Victoria hot seats LIVE results: Ryan’s lead over Hamer in Kooyong grows; Ratnam concedes Wills; Rising star Wolahan bows out

The second batch of postal votes has just dropped — and if you were Monique Ryan, you’d be feeling a little more relaxed right now.

This latest lot has pushed the gap between Ryan and Liberal challenger Amelia Hamer back out to 724 votes (up from around 600), shifting the two-candidate-preferred margin ever so slightly in Ryan’s favour: now sitting at 50.35 to 49.65 — a 0.05 per cent bump her way.

It also means the AEC is nearly through the pile of postals. Just 961 remain to be counted, down from a total of 25,306 issued, with 21,356 already returned.

While there’s still another week for late postals to trickle in, most of the votes are now in and counted.

Psephologist Dr Kevin Bonham says it’s looking “very likely now” that Ryan will hold on — but he’s still watching one large pre-poll booth that hasn’t been rechecked. Remember, it was the rechecks of Kew and Ashburton last night that caused a big correction in Ryan’s favour.

Monique Ryan (left) is ahead of Amelia Hamer.Credit: The Age

But it’s not a great booth for Ryan (as we noted in this post from last night that looked at the booths in the new parts of Kooyong), so it’s unlikely any error would go against her, according to Bonham.

Still to come: 2,526 absentee votes and 2,477 declaration pre-polls. The AEC plans to get into both of those piles tomorrow, aiming to knock over at least 1000 of each.

We’re nearly a week on from election day — and edging ever closer to a result in the ’Yong.

Another result we came to expect has seemingly been decided, with Liberal MP Keith Wolahan conceding the seat of Menzies to Labor challenger Gabriel Ng.

With nearly 87% of votes counted Ng leads by 300 votes two-candidate preferred, a swing of 0.22 per cent towards Labor.

In this ultra-marginal outer Melbourne seat, that’s enough to get him over the line.

Wolahan, holding the seat named after Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies, was himself touted as future leadership material.

Keith Wolahan has conceded defeat in Menzies.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Gratitude and hope have always sustained me, and they always will. The votes are in, and I didn’t quite get there. I want to congratulate Gabriel Ng on his election,” he said on Facebook earlier tonight.

“The Liberal Party is an institution of democracy, founded on values worth fighting for. It will recover, and I will be there to help.”

Quick Kooyong update: we started the day with 4960 postal votes still to count.

The Australian Electoral Commission told me to expect two batches of around 2000 each today.

It looks like the first has just dropped — and it’s slightly narrowed the margin after that major overnight correction doubled independent MP Monique Ryan’s lead over Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer.

The current two-candidate preferred count has Ryan ahead by 617 votes (down from 723 this morning), sitting on 50.3 per cent to Hamer’s 49.7 per cent.

In a confirmation of the theory he floated earlier today, Psephologist Dr Kevin Bonham says the latest batch of postal votes is less favourable to Hamer than previous batches – with just 52.5 per cent of the most recent batch going to the Liberal party.

Stay tuned for the second batch - we’ll have the results here as soon as they land.

The Greens candidate for Wills, former Victorian state leader Samantha Ratnam, has called Labor’s Peter Khalil to concede defeat on Thursday afternoon.

With 81 per cent of the vote in the seat counted by the Australian Electoral Commission, Khalil had established an unassailable lead of more than 4000 votes.

The former Greens state parliamentary leader posted not long ago to social media saying she had conceded the tight-run campaign.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get over the line this time, but we got very, very close,” she said.

Leaning on a stack of books – Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Christine Milne’s An Activist Life and Bob Brown’s Optimism – she thanked her campaign team and told people who had helped her fight for the seat not to give up.

“It’s sometimes hard to hold on to hope, but I’m holding on to hope,” she said, “because we don’t have the luxury of giving up” and she vowed to continue fighting for refugees, the environment, and for Palestine.

She said she intended to go back to being a social worker and spending more time with her daughter.

