In with a chance to win final Northern Metro spot
November 30, 2010
Dear volunteers and booth workers who helped out yesterday plus a few other interested parties,
First up today, we're in with a real chance in Northern Metropolitan. Antony Green's ABC election predictor for the upper house region is currently showing we win the fith spot ahead of the second Liberal. After all the candidates are excluded and preferences allocated, the final spot comes our way with 21.70% of the vote ahead of the second Liberal on 11.63%. Remember that a quota is 16.67% and we've got strong preference support from across the political divide.
If all these votes hold, this would represent the second largest win of the eight battles for the 5th and final spot in the upper house regions which currently stand as follows, according to the ABC election calculator:
Battles for the 5th spot in eight upper house regions
Eastern Victoria: ALP 21.99% defeat Country Alliance with 11.34%
Northern Metropolitan: Stephen Mayne 21.86% defeats Liberals with 11.47%
South Eastern Metropolitan: ALP 19.14% defeat Liberals with 14.19%
Southern Metropolitan: Greens 19.02% defeat ALP with 14%
Western Victoria: Liberals with 18.3% defeat Greens with 15.04%
Eastern Metropolitan: ALP 17.38% defeat Greens with 11.77%
Western Metropolitan: ALP 17% defeat Greens with 16.33%
Northern Victoria: Country Alliance 16.93% defeat Coalition with 16.4%
The day after the night before
After a hard fought election campaign, many of the political players go into an exhausted funk on the Sunday afterwards. We're no different.
Whilst incoming opposition leader Tim Holding was working the journalists and political players until after 3am at the Imperial Hotel across the road from State Parliament this morning, many others had less energy to deal with the future so quickly.
However, the blogosphere is starting to focus on our fascinating situation. Crikey's Andrew Crook posted this mid-afternoon update and Pokieact.org's Paul Bendat also posted this at about 9am today.
And The Manningham Leader is also covering the intrigue around the Northern Metropolitan possibilities as you can see here.
But, but, but, but...
Before anyone gets too excited, there are a number of uncertainties to be resolved.
The key challenge will be staying ahead of the second Green candidate, Alex Bathal. If you go to count 8 when the Christian Democrats are elimated, you can see that the next two candidates vying for elemination are as follows:
Stephen Mayne: 4511 votes or 1.55%
Alex Bathal from the Greens: 3526 votes or 1.21%
A lead of 985 votes with only 68.38% of the 426,000 possible votes counted is hardly the sort of buffer which would have you popping champagne corks.
However, clearly we are in with a show. The big question is whether the pre-poll and absentee votes deliver a different result to my 1.04% vote and the Green result so far of 17.88%.
However, we can't afford the Green vote to go backwards because we need a surplus of at least 0.8% to then get ahead of Family First which scored a primary vote of 2.3%.
The bigger risk is that the Green vote goes up and ours goes down. However, at the moment, we're in front and have our fingers crossed that it holds over the coming days.
Balance of power up for grabs
As Crikey's Andrew Crook noted this afternoon, the situation is doubly intriguing because the swing to the Coalition was so strong that the outcome in Northern Metropolitan is pivotal to the balance of power equation in the upper house.
If I go out, the second Liberal is tipped to take the final spot, partly on the back of my preferences which go to the Liberals ahead of Labor. This would be a reverse of the 2006 election, when my preferences helped Labor's Evan Thornley stagger over the line ahead of third Liberal David Southwick in Southern Metropolitan.
If the second Liberal Craig Ondarchie wins in Northern Metropolitan, the Coalition are a chance for outright control with the assistance of Country Alliance. If I get up, the same situation could occur with the non-Labor parties having a majority.
Who would ever have thought the combined Labor-Green numbers in the upper house could fall from 22 to 19? Whilst Greg Barber got back in Northern Metropolitan in his own right and fellow Green Sue Pennicuik got back in the Southern Metropolitan region on the back of Sex Party preferences, Colleen Hartland looks to be in trouble in Western Metropolitan courtesy of a three way struggle for the last two spots with the second Liberal and third Labor candidate, upper house speaker Bob Smith.
A big thank you to booth workers
With the rain coming down it was a tough old day on the booths yesterday, so a big thank you indeed to the 80-plus people who helped out.
A number of workers in the big northern booths of Broadmeadows, Thomastown and Mill Park got through more than 1000 cards with the biggest effort being at the giant Meadow Heights booth where 2000 cards were distributed by 1.50pm. We were only left with 4 of our 50 boxes unopened at the end of the day so at least 50,000 cards were distributed.
