CRIKEY! MayneReport misleading readers

Stephen Mayne published a twitter comment claiming that he was still in the lead for Northern Metropolitan Region before the VEC pulled the tally from publication.

MayneReport 3:16pm via web

Green vote up to 18.14% after 1st 4000 absentee votes counted - not a good sign. Cuts lead over Greens to just 137, although need small win.

 The fact is Mayne was trailing the Greens by 120 votes ,  What Mayne was relying on in making his claim of course is ABC Analyst Antony Green's Calculator which is seriously left wanting at this stage of the cont.  What Green's Calculator does not take into consideration is the 309 votes attributed to independent Adrian Whitehead.  Whiteheads preferences follow his ticket and flow on to the Greens. When you take this into account Mayne is 120 vote behind the Greens surplus and as such he is eliminated from the count at an earlier stage and does not benefit from the Greens vote which has he survived would have topped him up.

The VEC has pulled the published results from its web site and now the count starts again as we are forced to wait without any comparison for the count to progress. 

Meanwhile Crikey.com.au/PollBludger Dr William Bowe has once again unjustly banned commentators from speaking out and informing Crikey's readers that Mayne was in fact behind.  It is unclear if We was acting under directions or just acting in plain bias to prevent open public discussion as the count progresses to the most crucial stage.Stephen Mayne was the founder of crikey.com.au

Meanwhile just before the the VEC pulled the curtain down on the election results, Stephen Mayne reported that the DLP was showing to be in a winning position in Western Victoria. Something we can not verify as the data is not longer available.   Someone really need to take a serious look at the way the VEC conducts its business.  The AEC is by far a more professional run organization.  One has to wonder why we have two organisation that basically do the same task.  That's two organizations with duplicated staff and resources.  Millions of dollars wasted , Millions that could be saved by having just one competent professional independent electoral authority..

MayneReport 8:01pm via web

Bizarre developments in the upper house count today. VEC briefly tipped a DLP win in Western Vic and then pulled all primary counts offline.

 Bizarre is an understatement, Incompetent is probably more accurate

Mayne Edges Forward - Split in Religious Unity - Towards Victory

With an additional 10,000 votes added to the Tally corporate attack dog, Stephen Mayne, has moved forward 200 votes to just over 1,000 theoretical vote lead in the race to the firth spot.

In what is an extraordinarily well placed set of preferences Mayne picks up Group A preferences which put him above the Greens No. 2 Candidate, who when  excluded from the count leap frogs over Family First Whose votes flow on to Mayne instead of the DLP and Christian Party, on what some might say is a division of faith. Catholic versus Evangelists.

Normally the three Christian Parties preference each other but not in this case. Mayne has manged to divide them and come up trumps. Mayne with the Support of Family First out-polls the combined vote of the DLP and Fred Niles Christian Party who then add to Mayne's snowballing total eventually out-polling the ALP's Nathan Murphy who when excluded goes on to elect Mayne to the fifth spot

It's still early and there are an anticipated 50,000 votes to be added into the pool, mainly from the inner city regions, which hopefully will pickup the Greens' overall vote.  If they can secure over 1.10 quotas the Mayne juggernaught may come to a crashing halt early on in the count in which case the Liberal Party will elect a second canidate to represent the Northern Metropolitan and in doing so will give the LNP Coalition absolute control of the Victorian Upperhouse.

If Mayne survives the count  this will be a one for the history books that will exclipse Family First's preference deal that saw Stephen Fielding with just 2% primary support elected to the Victorian Senate in 2004 .  Mayne has just 1.02% primary support.

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.

Stephen Mayne Award

Poll Blogger congratulates founder of Crikey (Alias "Nameless") for winning the inaugural ABC Stephen Mayne Award named in his honour

Stephen Mayne is a serial candidate

He stood for Federal parliament twice
Shame Parliament three times
Local Government once (He won that one)
ASX company boards a record breaking 38 times not once elected.

Thats a hit rate of  1 in 44

Congratulations