Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Friday, the second of May. I'm belief, it's Simon's I'm Zara Seidler. The election is finally here. It is tomorrow, which means that we're at the end of our Politics one oh one series. So to wrap up the week, we want to arm you with all of the information you need to make sense of Election
night itself. In this episode, we're going to do things a little bit differently, and we're going to take you through the number, the words, the moment and the time for you to look out for come tomorrow night.
Yeah.
This is something that we developed Billy earlier in the week when we hosted some Politics in the Pub events, and anyone that's listening that attended those events, thank you. We loved meeting you, Billy, and I love talking about politics, and the fact that we got to do that in real life.
Was truly a pleasure with a charazin hand.
With a charaz in hand, how could we forget?
But it is just, I think, a really good framework to understand because there's so much going on in election night if you tune into one of the TV stations, there's like graphics thrown around, there are words, the jargon like things people who pay attention each and every day might not even understand. And so this is a way to just distill the information that you need to pay attention to. So, Billy, let's start with the number first. What is the magic number that people need to listen out for.
I feel like we should have a drum roll or something, yeah, to reveal the number. Producer Elliot role the magic number is seventy six. So here we're talking about the House of Representatives. That is where the government is formed. And in Australia we have one hundred and fifty electorates, which means that we have one hundred and fifty seats and in order to form government you need a majority of that. So one hundred and fifty divided by two seventy five
plus one to reach the majority. A quick, little mass class.
You're saying it with such a smile on your face because you know that I have struggled through the maths of it all.
But yes, that is correct.
I think it's good to walk people through it. So, so seventy six is how many seats a party needs to reach in order to form a majority government. So if you're watching the election tomorrow night, you'll see the seventy six come up time and time again. If a party reaches out number, that means election is over. That party has one.
Okay, So you're sitting at home or you're at an election party. I don't know if people still have election parties.
Oh, my parents too, and it is a fall off. It is all they have spoken about for a year. They have put more planning into this election night party than anything else.
Okay, excellent, So we have proof that election night parties still exists. So if people are at an election night party and perhaps the volumes down and people are talking, but there is need to listen out for that magic seventy six, okay, And when that happens, a majority has been reached, the election is called and we know who has won.
Yes, all right, so that's a number.
Talk me through the word people need to be listening out for, because, as I said earlier, there are quite a few words said on election night.
How do you narrow it down. What's the one word that you think people need to really pay attention to?
Okay, So the word we have chosen is marginal, and now that is what we use to describe certain seats that I was talking about before, the seats that we don't know which way it's going to go, and from election to election they tend to go either way. Now we know which ones are the marginal seats based on the result from last election and then also from current polling.
There is a technical definition from the AEC which is if at the last election the winner won by less than fifty six percent, then that seat is considered a marginal seat. So it's literally just about the margin by which they won the previous election.
Margin, got it? Margin for marginal?
Are you allowed to use the word in the definition of the word? I think yes.
You would lose an articulation, but I will allow it this one.
Thank you. So about a third of the one hundred and fifty seats in Parliament are marginal, So those are fifty seats for us to look out for at tomorrow's election. But I thought we could go through one each, sar, do you yes? Putting you on the spot, all right, do you have a marginal seat that you have favorite? Yes, So you've thought about a lot this election.
One that I have been thinking about, and I think it's because there's been quite a lot of coverage of it. Is the seat of Dixon. That is Peter Dudden's seat, so it's the most marginal seat in Queensland, and I think that that's a really interesting thing in and of itself, that the leader of a party could potentially find himself in a situation where he loses his seat but his party wins the election. And so I think I'm keeping
a really strong focus on Dixon. There we have Ali France, who the ALP have put up for election I think maybe three elections in a row to contest the seat of Dixon. She has been unsuccessful to date, but she is looking to win that seat off opposition leader Peter Dubnan. So that is one that I'll be keeping an eye on. What about you, Billy, Just.
