Preferential Voting – Multi-Member

How GVTs Have Distorted Victorian Legislative Council Elections

Summary: Change is coming to the Victorian Legislative Council’s electoral system for November’s state election. Victoria becomes the last jurisdiction to abolish group voting tickets, a system that allowed parties to control preference flows and distort election results. Voters will now control between-party preferences and the method of voting mimics the Senate system in use since 2016. The change favours parties that campaign for votes over parties that rely on preferences. Based on past results, the big losers will be minor parties whose election from low votes has been achieved by “preference harvesting” tactics, something that is impossible with group voting tickets abolished.

The Victorian Labor government’s bill to abolish group voting tickets (GVTs) for Legislative Council elections was introduced on Tuesday 28 July, passed the lower house the next day with no opposition, and will be debated in the the upper house on Tuesday 11 August.

The bill is supported by the government, opposition and Greens and will pass by week’s end. The new voting rules will be in place for November’s state election.

(Update 9:30pm 11 August: the bill passed the upper house without amendment. The next step is royal assent by the Governor at which point the amendments in the bill are incorporated into the Electoral Act.)

Inside this post I look back at the five Victorian elections that have used GVTs and estimate how the results might have looked without GVTs. In summary –

  • The new system will favour parties that attract significant first preference support and disadvantage parties that rely heavily on preferences. Based on my analysis of post-GVT Senate results, (see this post), weaker preference flows will make it very difficult for a party to be elected with less than 6% in a region.
  • Across the 2014, 2018 and 2022 elections, 24 leading candidates who began the preference distribution with more than 6% of the vote were defeated by lower polling candidates. Three of the defeated candidates polled above 12% or 0.7 quotas.
  • At the same elections there were 20 candidates elected from under 6%, including nine that polled below 3%.
  • Without GVTs, the 2014 election would have seen five fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, two Coalition and two Greens.
  • Without GVTs, the 2018 election would have seen seven fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, three Coalition and three Greens.
  • Without GVTs, the 2022 result would have seen six fewer minor party MLCs elected, the seats instead going one Labor, one Coalition and four Greens.
  • Over the last three elections, the number of non-Green minor party members would have fallen from 22 to 4. The number of Greens elected would have risen from 10 to 19, Labor from 47 to 50, and the Coalition from 41 to 47.

Table 1 below shows a four party breakdown of seats won at elections since 2006, along with my estimated results had there been no GVTs. My estimates assume the same parties contested election and the same party vote shares were recorded. I explain my method for estimating results inside the post.

Table 1 – Legislative Council Seats 2006-2022 – With and Without GVTs
Election Alternatives ALP L/NP GRN OTH
2006 Actual result 19 17 3 1
Estimate without GVTs 20 17 3 ..
2010 Actual result 16 21 3 ..
Estimate without GVTs 16 21 3 ..
2014 Actual result 14 16 5 5
Estimate without GVTs 15 18 7 ..
2018 Actual result 18 11 1 10
Estimate without GVTs 19 14 4 3
2022 Actual result 15 14 4 7
Estimate without GVTs 16 15 8 1

Source: Estimated results without GVTs calculated by Antony Green as set out in the post.

The changed results are due to weaker preference flows with the abolition of GVTs. Preference ‘deals’ implemented by GVTs were previously used to engineer results. Even the smallest parties could deliver preference flows above 90%. GVT deals could deliver victory to parties with little electoral support at the expense parties with up to 14 times the vote. These remarkable come from behind victories were created by GVT preference deals, not by the actions of voters.

Three of the more remarkable results occurred in 2018. In Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Transport Matters Party was elected from 0.62%, defeating a Greens candidate who began the count with 9.0%. In Southern-Eastern Metropolitan Region, the Liberal Democrats polled just 0.84% but defeated the second Liberal candidate who began the count with 12.3%. In Southern Metropolitan Region, the Sustainable Australia Party polled 1.32% but defeated the Greens on 13.5%. (Data in this paragraph has been corrected.)

Results such as these could only happen under an electoral system where voters are herded into voting for above-the-line for tickets with preferences controlled by parties.

