Prahran: Election night results

Four more years for Tony.

Counting has finished for the night, and it looks like Talk to Me Tony is back for four more years:

PRAHRAN

Primary Count

Justin Walker (Green)
VOTE: 19.4% SWING: +1.4%

Tony Lupton (Labor)
VOTE: 38.0% SWING: 0.0%

Clem Newton-Brown (Liberal)
VOTE: 41.4% SWING: +0.4%

Gary Pinto (Family First)
VOTE: 1.2% SWING: +1.2%


After Preferences

Tony Lupton (Labor)
VOTE: 56.3% SWING: +1.9%

Clem Newton-Brown (Liberal)
VOTE: 43.7% SWING: -1.9%

Interestingly only 67.4% of votes have been counted, one of the lowest of any electorates, suggesting that there is a high number of postal and absentee votes yet to be counted. Historically, there's a Liberal tendancy amongst these votes, but the Two Party Preferred margin seems to be too big to be overcome.

As happened in 2002, the Liberals won on primary votes, but got beaten soundly after the allocation of preferences. Most of these preferences are from the Greens. The Greens preference flow to the ALP was above 90%, an extraordinarily strong flow, especially given that Newton-Blog went out of his way to establish his environmental credentials.

Enough for now. More tomorrow.

UPDATE 1/12, 5:10pm: An anonymous commenter has asked about whether the results demonstrate the irrelevance of the internet in attracting voters. I think Anonymous is onto something. To me, it comes down the question of who is likely to turn to candidate websites, videos or blogs for information - they are overwhelmingly likely to be switched on politically-minded people who are already well-entrenched in their political beliefs. In other words, swing voters are likely to be apathetic, and therefore not spending their time online finding out about their local candidates.

More likely, the internet plays a role in keeping up energy and excitement amongst true believers, letting them know that the candidate is lively and active. Few undecided voters might have seen Clem's YouTube blog, but plenty of Liberal helpers would have turned to it for inspiration. So long as your helpers don't have the internet as a big part of their lives - ie, the DLP - you can get away with a scant internet presence. For the rest, though, it's essential.

Still, we all know how well www.jeff.com.au went.