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Federal election 2016: AEC website's seat tally is wrong, warns Antony Green
Updated ,first published
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Beloved ABC election analyst Antony Green has cautioned people that the Australian Electoral Commission's website seat tallies are wrong and causing confusion as the results of the 2016 election wait to be finalised.
"There's a lot of confusion about how many seats each party has won and a lot of it is coming from the Electoral Commission's website, which if you go to it says Labor has 71 seats and the Coalition has 67," he said on Monday afternoon.
"That's not right. It's just not right. There are six seats on the Electoral Commission's website, which are not included in their totals. Five of them have been safely won by the Coalition, one of them has been safely won by the Labor Party and they're not included in the totals.
Green, a 25-year veteran of Australian elections, currently gives the Coalition 68 seats, Labor 67 and five to independents and minor parties. He says the final 10 seats remain in doubt.
Fairfax Media's prediction is slightly different and puts the seat count as follows:
- Coalition: 70
- Labor: 67
- Greens: 1
- Nick Xenophon Team: 2
- independents: 3
- Too close to call: 7 (Dunkley, Gilmore, Capricornia, Forde, Hindmarsh, Chisholm, Cowan)
To form a majority government Labor or the Coalition would need to win 76 lower house seats.
The AEC count mentioned purely indicates where parties are ahead and is not predictive. They designate seats with less than five per cent two-candidate preferred vote counted as "yet to be determined". Numbers are likely to change, with the trend among postal votes benefiting the Coalition.
Attorney-General George Brandis says he is confident of attaining a "working majority" in the House of Representatives. A hung Parliament remains a very likely outcome.
Labor surprised many with its strong showing, picking up a swag of marginal seats in western Sydney and Tasmania that had been predicted to stay with the Coalition.
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Fergus Hunter is a former crime reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. He previously reported on federal politics, education and communications at Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X, Facebook or email.