Bundamba, Currumbin and Brisbane City Council live

Live results for Bundamba here and Currumbin here, including booth level totals and swings.

Monday

11pm. I’ve actually turned off the booth matching now, so the 76.7% probability shown of an LNP probability win entails an expectation that the uncounted two-party vote (i.e. all pre-polls, postals and the rest) should behave similarly to the election day votes, when the primary vote numbers make clear that they will actually favour the LNP. So disregard the probability and treat this is near-certain LNP win. Other than the two-party numbers, there was next to no additional counting in the by-elections today. However, the picture for Brisbane City Council has become clearer, and it bears out expectations that postal votes would heavily favour the Liberal National Party — so much so that they now look like matching their performance in 2016, when it won 19 seats out of 26. Labor’s clearest hope of an addition to its meagre was for a surprise win in Calamvale, but that’s faded now; the LNP has also pulled clear from a hitherto precarious position in marginal Holland Park; and the general trend suggests they should also prevail in currently lineball Enoggera and Northgate. The same is probably also true of Paddington, where they presently hold a narrow lead over the Greens, who thus look unlikely to gain a second seat to add to The Gabba despite a generally strong performance.

5.30pm. There are now two-party results in Currumbin for all election day polling booths. This means my projections have come to life – and they are projecting a 1.2% swing to the LNP for a winning margin of 4.5%, with a 99.7% probability of victory. But as I noted at the very beginning of all this, this is based off estimates of where votes would be cast at the by-election that entailed a huge amount of guess work. The reason I have very different swing results in the tables at the top left and the charts at the top right is that the latter estimate two-party results where only primary votes are presently available, i.e. for pre-polls and postals. Other than that, no new numbers have been added today — indeed, the existing postal votes for Bundamba seem to have disappeared for some reason.

Sunday

As you can see on the links above, my results reporting pages are in action, but they only have primary votes to work with — it doesn’t appear notional two-party counts are being conducted, and I am not making use of preference estimates like Antony Green. Nonetheless, they are of value in being the only place you can find booth results short of poring through the XML media feed, and exclusively feature swings for polling booths and vote types.

The situation in Bundamba and Currumbin seems to be that most of the election day and pre-poll primary votes have been counted; that there should be roughly 5000 postals for each electorate and maybe 1500 to 2000 of various other kinds of vote, of which respectively 2191 and 998 formal votes have been counted in Currumbin, while only 747 postals have been counted in Bundamba. In Currumbin, the current primary vote shares are LNP 43.1%, Labor 39.6%, Greens 10.9% and One Nation 6.5%, with postals heavily favouring the LNP as expected, and “other” votes so far leaning their way as well. My back-of-envelope reckoning is that the LNP’s 3.5% primary vote lead should increase to upwards of 6%, which Labor should only be able to reduce by a couple of points on preferences — Antony Green has scrutineer info that Labor is only getting 71% of Greens preferences, while the LNP is getting 62% from One Nation. So the LNP went into the by-election with a 3.3% margin, and should probably come out of it with about the same.

In Bundamba, Labor does not appear to be losing ground on postals, so their 42.4% is likely to be more or less solid. The Greens are, however, which may rein their 13.5% by upwards of 0.5%. That would mean Labor’s routine three-quarter share of Greens preferences would put them fairly comfortably over the line even without accounting for preference leakage from the LNP, which should be pretty substantial. Labor weren’t claiming victory last I heard, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t.

The LNP are claiming victory for Adrian Schrinner in the Brisbane lord mayoralty race, where Antony Green projects a final margin of 5.0%, which I see no reason to question. The LNP also looks assured of retaining its majority on council: yesterday I said they only had five of their council wards in the bag, but that this said more about the slow grind of the count than the weakness of their position. With today’s counting providing further clarity, it is now clear they have won 13 out of the 26 seats and would not be writing off any of their complement of 19 from 2016. They have retained the more-or-less marginal wards of The Gap, Marchant, Doboy and Runcorn, are very likely to hold Holland Park as well (although the ABC computer isn’t calling that one yet), and appear to have overcome early scares in the seemingly safe wards of Bracken Ridge and Jamboree.

