates).
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. The sitting independent Geoff Brock looks set to win a third full term in Frome. The Liberal-turned-independent Troy Bell has a substantial lead in Mount Gambier, while the ex-Labor MP Frances Bedford has a substantial lead in Florey.
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.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 predicting a Labor win in Batman. (50 per cent of the vote has been counted and Labor is ahead) Antony Green is predicting a Labor win in Batman (50% of the vote has been counted and Labor is ahead).
Reaction at the Labor party to @AntonyGreenABC predicting Ged to win. #batmanvotes @AmyRemeikis pic.twitter.com/qlF6KFzoTJReaction at the Labor party to @AntonyGreenABC predicting Ged to win. #batmanvotes @AmyRemeikis pic.twitter.com/qlF6KFzoTJ
Ben Raue is still crunching the Batman numbers - Ben Raue is still crunching the Batman numbers:
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%. Twenty-eight booths have reported two-candidate-preferred votes in Batman and the vote is ticking up slowly for Labor. Their swing is now 0.69%.
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.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.
29 of 46 polling places returned and 40.06% votes counted, Labor 52% Greens 48% #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis29 of 46 polling places returned and 40.06% votes counted, Labor 52% Greens 48% #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
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:
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
Our intrepid Melbourne reporter Calla Wahlquist has headed over to Ged Kearney’s party
Labor MUCH more positive. cc @AmyRemeikis #batman votes pic.twitter.com/ezWojLmTG1
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.
SA Best is only competing in a handful of seats so far, with Labor and Liberal retaining a substantial number of their safer seats.
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.
In Hartley, the Liberals are still ahead on 40 per cent, (Vincent Tarzia is the incumbent) and Nick Xenophon is on 25 per cent.
Labor’s candidate Grace Portolesi looks like coming second though, if the Greens preferences flow through to her, meaning Tarzia would hold on.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Cunnington been volunteering with Xenophon since the 2007 federal senate run, because the candidate had helped him find a job when he was unemployed.
“I like Nick because he’s sensible, and working for the people, not the one percent,” he says.
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.
But that is a very early count.
Another factor to keep in mind with Batman: 30% of the vote still to come from postals and pre-poll #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
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.
Labor polled over 60% after preferences in Bundoora South in 2016. The result is a perfect tie this year – 513 votes each.
That’s a swing of 10.3%.
Labor folks on the ground in Batman telling me there are big movements their way across the south of the electorate #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis
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) .
He now says “all going well” this will be the last time he speaks as the only Greens lower house MP.
Word from the Greens: the party is “still optimistic”.
Word from Labor party: it’s “cautiously optimistic”.
At this stage, Antony Green’s computer is predicting a Labor win, with a slight swing.
2PP with half the polling places counted, Labor 51.46% Greens 48.54% #BatmanVotes #auspol @AmyRemeikis