Northern Territory election endgame

Counting almost complete for the Northern Territory election, where the Country Liberals appear likely to hold 17 seats out of 25.

Click here for full display of Northern Territory election results.

Saturday

With the NTEC’s publication of the full preference distributions, the results can be considered finalised. In Fannie Bay, the surprise success of the CLP in staying ahead of the Greens at the final count had nothing to do with independent Leonard May, who actually delivered more preferences to the Greens than the CLP, and everything to do with the fact that only around two-thirds of Labor’s preferences went to the Greens ahead of the CLP. The Greens’ win in Nightcliff resulted from three-quarters of a substantial independent vote flowing to them, together with only slightly less than half of the transfer when the CLP was excluded.

Wednesday 4pm

Another preference count boilover, with a fresh Labor-versus-Greens two-candidate count in former Labor leader Natasha Fyles’ seat of Nightcliff showing the Greens with a seemingly insurmountable lead of 2242 to 2200. This means the Greens, whose luck appeared to desert them in Fannie Bay, will win a seat in parliament after all, provided their candidate Kat McNamara makes the final count — which she apparently will, because the NTEC relates it also conducted a three-way count between Fyles, McNamara and the CLP. The strength of the preference flow to the Greens is the second such surprise (to me at least) to emerge from late counting, one giving the Greens a (seemingly) unexpected victory and the other an unexpected defeat. The split was 63.1-36.9 in the Greens’ favour, which is inclusive of 1055 CLP and 957 independent votes. I have replaced my preference flow estimates with the exact figures on my results page, but the results from the fresh count are not in the media feed at this stage.

Tuesday evening

I have taken my eye off the ball for the count in the Northern Territory, where the Country Liberal Party’s position strengthened still further with the apparent likelihood that they will take a seventeenth seat in Fannie Bay, a Darwin seat that Labor has held since 1995. The surprise lay in the fact that a fresh two-candidate preferred count between the Country Liberal candidate Laurie Zio and Greens candidate Suki Dorras-Walker showed a surprisingly weak flow of Labor preferences to the latter, seemingly scotching the party’s hopes of winning its first ever territory seat (though more on an alternative possibility shortly). Based on the normal behaviour of preference flows, it had hitherto seemed likely that the result would be decided by which out of Dorras-Walker and Labor incumbent Brent Potter made the final count. A win for the latter is mathematically possible, but with few if any votes yet to be counted, he would need the distribution of independent Leonard May’s 185 votes to close a gap against the Greens of 1327 to 1268, which seems most unlikely. It could otherwise be presumed that Greens preferences would then push him ahead of the CLP.

There is also the technical possibility of a late boilover in one of only five seats that appear likely to remain with Labor, that being former leader Natasha Fyles’ seat of Nightcliff. The alternative scenario in this case involves a win for Greens candidate Kat McNamara, who has polled 21.9% to the Country Liberals’ 23.8% and Fyles’ 32.8%. If McNamara can close the gap with the Country Liberals, it’s conceivable that enough CLP preferences will flow to her to win her the seat. My own results page for the seat has Fyles well ahead of McNamara in a two-candidate contest based on estimated preference splits of 65-35 to Labor among CLP votes, 70-30 to the Greens among those for a strongly performing progressive independent, and 50-50 for a minor independent. The first of these in particular would need to be well off the mark to turn the result. Antony Green reports the preferences of the two independent candidates will be counted today to determine if the Greens will indeed make the final count, presumably to be followed by a Labor-versus-Greens count if so.

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.

33 comments on “Northern Territory election endgame”

  2. Well, it’s a disaster for total Labor: arguably worse than the 2012 Queensland election.

    If Fannie Bay goes to the CLP and Fyles can’t beat the Greens, then Labor will be reduced to four Indigenous MPs: three of whom represent seats in remote parts of the Territory (Arnhem, Arafura and Gwoja) and one from the rural hinterland around Darwin (Daly). The good news is that three out of the four – Chansey Paech, Serena Uibo (now the new party leader) and Dheran Young – were prominent members of the outgoing government being, respectively, Deputy Leader, Minister for Health, and Speaker.

    But having no members from the main population centres of the Territory (other than, hopefully, Fyles) is going to be a serious impediment. I believe that Uibo was already being talked about as a potential leader when Fyles resigned so hopefully she will go ok.