Labor’s clearest shot at a gain from their existing tally of five seats looks to be Calamvale, a rather spectacular result given the existing 14.3% margin. Two LNP marginals, Enoggera and Northgate, look like going down to the wire, but Labor suffered a disappointing failure in Doboy, where the LNP margin had been erased by the redistribution. The Greens are in a tight race to take Paddington off the LNP, which would give them a second seat to add to The Gabba. However, they look to have done well but not well enough in Central, Coorparoo and Walter Taylor.

Saturday night overview

Tonight’s counting and reporting of results was an incomplete and highly chaotic affair, reflecting these times. All that seems clear is that Labor will retain Bundamba, and that Adrian Schrinner seems near certain to retain the Brisbane lord mayoralty. Currumbin is impossible to call at this stage. The council ward results in Brisbane so far look rather weak for the Liberal National Party, but that seems likely to change when counting of postal votes begins. By the same token, the Greens look to have done extremely well, but that too seems likely to moderate. Nowhere do we appear to have two-party preferred counts.

Bundamba

The ECQ website has 56.0% of the primary vote counted in Bundamba, but there are only 25.4% counted (9301 votes) on the media feed, which is the only place where booth results are available. Presumably the former is all the election day and pre-poll results, leaving a big bunch of postals outstanding. Labor are on 42.9% on the latest count, but it was a good result nonetheless for One Nation (27.8%), who far outpolled the LNP (15.9%). The best that can be said for the LNP is that they haven’t come last, as one poll suggested they might, with the Greens on 13.4%. Presumably most of the LNP vote will exhaust, and Labor should get a good flow of preferences from the Greens. I have my results facility back online, but a) as noted it’s well behind the ECQ website count, being based off the feed, and b) my primary vote and swing projections are screwy — they should say Labor 40.3% (-13.0%), Liberal National 16.8% (+1.7%), Greens 16.3% (5.4%). If nothing else, they offer an opportunity to look at booth swings in an easy-to-read format, with due regard to the collapse in traffic at polling booths.

Currumbin

The Currumbin results look to have been removed altogether from the media feed, leaving us with raw totals only the ECQ website’s to go off, accounting for 12,988 votes or 37.1% of the enrolment. So clearly there are plenty of pre-poll and perhaps even election day results to come here on top of the postals.

Brisbane lord mayoralty

The count as recorded on the ECQ website is relatively well advanced, accounting for 41.6% of enrolment. It’s a very different story on the media feed though, so the projection on the ABC site, which makes use of booth-matching, is not illumating. LNP incumbent Adrian Schrinner is on 45.6%, which should presumably be enough. Labor’s Pat Condren is on 31.8%, and while he can hope for a solid boost for preferences from Greens candidate Kath Angus 15.8%, postals should favour Schrinner.

Brisbane City Council

The counts for the council wards are less advanced than for the mayoralty, with progress ranging from barely over 10% to the low forties as a percentage of enrolled voters. While the LNP has only a handful of its existing seats bolted down (Chandler, Hamilton, Macgregor, McDowall and Pullenvale), they seem to be holding up well in some fairly dicey wards (The Gap, Holland Park, Marchant, Doboy). They aren’t doing brilliantly on the early count in the double-digit margin wards of Bracken Ridge, Calamvale and Jamboree, but it’s early days in each case and my guess is that they will pull through. Labor can at least be hopeful of gaining Enoggera, Northgate and Runcorn, which may be the decisive contests in determining if they can wear away the LNP majority.

Early results have been encouraging for the Greens, who have clearly retained The Gabba, are in the hunt to take Paddington off the LNP and can’t be ruled out in Central, Coorparoo and Walter Taylor, although my feeling is that the LNP will pull clear in the latter three. Independent Nicole Johnston has easily retained Tennyson, but Kate Richards failed to pull a rabbit out of the hat in Pullenvale. My best guess is that the LNP, after winning 19 wards out of 26 in 2016, will drop a few seats but retain a majority, but there are very wide error bars on that assessment.