A decade of experience with Senate elections since GVTs were abolished, and evidence from Legislative Council elections in other states, shows that preference flows are much weaker without GVTs. Larger parties that campaign actively can still influence preference decisions and create stronger preference flows, but the flows of smaller parties become almost random. This decreases the ability of parties to win from trailing positions.

When voters control preferences rather than parties, the system rewards parties that attract first preference votes over parties that rely on opaque and labyrinthine preference deals. The days of preference ‘whisperers’, preference ‘harvesting’ and ‘corralling’ preferences disappear when GVTs are abolished. Voters first preference party choices play a greater role in determining which parties elect members.

But I need to stress that the analysis in this post is about the parties that have contested the last five Victorian Legislative Council elections, not the parties contested the 2026 election.

It is clear from polls that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will poll strongly, will elect MLCs, and probably outpoll the Greens. I make no comment on whether abolishing GVTs increases or decreases the number of MLCs that One Nation might elect.

What is certain is that abolishing GVTs will see the number of MLCs elected by party more accurately reflect vote share by party. The new system will better translate the will of the electorate into representation than any election conducted with GVTs.

Read More »How GVTs Have Distorted Victorian Legislative Council Elections

The Impact on Senate Election Results of Abolishing GVTs – the Lessons for Victoria

Over the next week I will publish several posts looking at the abolition of Group Voting Tickets (GVTs) in Victoria and the implications this has for the state’s Legislative Council election in November.

Work I’ve undertaken in the past, about Senate elections both before and after the abolition of GVTs, produces clear conclusions.

Abolishing GVTs will increase the importance of first preference votes and diminish the value of preference transfers. Abolishing GVTs advantages parties that campaign for votes and disadvantages those that rely on deals and transfers to be elected.

Abolishing GVTs also ends the ability of parties to conspire and use GVTs to block the election of high polling parties. It also stops parties using GVTs to elect low-polling parties that few voters have heard of into important upper house balance of power seats.

The key aim of abolishing GVTs is to end party control over between-party preferences and leave it to voters to make the decision. With 95% of votes tied up in party tickets, too many elections had been decided by opaque preferences deals that voters had little knowledge of. A new form of above-the-line (ATL) voting was created allowing voters to show preferences for parties rather than candidates. Voters still had the option to vote below-the-line (BTL) for individual candidates of any party.

In other states this has been implemented with full optional preferential voting. A voter must indicate a first preference for a formal vote, but further preferences were optional. At elections conducted under the new rules, only a third of ATL ballot papers have preferences beyond ‘1’ and exhausted preferences have come to play a part in deciding who wins the final seats. (See my previous post that covered experience with the change in NSW.)

By contrast, the Senate instructions after the abolition of GVTs has been to mark at least six preferences, though a savings provision allows any first preference vote to remain formal. Under these instructions, around 95% of ballot papers are completed above the line (ATL) with between-party preferences. Given the exhaustion rate of preferences for minor party votes, there hasn’t been much difference between the role of preferences in the two ballot marking systems.

Abolishing GVTs makes it nearly impossible to win from a low vote AND from behind on preferences. Abolishing GVTs does not prevent a party winning from a low vote, nor prevent a trailing candidate from winning on preferences, though it does make it harder. But is becomes extremely difficult to do both at the same time.

A party winning from a low vote is possible without GVTs if there is an even split of vote between remaining parties. The United Australia Party’s Ralph Babet won a Victorian Senate seat in 2022 from only 0.28 quotas (4.0%). This was because there were five parties between 0.20 and 0.28 quotas competing for one seat. Without GVTs, preference flows were relatively weak and Babet maintained his lead to win the final seat. Preferences were not responsible for his victory.

And coming from behind is possible. In NSW at the 2025 Federal election, strong preference flows from the Coalition and small right-wing parties allowed One Nation on 0.42 quotas (6.1%) to pass Labor’s third candidate on 0.63 quotas (9.1%).

Without GVTs, the classic 2013 Victorian Senate case of Ricky Muir (Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party) on 0.5% defeating Helen Kroger (Liberal) on 11.6% would be impossible. Muir’s election was the equivalent of a lower house candidate on 1.7% defeating a candidate with 40%.

