Tonight’s election result was very clear. A massive swing against the Liberal Party has pushed the Morrison coalition government into a minority position, with Dave Sharma losing a seat held by the conservative major party since federation, despite a 17.7% margin built up by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
6:00 – Polls have just closed in the Wentworth by-election. Don’t expect much in the way of results for at least 45 minutes, but I’ll be tracking the results here all night.
Polls have just opened in the federal by-election in the seat of Wentworth in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. I’ll be back at 6pm to cover the results, but until then enjoy this open thread.
You may like to read my guide to today’s by-election.
Apologies for this, I was planning to publish a podcast today about the Wentworth campaign and Victoria but some technical issues mean it won’t be happening. I plan to put out a post-by-election podcast this Sunday then we’ll be back in two weeks with a show all about Victoria.
Some of my more committed readers may have noticed that this website was unavailable late on Saturday night. Basically an attempt to install a new mobile theme screwed up the website and it took some time to fix the damage.
When I produce seat guides, I always like to split up the polling places in the electorate into a number of subareas. I find that there are times where you want a sense of the different parts of the seat, but the granular detail of polling places can confuse the broader trends.
I’ve just added a bunch of extra data to my collection, covering all of the recent by-elections.
By-election data can often be even more scattered than general election data. I’ve avoided publishing federal election data, because the AEC does a thorough job, at least they do at general elections.
Ben is joined by William Bowe and Georgia Tkachuk to discuss the Wentworth by-election and to begin discussing the Victorian state election.
I’ve finished posting the Victorian state election guide today, with all of the remaining seats available on the website now.
You can use this map to click through to any seat guide:
I’ve been trickling out seat guides for the Victorian election gradually for the last while. I’ve now posted 53 out of 88 lower house profiles, and guides to all eight upper house regions. At the moment I’m posting two seats per day.
As part of this work I’ve been tracking candidates who are running, and I thought I would publish my spreadsheet for anyone to access.