Victorian Election Results

Postscript one: In preparing this story I forgot to congratulate Evan Thornley on his election to the upper house as an ALP member for Southern Metropolitan. Evan gave this year's Drummond Oration at Armidale and also recruited my wife into the Fabian Society.

Postscript two 27 November: I see from later information that the final Council results will be a a little different from those I presented here. I will include full results once they have been finalised.

With 75 per cent of the votes counted, the ALP has held Government comfortably, with the ABC predicting (seven seats are still in doubt) that the ALP will win 56 (down 3) of the 88 Legislative Assembly seats as compared to 23 Liberals (plus 3), 8 Nationals (plus 1) and 1 (down 1) independent.

Labor has, however, lost control of the Legislative Council under the new proportional voting system in use for the first time. If my maths are correct here, the new Council will have 17 ALP, 14 Liberal with 3 each for the Nationals and the Greens.

Looking at the individual party votes:

• The ALP ran in all 88 seats gaining 43.7 per cent of the Assembly primary vote, down 4.3 per cent. Labor will be happy with this result.
• The Liberals also ran in all 88 seats, gaining 34 per cent of the vote, an increase of just 0.1 per cent. The Liberals are not happy with this outcome.
• A key reason for the small swing to the Liberals is the presence this time of the Family First party (a Christian, family values party), which also ran in all 88 seats gaining 4.3 per cent of the vote. Family First will not be happy at its failure to gain representation in the upper house.
• The Greens ran in all 88 seats, gaining 9.6 per cent of the primary vote, down 0.1 per cent. This was not a good result for the Greens. The Green vote appears to have been largely concentrated in Melbourne, giving them a member in three of the five metropolitan upper house provinces. While they will be pleased with this outcome, they will also be disappointed at their failure to win any lower house seats and especially the seat of Melbourne where they were given a strong chance prior to the election.
• The National ran in 20 regional seats, giving them 5.4 per cent of the total primary vote, an increase of 1 per cent. I suspect the main National Party reaction to the result will be one of relief. Facing a challenge this time from the Liberal Party in every National held seat, the Nationals managed to hold all their seats while also winning an additional one back from an independent.