Election night commentary

9.31pm. The ECQ relates: “Preliminary counts are underway. Results are coming into the ECQ as expected. We’re having technical issues displaying results online. We are are working on the issue. Preliminary count continues tonight till around 10pm. The official count begins tomorrow.” Furthermore, the lack of scrutineers means party insiders can’t offer the insight they usually would. Antony Green relates on twitter that “from a hand-scribbled A4 sheet, it seems the LNP leads Currumbin 3200-3167 from 10 counting centres, but 12,000 pre-polls to be counted and then the LNP leaning postals after that”. Given postals are likely to favour the LNP, this suggests they are more likely to hold on that not, but the bulk of the uncounted pre-poll vote suggests nothing should be taken for granted – and it would seem we are unlikely to have much joy on that front tonight.

8.47pm. With 6.9% counted in Central ward, LNP incumbent Vicki Howard is on 42.8% with the Greens running second on 34.0% and Labor third on 23.2%, suggesting it’s worth keeping an eye on as a potential Greens gain. No or next to no votes counted in the Greens existing seat of The Gabba and other potential gains in Coorparoo and Paddington.

Labor are running third in Central ward with 6.9% counted, suggesting it’s worth kee

8.40pm. There are no two-party numbers in the feed, so I presume Antony Green’s numbers are based on preference estimates.

8.20pm. A big hit of results for the Brisbane lord mayoralty with 44,720 votes now counted, though still only a bit more than 5% of enrolment. Adrian Schrinner leads Pat Condren 43.4% to 30.4%, though a lot depends on where those votes are from — probably inner urban areas, judging by the 18.7% Greens vote, which should feed Condren quite a few preferences. This update hasn’t made it through to the feed and the ABC site yet, so no booth matched calculations available.

8.14pm. Slow progress all around. Nothing to report since the last updates.

7.50pm. Antony Green is detecting a 10% swing to Labor in the lord mayoralty race, which should bring it down to the wire. But the qualification remains that projecting results is uniquely challenging at these elections. No further progress in the Currumbin count.

7.40pm. There are nine booths in from Currumbin, with at most 563 formal votes. Antony Green projects no swing at all, which is good news for the LNP, but we’re still only talking 1107 votes counted, or 3.5% of the roll. A different dynamic on pre-polls and postals might yet change things.

7.36pm. Clearly my results facility isn’t about to come to life any time soon, so I’ve put it on ice and will fix it this evening so it will at least be of use in following the late count. Just eyeballing the media feed, I can report that eight booths are in from Bundamba, none of which recorded more than 563 formal votes. Antony Green is calling it for Labor; the LNP look like coming third, not fourth; but One Nation are in second place on a substantial 28.2%, but projected to fall 8.6% short after preferences.

7.21pm. For what very little it’s worth, the Greens lead in the race for the lord mayoralty with 0.12% counted. So presumably an inner city booth.

7.18pm. Some small numbers are starting to appear for Brisbane City Council on the ECQ, but I fear the media feed may have tanked — still nothing on Antony Green’s results page.

7.14pm. Now there are some primary results on the ECQ site for Currumbin, which look reasonably encouraging for the LNP in that they lead Labor 47.9% to 37.6%, but again we don’t know what part of the electorate this is from.

7.11pm. More numbers in from Bundamba on the ECQ site, but still nothing on the feed (no updates on Antony Green’s page either so the problem doesn’t seem to be on my end). The latest update does not change the situation noted previously. We don’t what booths these votes are from, but Bundamba is homogenous enough an electorate that it’s unlikely to matter much.

7.06pm. There are some numbers from Bundamba on the ECQ site but they’re not on the feed yet. They suggest that uComms poll might not have been far off the mark, with the LNP coming last out of four and Labor poised to win easily.

7.00pm. An hour in, and there’s not a single result yet anywhere across Queensland. Might be that social distancing is slowing the process.

6.18pm. I’ve mostly got it working now, I hope, though a niggling error means I’m unable to provide rows for non-ordinary (i.e. mostly postal) votes, which shouldn’t matter until later in the evening and hopefully I’ll have fixed it by then. In any case, the projections have to be regarded as experimental due to the extraordinary circumstances of the election: with voters abandoning polling day voting en masse for postal and pre-poll voting, I’ve had to shift results around for purposes of booth-matching in a rather arbitrary fashion.

6.05pm. Welcome to live coverage of the count for Queensland’s Bundamba and Currumbin state by-elections, and to a lesser extent for the Brisbane lord mayoralty and council. I am hoping to have my live results facility in operation for the first two shortly, provided I’m able to iron a few last teething problems.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics. View all posts by William Bowe