The Bradfield booth that swung it for the teals and how the Liberals’ lead slipped away

It was a polling booth in Turramurra that broke the deadlock in the battle for the seat of Bradfield.

The initial count had already revealed the tightest federal contest in years, and when it finally concluded, the Liberal contender Gisele Kapterian was ahead of her teal independent rival Nicolette Boele by just eight votes. That tiny margin triggered an automatic recount.

Teal MP Nicolette Boele was formally declared the winner of Bradfield on Friday.Credit: Janie Barrett

For days Kapterian held on to her wafer-thin advantage, but about 6.45pm last Saturday the momentum shifted. Election officials had just recounted 6400 votes cast at the Turramurra pre-polling station on Bobbin Head Road and the outcome posted on the Australian Electoral Commission website was good news for Boele.

Kapterian had lost 16 votes, putting the teal independent ahead by 12. It was the last time the lead in this see-sawing contest would change, and when the recount eventually wrapped up on Wednesday, Boele had won the battle for Bradfield by 26 votes.

Boele was formally declared the winner on Friday at a ceremony held by the AEC at Asquith, where the count for the ultra-marginal seat was held over more than four weeks.

Kapterian, meanwhile, has not conceded and is weighing up whether to petition the Court of Disputed Returns to consider the result.

Federal Liberal Leader Sussan Ley appointed Kapterian to her front bench, and that role will remain pending a possible challenge. Liberal sources said Ley’s decision to appoint Kapterian assistant spokesperson for technology and the digital economy was because of her corporate background in the sector.

Nearly 119,000 votes were cast in Bradfield, although 6656 of those ballots (5.6 per cent) were ultimately deemed to be informal and therefore not counted; that’s 1.7 per cent more than at the last election in Bradfield but in line with the national average for informal votes.

Election analyst and editor of the Poll Bludger website, William Bowe, estimates Kapterian’s two-candidate preferred tally fell by 103 during the recount, due mostly to first-preference votes for her being deemed to be informal after greater scrutiny.

Liberal candidate for Bradfield, Gisele Kapterian, has not conceded.Credit: Sam Mooy

By comparison, Boele’s two candidate preferred tally fell by 69 during the recount. That difference turned Kapterian’s eight-vote lead at the end of the initial count into a 26-vote win for Boele.

Kapterian had received 38 per cent of first-preference votes compared with Boele’s 27 per cent. But having more first-preference votes became a disadvantage during the recount.

That’s because first-preference votes for the most popular candidates tend to get less scrutiny than others when first counted. When a voter casts a ballot for a less popular candidate, their ballot paper is checked several times as that voter’s preferences are redistributed.

When there is a recount, many first-preference votes cast for the two most popular candidates receive a much higher level of scrutiny, often for the first time.

It is inevitable in a recount that some first-preference ballots for the top two candidates are ruled informal and knocked out – that trend proved decisive in Bradfield.

“Boele’s situation was transformed by the Turramurra pre-poll centre,” Bowe said.

The result left many Liberals shell-shocked, after assuming Kapterian’s lead would only increase in the recount. Party insiders immediately started considering legal action which could deliver several possible scenarios.

The court could confirm Boele as the winner (and perhaps increase her margin after review) or it could order a fresh election should it deem the result unsound. It has the power to declare Kapterian the winner after review, although that seems unlikely.

Several senior Liberal sources, not authorised to speak publicly about a potential challenge, said preliminary legal advice indicated Kapterian had a strong case to petition the court.

The sources said there were several points the party would consider.

These include the fact that the first count and the recount produced two different winners, with both margins representing less than 0.02 per cent of the total ballots cast. Also, between the two counts, about 170 votes that were originally deemed formal were ruled informal, which is more than six times the margin separating both candidates following the recount.

Another ground they could argue is that the total votes increased between the first full count and the recount, which accounted for about one-third of the final difference between Boele and Kapterian.

However, election analyst Ben Raue, who publishes the Tally Room website, says the AEC has developed clear guidelines for deciding whether a vote is informal.

“I think the rules they have work well to produce some consistency,” he said.

During the Bradfield count, the most difficult adjudications about the formality of votes were made by the top AEC official in NSW.

The last legal challenge to a House of Representatives election was in the Victorian electorate of McEwan in 2007. In that contest Labor’s Rob Mitchell won the initial count by six votes but after a full recount his opponent and Liberal incumbent Fran Bailey was declared the winner by 12.

The result was challenged in the Court of Disputed Returns. After reviewing disputed ballots cast by voters in McEwan, the court ultimately declared Bailey the victor by 31 votes.

Two other recent results that went to a recount – in the Queensland electorates of Fairfax in 2013 (final margin 53 votes) and Herbert in 2016 (final margin 37 votes) – were not challenged in court.

But would a fresh ballot in Bradfield suit the Liberals after last month’s electoral drubbing? History shows that making legal challenges in the hope of getting a new election can backfire.

In 1996 Liberal Jackie Kelly won the western Sydney seat of Lindsay, but Labor challenged Kelly’s eligibility to be a member of parliament because of her dual citizenship.

It won the court case and forced a byelection, but Kelly was elected with a 5 per cent swing in her favour and went on to hold the seat for more than a decade.

“Things do change when you have a fresh election,” Raue said. “People have a chance to change their mind.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.