As One Nation showed in 2025, is is possible for a candidate with two-thirds of another candidate’s vote to come from behind and win on preference transfers. Voters still have their say on preferences, but without GVTs, results can’t be engineered. Muir’s case of winning from behind with only one-23rd of the winning candidate’s vote is absolutely impossible without GVTs.

And to date, every jurisdiction except except Victoria has understood this inherent problem with GVTs and abolished them. Next week it appears Victoria will be the last to join the club.

Based on One Nation’s two come from behind Senate victories in 2025, I think around 0.4 quotas is the minimum a party needs for victory, 6.5% translated into Victorian Legislative Council numbers. That’s unless you get a case like Ralph Babet’s where a seat remains to be filled and all remaining parties have a low vote.

Looking at how many parties have been elected from trailing positions, the difference produced by the abolition of GVTs for Senate elections is clear.

At the 2013 half-Senate election, the last to use GVTs, 9 of the 36 state Senate positions were won by trailing candidates. At three half-Senate elections since the abolition of GVTs, only 2 of 108 state Senate seats have been won by trailing candidates.

And both of those trailing wins were aided by Senate instructions to mark 6 preferences. Trailing wins may be even harder under instructions for ‘1’ with further preferences optional.
Read More »The Impact on Senate Election Results of Abolishing GVTs – the Lessons for Victoria

Reports that Victoria is set to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

(Update Wednesday 29 July: – Legislation has been introduced today and will be debated and passed by the Assembly this afternoon. The legislation abolishes group voting tickets and adopts a similar method of ATL voting to the Senate. Voters are required to mark 5 ATL preferences and there is a savings provision so that any vote with at least a valid first preference vote remains formal. There is no change to the Victorian method of BTL voting where voters are required to complete preferences for five candidates.)

Two weeks ago I published a post highlighting that if Victoria wanted to abolish group voting tickets (GVTs) for the 2026 Legislative Council election, legislation had to be passed at the next sitting of parliament in the last week of July.

As I outlined in the post (you can find it at this link), abolishing GVTs would bring Victoria in line with the Commonwealth, New South Wales, South Australian and Western Australian parliaments. It would also implement a recommendation made twice in the last four years by the Victorian parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee.

Both The Age and Herald-Sun reported over the weekend that GVTs will be abolished and voters allowed to indicate their own preferences with an above-the-line (ATL) vote. What the reports don’t make clear is whether Victoria will adopt fully optional preferential voting as used in NSW, SA and WA. The alternative would be to copy the Senate model where ballot paper instructions are to complete a minimum number of ATL preferences. The Senate model still allows any vote with a valid ATL first preference to remain formal in line with ballot paper instructions for the GVT system.

The number of members to be elected per region may lean the Victorian decision in favour of the Senate system.

NSW, SA and WA elect their Legislative Councils using a state-wide electorate. NSW elects 21 members, South Australia 11, and Western Australia 37. A single ‘1’ vote in these systems is enough to produce a very proportional result. Over six elections since the NSW system was reformed, only twice have preferences altered the party elected as the 21st member. Two SA elections elections have seen preferences play no part in the result, while the first WA election after reform saw preferences change only one of the 37 members elected.

The complication in Victoria is members are not elected state-wide. The Legislative Council consists of five members elected from each of eight regions. The quota for election is a high 16.7%. A high quota makes it much harder to match the number of members elected by party in each region to the proportion of votes by party.

As with the Senate, where six members are elected per state, there may be an argument to encourage more ATL preferences to ensure the members elected reflect first preference votes and the preference intent of voters for excluded parties.

The Senate rule to mark at least six preferences encourages voters to complete preferences. At the 2025 Victorian Senate election, 83.4% of voters marked six preferences. Only 1.9% of voters marked a single first preference, a vote that remains formal under Senate voting rules.

Contrast this with lower preferencing rates at interstate Legislative Council experience where only a third of ballot papers have preferences. If fully optional preferential voting were adopted, then clearly there would be fewer preferences playing a part in determining the final seats in each region. It is a matter of opinion whether this is a good or bad outcome.

Fully optional preferences would work without difficulty if Victoria were electing 40 MLCs from a state-wide electorate. But Victoria can’t switch to state-wide election without a referendum, so the five members by eight regions model will be used in 2026.

