Day Two of SRC voting closed with students beating the heat to choose their student representatives for 2024. In addition to the booth at Jane Foss Russell (JFR), three additional booths opened today at Fisher Library, Manning House and the Conservatorium of Music. JFR and Fisher were open the entire day (8:45am – 5:15pm) and received the highest amount of foot traffic.
Manning and Conservatorium booths will be closed tomorrow, while new booths will open at the Susan Wakil Building and Peter Nicol Russell (PNR). The closure of the Con may impact Artistry’s con-focused campaign, while the new booths may mobilise STEM students — particularly engineers — to vote. Manning (both the bar and the voting booth) was once a powerhouse, with 468 ballots issued there in 2016. Though now, it is a ghost town with Electoral Officer Riki Scanlan saying today around 2pm, “Manning used to be a 600-voter booth. Now we have 30, maybe 34 — we should have 300 votes by now!”
A total of 784 votes were cast today, with Honi’s exit polling catching 457 (58.3%). This means that a total of 1352 ballots were issued, and the number of voters who completed the exit poll was 690 (51%). Scanlan informed Honi that the voter count from Day One was 568 instead of 570. At this stage last year, there were 1079 ballots issued. With COVID considerably diminishing involvement in student politics, and campus activities more broadly, the uptick in voter numbers shows promise.
In the race for President, our exit polling indicates that Harrison Brennan’s lead has narrowed marginally, shifting from 57.1% to 54.2% of the vote share, placing Rose Donnelly share of vote at 45.8%. Brennan has not slipped below Donnelly at any point in the past two days, meaning a considerable shift and push from Revive would be needed for an upset tomorrow.
Though there have been some minor swings in the Council primary vote, trends remain largely the same. It is worth noting that Honi did not conduct exit polling at the Conservatorium, meaning that the data will not be representative of Con students’ votes. This will impact Artistry for SRC’s numbers in the exit polling, who likely have a larger share of the primary votes than is currently represented in Honi’s data. Last year, Artistry went up from 1.2% to 3.4% last year when voting at the Con opened — they’re currently sitting at 1.6% without exit polling data from the Con.
After Day Two, this year’s heavy hitters are holding onto their leads. Grassroots and Switch still hold the most primary votes at 23.5% collectively (though they are nominally different, “Switchroots” functionally operate as one faction). Left Action continue their strong push with 21.7%, and Revive are sitting at 16.8%. Lift retains a steady share of 10.2%, though the other Liberal brands look worse for wear, sitting at around 2% or less.
Engineers and SLA currently sit at around the 6% mark with Penta closely behind just under 5%. With the Peter Nicol Russell Building (PNR) booth opening tomorrow, it is likely that Engineers will push on, having increased their share by 4.2% when the PNR booth opened last year. It is worth noting that since this data only indicates the percentage these factions were placed as first preference, it is limited without closer analysis of tickets and their specific voting counts.
Last year, Day Three had the most ballots issued over the three days of polling, so there’s still much up for grabs. See you tomorrow!
Day Two Highlights!
Stay tuned for Honi’s live blog, tweets and exit polling results tomorrow. To read yesterday’s live blog click here.