And she said she wanted to be “on the front lines of stopping the demolition and privatisation of public housing here in Victoria, which the Allan Labor government plans to do, and I’ll be on the front lines of stopping new coal and gas projects in the midst of a climate crisis”.

“So hold on to hope everyone. We’ve achieved something historic that’s not going anywhere. It’s not the end, it’s just the beginning of this next chapter. And there’s one thing that I promise you is that I’ll be back,” she said.

Khalil issued a statement an hour later, thanking the people of Wills and noting the redistribution last year, that introduced North Carlton and North Fitzroy into the electorate, had made retaining the seat tough. The Labor MP while holding on to the seat had a seven per cent swing against him.

“My team and I worked hard to not only introduce myself to new parts of the electorate, but to share Labor’s message with the existing suburbs,” he said.

He said his campaign committed to open a new Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Coburg, to make the Linear Parklands in North Fitzroy, North Carlton and Princes Hill a more accessible space, and to upgrade sporting facilities at Fawkner Netball Courts and Gillon Oval in Brunswick.

Khalil thanked his staff, and said they had worked under “immense pressure”.

“Even in the final days of the election campaign, when our office was closed due to dangerous protest activity, my staff set up with camping chairs at an early voting centre and continued to take constituent enquiries,” he said.

He wished Ratnam well and said it “took courage to leave state parliament as leader of the Greens to run for federal parliament”.

Ratnam conceded shortly after Greens leader Adam Bandt did the same in his seat of Melbourne.

In Wills, Ratnam’s team had hoped that counting of absentee and other special votes would be enough to haul in Khalil’s lead but eventually the margin – which stood at 4193 at the latest update – was too great.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has thanked the Melbourne community, his family and party colleagues after conceding defeat on Thursday afternoon, saying he was proud of the things his party has achieved.

“To win in Melbourne, we needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it’s an Everest we’ve climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short,” he said at a press conference in Melbourne, surrounded by his wife and colleagues.

Adam Bandt concedes defeat in the seat of Melbourne.Credit: Nine

“Thank you for the last 15 years and the chance to do some amazing things together.

“Together we’ve been powerful. As a community, we’ve been a progressive beacon for the nation. We’ve stood for justice, for compassion, and we’ve led the way on the national stage.”

Bandt went on to say there were multiple reasons he lost Melbourne, including boundaries being redrawn, a section of votes “massively swung from Liberal to Labor”, and people wanting to vote Labor to get rid of Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

“People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton with a very good reason,” he said.

In a statement released minutes earlier, Bandt conceded defeat in the seat he has held since 2010, after Melbourne was called for Labor’s Sarah Witty.

“A short time ago I called the Labor candidate for Melbourne, Sarah Witty, to concede, congratulate her and wish her all the best as the next member for Melbourne,” he said in his statement.

“The Greens got the highest vote in Melbourne, but One Nation and Liberal preferences will get Labor over the line.”

The Greens, like the Liberals whose leader Dutton lost his seat this election, now face the task of appointing a new leader.

Read more here.

Zoe Daniel may not have conceded Goldstein yet but Liberal Tim Wilson, who claimed victory yesterday, is looking ahead, fielding questions about the Liberal leadership on morning radio.

Wilson told 3AW that the Liberal party room is still mulling its options for the leadership, after Peter Dutton lost his seat, adding he will back the candidate who can succinctly project a vision for the nation’s future under the Coalition.

Tim Wilson has claimed victory in Goldstein.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Wilson – dubbed the “teal slayer” on social media – declared victory in Goldstein yesterday after a dramatic contest against Daniel, who initially claimed victory on Saturday night before the flow of postal votes shifted the count in Wilson’s favour. Wilson held Goldstein from 2016 to 2022, before losing the seat to the teal candidate.

Wilson said he had spoken to two or three colleagues about the Liberal leadership, and was considering his best course of action before returning to Canberra.

“I haven’t spoken to all of the candidates, and [I’m] weighing up my options, but I don’t think anyone has perfect clarity yet,” Wilson said.

