To wrap up what has been an extremely uneventful day of University of Sydney Union (USU) Board election pre-polling (if you don’t believe us, read the live blog) here is what you all want to know: which candidates are getting the votes so far.
Today was the second day of pre-polling, with booths open at both the International Students Lounge (ISL) and Manning from 10am to 4pm. Honi polled the entire day at both locations, with 164 people surveyed at ISL and 192 at Manning, for a total of 356.
What was particularly interesting was that the top four at each booth did not cross over at all, with the top four at ISL being either international student candidates or candidates whose policies were heavily international student-focused. But before we get into the booth specific numbers, here are the candidates overall primary results:
First place preferences
1st place — Hengjie Sun (79 votes)
2nd place — Adam Torres (42 votes)
3rd place — Liliana Tai (40 votes)
4th place — Jacob Masina (39 votes)
5th place — Zhixian Wang (37 votes)
6th place — Alexander Shu (36 votes)
7th place — Claudia Gulbransen-Diaz (31 votes)
8th place — Sally Yang (29 votes)
9th place — Caitlin McMenamin (21 votes)
10th place — Erika Salmon (2 votes)
As is evident above, Hengjie has come through with an impressive number of primary votes, almost doubling the number of votes of his nearest competitor.
Preference flow
Using these numbers and taking into account the preference flow from excluded candidates, the final six people elected to the Union Board would be:
1st place — Hengjie Sun (85 votes)
2nd place — Liliana Tai (47 votes)
3rd place — Claudia Gulbransen-Diaz (45 votes)
4th place — Adam Torres (44 votes)
5th place — Jacob Masina (43 votes)
6th place — Zhixian Wang (42 votes)
By our fourth count, Alexander Shu was excluded with 37 votes, while 13 votes were exhausted. As the results of our exit poll count satisfy the USU election’s affirmative action requirements (at least 3 of 6 candidates elected must identify as a woman), this would be the final standing.
Preference flow is strongest for Liliana (45 voters preferenced her second), and Jacob (40), while Claudia (18) and Erika (6) received the least number of second preference votes.
It seems that the regular punter does (mostly) follow candidates’ ‘How to Votes’. Adam Torres and Liliana are scoring a majority of preference votes from each other. Though, despite their preference deal with Alexander Shu as well, few of his voters are preferencing them by comparison. The reverse is also true for Alexander Shu: out of all the other candidates, Hengjie’s voters are providing him with the highest number of 2nd preference votes.
Team Jacob and Hengjie’s voters seem to be following their HTV’s more closely.
Breakdown by booth
Manning
1st place — Liliana Tai (34 votes)
2nd place — Adam Torres (33 votes)
3rd place — Claudia Gulbransen-Diaz (31 votes)
4th place — Jacob Masina (30 votes)
5th place — Alexander Shu (20 votes)
6th place — Caitlin McMenamin (18 votes)
7th place — Hengjie Sun (14 votes)
8th place — Sally Yang (6)
9th place — Zhixian Wang (4)
10th place — Erika Salmon (2)
International Students Lounge
1st place — Hengjie Sun (65 votes)
2nd place — Zhixian Wang (33 votes)
3rd place — Sally Yang (23 votes)
4th place — Alexander Shu (16 votes)
5th place (equal) — Adam Torres (9 votes) and Jacob Masina (9 votes)
7th place — Liliana Tai (6 votes)
8th place — Caitlin McMenamin (3 votes)
Claudia Gulbransen-Diaz and Erika Salmon received no primary votes at this booth.
‘One Day More’ (by Les Misérables Cast)
As we mentioned above, today was only pre-polling. The real fun kicks off tomorrow, with seven polling booths open across campus. With longer hours and many, many more campaigners, this will be a very different race with potentially very different outcomes. Honi will be live-blogging all day, from all across campus, here and will bring you the results as they come in from the election night party.
Here are the places and times to avoid if you hate this shit (read: polling spots):
Cadigal Green 7.30am — 3.30pm
Eastern Avenue 8:00am — 6.30pm
Holme Building 8.30am — 3:00pm
International Students Lounge 10.00am — 4:00pm
Manning 10.00am — 4:00pm
Merewether 10:00am — 4:00pm
Peter Nicol Russel (PNR) 10.00am — 4.00pm.
Disclaimer: While we tried to exit poll everybody who voted, some people declined to take part, and there is no way to confirm that those who participated correctly entered their vote. While these results are representative, we cannot say that these numbers accurately reflect the final vote count.
