Here are the preliminary election results

Melba

This was the main battle ground for council - with the ALP wanting to get a 5th seat so that they would have a absolute majority on Council. I ran against 4 ALP supported 'independents', 1 official ALP, 2 greens, and 1 socialist.

The preliminary first preferences were -

The interesting numbers are -
I did a bit better than last time, with 12% vote vs 10% (2004). Given I was running against 4 well supported ALP 'independents' I think that was a good result!

Judy's vote dropped from 22% in 2004 to 18% in 2008 - even though she was the current Mayor and had a massive ALP supported campaign! The ALP were telling me 4 weeks ago that they expected her to be over quota with her primary vote - which shows how out of touch they are. It is well know that Judy didn't want to run this time, and only did so after considerable ALP pressure - they HAD to get her to run to keep me off council!

The greens vote went up from 16% in 2004 to 22% now. While 3% of this would have been from being at the top of the ballot paper, at least 3% was an increase in the green vote.

Th official ALP candidate (Josh) only just scrapped over quota with 26% - where at the last election the official ALP got a combined vote of 43%! Which is probably not too surprising given he has never been to a council meeting prior to the election period, and doesn't live in Richmond. In fact, without the housing commission high rise, he wouldn't have been over quota.

Dale did a lot better than last time, with 10% vs 2%. He ran a lot better campaign this time, and got far more ALP support.

The end result

The ALP achieved it's main aim of keeping me off council, but did not succeed in the secondary objective of getting all three positions.
My preferences will flow to the greens, and the three councillors will be Alison, Judy, and Josh.
And the ALP almost shot themselves in the foot - Dale did so well (and gets suzana's and joes' preferences ahead of Judy) and Judy so poorly, that he almost beat Judy into Council..

Langridge Ward

The interesting numbers are -

Stephen Jolly was massively over quota with 29% of the vote - he received the highest vote of any candidate in any ward - this is over twice his vote last time (12%). Many people (including me) were expecting this, as he was about the only councillor returning phone calls for the last 4 years...

Amanda was only just over quota, and the total Green vote (they ran a split ticket) was 36% - which was lower than the 40% last time. This drop is not unexpected, as 4% of the green vote would have shifted to Steve.

The ALP primary vote (Geoff) was massacred by Steve, falling from 28% last time to only 16% this time.

The end result

Amanda and Steve are in, and all the ALP candidates should roll up into Geoff and get him in. There would have to be a LOT of leakage to get Jenny in, so I do not think that will happen.

NichollsWard

The interesting numbers are -
Jackie's vote dropped from 25% to 22% - I suspect mainly because of the library issue

The combined Green vote (they had a split ticket) went up from 27% to 37%!

The Socialist vote dropped from 6% to 5%.

The ALP combined vote dropped from 27.3% to 25.7% - so Jane just gets in on primary.

Ian Mack received a very good 9%.

The end result

Sam and Jane are over quota, with the most likely third councillor being Jackie.
'Most likely' because it is possible that Gurm could get in due to the preference flows ie

Jackie has 2084 votes (quota is 2388)
Assume she gets all of Janes over quota votes (65), ie for a total of 2149
She would then need 239 votes to leak from Sam's, Ian's, and Anthony's vote flow. ie 15% leakage of their 1686 votes.
This is likely to happen, as leakage is typically 30% - even on the greens card at the last election, leakage was 27%.

So Jackie will be the third councillor.

- Ian Quick