Quickly on Dixon. What's so interesting about that is I'm pretty sure that Peter Dunnan has held that seat since something like two thousand and one, but throughout that whole time, so twenty five years now almost, it has been marginal.
Oh interesting.
Yeah, So even though you'd think that it's a safe seat considering how long he has held it. It has always been a marginal seed, so it's quite amazing that he has held on to it for so long.
Yeah, okay.
My one that I have been paying close attention to is Kuyong.
Yeah.
That is one of the seats in Melbourne and it was one of the ones that one of the Teal independents took from one of the Liberal MP's, quite a famous Liberal MP in Josh Fridenberg who was the then Treasurer. She defeated him at the last election. It's since then been quite a high profile seat and certainly this election
that has remained. I saw a TikTok the other day that was from someone who said that if you're saying this election is boring, you clearly haven't been paying attention to what is happening in ku Yong.
Agreed.
I don't think we need to get into all of the drama, but just know there has been so much drama, and my god, the politics in that electorate that have been going on have been insane to watch and it will be absolutely fascinating to see what happens tomorrow night in Kuyong. That is the one I'm just so interested to see what happens.
Yeah, and it is really interesting because sometimes it's very clear straight off about poll's close, and you start to get these early results. And Anthony Green on the ABC, who's kind of considered the election overlord, it's the key. It's his last election there, so it's the last time he'll be doing it. But he'll call seats quite early
if he's very confident. And so it could be that we are very quickly getting a result from somewhere likeo Young, or it could be hours and hours and hours or days and days and days.
It could if it's if it's really close, then I'm sure it will take. It won't be instant.
Yeah, So that's certainly one to keep an eye on. Billy.
We've talked through the number to keep an ear out for. We've spoken about the word that people should keep in the front of their mind. What to you is the standout moment from any election?
Okay, the moment is the phone call. Now, every single election, there will be a phone call between the two leaders before either of them declare victory or concede, and so the phone call will be from the person who loses. They typically will then call the person who wins and
say I concede, congratulations, You've won the election. And then the winner will go out and do their victory speech, and often they'll start that speech by saying, I've just had a phone call from so and so, and I can now declare victory.
Can you imagine a more awkward phone call?
No, Like I have any of my friends who listen to this will know my phones permanently on, do not disturb. I'm not interested in answering phone calls. So the fear of phone calls is a starting point. Imagine just having to say I've lost, You've won, well done.
Also from someone who like, it's not like they've been friendsout this entire election camp by No. Yeah, and also a lot of this election has become quite personal between them, in the attacks that they direct towards one another. And so you know, after all of these kind of nastiness, you then have to call the person say congratulations.
And like, how do they get each other's numbers?
Do you think that they have them their teams? Yeah, say to your team.
Hand over the number, I'll call him. Hope it goes to voicemail.
Yes, And this is something that happens at elections around the world. It's definitely not unique to Australia. I know that Joe Biden called Donald Trump before Donald Trump declared victory, so it's a very common thing.
Yeah, okay, so we are waiting for or not wait, we are not running for prime minister, but whoever Claire's victory, we'll only do that when the other usually has conceded. We know that that happens via a phone call at some point during the evening, so that is a good one to keep an eye on. We have mentioned though, that we don't really know how long this can all take, So can you just set up a bit of a timeline for us for Saturday night?
Yeah, so polls close at six pm, no matter what state you're in, and then the counting immediately begins. Now, the Australian Electoral Commission, who oversees elections in Australia, they say that we can start to see results roll in at about seven pm, particularly from the smaller polling centers, and then for the medium to bigger size polling centers, they say that we'll start to see results from about
eight to eight thirty PM. So I think based on that at about nine pm, I would say that is the time for you to tune in, and we should by that time understand kind of what direction this is going in. If it's really close, it will go for hours and hours an hour, but again we'll know if it's really close by about nine pm.
