The ABC’s Election Wizard Reckons The Official AEC Seat Tally Is Stuffed

Well, counting resumes on House of Representatives ballots today, so we may find ourselves inching a few steps closer to comprehending the bizarre Frankenstein’s monster of a government we have created. Hooray!

But at the moment, the numbers don’t add up. Or at least that’s what the ABC’s resident psephologist Antony Green reckons. He reckons the data that’s being presented on the Australian Electoral Commission‘s website – which says that Labor has 71 seats and the Coalition has 67 – aren’t quite right, and are being calculated oddly.

“There’s a lot of confusion about how many seats each party has won and a lot of it is coming from the Electoral Commission’s website, which if you go to it says Labor has 71 seats and the Coalition has 67,” the sorcerer himself said yesterday arvo.
“That’s not right. It’s just not right. There are six seats on the Electoral Commission’s website, which are not included in their totals. Five of them have been safely won by the Coalition, one of them has been safely won by the Labor Party and they’re not included in the totals.”

So if you’re a Labor dieheard and you’re loving those numbers, don’t start cheering yet. Green – who is awakened from a cryogenic sleep deep within the laboratories beneath ABC’s Ultimo office every federal election – thinks that the tally actually looks like 68 for the Coalition, 67 for Labor and 5 for independents and minor parties. There are 10 seats currently in doubt.
To form a majority government, someone needs 76 lower house seats. So a hung parliament is an astoundingly likely outcome.
Let’s see what happens today.
Source: ABC / Twitter.
Photo: Twitter.

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