A special thanks to Rich, Stephanie, Coatie, Big Pete, Paul B, Paul R, Gabriella and Paula for doing an entire day as volunteers.
We did suffer from some dirty tricks. Someone at the biggest booth in Flemington knocked off Ashok's box of cards, so I lost an hour of valuable booth time driving across town to replace it.
Similarly, Stephanie wasn't treated well by the Labor booth workers at Thornbury Primary School who took down our modest A3 posters.
However, these were minor matters in the broader scheme of things and most booth workers reported back that the reception was warm from voters and the booth banter with other volunteers was enjoyable.
That said, there was a big difference in being under cover at booths like Brunswick Town Hall, Collingwood Secondary College, RMIT, Victoria University and Meadow Heights and being exposed to all the elements at the vast majority of polling stations.
It really is time the VEC became more accommodating of the needs of booth workers.
Tracking the different outcomes across booths and seats
Everyone can see the Northern Metropolitan booth by booth results from this link on the VEC website.
It's always interesting to see how your booth performed so below we've listed the names of workers on out top 30 booths in terms of straight votes.
1. Apollo Parkways Primary in Greensborough: 97 votes or 3.97% (Ted, Tony and Sandra)
2. Kensington Primary: 84 votes or 2.52% (Linda all day)
3. Brunswick Town Hall: 82 votes or 3.47% (Ed, Jennifer and Paul)
4. Ivanhoe Grammar: 73 votes and the old school delivered our best result of 5.27% (David and Olivia)
5. Merri Creek Primary in East Brunswick: 74 votes or 4.86% which was third best (Richard all day)
6. Ivanhoe Primary: 73 votes or 2.53% (Gary, Michael and Vivienne)
7. Westgarth Primary in Northcote South: 69 votes or 2.47% (Sasha, Martin and one quiet hour late in the day from the candidate)
8. North Warrandyte: 68 votes or 5.05%, our second best percentage in a smallish booth (Ross, Linda and Diana)
9. Thornbury Primary: 65 votes or 2.45% (Stephanie)
10. Banyule Primary: 61 votes or 2.52% (Cat)
11. Yarra Primary in Richmond Central: 58 votes or 2.35% (Ross, Andrew and Lynnette)
12. Our Lady of Mercy College in Heidelberg: 58 votes or 2.39% (Girlie and David)
13. North Fitzroy Primary: 57 votes or 2.7% (Peter and Amelia)
14. East Melbourne, Dallas Brooks Centre: 49 votes or 2.75% (Blairney and Margaret)
15. Carlton Primary: 48 votes or 2.35% (Peter, Mary and Sean)
16. Fairfield Primary: 47 votes or 1.69% (Grant briefly)
17. Thornbury South (Wales St Primary): 47 votes or 1.76%
18. St Ignatious Church in Richmond: 45 votes or 1.63% (Nigel and Kate)
19. Brunswick South West: 43 votes or 2.31% (candidate from 8.45am until 10.40am)
20. Eaglemont: 42 votes or 2.8% (Susie)
21. Clifton Hill Primary: 42 votes or 1.84% (Mary-Anne)
22. Collingwood Secondary College: 42 votes or 1.92% (Kimberley)
23. Viewbank Primary: 41 votes or 1.67% (Ian all day)
24. East Ivanhoe (St George's Anglican Church): 41 votes or 2.34% (Lee and Wilf)
25. St Helena Secondary College, Eltham North: 41 votes or 3.3% (Roger)
26. Preston West Primary: 41 votes or 1.47% (Paul all day)
27. North Melbourne Primary: 40 votes or 2.04% (Linda and Sam)
28. Fitzroy Town Hall: 36 votes or 1.48% (Tony, Thomas and Peter)
29. Brunswick North Primary: 36 votes or 1.21% (Jordan and Ed)
30. Brunswick East Primary: 34 votes or 1.46% (Mark)
As you can see, all these strong booths were either in the inner city or down the Hurstbridge train line which is closest to where I live and grew up and the City of Manningham. It also correlates strongly with higher Green and Liberal votes.
Despite giving away truckloads of cards in the likes of Broadmeadows, Mill Park, Epping and Lalor, it didn't translate to many votes. Nothing to do with the booth workers, it just reflects the voting demographics.
Finally, it was great to have a few of our volunteers come around last night for a barbecue and to watch the count. What an exciting night!
It's now a case of sitting back and watching the intrigue unfold over the days.