Yeah, And it's interesting because in every election around the world, when you first start to see results come back, it can swing really strongly one way. But that's just representative of where those early votes are coming from, not necessary the direction of the overall vote. It is also interesting to note, I don't know if people know this, that
early voting doesn't get counted early. So people who send in postal votes or people that have gone to pre poll and we know that's a huge percentage of the electorate, those votes aren't counted any earlier than the ones that are.
Lodged on election day.
So there's a lot of counting that gets done in a short period of time, and it's still all done by humans.
Yes, So there you go, Billy.
We've spoken about when we'll have a sense of what's going on. You work in the media, though, we are going to be telling I do. We are going to be telling our audience when the election has been called, how do we know.
We know from the data that the Australian Electoral Commission puts on their website. So they have something called the tally Room and that is available to every single person. You can just access it on their website and that gives you all of the raw data as the votes are coming in. I think it's updated every ninety seconds or so, and.
That's persons sitting there entering the data.
Point well, that will be us not entering it, but then looking at it every ninety seconds. And so then the media including us, go to that tally room and use that data to try to understand what is happening in each electorate. And once a certain number of votes are called, then you can pretty confidently say whether a seat has swung either way. And then again, if enough seats have been called and one of the parties reaches seventy six, based on that, a winner will be declared.
But that winner is only declared by the media on the night, which is kind of a funny thing. The AEC will never declare the winner on election night because they have to go through so many of the counting, Yeah, all of the counting and also so many formal processes. Even after that counting is done, so it is quite a long process, at least for the AEC, but for the media, once they have enough of the raw data, it usually will be called, often by none other than Anthony Green.
You're just going to say, news outlets across the country and across the world. During every single election, it's this tension of when to call it because you know there can be early results that might radically change through the night. It's not overly likely, but we do tend to be a bit more conservative in when we will call the election, and as you said, Anthony Green is usually the first
to call it officially. But then, as you said, once that phone calls happen and once a leader gets up, that's a pretty sure thing.
The election has been called. All right now, believe I.
Want to end on a question which might seem counterproductive, but there is I think a big question linking as we head into election night because the polls are telling us one thing. The polls have told us one thing many times in a row. They might not have been correct. Can we trust the polls? Will the polls be right?
Yeah? This is the key question. Will the polls be right? Where you have seen time and time again, not just in Australia but around the world examples of polls being wrong, most famously in Australia. This is just my favorite example ever. In twenty nineteen, there was a widespread expectation, based on the polling, that Labor would win in a very decisive victory, and they absolutely did not. The coalition. One that was when Scott Morrison famously got up in his victory speech
and said he's always believed in miracles. I think that was the quote, very very famous. The polls, Just to give you an idea, the polls were so wrong that actually, two days before the election, Sports Bet they paid out everyone who had predicted a Labor win because they were so confident, crazy that Labor would win based on the polling, and then they lost something like six million or five million dollars because in the end, obviously Labor didn't win.
I mean, it's so remarkable, and I think a lot of posters around the country have changed the.
Way that they are polling.
They have broadened the margin of error, they have accounted for what happened then. But still, you know, there have been examples since, and it's a really good point. Can we trust the polls because right now they are suggesting an Anthony Albanizi win a labor majority. We're gonna sit here on Monday morning and be able to reflect on whether or not the answer to that question is yes.
Politicians always famously say the only poll that counts is on election day, correct their favorite saying, well, Billy, I.
Think that's a really helpful framework to understand the Big night itself, the Big Dance. It's been a long road to get here, but thank you for being here every step of the way. It's been a pleasure to take the audience through the foundations of.
Our political system.
We're here at the Daily Odds care so deeply about engaging young people in our democratic process and helping you make an informed vote on Saturday, so let us know how you go. If you have any last minute questions, you can throw them in the Spotify question section.
Otherwise we'll talk to you on Monday with the results.
Bye. My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Kalkutin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people. And pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.