NT2024 Election – Post-Election Blog

This post will track counting in the close seats that remain in play after the Country Liberal Party’s landslide victory.

This post is ordered with the most recent updates at the top of the page.

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Wednesday 4 September

4:30pm – what happened in Nightcliff shows up strongly in the table below. The table shows preference flows to the Greens by polling place and count centre. It is ordered by ascending preference flows to the Greens. The higher the vote for Independent Mililma May, the stronger the flow of excluded candidate preferences to the Greens, and the stronger the CLP vote, the weaker the flow of preferences to the Greens.

Percentage Preference Flows to the Greens

Polling Place/Count Centre	Votes	CLP Primary %	Ind May Primary %	% Preference Flows
Eaton EVC	1,429	29.8	14.7	40.7
Darwin EVC	464	24.6	18.4	63.5
Absent	649	24.1	19.7	66.6
Casuarina	659	20.3	22.0	65.1
Postal	232	21.6	22.0	64.8
Nightcliff School	1,099	18.0	22.7	73.5
Declaration	35	17.1	31.4	79.2
Total	4,567	23.8	19.3	61.5

On the three way flow of preferences from May and Mamouzellos, preferences flowed 72.6% to the Greens, 14.0% to Labor and 13.4% to the CLP. On the exclusion of the CLP, preferences split 51.4% to Labor and 48.6% to the Greens. I had left the seat in doubt despite my assumption that 60% of CLP preferences would flow to Labor. It turns out I was right to leave Nightcliff in doubt as CLP preferences were weaker than I had expected. CLP voters made up their own minds on preferences with close to half ignoring the CLP HTV recommendation to put Labor before the Greens.

As the result is so close, the NT Electoral Commission will undertake a full re-count of all Nightcliff votes tomorrow. After the cut off for postal votes at midday on Friday, the final handful of postal votes will also be added to the count.

Nightcliff Update 3:45pm: The Labor versus Greens preference count has been released and the Greens are 42 votes ahead. There cannot be many votes left to count so this is bad news for Labor’s Natasha Fyles and the Greens must now be favoured to win.

If the Greens are confirmed as winning Nightcliff, Labor will be left with four seats, Arafura, Arnhem, Daly and Gwoja. Labor will be left with no urban seats, losing all seats they previously held in Darwin and Palmerston.

Nightcliff Update: The Labor-CLP two-party preferred count has disappeared from the NTEC results feed so I presume a re-throw of preferences is underway.

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Tuesday 3 September

Nightcliff Update: I understand that on Wednesday morning there will be a three-way throw of preferences from the bottom two Nightcliff candidates. This will confirm which of the CLP and Greens candidates finishes second to Labor when only three candidate remain. If as I expect the CLP candidate slips to third, the preference count will be re-thrown as a Labor versus Greens contest which will clarify whether Natasha Fyles retains her seat.

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Monday 2 September

Fannie Bay Update: 47 Declaration votes were counted and the Greens gained 9 votes. A dozen Absent votes were added which narrowed another three votes. The CLP’s Laurie Zio is now 28 votes ahead, down from 40. With only a limited number of postal votes to count, Zio is still set to win.

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Friday 30 August

11am: 65 postal votes counted in Fannie Bay. In the race for second place, the Greens increased by 15 votes from 42 to 47. After preferences the Greens also gained 15 votes and the CLP lead has been cut from 55 votes to 40. Apart from some sundry declaration votes, all that remain are outstanding postal votes. 490 were issued, 324 have been counted. At least half of the outstanding postals will either not be used or will be rejected based on errors with the declaration envelope. The CLP’s lead of 40 votes can’t be passed on the number of votes outstanding so the CLP Laurie Zio wins Fannie Bay bringing the CLP to 17 seats.

On Nightcliff, everything points to Natasha Fyles retaining it for Labor in a final race against the Greens. I expect that the Greens will pass the CLP during the distribution of preferences, and CLP preferences will then elect Fyles. However, I have no information on the flow of CLP preferences so will leave the seat in doubt at this stage. The final result will require a full distribution of preferences on 9 September.

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Thursday 29 August

There will be another count of Postal votes for Fannie Bay on Friday. After that count, the Electoral Commissioner will consider whether a three-way throw of Leonard May’s preferences will be carried out to insure the final count is CLP versus Greens.

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Wednesday 28 August

All votes on hand for Fannie Bay and Nightcliff were counted on Tuesday so there is no update for either seat. Absent votes were added to the count in all other seats.

