‘Could be f***ed’: Ugly twist in Bandt fight

Greens leader Adam Bandt is in the fight of his life with Labor’s Sarah Witty to hold onto his Melbourne seat - but there’s been a big development in the vote count.

The AEC has conceded it made the “wrong call” on the two-party preferred vote count in the battleground seat of Melbourne, causing mass confusion about the real state of play in Greens leader Adam Bandt’s seat.

Mr Bandt still thinks he can hang onto his seat and beat Labor’s Sarah Witty after an AEC “stuff up” plunged the count and the outcome into confusion.

The Labor Party concedes they shouldn’t win the seat in theory, but there’s magic in the air and postal votes are flowing their way.

Adam Bandt. Picture: NewsWire/Ian Currie

AEC admits “wrong call”

There was nothing wrong with the AEC’s actual count, simply the methodology it used to decide to do the two-party preferred projections.

Instead of doing it between Labor and the Greens, AEC staff insisted on putting it between the Liberals and the Greens.

The AEC has now told news.com.au they made the wrong call.

“We made the wrong call on which candidates to include in the two party preferred count on the night,’’ a spokesman for the AEC told news.com.au.

That said, the AEC resets the two-party preferred count in three-cornered contests all the time and that’s what they’ve done here.

“We reset two-party preferred counts all the time. We made the call on the night and I believe we started running the updated two-party preferred vote on Sunday afternoon,’’ the AEC spokesman said.

The decision has Labor and the Greens in an absolute froth.

“In advance of election night, for reasons that f**king confound me, the AEC determined that the two-party preferred count should be between the Greens and the Liberals,’’ a Labor source told news.com.au.

“So effectively, we have not been able to ascertain a clear read on, like, what our two-party preferred lead is, because they’ve only started doing, ALP, the Greens.”

Sarah Witty. Picture: Supplied.

The scrutineers have arrived

But that’s when the count appears to have slowed down as the major parties sent in their best and biggest scrutineers to peer over every ballot paper with a magnifying glass.

“Labor is now scrutinising really hard, and the count is going at a glacial pace,” a Greens source said.

“Yeah, so an entire day yesterday they got through 2000 postal votes. But he’s not conceding.”

The new count is also throwing out some wild swings in the two-party preferred vote that are confusing people logging onto the AEC website because they suggest Labor is way out in front with an unbeatable lead.

If you take a look at the count in the AEC tally room right now, it has Labor’s Sarah Whitty on a massive 55 per cent two-party preferred.

AEC polling as of 2pm Tuesday.

But over at the ABC’s projected count it’s a lot closer.

ABC projections as of 2pm Tuesday.

The confusion has left both Labor and the Greens unsure of exactly how the final count will play out.

“We’re winning the postal votes at an extremely high rate,’’’ a Labor source said.

“And the Liberals’ preferences are coming in really strongly to us. We’ve built this really deep lead on postal votes.

“But because we don’t have an accurate two-party preferred, we don’t know.

“We don’t know if the lead that we have on postals is sufficient enough to beat Adam Bandt’s election day lead, which we assume based on previous behavior, that The Greens would win on election day voting.

“The reason we can’t ascertain what his two-party preferred lead is is because the AEC didn’t do a two-party preferred count for Labor.

“We just don’t know how many preferences went away. My gut instinct is we probably got anywhere between 40 per cent on election day. So, he could be f*cked here.

“We will get a better steer this afternoon.”

Greens leader isn’t conceding

As the count continues, Parliament House has been awash with rumours this morning that he’s planning to concede defeat.

But that’s not true according to the Green leader’s office who told news.com.au that he’s still in the hunt and remains hopeful of hanging on despite a savage swing.

ABC elections analyst Antony Green predicted on 7.30 last night that it was too early to call time on the Greens leader. “Ah, I’m not convinced of that,” Green said.

“Labor finished second because of what the Liberals did without a vote card. That’s bad news for the Liberals. Now we’ve got the postal vote counted out to preferences, and that’s flowing 75 per cent to Labor, in which case, if that continues through the rest of the count, Labor will win that seat.

“But I don’t think that the rest of the votes will work that way. The Liberal, the postal votes are strongest for the Liberals in Melbourne. They also are most likely to get a how-to-vote card and so the preference flows are stronger. I think Adam Bandt will still probably win, but there’s going to be a bit of a fair bit of counting … to clarify that.”

As a result, the Greens insist it’s not over, despite the two party preferred vote blowing out on the current count.

Originally published as ‘Could be f***ed’: Ugly twist in Bandt fight