Disclaimer: Editors Pranay Jha and Liam Thorne are not involved in the 2019 coverage of the Honi Soit, NUS and SRC elections.
2232 votes were cast today and the tables have turned. It’s been a dramatic day of shouting matches, trashed A-frames, banned campaigners and drained exit pollers.
President race flips
Whilst Jakovac was yesterday’s victor, Donohoe has won the second day of polling. The race between them is tight, with overall exit polls showing Donohoe currently leading by a small margin at 53%. Jakovac trails at 47%.
Isolating day two’s data, Donohoe was polling at 58.1% throughout the entire day. He polled slightly better at 59.1% after Panda was banned from physical campaigning at 2.15pm, but did not make the significant gains that one may have expected. Panda was banned after the EO and their assistants caught campaigners standing over voters within the exclusion zone, campaigning over the line and campaigning in Mandarin, which is prohibited by the Regulations. SRC President Jacky He was seen involved in various loud exchanges throughout the day, with EO Casper Lu, and Switch and Grassroots campaigners.
Panda and Cupcake
Even after Panda’s ban came into effect, Honi has heard reports that some of their members continued to campaign in plain clothes afterwards. There have also been reports of Panda campaigners sending photos of how-to-votes and ballots to voters over the line, and calling voters to instruct them on how to fill out the ballot.
Tensions allegedly erupted today between Jakovac and Crystal Xu, the campaign manager for Cupcake, after Jakovac found out that Cupcake’s how-to-vote cards did not instruct voters to vote for her for president. Cupcake is a Panda-breakaway grouping that formed this year after fractures emerged within Panda as to whether or not to support Jakovac.
Cream getting creamed
Things aren’t looking good for the embattled Cream for Honi. They’re still coming last, and by a much larger margin — they’re polling at about 38.1% whilst Fit leads at 61.9%. Can they make a miracle happen tomorrow, or are the dreams of this ticket’s remaining seven members about to be crushed at last?
According to our exit poll data, the Honi vote is split largely down factional lines. The majority of Jakovac voters are voting for Cream (59.3%), whilst the vast majority of Donohoe voters are voting for Fit (78.6%). Something about the promise of ‘objective reporting’ must appeal to the right.
We were exit polling before it was cool, GOVT1104
Many students may have noticed that Honi aren’t the only people exit polling at booths. A research project, supervised by Associate Professor Susan Park and Associate Professor Jingdong Yuan, has been underway. A survey has been administered to students asking them, amongst other things, to rate Chinese people on a scale of 0-7 according to different adjectives including ‘attractive’, ‘deceptive’, and ‘violent’. Several students have expressed discomfort at answering these questions. The researchers and the University Ethics Committee have been contacted by Honi for comment.
Honi understands the project has received provisional approval from the Ethics Committee.
The project — entitled “Regionalisation without Regionalism: Understanding the role of nation building and identity formation in the puzzle of Northeast Asia’s organisational gap” — is being conducted by Minran Liu, co-President of the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA).
Liu took over from fellow “Weihong for International” ticket member Weihong Liang as President earlier this year after Liang returned to China to sit the civil service exam.
A rogue Maoist
An individual identified as a “non-factional Maoist” went rogue today, trashing Ban the Socialist Alternative’s A-frames at JFR and on Eastern Avenue. The Maoist’s name is allegedly “Eric.” It is not Decheng Sun.
Do it, we double dare you
We’ve had a look at a flyer by Students First for SRC, of which William Olive is the tickethead. One of their policies is: “DEFUND and DIGITISE Honi Soit. Who reads it anyway?” We might ask you the same question, Students First. Who reads your flyers anyway?
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day
With 3400 votes cast and 897 voters polled, Honi can say with some confidence that the results will fall within a 2.8% margin of error. If these patterns continued tomorrow, then Fit would take the editorship and Liam Donohoe could likely take presidency. However, as we saw today, voting patterns can change in a matter of hours. There’s no telling what eleventh hour miracles, scandals and bans will happen tomorrow.