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Tuesday 27 August

6:15pm – The two-party preferred count in Nightcliff shows Labor winning easily against the CLP. But the final count is most likely to be between Labor and the Greens. The CLP how-to-vote recommended preferences to Labor ahead of the Greens, which makes it almost impossible for a second placed Green candidate to win on CLP preferences. The possibility early in the count that Independent Mililma May could pass the Greens and create a closer contest now looks extremely unlikely.

6:00pm – With a maximum of about 150 votes left to count, most of them postal votes favouring the CLP, it seems the CLP will win Fannie Bay as long as the final count is between the CLP and Greens. But there is still a gap of only 42 votes between the Greens in 2nd place and Labor in 3rd, and 177 votes with 4th placed candidate Leonard May. I understand the Commission is likely to do an indicative three-way throw of May’s preferences on Wednesday to be certain on the order of exclusion and clarify that the throw of preferences between the Country Liberals and Greens will be the final count.

3:45pm – 474 Absent votes added for Fannie Bay. They narrowed the CLP lead by only 21 votes which leaves the CLP’s Laurie Zio ahead by 55 votes with only a few Declaration votes and a small number of outstanding postal votes to count. Fannie Bay is on track to become the CLP’s 17th seat.

Noon – Fannie Bay update. All polling places and count centres have now been re-thrown for a CLP versus Greens count. At this stage the CLP’s Laurie Zio leads by 78 votes on 50.8%. The gap between second and third remains at the 39 votes with the Greens leading Labor.

Here’s an update on counting to come. All 268 postal votes on hand on Friday have now been counted. A total of 490 postal vote packs were sent out, and maybe another 100 of these will be returned.

There are 51 declaration votes to be processed. Based on past elections, most of the declaration votes will be rejected.

There are 194 Early Votes cast outside of Darwin that are counted as a type of Absent vote. These were cast at the following early voting centres. Yarrawonga EVC in Palmerston (60), Palmerston EVC (40), Coolalinga EVC (52), Katherine EVC (18), Alice Springs EVC (12), Nhulunbuy (5), Berry Springs (4) and Tennant Creek (3). These votes are likely to favour the CLP.

The NTEC has also recorded 276 polling day absent votes, taken on election day at polling places in other districts. The polling places in Port Darwin and Fong Lim all took polling day ordinary votes for Fannie Bay, so most of these absent votes would have been taken to the north of Fannie Bay, electors voting in nearby Nightcliff, or at the heavily publicised early and polling day voting centres in Eaton and Casuarina. I presume the 69 Fannie Bay votes taken by mobile polling teams will also be counted in this Absent group. I believe the absent votes taken in nearby electorates will tend to favour the Greens.

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Monday 26 August 7pm

Today I’ve been out of circulation while flying from Darwin to Sydney which prevented me blogging earlier or monitoring the ABC website. Which was a problem because the NT Electoral Commission stopped updating their website and the media feed for part of the day. This was done due to public confusion over the meaning of preference re-throws the NTEC was publishing polling place by polling place.

The NTEC stopped publishing until most of the re-throws were complete. The NTEC then re-started website updates, but unfortunately did not re-start the results feed to the media.

Some time tonight that feed will re-start, but in the mean time I’ve updated the ABC’s website manually.

A re-throw of preferences between the CLP and Independent Justine Davis in Johnston has confirmed that Davis has won Johnston. You can find the new Johnston totals on the ABC site.

There has also been a major change in Fannie Bay (ABC wesbite results here) produced by a re-throw of preferences between the CLP and Greens.

This has created an interesting paradox. If Labor is excluded, the CLP win, but if the Greens candidate is excluded, Labor wins. Here’s my explanation from the ABC website.

There has been no significant change to the count in Nightcliff.

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Sunday 25 August 3pm

Fannie Bay – Labor gained 30 votes on the Greens through the counting of 258 Postal votes. The Greens now lead Labor by 38 votes at the crucial point in the count that determines which party finishes second and elects the other party on preferences. See inside post for discussion of the race for Fannie Bay.

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Sunday 2pm

Johnston – lead of Independent Justine Davis over Labor’s Joel Bowden at the key exclusion in the count increases from 162 to 165 votes. See Johnston table below for explanation of the count.

Casuarina – Darwin EVC added breaking 96-92 to CLP and first Postals splitting 121-93. CLP have won.

Nightcliff – 176 postal votes added that left the Greens 74 votes ahead of Independent May. As explained in the post, as long as the Greens stay ahead of May, Labor’s Natasha Fyles is on track to retain her seat.

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Sunday 10am

There are four seats that remain close, though in the case of Casuarina, today’s further counting should confirm it as a CLP gains. A narrow CLP lead in Barkly has been increased by counting of Postal votes today.

Today the NT Electoral Commission will count Pre-poll centres that did not have their votes counted on Saturday night, and they will also count Postal votes that had been returned by Friday. Below I’ll set out the end of election night position in each seat.

