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Super Saturday elections: final votes cast in Longman and Braddon – politics live Super Saturday elections: counting begins in Mayo, Braddon and Longman – politics live
(35 minutes later)
Labor is performing well so far in Braddon and Longman.
We have twelve booths reporting preferences in Braddon, and Labor’s Justine Keay is up 2.1%.
There’s also a large 16% primary vote for independent fisherman candidate Craig Garland, which has held up even with one third of booths reporting, but we’d expect that vote to drop a bit as the more urban booths report.
We don’t have any two-party-preferred votes in Longman, but we do have primary votes from six booths. This sample has Labor’s Susan Lamb up 6.4%, while the LNP’s Trevor Ruthenberg is down 10.1%.
And in Braddon
25 of 71 polling places returned in Braddon: the independent Garland has more than 16% of the vote #auspol #SuperSaturday @AmyRemeikis
Wayne Swan is at Caboolture (of course) and the volunteers behind him are going nuts as the ABC crosses to him.
He says that if Labor’s primary vote hovers around 40% then that’s not only a swing, it could offset the One Nation preference vulnerability.
You have to understand that at the last election our primary vote was 35. We only won because of those One Nation preferences. If we didn’t get those preferences last time we would have been on 48%. We have to get a solid swing on the primary vote to win the seat.”
Results are starting to roll in from the Caboolture booth – that is typically a Labor booth – and Susan Lamb has 600 votes to Trevor Ruthernberg’s 383 (that is first preferences).
Pauline Hanson, who is on a UK cruise, would be able to follow along with tonight’s shenanigans – it is just before 10am in her part of the world.
One of my favourite moments this election campaign has been when Hanson’s advisor referred to the cardboard cutouts of the One Nation leader which have been dotted around Longman polling booths since Friday, as almost as good as the real thing.
Just further to Ben’s post, United Voice not only volunteered for Susan Lamb’s campaign – they ran it. The left have the numbers in Queensland, which has made national conference fun, while also having an influence on the state parliament – premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is from the right, but her faction doesn’t have control.
Susan Lamb’s byelection party has a healthy number of volunteers from the United Voice union.
UV is rapidly increasing its influence within Labor in Queensland. The party now has seven former members who are state MPs, including a few in the state cabinet. They’re sometimes jokingly referred to as their own wing of the party.
Lamb had been, until her resignation, the lone Queensland federal MP aligned with the leftwing union.
So, keeping in mind that the equivalent of one second of an Oscar speech has been counted so far, my Queensland contacts must have hit the beers, because the messages are starting to roll through.
So far, both the LNP and Labor are saying the same thing - it is close. Labor feels sort of OK, and so does the LNP.
“It’s amazing that we are even in this race, so that’s a victory right there,” one LNP source has just messaged me.
To which I told them, and now you, that Longman is a little different to the usual byelection, in that it is not really a Labor seat to start with.
Wyatt Roy lost it in 2016 not because everyone suddenly decided they wanted to support Labor, but because Longman was annoyed Tony Abbott had been dumped – and that Roy had played such a huge role in that.
In a stroke of genius, one of the unions popped a giant photo of Roy and Malcolm Turnbull happily posing together at the GQ awards on a billboard truck and drove it around Longman for the last weeks of the campaign.
It worked. A hell of a lot of One Nation votes flowed to Labor and Susan Lamb won it by 0.7%.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a Labor seat. No matter the result tonight, the general election is going to be a hell of a fight as well.
History of Mayo
Mayo has traditionally been held by the Liberal party, but has had a tendency to flirt with minor parties of the centre and left on multiple occasions
The seat was created in 1984 and was won that year by Alexander Downer – son of a Menzies government minister and grandson of a colonial premier. Downer held the seat for the next 24 years, but faced strong challenges from the Democrats in 1990 and 1998.