Thanks again and just keep doin' ya best, Stephen Mayne
First up today, we're in with a real chance in Northern Metropolitan. Antony Green's ABC election predictor for the upper house region is currently showing we win the fith spot ahead of the second Liberal. After all the candidates are excluded and preferences allocated, the final spot comes our way with 21.70% of the vote ahead of the second Liberal on 11.63%. Remember that a quota is 16.67% and we've got strong preference support from across the political divide.
If all these votes hold, this would represent the second largest win of the eight battles for the 5th and final spot in the upper house regions which currently stand as follows, according to the ABC election calculator:
Battles for the 5th spot in eight upper house regions
Eastern Victoria: ALP 21.99% defeat Country Alliance with 11.34%
Northern Metropolitan: Stephen Mayne 21.86% defeats Liberals with 11.47%
South Eastern Metropolitan: ALP 19.14% defeat Liberals with 14.19%
Southern Metropolitan: Greens 19.02% defeat ALP with 14%
Western Victoria: Liberals with 18.3% defeat Greens with 15.04%
Eastern Metropolitan: ALP 17.38% defeat Greens with 11.77%
Western Metropolitan: ALP 17% defeat Greens with 16.33%
Northern Victoria: Country Alliance 16.93% defeat Coalition with 16.4%
The day after the night before
After a hard fought election campaign, many of the political players go into an exhausted funk on the Sunday afterwards. We're no different.
Whilst incoming opposition leader Tim Holding was working the journalists and political players until after 3am at the Imperial Hotel across the road from State Parliament this morning, many others had less energy to deal with the future so quickly.
However, the blogosphere is starting to focus on our fascinating situation. Crikey's Andrew Crook posted this mid-afternoon update and Pokieact.org's Paul Bendat also posted this at about 9am today.
And The Manningham Leader is also covering the intrigue around the Northern Metropolitan possibilities as you can see here.
But, but, but, but...
Before anyone gets too excited, there are a number of uncertainties to be resolved.
The key challenge will be staying ahead of the second Green candidate, Alex Bathal. If you go to count 8 when the Christian Democrats are elimated, you can see that the next two candidates vying for elemination are as follows:
Stephen Mayne: 4511 votes or 1.55%
Alex Bathal from the Greens: 3526 votes or 1.21%
A lead of 985 votes with only 68.38% of the 426,000 possible votes counted is hardly the sort of buffer which would have you popping champagne corks.
However, clearly we are in with a show. The big question is whether the pre-poll and absentee votes deliver a different result to my 1.04% vote and the Green result so far of 17.88%.
However, we can't afford the Green vote to go backwards because we need a surplus of at least 0.8% to then get ahead of Family First which scored a primary vote of 2.3%.
The bigger risk is that the Green vote goes up and ours goes down. However, at the moment, we're in front and have our fingers crossed that it holds over the coming days.
Balance of power up for grabs
As Crikey's Andrew Crook noted this afternoon, the situation is doubly intriguing because the swing to the Coalition was so strong that the outcome in Northern Metropolitan is pivotal to the balance of power equation in the upper house.
If I go out, the second Liberal is tipped to take the final spot, partly on the back of my preferences which go to the Liberals ahead of Labor. This would be a reverse of the 2006 election, when my preferences helped Labor's Evan Thornley stagger over the line ahead of third Liberal David Southwick in Southern Metropolitan.
If the second Liberal Craig Ondarchie wins in Northern Metropolitan, the Coalition are a chance for outright control with the assistance of Country Alliance. If I get up, the same situation could occur with the non-Labor parties having a majority.
Who would ever have thought the combined Labor-Green numbers in the upper house could fall from 22 to 19? Whilst Greg Barber got back in Northern Metropolitan in his own right and fellow Green Sue Pennicuik got back in the Southern Metropolitan region on the back of Sex Party preferences, Colleen Hartland looks to be in trouble in Western Metropolitan courtesy of a three way struggle for the last two spots with the second Liberal and third Labor candidate, upper house speaker Bob Smith.
A big thank you to booth workers
With the rain coming down it was a tough old day on the booths yesterday, so a big thank you indeed to the 80-plus people who helped out.
A number of workers in the big northern booths of Broadmeadows, Thomastown and Mill Park got through more than 1000 cards with the biggest effort being at the giant Meadow Heights booth where 2000 cards were distributed by 1.50pm. We were only left with 4 of our 50 boxes unopened at the end of the day so at least 50,000 cards were distributed.
