If, like a normal person, you spent your weekend doing normal person things like hanging out with friends, enjoying the outdoors, and generally having a sick one, rather than hunching over your phone following a federal byelection, you may not be totally across what happened in Wentworth. That’s okay! Let me take you through where we’re at right now.
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On Saturday, the people of Wentworth – traditionally one of the safest Liberal seats in the entire country – have fallen on their blades for their king Malcolm Turnbull and elected an independent, current Sydney councillor Kerryn Phelps. This represents the biggest swing away from a sitting government in Australian history, and an absolute pain in the ass for the Coalition. Why? Because the government only has a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. With an independent nicking one of their seats, they’ll be in minority government and will find passing legislation extremely hard.
After the ABC’s resident elections genius Antony Green called it for Phelps unbelievably early, the narrative quickly shifted. Liberal candidate Dave Sharma gave what was basically a concession speech, and Scott Morrison tried to pretend this wasn’t fundamentally devastating to the Liberal Party.
Prime Minister @ScottMorrisonMP is speaking at the @LiberalAus function after losing majority government.
‘What has happened in Wentworth is not unexpected. The result is on us but not on @DaveSharma.’
MORE: https://t.co/BqW9BmzOeb #WentworthVotes pic.twitter.com/7DlD17kiLC
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) October 20, 2018
But there came a twist on Sunday! Despite the fact Phelps had a solid lead in the counting with preferences, the tide started to shift when they got to counting the pre-polling and postal votes. Those who pre-poll and vote by post tend to be older and more conservative than your average voter – ergo, they usually favour the Libs. But these votes were breaking at a much brisker pace than expected for Sharma, and commentators started to realise that Phelps might not have won the thing after all.
It got remarkably narrow at one point on Sunday, with the gulf receding to a knife-edge of 900 or so votes.
look at the margin now in Wentworth – just 900 votes, and counting still ongoing. Phelps may not be as home and hosed as we thought last night https://t.co/CwcVXZt94Z pic.twitter.com/nKCf91RtPp
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) October 20, 2018
It genuinely looked like – if the pre-polling and postal votes continued to break in Sharma’s favour – that the jubilation of the Phelps camp on Saturday night might have been very premature. The Libs could actually have won this.
But then there was another twist. As was pointed out by a number of poll experts and bloggers, something fishy was going on with the result from two of the polling places: Bondi Beach and Bellevue Hill. Without getting too technical, the issue was with preference flows being calculated incorrectly at those two booths – the kind of error that usually gets picked up on a recount. When this was resolved, it put Phelps back into what seems like an unassailable lead.
So is it completely done and dusted? No, and we probably won’t get a true and final declaration for a little while yet. There are about 3000 postal votes still outstanding, and those who hold them have until November 2 to get them back. Sharma theoretically could get over the line, but he’d need to win about 73% of those votes – incredibly unlikely, and way, way above what he’s been polling with postals to this point.
Phew. Here’s the tl;dr – barring some incredible late-gate change or error, Phelps has almost won this one, despite all the hand-wringing on Sunday. To put it simply: Scott Morrison’s life is still thoroughly ruined.
