Grab yourself a democracy sausage — and breathe a sigh of relief that Clive Palmer has finally stopped texting you — because it’s election day. After five gruelling weeks of campaigning, Australians across the country are headed to their local school/community hall/weird building that only gets used for elections to cast their vote today. But what time can we expect a result?
What time can we expect a result?
Australians will likely have some sort of result before they go to sleep tonight, at least when it comes to which party will be able to form government.
But while we may know which party will be running the country, results for individual electorates and Senate seats may not be known for a little while longer.
What time does counting start?
Polls on the east coast close at 6pm AEST, and we should start to see some early numbers roll in after that time.
Australian Electoral Commission staff are allowed to open ballot boxes and start sorting votes from 4pm local time, but the actual vote counting can’t start until 6pm.
Voting in South Australia and the Northern Territory will close at 6:30pm AEST, while we’ll be waiting until 8pm AEST before our friends in Western Australia wrap up.
Norfolk Island is usually the first to report results due to their earlier time zone, and we can expect results from regional seats with smaller populations on the mainland to roll in shortly after that.
What time will the election be called?
While we’re likely to know the result tonight, it’s hard to tell exactly what time we can expect it — especially if it ends up being a close election.
According to ABC chief election analyst Antony Green, who has been the expert on this stuff for longer than most of us have been alive, we’ll “probably know by 10 o’clock”.
In 2019, we knew the result by 9:30pm, and the ABC had called a Labor victory last election just after 9pm — so your friendly neighbourhood political journalists (me) are hoping for a repeat early mark this time around.
How many people voted early?
According to the Australian Electoral Commission, at least 8.5 million Australians cast their vote early this year, with more than 1.64 million postal votes returned as of last night. This means that pre-poll centre counts will likely continue late into the evening tonight.
“With more completed postal votes to come back, there is no doubt that more than half of everyone who will cast a vote in this federal election has done so before the day,” AEC said.
Early voting doesn’t mean early results
Contrary to popular belief, the huge surge in early voting doesn’t actually make it quicker for us to get a result.
Early votes aren’t counted any earlier than regular ballots, which actually means we might be waiting even longer for a result.
Who actually declares the winner?
The AEC will make the official call, but they won’t make this for some time after the election wraps up and everyone celebrates the winner.
Due to a process called “fresh scrutiny”, which requires the AEC to count each ballot paper at least twice, the *real* result take a lot of time, but thankfully our mates at the ABC won’t make you wait that long.
The ABC will call a winner based on a modelling system that uses AEC counting data. Technically, this isn’t the actual winner declaration, but they won’t call it until it’s all but certain.
“We call a result when it’s clear that one candidate has enough votes that they won’t be overtaken by some other candidate,” Green said.
Where will the winner be called?
The ABC will broadcast live coverage throughout the vote-counting process, and will declare the winner on ABC TV, ABC iView, and their live blog. While I’m not quite as good as Antony Green, you can expect us to cover the results right here on the PEDESTRIAN.TV live blog soon after.
The post Here’s When Australia Can Expect To Know The Election Result appeared first on PEDESTRIAN.TV .
