January 2022

Federal Election Guide Published

It hasn’t had it’s formal launch yet, but my 2022 Federal Election Guide has been published by the ABC.

Here’s the link
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2022/guide/preview-national

That’s the link to the overall election preview which includes links to a preview for the contest in each state.

At the top of the page are the usual links to Electorate and Candidate index pages. From these you can navigate to a profile for every electorate.

There’s more to be added to the site but this is a good start.Read More »Federal Election Guide Published

Election Night Analysis – Art or Science?

On 15 January I gave a presentation at the 2022 Linux conference on how Australian elections are counted and reported, and in particular, how I go about calling the winner as part of the ABC election coverage.

I titled the talk “Election Night Analysis – Art or Science?”, and as I explain in the talk, it is all statistics and mathematics with only a hint of art and hunch around the edges.

Here’s a video of the address which you can watch in the embedded version below or link through to the version on YouTube.Read More »Election Night Analysis – Art or Science?

2022 Contests of Interest – Capricornia

This is the first of several posts I will do in the run up to the Federal election, expected to be held in May.

These posts will draw on material from my soon-to-be-published election guide guide for the ABC.

My posts on this site won’t be about the key seats that will decide the election. Rather I will concentrate on seats of political science interest, where the 2019 election produced a peculiar result, or where there are significant long term shifts in party support.

My first post on Capricornia fits both these criteria. The 2019 election result was well out of line with past results in the seat. The question is whether the 2019 result in Capricornia was caused by the issues that swirled around the 2019 campaign, or was the result a longer term trend that is undermining Labor support in the seat.Read More »2022 Contests of Interest – Capricornia