ALP Vote Deteriorating In Final Stages Of Counting; 55 Seats May Be 53 When All Votes Are In

The ALP’s vote continued to deteriorate in Thursday’s counting.

Whilst on Wednesday it appeared that the ALP would lose 17 seats to finish with 55, it is now possible that it will lose 19 and finish with 53.

In NSW, the seat of Parramatta became close yesterday. The sitting Labor member, Julie Owens, now has a lead of 389 votes, or 50.27%.

In Barton, the Liberal lead of 771 became 961. In Eden-Monaro, the Liberal lead of 591 was extended to 633.

In Victoria, the Liberal lead of 116 votes in McEwen grew to 396.

In Queensland, for the first time since Saturday night, the Liberal National candidate has taken the lead in Capricornia. On Wednesday night, the ALP led by 268 votes, whereas by Thursday night the LNP was ahead by 624 votes.

Assuming that the ALP has lost Barton, Eden-Monaro and McEwen, it will finish with 54 seats if it also loses Capricornia. A loss in Parramatta would see the ALP settle on 53, with the Coalition on 92. This is the ALP’s worst case scenario.

For the Coalition, the seats of Fairfax and Indi remain in doubt. In Fairfax, Clive Palmer’s lead has dwindled from 1,411 votes to 1,132. In Indi, independent Cathy McGowan’s lead has narrowed from 1,449 to 1,100.

In most electorates, ordinary votes, those cast on polling day last Saturday, have now been counted. Most pre-poll votes, those cast at pre-poll centres in the three weeks prior to election day, have also been counted.

Absentee votes, those cast on Saturday by voters outside of their electorate, are now arriving at electoral commission offices, as are postal votes from Australia and overseas. These will continue to dribble in for several more days.

Electoral staff are also processing provisional votes, those votes where the eligibility of the elector has to be verified.

Late changes in close electorates are often caused by one or major party candidates polling better on postal votes than their opponent. It is not uncommon for the Coalition to poll better on postals, although it is also common for sitting members of either side to do better on postals. In the case of Indi and Fairfax, it is especially interesting because Palmer and McGowan have not previously contested the seats and it is difficult to predict which side postal votes will break for.

There has been much discussion about the extent of the ALP’s defeat in this election. As I showed yesterday, a final tally of 55 seats would be 36.66% of the House seats and the ALP’s 10th worst defeat since 1910.

A final tally of 54 seats (36%) or 53 seats (35.33%) would be the ALP’s 9th worst defeat since 1910. It experienced more severe defeats in 1917, 1919, 1925, 1931, 1966, 1975, 1977 and 1996.

Aside from the proportion of seats it wins in the House of Representatives, the ALP has struck a new low in terms of its primary vote, the percentage of people who placed a number “1” against a Labor candidate. On current figures, it has polled 33.73% of the primary vote nationwide, a swing of 4.26% from 2010. Previously, its lowest vote was in 1931, when the official ALP polled 27.10% and the NSW Lang Labor forces polled 10.57%.

Most worrying for the ALP is that two of its lowest ever primary votes have been recorded in the past ten years. In 2004, under Mark Latham’s leadership, it polled 37.63%.

The most accurate measure of voter support, however, is the two-party-preferred vote. This is the figure that shows the final preference of all voters for either the ALP or the Coalition. Because full preferential voting is compulsory, it is the most accurate measure of popular support.

On current figures, the ALP has 46.71% of the two-party vote, compared to 53.29% for the Coalition. This is slightly better than the 46.37% achieved when Paul Keating was defeated in 1996 and not as bad as the defeats of 1975, 1977, 1966, 1958 or 1955.

The two-party swing to the Coalition in 2013 currently stands at 3.49%. This compares to 5.44% achieved by the ALP under Kevin Rudd when it defeated John Howard in 2007 and 5.07% achieved by the Coalition under John Howard when it defeated Paul Keating in 1996, or the 3.6% swing achieved by the ALP under Bob Hawke when it defeated Malcolm Fraser in 1983.

The 53.29% two-party vote for the Coalition in 2013 compares to John Howard’s 53.63% in 1996 and Bob Hawke’s 53.2% in 1983. In 2007, Kevin Rudd was elected with 52.70%.

It is fair to say that the ALP has suffered a significant defeat in the House of Representatives, although it has done much worse in at least 8 previous elections. It’s two-party-preferred vote is on a similar level to previous defeats of this magnitude but its primary vote is significantly lower than at any election for the past 80 years.

• Colour-coded table showing the winner of every seat in the House of Representatives since 1984
• ALP Federal Election Results Since 1910
• National two-party-preferred figures at every federal election since 1949
• State-by-state and party breakdown of House of Reps results since 1972