With 44% of registered voters counted in today’s election Aston federal by-electionthe ABC expects Labor to win 53.4-46.6 against the Liberals, a 6.3% swing to Labor from the 2022 general election. This includes ordinary election day voting only, no pre-polls or mail shipments.
It is very likely that Labor will win Aston, but I will update this article tomorrow morning when the pre-polls and most mails have been counted. In the NSW election last week, Labor far outperformed their election day votes in the preliminary polls.
Update: The primaries are in primary voices, and there are swings against the Liberals in all three. This confirms that Labor Aston will win against the Liberals.
Labor winning Aston is only the second time a government has won a seat in a federal by-election – the first being in 1920. Labor had performed poorly in previous by-elections during the early years of the Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd administrations .
Read more: Liberals likely to win Aston by election; Voice support increases in Essential poll
Labor is currently gauging honeymoon support, and this explains the strong Aston result. The next federal election is still about two years away, by which time Labor may not be doing very well in the polls. This by-election is not predictive of the next election outcome.
However, the midterm elections are a terrible result for the Liberals and their leader, Peter Dutton. It will put pressure on him to keep his job.
Labor will not win a NSW electoral majority
The New South Wales state election was held on March 31 ABC is calling now Labour, 35 for the Coalition, three Greens and nine Independents won 45 of the 93 seats in the lower house.
The sheer volume of mail today confirmed that the coalition would retain the three seats they were likely to win as of Wednesday’s article: Terrigal, Goulburn and Holsworthy. Only one seat remains in doubt: Rydewhere the Liberals took a small lead over today’s Post Office, but Labor was able to retake the lead.
Read more: NSW Labor unlikely to win a majority after flopping pre-poll votes
Even if Labor win Ryde they would end up with 46 of the 93 seats, one short of the 47 needed for a majority. As I wrote on Wednesday, Labor will still form the next NSW government.
As the combined vote share for the major parties declines and the number of seats won by non-major party candidates increases, hanging parliaments will emerge in which one major party has at least a few seats more than the other, but falls short of a majority . more often.
Mail votes from today’s count have not yet been added to the count upstairs. These votes will help the coalition in their bid to win seven seats in the upper house, but the late counting of absentees and new enrollment votes could put Animal Justice back in contention for the last seat in the upper house.
NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham made a homophobic and sexually abusive tweet on Thursday. In this election, One Nation was expected to at least equal the two seats in the upper house they won in 2019but only won one seat after their votes fell by 1.2% from 2019.
Because half of the upper house is elected every four years to eight-year terms, One Nation will have a total of three seats in the upper house, but expected four.
Trump sued, but the Republican primaries swing in his favor
Former US President Donald Trump was sued on Thursday (Friday AEDT) about hush money payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election.
Republican primaries to select their candidate to contest the November 2024 general election will begin in early 2024. There is disagreement over the size of Trump’s lead, with recent polls rated B+ or better by FiveThirtyEight giving Trump a five to 30-point lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis when other candidates are included.
It is highly likely that Trump or DeSantis will be the Republican nominee, as no other potential Republican candidate polls higher than the mid-single digits.
While the polls disagree on the current size of Trump’s lead, they agree that there has been a recent swing toward Trump. A Fox News poll had Trump up 15 points in February and now gives Trump a 30-point lead. A Quinnipiac poll gave Trump an eight-point lead in February; now Trump leads with 14.
On the Democratic side, there has been no credible challenge to incumbent President Joe Biden thus far.
If Trump is the Republican nominee, he has a good chance of beating Biden. Biden’s disapproval rating exceeded 50% in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate since October 2021. He will be almost 82 by the November 2024 election, as Trump turns 78.