Fannie Bay

Fannie Bay (Sunday 25 August – 10:15am)

Candidate	Party	Primary Votes	Pct	Gap
Laurie Zio	CLP	1,503	39.8
Suki Dorras-Walker	GRN	1,106	29.3	+68
*Brent Potter	LAB	1,038	27.5
Leonard May	IND	128	3.4

The CLP candidate Laurie Zio leads with 39.8%, but the winner will be determined by whether Suki Dorras-Walker (Greens) or MLA Brent Potter (Labor) finish second. Dorras-Walker currently leads by 68 votes and if she stays ahead and gets at least 70% of Labor preferences she will win. But if Labor reaches second place then Potter will win on Green preferences.

Independent Leonard May has 128 votes and will be distributed first. How this affects the position of Dorras-Walker and Potter is not known.

The Labor-CLP preference count from Saturday delivers Labor victory with 51.7% of the vote. Overall preferences of the Independent and Greens are flowing 74.1% to Labor and 25.9% to CLP.

To be counted today are 268 postal votess received by Friday. Based on past trends you would expect these to favour Labor over the Greens but not by enough at this stage to put Potter into second place.

Still outstanding to be counted on future days are 194 pre-poll votes cast at Early Voting Centres in Palmerston and other parts of the NT, and the balance of returned postal votes. A total of 490 postals were issued. It is not known how many other Absent votes and Declaration Votes are yet to be returned and checked for counting.

Johnston

Johnston (Sunday 25 August – 11:00am)

Candidate	Party	Primary Votes	Pct	Gap
Gary Strachan	CLP	1,233	34.9
Justine Davis	IND	1,080	30.6	+162
Joel Bowden	LAB	918	26.0
Billie Barton	GRN	297	8.4

The CLP candidate Gary Strachan leads with 34.9% but cannot win. We have a two-party preference count between Strachan and Bowden which would elect Bowden with 52.9% after preferences. Preferences for Davis and Barton if excluded flow 68.9% to Labor and 31.1% to CLP.

If Bowden finishes third and is excluded, his preferences will flow strongly against the CLP and easily elect Justine Davis. The question is whether Davis finishes in second place. At the moment she leads Bowden by 168 votes and should pull further ahead when the fourth placed Green candidate is excluded.

In my view it is hard to see how Bowden can win. There are 174 postals to be counted today. There are 163 EVC Absent votes to be counted next week. 359 Postal vote packs were dispatched. It is unknown how many more postals will be returned and how many more Absent votes have been cast.

However many are outstanding, they are unlikely to put Bowden ahead in the race for second and Justine Davis will win on Labor preferences.

Casuarina

Casuarina (Sunday 25 August – Noon)

Candidate	Party	Primary Votes	Pct	2-Candidate	Pct	Gap
Khoda Patel	CLP	1,477	45.1	1,693	51.7
Lauren Moss	LAB	1,093	33.4	1,580	48.3	+113
Pamela McCalman	GRN	368	11.2
Martin Jackson	IND	335	10.2

Casuarina is a traditional two-party preferred contest between CLP and Labor. The CLP’s Khoda Patel leads by 113 votes or 51.7% ahead of Labor’s sitting member Lauren Moss.

Today there are 226 postal votes to be counted and 199 pre-poll votes from the Darwin Early Voting Centre. The counting of these votes should confirm the CLP’s victory.

Nightcliff

Nightcliff (Sunday 25 August – 12:30pm)

Candidate	Party	Primary Votes	Pct	Gap
Natasha Fyles	LAB	1,207	34.0
Helen Secretary	CLP	849	23.9
Kat McNamara	GRN	749	21.1	+77
Mililma May	IND	672	18.9
George Mamouzellos	IND	72	2.0

The CLP candidate Helen Secretary cannot win this seat. A two-party preferred preference count has been published that has Natasha Fyles winning with more than 65% of the two-party preferred vote.

But Helen Secretary will not finish second. She will be passed by the Greens Kat McNamara or possibly Mililma May. Which is where the CLP how-to-vote becomes important.

The CLP how-to-0vote recommended a 3rd preference for May, a 4th for Labor but the Greens last.

If further counting or Mamouzellos preferences put May ahead of McNamara, then May will then probably benefit from CLP preferences and threaten Natasha Fyles. But if May goes out, McNamara passes Secretary and Fyles will benefit from CLP preferences, unless voters completely ignore the CLP’s recommendation.

So the key gap in the above table is between McNamara and May which is 77 votes. As long as McNamara is ahead of May, then Natasha Fyles is favoured to win Nightcliff.

Around 186 Postal votes should be added to the count today.