Tim Colebatch writes in Inside Story (8.7.16) about postal vote counting delivering a late swing to the Coalition in the handful of undecided seats, mainly those in Queensland, which seems likely to return the Turnbull Government with a slender majority.
‘Malcolm Turnbull was right. The Coalition now looks set to win government in its own right, probably with a majority of four to six seats.
‘While thousands of votes are still to be counted in every seat, counting of postal votes in the past forty-eight hours has dramatically erased what had been a 2000-vote lead for Labor in the central Queensland electorate of Flynn.
‘… Most of the votes counted in the past twenty-four hours have been postal votes and, as usual, they have heavily favoured the Coalition. Indeed, in most of the six seats, these batches were even better for the Coalition than those counted earlier. In Flynn, Forde, Hindmarsh and Cowan, most of the postal votes have now been counted, but it is not clear how many more will arrive before the deadline for receipt next Friday.
‘At a national level, at past elections, Labor’s share of the two-party vote has rebounded slightly in the final days of counting, as officials move on from counting postal votes to counting absentee and pre-poll votes.’