The Australian Electoral Commission has begun what is known as the ‘fresh scrutiny’ phase of the election count. Photo: AEC.
Three days after polls closed on the 2025 federal election, counting continues across the country with numerous seats still too close to call.
As of Tuesday morning (6 May), the Australian Labor Party looks set to secure 86 seats in the House of Representatives, while the Coalition sits on 40 and independents 11.
No seat has yet been declared a Greens win, but there are two possibilities, including leader Adam Bandt’s own seat of Melbourne, which is currently on a knife-edge.
The Nationals’ vote has held up better than the Liberals’, if you take into account that the Liberal Nationals of Queensland so far have 16 seats, the Nationals 10 and the purely Liberal Party candidates 14.
In two and a half days since polls closes, the Australian Electoral Commission had counted first preferences for 14.1 million House of Representatives ballot papers (including more than 1 million postal votes); two-candidate-preferred (TCP) counts for 11.8 million Reps ballot papers; first preferences for 7.2 million Senate ballot papers; and started the delivery of 1.3 million ballot papers back to home divisions for counting using 4800 different transport routes.
Acting AEC Commissioner Jeff Pope said that election night alone saw AEC staff count more votes in a single night than has ever occurred in Australia’s electoral history.
“Since election night, we have also managed to count the vast majority of postal votes that have been returned to the AEC by now – more than 1 million postal votes have been counted in total,” Mr Pope said.
“The days after election night always have some external focus on close seats. We understand that and prioritise further counts in those close seats where we can.
“Given we managed to count so much on election night itself, the ability to count more votes in close contests often relies upon transport for interstate, overseas and postal votes coming back to the relevant local counting centre.
“We can’t count votes that aren’t at local counting centres yet. Secure transport takes time, and our motto is always ‘right, not rushed’.”
Mr Pope said it was important to note that figures in the AEC’s Tally Room are only based on votes counted so far and do not represent a final turnout figure for the 2025 federal election.
Tuesday also saw the start of what is known as ‘fresh scrutiny’ – the mandatory secondary count of all votes that have been counted so far.
“While fresh scrutiny doesn’t typically provide any additional results information to reflect on, aside from some minor changes, it will provide some further clarity for seats that had their two-candidate-preferred (TCP) contests reset,” Mr Pope said.
Further ‘declaration vote’ counts are also underway.
Declaration votes are votes cast in envelopes, including interstate, overseas and postal votes.
Each electoral division will continue to count declaration votes as sufficient quantities are received by local counting centres.
For anyone checking the AEC count on its website, the ‘declaration vote scrutiny progress’ table on each division’s page on the tally room is the place to check the quantities of votes that are left to be counted in a contest and how many the AEC has completed so far.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
