9.25pm. Most booths in now. Labor’s primary vote swing has limped to 4%, while Joyce’s has remained in double figures and the two-party swing has settled at around 6%.
8.10pm. Now up from 66 to 74 booths counted out of 104, and Labor’s position seems to be slowly improving as larger booths report, their two-party swing now nudging up to 3.8% and the projected two-party swing to the Nationals now below 7%.
8.06pm. The ABC site has been a while updating.
7.31pm. The vote tally remains dominated by rural booths, but so far this is a remarkable result for Barnaby Joyce, and a troubling one for Labor, who have so far gained 1.9% with 24.1% available from Tony Windsor.
7.21pm. Actually, we do have the Hillvue booth from Tamworth, where Joyce’s swing is a below average 1.6%. The spread of non-Nationals votes is about the same though.
7.18pm. The only outstanding point of interest is whether we will see different patterns when results come in from Armidale and Tamworth.
7.11pm. It would seem a surprisingly high share of the Tony Windsor vote is going to Joyce, which it might have been thought would go to Rob Taber or Labor.
7.07pm. With 15 booths reporting out of 112, it’s rather impressive that Barnaby Joyce is projected to pick up a 10% two-party swing against Labor.
7.00pm. Antony Green now projecting Labor to run second, with a mere 8.2% of the primary vote, such is Joyce’s dominance. Surely though Labor couldn’t fail to improve on 2016 with Tony Windsor’s 22.6% up for grabs.
6.55pm. Turns out I wasn’t looking hard enough for the ABC’s booth level numbers, which are here.
6.52pm. There are now 12 booths in on the primary vote, and in the four I’ve looked at, Barnaby Joyce’s primary vote is up in all them, from a little to a lot. Antony Green is projecting 70.7% for Joyce on the primary vote, so I think it’s safe to say he’s not in trouble.
6.41pm. With two booths to work with, Antony Green projects a 71.6% Nationals 2PP, which inflates to 85.4% if he extracts a result from a third booth with primary vote numbers only by assuming preferences will flow as they did in the other two booths. So either the swing to the Nationals in the third booth is very strong, or the Nationals have done extremely well out of preferences in the first two booths – as it figures they would, since this is a strong Nationals area. All of which amounts to a lot of analysis of not very much.
6.36pm. Now there are two booths in on two-party, and the AEC is projecting a 71.55-28.45 win for Joyce over Labor, although Labor are actually running fourth though. Tiny booths though that will behave differently from the ones in the big towns.
6.33pm. Two very small rural booths in, and apparently Barnaby Joyce’s vote is up 8.1%. Beyond that there’s no booth-level reporting available anywhere, so I’m not going to be able to offer much depth of analysis.
6.17pm. An ALP activist on Twitter reports a 22% drop in turnout in Armidale South.
6pm. Polls have closed. Rural booths should start reporting very shortly indeed, probably inside half an hour.
6am. Barnaby Joyce’s moment of truth arrives today in the form of the New England by-election. Despite a certain amount of late campaign excitement, the by-election has not attracted much interest on the betting markets, with Ladbrokes continuing to rate Joyce an unbackable $1.01 favourite. My summary of the situation is here; live coverage of the count will commence at 6pm. Until then, here’s a thread for discussion.
Presumably this is meant to send a signal that Turnbull and Joyce are buddy-buddies after the ructions in Queensland and Barilaro’s comments:
How can the Science Party be pulling fewer votes than the Fred Nile Party?!
Ummm Fess, Look at the name of the Science Party candidate!
Thanks Peter.
JackARanda:
Well yes, but still a more appealing name than Fred Nile!
I wonder what the record swing TO the government in a by-election is?
So much for all the salivating over the imminent demise of Turnbull!
ABC calling it already.
Briefly We will soon find out how deep is the disaffection with the Nationals in NSW.
I guess not at all
This is a very strong swing to a government at a by election, when that government is down in the polls, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a record. Then again, given the woeful state of the current Government, I wonder if this is essentially a pre-emptive vote against what is perceived as an inevitable Labor government, which would be highly unpopular in that country.
More a personal vote for the Beetroot I reckon OC.
A Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate might have made it interesting.
Niangala booth is impressive:
Joyce 58 Informal 3 all others 1 2PP: Joyce 59 ALP 0
Whatever the reason for the swing, a single figure vote for Labor when Windsor isn’t running is a concern
OC
Went to see my dad at his nursing home in Southern Highlands today. Newest resident is Dr Bruce Shepherd. Views?
These small rural booths are interesting. How do you have 60 people vote for 17 candidates and not 1 person has a different opinion on who they should vote for?
Jesus. I expected Joyce to win pretty easily, but I didn’t think he’d do this well!
I wonder if the Nats’ recent flexing of their muscles against the Libs has actually helped him here?
Malcolm will be pleased. Now for the press Gallery’s revision.
Armidale South in and Barnaby only gets a 6.8% increase in first preferences when Windsor had 38.4% of first preferences. The 2PP swing will be interesting.
Overall the 2PP swing will keep on declining.
Shell
A disgrace to the profession; one of the great arseholes of Australia
How he could have become the leader of Australian doctors is beyond me
My one conversation with him ended, after multiple expletives, with a promise that he would destroy my career and sue my pants off. Something he failed to do
They’re really rusted on in New England.
Given that Windsor’s 2CP against Joyce was 7.9% higher than Labor’s at the last election, that seems to indicate 7.9% of people went Windsor > Joyce > Labour so you’d expect about that amount of the Windsor primary going to Joyce, wouldn’t you?
The 2PP swing against Labor is another matter, of course.
