Tasmania

When will the next Federal Election be? Will it be early?

With an agreement reached between Labor and the Greens to pass the government’s housing legislation, even the remotest prospect of an early double dissolution election has vanished.

The only way for a joint House and Senate election to be held before August 2024 was via a double dissolution election. With that already unlikely option now removed, an election before August 2024 is only possible if Anthony Albanese breaks with 50 years of Prime Ministerial tradition and holds separate House and half-Senate elections.

In theory a House election can be called at any time, but as has been the case at every election since 1974, the next House elections will be held in conjunction with the next half-Senate election due at latest in May 2025.

Fixed terms and a constitutional restrictions mean that writs for a half-Senate election cannot be issued until 1 July in the year before a Senate term expires. This restriction creates an election window between August and May every three years.

The next election window opens on Saturday 3 August 2024, the first possible date for an election if writs are issued on 1 July. The election window will stay open until mid-May 2025, the last date being 17 or 24 May.

There remains a chance the government could go to a House and half-Senate election between August and October 2024. But the option is unlikely due to redistributions and a series of state and territory elections. Everything points to the government going full term to May 2025.

Of course, events over the next 20 months could unfold differently. And if they do, the election could arrive earlier than April-May 2025.
Read More »When will the next Federal Election be? Will it be early?

Braddon 2021 – Updates on the Distribution of Preferences

Candidates Elected in Order

  1. Liberal – Jeremy Rockliff (Re-elected)
  2. Labor – Anita Dow (Re-elected)
  3. Labor – Shane Broad (Re-elected)
  4. Liberal – Roger Jaensch (Re-elected)
  5. Liberal – Adam Brooks (Elected)

Count Completed

Change in Elected Members – On the Liberal ticket, Adam Brooks will be elected defeating Felix Ellis. Remarkably for a man who looked defeated on election night, Roger Jaensch was elected ahead of Adam Brooks.

Update 15 May – so after all that effort, Adam Brooks has announced he will not take his seat. He has been charged with several offences by Queensland Police that can be read about on news sites. The consequences for the new Parliament is that he will resign and create a vacancy. In Tasmania vacancies are filled by a countback of the votes that elected the departing member. That countback will elect another Liberal from the party ticket. The most likely candidate to win the count is Felix Ellis, but we will see once the count is undertaken.
Read More »Braddon 2021 – Updates on the Distribution of Preferences

Clark 2021 – Updates on the Distribution of Preferences

Keeping track on the critical preference distribution in Clark. The seat that will determine whether the Liberal government has majority or minority status. Updates inside the post.

Candidates Elected in Order

  1. Greens – Cassy O’Connor (Re-elected)
  2. Liberal – Elise Archer (Re-elected)
  3. Labor – Ella Haddad (Re-elected)
  4. Liberal – Madeleine Ogilvie (Re-elected)
  5. Independent – Kristie Johnston (Elected)

Count Completed

Change in Elected Members: Madeleine Ogilvie was a defeated Labor candidate at the 2018 election but returned to the Assembly in September 2019 at a re-count. She replaced Labor MHA Scott Bacon but took her seat as an Independent. Ogilvie has been elected as a Liberal MHA at the 2021 election.

Sue Hickey was elected as a Liberal in 2019, was disendorsed by the Liberal Party for the 2021 election but re-contested and was defeated as an Independent. Her seat has been won by Independent Kristie Johnston.

Taking account of the changing party allegiances of Ogilvie and Hickey, the result in Clark compared to the party numbers in 2018 is that Labor has lost a seat to Independent Kristie Johnston.
Read More »Clark 2021 – Updates on the Distribution of Preferences

Franklin 2021- Updates on Distribution of Preferences

Candidates Elected in (speculative) Order

  1. Liberal – Jacquie Petrusma (Re-elected)
  2. Greens – Rosalie Woodruff (Re-elected)
  3. Labor – Dean Winter (Elected)
  4. Labor – David O’Byrne (Re-elected)
  5. Liberal – Nic Street (Re-elected)

Count Completed

Change in Elected Members – On the Labor ticket, Dean Winter defeats Alison Standen. The order of election for O’Byrne and Winter is yet to be determined.
Read More »Franklin 2021- Updates on Distribution of Preferences

2018 Tasmanian election – Animations of the Distributions of Preferences

Thanks to the excellent animation work of the ABC’s Markus Mannheim, I’ve pulled together animations that show the distribution of preferences in all five seats at the 2018 Tasmanian election.

These are good illustration of how the system works to fit seats to votes recorded by candidate.

Below the animation on each page I have included some notes on the key points in each count.Read More »2018 Tasmanian election – Animations of the Distributions of Preferences

Bass – Distribution of Preferences – 2018 Tasmanian Election

To help explain the mysteries of the Hare-Clark electoral system, I’ve prepared a series of posts that summarise the key points of the distribution of preferences in the five electorates at the 2018 Tasmanian election.

This post summarises the count in Bass.

An important point I feel needs to be stressed is that while the Hare-Clark counting system is complex, voting is NOT complex.

All preferences in the Hare-Clark system are under the control of you the voter. Parties and candidate have no say on how preferences on your ballot paper are counted.

All you need to do is number a minimum of five preferences for your vote to be counted as formal. And you are free to keep numbering preferences beyond five if you want to order other candidates. If you number candidates in the order you would like to them elected, then the complex counting system will apply your votes to your chosen candidates in the order that you specified.

Some people like to bet their preference order against how every one else will vote. Unless you want to spend a lot of time researching guestimates of how candidates will poll, the best tactic to adopt is the one I stated above – simply number candidates in the order you would like to see them elected.
Read More »Bass – Distribution of Preferences – 2018 Tasmanian Election

Early Voting at Tasmanian Elections

UPDATE 23 April – One week before the election, 26,000 postal packs have been dispatched with the date for applications now having passed. This is only slightly up on the 24,676 in 2018. 18,000 pre-poll votes have been taken, only half the number in 2018, but the last week of the campaign is when most pre-poll votes are cast.

Original post
Rising rates of early voting have been a phenomena at elections across Australia for the last decade, with the rate of early voting boosted further since the emergence of Covid-19 a year ago.

Elections held since the emergence of Covid-19 have seen fewer than 40% of voters turn up to vote on election day, exaggerating the pre-pandemic trend to voting early.

At last October’s Queensland election, ordinary votes cast in a voter’s home district on polling day represented only 27.6% of all votes, down more than half from 57.2% in 2017. Postal votes doubled from 10.7% to 23.8% and rates of pre-poll voting rose from 26.2% to 43.8%.

Exact figures are not available for the Western Australian election but point to less than 40% of votes being cast on election day, and there were similar low rates at last year’s ACT and Northern Territory elections, and the Eden-Monaro and Groom federal by-elections.

The Tasmanian Electoral Commission (TEC) has not adopted the strategy of its brethren Electoral Commissions in vigorously encouraging early voting. Both Pre-poll and Postal voting are readily available, but with no community transmission of Covid in Tasmania, on health advice the TEC has decided there is no reason to discourage polling day voting.

There has been a rise in pre-poll voting at recent Tasmanian elections, but its incidence remains much lower than elsewhere.

At the 2018 Tasmanian election, 74.6% of votes were within district polling day ordinary votes. The figure was down from 80.8% in 2010 and 89.2% in 1992. The graph below shows the rates for each category of non-ordinary votes at Tasmanian elections since 1992.Read More »Early Voting at Tasmanian Elections