Mayne 1% Mirage Miracle in the fading light of the Northern Star

In what appears to be a Family First Miracle of the North, Stephen Mayne, serial board candidate and city Councillor, based on 100% ticket vote allocation looks like winning a seat on the Red velvet from a low base of 1% of the vote.

Whilst it is possible it is never the less unlikely as more votes come in and the three main parties primary vote increases. There are a number of conjunction contest points in the preference distribution.

Stephen Mayne was well placed, as were also other minor party candidates, in the preference allocations.

Had the DLP secured  5% primary it could have won the seat.  It is still too early to hand over the Parliamentary pager to Mayne but this is one seat worth watching.

The Greens vote outside of Zone 1 in Northern Metro Region had collapsed as voters become increasingly concerned about the remote possibility of the Greens holding the balance of power.

Stephen Mayne ran on a Xenophon style Anti-Pokies platform and this has placed him well in securing votes from the three religious parties and the other independents including the Greens surplus plus and Sex Party primary vote. a convergence of different minds and thinking. Mayne will no doubt be making hay whilst the sun shines but he will soon face a down poor of rain on his parade as more votes are counted.

UPDATE: Latest counting prior to the VEC closing the curtain on the count, showed Stephen Mayne trailing the Greens; Alexandra Kaur Bharthal  by 120 votes.  ABC Analyst Antony Greens's calculator failed to take into account 309 primary votes for  independent Adrian Whitehead whose HTV card preferences the Greens then exhaust.   Mayne is excluded early from the Count and Liberal candidate goes on to win the forth seat by a margin of 6,800 votes giving the Coalition absolute control over both houses.

Northern Metro: Interesting vote ahead for independents

Northern Metropolitan is shaping up to be the electorate to watch as there is a toss up who could win the converted fifth seat. One of the joys of having an add number to be elected in a STV count.

The identified distortion in the flawed way in which the VEC calculate the surplus transfer value will not play a major role as most candidates are elected on the primary votes and initial distribution of surplus transfers so there is minimal impact that would arise from mixing votes with full value with fractional values.

However the segmented distribution of preferences never the less becomes interesting and this could be a situation such as in Queensland 2007 where the method of segmentation and distribution of preferences from excluded candidates (The dealing from the bottom of the deck) elected the wrong candidate in the final position. In Northern Metro's case this could deliver a win for either Group A or the DLP versus the ALP or Liberal Party)

Playing around with the Antony Green's calculator which replicates the flawed VEC counting system  produces some interesting results.

We recommend that would be punters on Sportsbet  start off using the estimated Senate values (The ones published by ABC Analysts Antony Green does not include the Postal, Absentee and Pre polling vote 0 a fact that is not mentioned as a  error of margin statement) but never the less a good starting point to seed the values of the minor independent parties.We can expect no more than a 2-3$ points shift in group vote allocations. You can be the judge as to which direction.  The aim of to find the tipping point of the scales and in both directions for each of the various players. ALP, Liberals Greens and the DLP.

We can bet that the DLP will concentrate its resources in  the region.

Tye likely outcome of an independent minor party securing the first seat is so great that we are forced to put on hold our final prediction for Northern Metro.  If the pollsters publish a poll breakdown into the upper house regions then we will be in a much better position to ascertain the final outcome prediction.