Downer retired in 2008, and the Greens made a strong challenge for the seat at the subsequent byelection, polling 47% after preferences, but losing to Jamie Briggs. Briggs was re-elected twice and then famously lost in 2016 to the Nick Xenophon Team’s Rebekha Sharkie.
Geography of Mayo
Mayo is a vast seat covering areas to the south and east of Adelaide. The seat covers most of the Adelaide Hills, the Fleurieu peninsula and Kangaroo Island. Major towns in the seat include Mount Barker and Victor Harbor. While the seat is large, a majority of the seat’s population lies in a spine at the north-eastern end of the seat in the Adelaide Hills and Mount Barker.
Sharkie won most booths in the electorate in 2016, but does particularly well in Mount Barker.
History of Braddon
The seat of Braddon has effectively existed in a similar form to its current shape since 1903, although it was called “Darwin” until 1955.
The seat has tended to be very marginal, if with a slight lean towards Labor. Labor’s Sid Sidebottom won the seat in 1998 and held it until 2004, when Labor lost both of the northern Tasmanian seats in a backlash against Mark Latham’s forestry policy. He made a comeback three years later in 2007, and held the seat until 2013.
Brett Whiteley, who is recontesting Braddon as the Liberal candidate, held the seat for one term before losing to Justine Keay in 2016.
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Geography of Braddon
Braddon covers the north-western corner of Tasmania, as well as the whole west coast. There are very few people living along the west coast, so most of the seat’s population lies on the north coast of the electorate. The bigger towns include Burnie, Devonport and Ulverstone.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in most urban booths in Burnie, Devonport and Ulverstone, while the Liberal party tended to win most rural booths.
History of Longman
Longman is a marginal seat, but has tended to favour the LNP. The seat was held by Mal Brough throughout the Howard government, but he lost in 2007 to Labor’s Jon Sullivan.
Sullivan lost three years later to 20-year-old Wyatt Roy, who held the seat from 2010 to 2016.
Roy lost in 2016 to Susan Lamb with a swing of 7.7%, well above the average for marginal seats in Queensland.
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Geography of Longman
Longman covers towns on the urban fringe of Brisbane covering the space between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. It’s biggest centre is Caboolture, and it also covers Morayfield, Burpengary and a bunch of smaller towns, as well as Bribie Island.
There was a big difference in the 2016 vote across Longman. Labor won large majorities in the booths around Caboolture, with 60% or more of the two-party-preferred vote in every booth in the area. Labor won narrow majorities in the booths at the southern edge of the electorate. The LNP won a majority of the vote in the rural towns in the north-west of the seat, as well as those booths on Bribie Island or close to it.
Having a look at pre-poll, those six booths at Longman were needed – about 40% of voters have already hit the polls before today, according to the AEC.
That is part of a wider trend – pre-poll once and you end up doing it again and again and telling everyone how great it is – and then the pre-poll grows.
Braddon has had about 25% of voters head to the polls early.
You’ll find that data here.
Update – we have seen 0.4% of votes counted in Braddon.
Beyonce give me strength.
Woo! There have been about 200 votes counted.Woo! There have been about 200 votes counted.
What a time to be alive.What a time to be alive.
Status - we still know nothing. Status – we still know nothing.
We’re at the point of the night where no one actually has anything to say. So we are hearing a lot of predictions and recapping, but nothing we haven’t actually heard before.
For the record, the consensus seems to be
Mayo – Rebekha Sharkie, Centre Alliance
Braddon – shrug emoji
Longman – shrug emoji
Fremantle/Perth – still voting, but Labor
So the panels are up and running – and Liberal Trent Zimmerman has just told the ABC he believes the night is a “toss of the coin”.
With polls closed, hit us up with your predictions in the comments - who is going to win and where?
The polls have closed in Longman and Braddon.
Meanwhile, in Longman:
Found a cardboard cut-out. Labor made an addition though. pic.twitter.com/AZeqkKJ9ur
We’ll be bringing you the seats as they are updated, but for those who just can’t get enough raw data, you can follow along with the AEC:
Progressive results for the #2018byelections will be provided via our tally rooms at https://t.co/kDXRrq4qqc as they become available after polls close at 6pm local time. #auspol
Labor volunteers are very cautious but positive about Susan Lamb’s chances in Longman.