    It’s going to be a very long road back for the ALP. They will need Finocchiaro to govern with a Campbell Newman-level of incompetence to be any sort of chance for at least 8 years, if not longer.

  3. Labor Rusties, particularly women, imo, don’t take kindly to the Greens swooping in to a Labor seat to steal their less staunch voters.

  4. It can be argued that the greens standing in
    Fannie Bay prevented either the greens or Labor winning the seat. Barkly went incredibly close. One of the Alice Springs seats went within 5% of a greens win. A 5 seat swing equals a possible alp majority govt

  7. With Bandt going full bottle populism there might be a break in the preference flows from the Greens to Labor and from Labor to the Greens. I have always preferenced the Greens, Pocock excepted, but am seriously reconsidering doing so.

  8. Abc almost calling it aka Anthony Green says Greens most likely winners in Nightcliff.

    CLP prefs favourited labor but independent -May -strongly favoured the Green meaning Greens win highly likely.

    One last kick in the guts for NT labor.

  11. I don’t know much about the rules of the NT Parliament.

    Can someone who does advise on whether Labor will even qualify as the official opposition?

  12. Nightcliff

    Seeing the “progressive independent” got 19.3% 1st pref votes, then 70-30% Green-CLP definitely sounds feasible for distribution of preferences. Even if 1/2 the 19.3% are exhausted, Greens make the final cut. That looks inevitable now.

    But it seems a very big stretch for it to turn out anything other than a Labour win on the final count. That’s based on simple Maths.

    What am I missing? – presumably the fact that not too many of the independent’s votes exhausted after all and Greens caught up with Lab sooner than expected?

  14. What WAS the actual distribution of both Mililma May’s and Helen Secretary’s (CLP) prefs in the end, % including % exhausted?

    Links above don’t tell you that.

  15. The split was 63.1-36.9 in the Greens’ favour, which is inclusive of 1055 CLP and 957
    Rough estimate, let’s say the Greens got 90% of the Indies prefs, then the CLP may have preferenced the Green 40%.
    If it’s purely local issues, then Labor can put it behind them, but if the issues are nationwide, then someone’s got to bite the bullet and call the Election.
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Just noticed, both Helen Secretary and Mililina May {ind] are indigenous, did Natasha Fyles nget the Indigenous community offside?

  16. William – thanks. I realised they’d finished after I posted – had to keep editing it!

    (Coming from the UK, I also had to look up what OPV was – so if I get you right, votes exhausting will occur in far fewer numbers as preferencing is meant to be mandatory)

  17. Badthinker – thanks.

    Would still be interesting to see the individual candidates’ prefs if it’s available, mainly to see how CLP prefs distribute between Green and Lab.

  22. Fyles had to resign as Chief Minister when as KB put it, she couldn’t understand what a conflict of interest was. Things like that tend to trigger some animosity directed at them.

  23. Badthinker

    Thanks.

    I can’t actually see what you describe on that link. Although I thought I got the gist, I’m puzzled by what you ref re primary votes of 43% and 8% for runner-up.

  24. In reply to Meher Baba, the reduced ALP numbers won’t prevent it from being the Opposition. The CLP kept opposition status after the 2005 and 2016 debacles although the Territory Alliance did try to displace the CLP as the Opposition. They were thwarted by the unaligned Independents.

  25. Greens primary was only up 3% in Nightcliff, i.e. must have been 18.9% last time, so there must have previously been some more strength in NT for Greens than generally credited by the commentators.

  26. BTSays:
    Under GROOM is:
    On this page.
    That is the Index.
    Scroll down to: Full Distribution of Preferences, click on that, and all the necessary information displays.

  29. Abc has called nightcliff for Greens.

    ‘A re-count has reduced the Greens lead to 33 votes but also removed any doubt that the Greens have won Nightcliff.’

  30. “So Liberal preferences elect a Green in Nightcliff and Labor preferences elect a Liberal in Fannie Bay”

    Well the winning margin (50.4%) is the same in both but that’s not quite right!

    Clearly Liberal preferences went very strongly for Green over Labour in Nightcliff, but in Fannie Bay probably no more than 1/3 of Labour’s prefs went to Liberal – I’d estimate 65% or so still went to Green which is why they made up so much of the 11.2% deficit (28.7% to 39.9%) behind CLP from the 1st round of voting – it just wasn’t enough to get Green over the line.

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