“What I’m looking for is somebody who’s going to project where we’re going to go as a country because that’s the basis that we’re going to persuade voters ... if you can’t do that, I’ll be left scratching my head about any candidate.”

Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor are the frontrunners for the leadership.

Read more here.

Liberal Tim Wilson claimed victory in Goldstein in a press conference on Wednesday surrounded by his supporters, but independent Zoe Daniel has not yet conceded – and counting continues.

The latest tally has Wilson ahead by 1362 votes, which appears to be an unassailable lead with postal votes swinging strongly in his direction.

But I’m hearing that Daniel is reluctant to concede because of concerns it may impact her chance for a recount.

I checked in with Evan Ekin-Smyth, spokesman for the Australian Electoral Commission, about the situation in Goldstein and whether a candidate’s concession impacts the count.

Ekin-Smyth says votes are counted three times: there’s the initial count; then a legislated process called “fresh scrutiny”, which is a mandatory second count; then the AEC does a full distribution of preferences – the third count.

“At the end of that process, if the margin is minute, then there’s an automatic trigger for a further count,” Ekin-Smyth says.

That automatic trigger is if the margin is as tight as 100 votes when the counting is concluded. There’s a long way to go in Goldstein – as of Thursday morning, there are still 4690 envelopes to be processed.

Once counting has finished, any candidate can request a recount, but it is very rare for this to happen, with no recounts in the 2022 federal election.

“The only other way that there is a recount is if somebody has really good grounds because we have already counted them three bloody times.”

Ekin-Smyth said any decisions were well down the track.

“If [Daniel] concedes, if Tim Wilson claims victory – that has absolutely no bearing on our processes whatsoever,” he says. “Her conceding means nothing.”

A substantial correction in the count for Kooyong has poured some cold water on Liberal Amelia Hamer’s chances, according to one psephologist.

I left you last night with the update that Hamer had sliced Monique Ryan’s lead down to just 366 votes, but today we start with Ryan ahead by 723 votes again.

So what happened?

While all the votes from pre-polling and election day booths are already counted, the good people from the Australian Electoral Commission are now going through the process of rechecking each of these counts — while also continuing to tally postal votes as they arrive.

Independent MP Monique Ryan’s lead in Kooyong has more than doubled overnight.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

It’s a normal part of the process. As psephologist Dr Kevin Bonham explains: “On Saturday night, when the votes are counted in those big pre-poll booths, it’s a lot of votes to count under time pressure … Every now and then a mistake is made.”

In this case, a substantial 210 votes from the Kew pre-poll centre were originally placed in Hamer’s pile, but on rechecking were correctly identified as votes for Ryan.

“It may well have been that it was like 100 votes in the wrong pile and also other minor changes,” Bonham said. “But that recheck made about a 200-vote difference by itself.”

Hamer also took a hit in the Ashburton pre-poll count, where 100 of her votes were removed after being deemed informal — meaning they weren’t filled out correctly and can’t be counted.

Bonham said these kinds of mix-ups are relatively common with large volumes of ballots: “It’s quite easy for bundles of 50 to just slip into the wrong pile.”

Smaller adjustments have been occurring across other booths too, he added, typically just a handful of votes here and there. These can result from reinterpreting unclear handwriting or reviewing ballots initially ruled informal on election night. This is all happening under the watchful eye of scrutineers from both Hamer’s and Ryan’s camps (see the photo below from Port Melbourne voting centre yesterday, which shows the Kooyong and Menzies divisions being counted — everyone in plain clothes is a scrutineer on behalf of a party or candidate).

Scrutineers (in plain clothes) watching the count for Kooyong and Menzies divisions at the AEC’s Port Melbourne counting centre on Wednesday.

While these kinds of rechecks happen in every seat, they make a big impact in contests as tight as this one. So does this swing the seat back toward Ryan?

“It’s a big blow for Hamer’s chances,” Bonham said. “Unless she gets one [correction] in the opposite direction … it’s going to be really difficult for her to get this back.”