A special thanks to Rich, Stephanie, Coatie, Big Pete, Paul B, Paul R, Gabriella and Paula for doing an entire day as volunteers.
We did suffer from some dirty tricks. Someone at the biggest booth in Flemington knocked off Ashok's box of cards, so I lost an hour of valuable booth time driving across town to replace it.
Similarly, Stephanie wasn't treated well by the Labor booth workers at Thornbury Primary School who took down our modest A3 posters.
However, these were minor matters in the broader scheme of things and most booth workers reported back that the reception was warm from voters and the booth banter with other volunteers was enjoyable.
That said, there was a big difference in being under cover at booths like Brunswick Town Hall, Collingwood Secondary College, RMIT, Victoria University and Meadow Heights and being exposed to all the elements at the vast majority of polling stations.
It really is time the VEC became more accommodating of the needs of booth workers.
Tracking the different outcomes across booths and seats
Everyone can see the Northern Metropolitan booth by booth results from this link on the VEC website.
It's always interesting to see how your booth performed so below we've listed the names of workers on out top 30 booths in terms of straight votes.
1. Apollo Parkways Primary in Greensborough: 97 votes or 3.97% (Ted, Tony and Sandra)
2. Kensington Primary: 84 votes or 2.52% (Linda all day)
3. Brunswick Town Hall: 82 votes or 3.47% (Ed, Jennifer and Paul)
4. Ivanhoe Grammar: 73 votes and the old school delivered our best result of 5.27% (David and Olivia)
5. Merri Creek Primary in East Brunswick: 74 votes or 4.86% which was third best (Richard all day)
6. Ivanhoe Primary: 73 votes or 2.53% (Gary, Michael and Vivienne)
7. Westgarth Primary in Northcote South: 69 votes or 2.47% (Sasha, Martin and one quiet hour late in the day from the candidate)
8. North Warrandyte: 68 votes or 5.05%, our second best percentage in a smallish booth (Ross, Linda and Diana)
9. Thornbury Primary: 65 votes or 2.45% (Stephanie)
10. Banyule Primary: 61 votes or 2.52% (Cat)
11. Yarra Primary in Richmond Central: 58 votes or 2.35% (Ross, Andrew and Lynnette)
12. Our Lady of Mercy College in Heidelberg: 58 votes or 2.39% (Girlie and David)
13. North Fitzroy Primary: 57 votes or 2.7% (Peter and Amelia)
14. East Melbourne, Dallas Brooks Centre: 49 votes or 2.75% (Blairney and Margaret)
15. Carlton Primary: 48 votes or 2.35% (Peter, Mary and Sean)
16. Fairfield Primary: 47 votes or 1.69% (Grant briefly)
17. Thornbury South (Wales St Primary): 47 votes or 1.76%
18. St Ignatious Church in Richmond: 45 votes or 1.63% (Nigel and Kate)
19. Brunswick South West: 43 votes or 2.31% (candidate from 8.45am until 10.40am)
20. Eaglemont: 42 votes or 2.8% (Susie)
21. Clifton Hill Primary: 42 votes or 1.84% (Mary-Anne)
22. Collingwood Secondary College: 42 votes or 1.92% (Kimberley)
23. Viewbank Primary: 41 votes or 1.67% (Ian all day)
24. East Ivanhoe (St George's Anglican Church): 41 votes or 2.34% (Lee and Wilf)
25. St Helena Secondary College, Eltham North: 41 votes or 3.3% (Roger)
26. Preston West Primary: 41 votes or 1.47% (Paul all day)
27. North Melbourne Primary: 40 votes or 2.04% (Linda and Sam)
28. Fitzroy Town Hall: 36 votes or 1.48% (Tony, Thomas and Peter)
29. Brunswick North Primary: 36 votes or 1.21% (Jordan and Ed)
30. Brunswick East Primary: 34 votes or 1.46% (Mark)
As you can see, all these strong booths were either in the inner city or down the Hurstbridge train line which is closest to where I live and grew up and the City of Manningham. It also correlates strongly with higher Green and Liberal votes.
Despite giving away truckloads of cards in the likes of Broadmeadows, Mill Park, Epping and Lalor, it didn't translate to many votes. Nothing to do with the booth workers, it just reflects the voting demographics.
Finally, it was great to have a few of our volunteers come around last night for a barbecue and to watch the count. What an exciting night!
It's now a case of sitting back and watching the intrigue unfold over the days.
Thanks again and just keep doin' ya best, Stephen Mayne