Obviously Malcolm turning up in new England was because they had polling showing Barnaby was going to get a big swing towards him and Malcolm wanted to be associated with something successful for a change.
However, given his almost perfect ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I’ll be fascinated to see by what means this success blows up – it’s almost guaranteed.
Where is the Greens Party when you need it?
New England must be a different world. How can anyone look at Barnaby Joyce and think, “Yeah, I’ll vote for that”?
Ewings is very, very slowly crawling upwards on TTP, and has just broken 26%.
ABC site has crashed again. AEC up to 27% of 2PP votes, and showing projected ALP share as 25.85%
Shell/OC
Bruce Shepherd in 1984 showed his political stripes by leading the AMA strike, where the log of claims was to disembowel Medicare and provide a harbourside mansion for every specialist – and to tarnish the newly elected Hawke government.
Thankfully for us he failed.
SilentMajority says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 7:57 pm
They’re really rusted on in New England.
I told yez all. Sheep vote up thisaway.
New England voters are just shit
Armidale South has a 4.2% 2PP swing to Joyce. 2PP is NP 53% ALP 47%
Mr Newbie says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 8:11 pm
New England must be a different world. How can anyone look at Barnaby Joyce and think, “Yeah, I’ll vote for that”?
You’re not wrong.
Oakeshott Country says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 7:28 pm
Briefly We will soon find out how deep is the disaffection with the Nationals in NSW.
I guess not at all
Quite so.
zoidlord says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 8:19 pm
New England voters are just shit
No they are not. They just think differently to the rest of Australia, not a huge crime. We live in a democracy.
Don’t forget there are people who vote for Pauline Hanson. In your electorate, wherever that might be.
Boerwar says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 8:05 pm
Where is the Greens Party when you need it?
Hugging trees.
Good evening all,
The stand out from tonight is how desperate Turnbull has shown himself to be and how much internal pressure is is under.
Clutching at straws springs to mind.
The good people of New England have spoken.
Cheers.
A little unfair
In 1984 there was a real grievance. The NSW government had not taken into account the effect of the introduction of Medicare on the hospital system. Pre-medicare the means test meant that most patients were responsible for their own bills and surgeons gave either an honorary service or accepted a peppercorn fee for those under the means test. Medicare resulted in surgeons being unpaid for 80% of the work hey did. This could and eventually was resolved in the industrial court. BUT you are right that Shepard attempted to use this grievance to destroy Medicare and surprisingly got he support of normally sane and well intentioned people
Gorks says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 7:47 pm
These small rural booths are interesting. How do you have 60 people vote for 17 candidates and not 1 person has a different opinion on who they should vote for?
If you knew the people in the small rural booths, you might come to an understanding of the situation. Same thing happened in the recent local government elections here.
At the dual citizenship by election in 1996 Jackie Kelly was re-elected with a 5% swing. So maybe Joyce has done a bit better than that, but it won’t be much better.
Now where the 45% of the 2PP polling the Coalition is coming from
They must really be on the nose elsewhere in the Nation and particularly in metro areas where the population is
This result is a real problem for Turnbull and Co
Asha Leu says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 7:47 pm
Jesus. I expected Joyce to win pretty easily, but I didn’t think he’d do this well!
I wonder if the Nats’ recent flexing of their muscles against the Libs has actually helped him here?
No.
99.99% of the electors in New England who voted Joyce as #1 on their ballot paper would not know that such flexing existed. It would not be on their radar.
They are national party voters. They vote for the national party. End of story.
From the comments, very few here seem to understand the situation.
I’m not sure why a dyed in the wool National Party seat being re held by a National Party leader under these circumstances should be a worry for the ALP, no matter what the vote. I don’t think we can take too many lessons from this result.
John Goss says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 8:30 pm
At the dual citizenship by election in 1996 Jackie Kelly was re-elected with a 5% swing. So maybe Joyce has done a bit better than that, but it won’t be much better.
Ye gods and little fishes. What on earth has that to do with anything to do with today’s election? What planet are you on?
How could Barnyard not get a swing towards him when you take Windsor out of the equation.
Gary says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 8:49 pm
I’m not sure why a dyed in the wool National Party seat being re held by a National Party leader under these circumstances should be a worry for the ALP, no matter what the vote. I don’t think we can take too many lessons from this result.
Exactly. You seem to be one of the very few on this blog who has any idea what this area is like. It is like no other.
Many people on this blog appear to think that it is like a Melbourne or Adelaide or Sydney electorate.
It is not remotely similar.
Think of the people who keep re-electing Bob Katter, the Federal Member for Kennedy since 1993.
With ever-increasng majorities, Don.
Don
Surely the dual citizenship byelection in Lindsay that Kelly won with a 5% swing to her is relevant. There aren’t many dual citizenship byelections, and it seems that the voters in those elections don’t believe the member should lose the seat because of an arcane technicality. In other sorts of byelections voters usually lodge a protest vote, so there is a swing against the Government candidate..
Or Maranoa at Federal, or the Southern Downs at Queensland state level. You could run chihuahua’s in akubras or potted plans (with or without akubras) and as long as they ran as Nationals they’d win handily.
antonbruckner11 says:
Saturday, December 2, 2017 at 8:52 pm
How could Barnyard not get a swing towards him when you take Windsor out of the equation.
Very true, but I think that Joyce would have got a similar swing whether Windsor ran or not.
Windsor is a very smart cookie, and knows when to hold ’em, knows when to fold ’em, knows when to walk away and knows when to run.
Or not.
If the Nats take from this that differentiation from the Libs = net positive, interesting times ahead
the Lindsay by-election occurred when Howard’s popularity was at its peak. This by-election is in the context of a terminal government. i was not expecting a pro-government swing