Is the 2016 election deadlock all the dead gorilla's fault?

If Harambe the dead gorilla had run for office this election he might well have ended up on the crossbench, if the number of informal votes cast in his favour is any indication.

Well, perhaps not – but the well-mourned primate's name did figure on many-a-ballot that might otherwise have contributed to an actual election result.

Assuming the numbers of informal votes are consistent with long-term trends, is it possible the disgruntled punters who went rogue in the booth could have significantly changed the course of Saturday night?

Dr Peter Chen, of the University of Sydney, says the answer is a resounding "sort of". In 2013, informal votes accounted for 5.92 per cent of ballots cast – the highest rate in 30 years. Dr Chen believes the numbers will be comparable this time around.

"Probably it'll be similar to the last election," Dr Chen told nine.com.au. "Roughly half those votes are blank and the other half are mistakes, which are more likely to occur in non-english speaking communities … so I think that trend is probably going to flow through into this election to some degree.

"Does that slay the election? Would there be a different outcome if all those people voted? Yeah, but more importantly, it's the 10 per cent of people who don't turn up to vote who are enrolled to vote. That would be more impactful.

"So, a marginal possibility (that informal votes would make a difference), but most of those are probably in safer Labor seats than necessarily in extremely marginal seats. On a completely knife-edge election, they could certainly change the outcome."

Heath Pickering, of Election Watch, has a slightly more cautious view than Dr Chen.

"It's hard to predict where the informal votes would have gone," he told nine.com.au.

"It's not easy to gauge the impact of the informal votes. They could be lost from either party equally. We haven't seen the data, but maybe at the last election there was no third or fourth alternative. But maybe folks have been inspired by Nick Xenophon at this election who appears to have taken the place of the Democrats from years past.

"The purists would say that every vote counts in any election…At the last election Clive Palmer was elected by 43 votes – so every vote counted in that seat."