But we’re not done yet. Several booths in Kooyong still haven’t been rechecked, so another twist isn’t out of the question.

Postal votes are also still coming in. Hamer had been steadily gaining from these through the week, but Bonham says that advantage is likely to fade.

“In these counts, postals often start out very strong for the Coalition — sometimes 65–35 [per cent in favour of the Coalition] — but the later ones tend to be less conservative,” he said. “By the time you get to the end, the flow may even start to favour the independent.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned covering Kooyong, it’s to expect the unexpected!

Greens leader Adam Bandt is set to lose the seat of Melbourne in a shock defeat that leaves the party in disarray after a series of extraordinary setbacks at the election.

Labor claimed victory for its candidate, charity chief Sarah Witty, in the tight contest on Wednesday after gaining more than 53 per cent of the vote so far, but Bandt has not conceded.

Greens leader Adam Bandt on Monday.Credit: Penny Stephens

The Australian Electoral Commission extended its booth-by-booth, two-party preferred count of the seat showing substantial swings to Witty, who was leading against Bandt by more than 2000 votes late on Wednesday afternoon.

In the key booth of Richmond, which Labor won 51-49 at the 2022 election, Witty won 61-38. In the nearby Cremorne booth, Witty enjoyed a 15 per cent swing while in Fitzroy - a Greens’ stronghold - she was boosted by a near 9 per cent swing.

ABC election analyst Anthony Green said on Wednesday afternoon that based on current voting trends, Bandt will lose the seat.

Read more here.

Independent MP Monique Ryan’s lead in the seat of Kooyong has shrunk again this afternoon.

An updated count featuring a fresh batch of postal votes was completed not long ago, and Ryan is now just 366 votes ahead of Liberal Amelia Hamer, down from 622 a few hours ago.

That has narrowed the two-candidate-preferred result by 0.1 percentage points too: it now sits at 50.2 per cent Ryan to 49.8 per cent Hamer. We’re not far off a potential tipping point in the race.

While celebrating his victory in Goldstein this morning, Liberal candidate Tim Wilson commented on Hamer’s chances in Kooyong: “The trend lines are very encouraging, but it’s up to the voters to decide where that ultimately happens … but we’re very optimistic about where it’s heading.”

Hamer posted on social media shortly after: “Whichever way it goes, everyone who was part of the campaign should be so proud of what we achieved.”

While we wait to see if Hamer joins Wilson on the opposition benches, I’ve taken a look at how the new boundaries of Kooyong – redrawn since the 2022 election – might have affected the contest this time.

The electoral commission’s redistribution process abolished the neighbouring seat of Higgins, folding parts of it into Kooyong. These areas were always expected to be a wildcard for Ryan’s re-election bid.

An additional 26,000 voters were added to Kooyong from Toorak, Malvern, Armadale and parts of Prahran.

As mentioned in the blog previously, this redistribution was a catalyst for a short-lived push to recruit former treasurer and Kooyong MP Josh Frydenberg to recontest the seat – based on the belief that these wealthier areas might help swing the seat back to the Liberals.

Of course, Hamer was pre-selected in the end. But how did the redistribution shake out for both lead candidates in the end?

We’ve pulled the finalised two-candidate-preferred results for the 11 booths from these new areas and graphed them below:

It’s a mixed picture – but overall, Hamer performed well in the new territory, especially in Toorak, while Ryan held ground in the younger, more progressive pockets of Prahran. Ryan came out ahead in five of the 11 booths, though four were very tight:

• Armadale: 51.23 per cent
• Malvern Central: 52.23 per cent
• Malvern South: 50.19 per cent
• Prahran North East: 66.16 per cent
• Toorak Central: 50.73 per cent

Hamer led in the remaining six:

• Armadale Central: 52.41 per cent
• Armadale North: 54.33 per cent
• Malvern: 54.13 per cent
• Malvern pre-polling centre: 58.39 per cent
• Toorak: 61.95 per cent
• Toorak West: 57.67 per cent