Counting of votes continues from last Saturday’s two state elections.
In Tasmania, the Greens have picked up a little, increasing their
(still slim) chance of holding their seat in Bass and also improving
their position for the last seat in Lyons (figures here).
The last seat in Franklin remains neck-and-neck between the Liberals
and ALP; I’m still inclined to put Labor slightly ahead, although
today’s Mercury has the opposite view.
Counting of preferences won’t take place in Tasmania until next week,
so everything is speculation until then. But South Australia is more
straightforward; further counting
has put all but one of the lower house seats out of doubt. Independent
ex-Labor and ex-Greens MP Kris Hanna has confounded all the pundits by
narrowly retaining his seat of Mitchell, while the Liberals have held
on to Unley (which for some reason is missing from Antony Green’s alphabetical list) with a margin of 1.5%.
The one remaining doubtful is the far northern seat of Stuart,
where sitting Liberal Graham Gunn, Australia’s longest-serving MP, now
trails his Labor challenger by just two votes. Early on Saturday night
Gunn was ahead, but by the end of the evening he had fallen behind by
318 votes. Now he has made up almost all of it on postal and absentee
votes.
Win or lose, Gunn has certainly defied the statewide swing; before the
election his was the Liberals’ most marginal seat on 2.1%, but while
another six seats have fallen he may still hold on. If he does and
serves out a full term, he will have been in parliament for not quite
40 years.
Depending on what happens in Stuart, the final numbers in the House of
Assembly will be either 28-15-4 or 29-14-4, so my prediction of 29-15-3
looks pretty good. There have been no further surprises in the
Legislative Council, with the 11 seats almost certain to go 4 Labor, 3
Liberal, 2 Nick Xenophon, and one each to Family First and the Greens.
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