The result be shaped by the strength of the One Nation vote and how strongly preferences then flow to the LNP candidate Trevor Ruthenberg.
One booth worker says he thinks the One Nation vote has been down compared the Queensland state election in November.
Labor also feel the LNP primary vote will be diminished.The One Nation vote in Longman is a fairly interesting side story.
Polls have candidate Matthew Stephen with about 15% of the primary vote.
That might seem like a solid improvement from the 9.4% One Nation polled in Longman in 2016.
But in corresponding seats at the 2017 Queensland election, Pauline Hanson’s party was polling 22% to 25%. The party’s weakest individual booth within the boundaries of Longman was 18%.
That’s worth keeping in mind when the results graphics show a swing to the party.
In a fun byelection fact, neither Brett Whitely or Trevor Ruthernberg, the government candidates for Braddon or Longman could vote for themselves today - as they live just outside the electorate. Whitely was asked about this:
JOURNALIST:
Are you sad you can’t add to your vote by voting for yourself?
BRETT WHITELEY:
Look, I’m out supporting all my volunteers today. I’m in a number of booths today with the Prime Minister, helping to support the team, helping to support the ideal situation, which will be an election of Brett Whiteley as the next member for Braddon.
The polls close in less than 30 minutes.
Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull started the day in Braddon, but Shorten has ended it in Longman. Which led to this exchange with a Tassie reporter today:
JOURNALIST: Mr Shorten, yourself and the prime minister have spent the morning in Braddon, I’m assuming you’ll be up to Longman this afternoon, does that mean that Longman is more important than Braddon to you both?SHORTEN: Well, I guess you can’t win. If I started in Brisbane you people might say should have started in Tassie. JOURNALIST: I’m a Tasmanian reporter, what am I supposed to ask?
It’s D-day, as the byelections in Longman, Braddon, Mayo, Fremantle and Perth are decided.
While the Western Australia elections have been largely ignored, given the Liberal party decided not to contest them, Queensland and Tasmania have received more than their fair share of attention.
Meanwhile, Mayo in South Australia, which was meant to be Georgina Downer’s entree into politics, has turned out to be a way bigger battle than the Liberal party was prepared for, with Centre Alliance Rebekha Sharkie expected to retain it.
Which means all eyes are on Longman and Braddon, where we have NO idea what will happen.
Not only are single seats notoriously difficult to poll, byelections usually make it impossible. The good burghers of Longman and Braddon are sick to death of the robocalls and phonecalls, surveys, journalists and politicians and their volunteers accosting them in the streets, shopping centres – and their homes – so getting an adequate picture of what is going on, is a pretty hard task.
Then throw in absenteeism – voter turnout at byelections is usually lower than usual – and people on holidays, and boom: it’s a recipe for a big ole mess.
But which way Longman and Braddon voters go will also determine what the next few months of politics looks like across the nation. If it goes against Labor, you can expect leadership tensions to boil over. If it goes against the government, you can expect any general election talk to be put off until next year.
So there is a lot riding on tonight. And that’s if we even get a result tonight!
But fear not – we will be with you until the counting stops. The early turnout for Longman and Braddon at pre-poll was pretty significant – there were six pre-poll booths in Longman alone – so if the government is ahead at the end of the night, that is very bad news for Labor, given postals usually go the conservative side’s way.
And we also don’t know how One Nation votes will play out.
There’s a lot to take in tonight. So I hope you have your beverage of choice and are settled somewhere comfortable. You can reach me at @amyremeikis on Twitter, or in the comment section, and there will be some behind the scenes stuff at @pyjamapolitics on Instagram. Katharine Murphy, Ben Raue and Ben Smee will also be making guest appearances.
Ready?
Let’s get into it.