In this post I’ll first summarise why the GVT system is so wrong using past election results. I’ll also look at evidence from NSW elections about how the Senate’s minimum preference numbers rule has caused more voters to complete further preferences at Legislative Council elections.Read More »Reports that Victoria is set to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

Time Running Out for the Victorian Government to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

10 August – party lists updated

The long-term decline in support for Australia’s traditional parties, combined with surging support for One Nation, is creating uncertainty over who will form government after November’s Victorian state election.

Opinion polls show Labor, the Coalition and One Nation all under a third of the vote. It is difficult to translate this three-way split of votes into a seat prediction, but it points to defeat for Labor if the Liberal and National parties co-operate with One Nation on preferences.

Seats not votes determine who forms government and whether it is a majority or minority government. Turning votes into seats will come down to order of exclusion and preference flows between three or four competing candidates in each seat.

The outcome in the Legislative Council, the upper house elected by proportional representation, would be easy to pick if it was elected from a state-wide electorate like other mainland states.

But Victoria’s Legislative Council is divided into eight regions electing five members each. Five regions cover most of metropolitan Melbourne. Three others extend like spokes to the corners of the state, covering rural and regional Victoria but including some outer Melbourne suburbs.

Having only five members per region makes it very difficult to match members elected to party vote share. The high 16.7% quota makes preferences critical for turning surplus to quota votes into extra seats.

And there is another problem. Despite numerous warnings and recommendations, electoral law in Victoria still mandates that the discredited Group Voting Ticket (GVT) system will be used for November’s upper house election.

Unless the law is changed, as recommended by committee and as already changed elsewhere, the ‘preference whisperers’ will be back in business.

We have had four Federal elections since GVTs were abolished for the Senate. Since 2016 voters have grown used to numbering their own party preferences when voting above-the-line (ATL). But as it stands today, and as I explained before the last Victorian election in 2022, any ATL preferences will be discarded and replaced by the GVT of the voter’s first choice party.

Twice this term the Electoral Matters Committee has recommended that group voting tickets to be abolished. Despite support for the move from the Opposition and Greens, nothing has happened. The Electoral Act retains group voting tickets as the method by which above-the-line votes are handled in the count.

If something isn’t done in the next month, shady backroom deals will determine the composition of the Legislative Council. And if the past is anything to go by, there could be half a dozen crossbench members elected from unknown parties recording only a tiny first preference vote.

If no one party wins a majority in the lower house, the prospects of an upper house occupied by political unknowns can only complicate the task of trying to govern Victoria for the next four years.

The Legislative Council is meant to be elected by proportional representation. But with more than 90% of votes locked into pre-arranged group voting tickets, proportionality is distorted and political power is delivered into the hands of the small cabal of party negotiators who arrange the GVT preference deals.

To avoid the upper house election descending into farce, it’s time for the Allan government to act and abolish group voting tickets.

As I explain in this post, the Electoral Commission has set a deadline for changing the law ahead of the election. And as I also explain, the last minute rush of party registrations and proposed party name changes show that the preference harvesting game will kick off if GVTs are not abolished. Read More »Time Running Out for the Victorian Government to Abolish Group Voting Tickets

SA2026 – Legislative Council – Result Declared

This post provides an overall summary of the South Australian Legislative Council result. It includes tables summarising the party composition of the new Council, a list of elected and departing members, party totals including change of vote since 2022, and a breakdown of results by party and candidate. I also have some comments on the final stages of the distribution of preferences.
Read More »SA2026 – Legislative Council – Result Declared

One Nation’s Poll Surge – the first 25 seats to watch

With One Nation surging in the polls, the obvious question is – which seats can the party win.

The first cabs off the rank would be the seats where One Nation polled strongest in 2025.

There were only two seats where One Nation reached the final pairing of candidates after preferences, the Labor seat of Hunter in NSW, and Maranoa in Queensland held by National Party Leader David Littleproud.

In both seats the One Nation candidate finished third on first preferences but reached second place through preferences flowing from other right-of-centre parties. These included Family First, Trumpet of Patriots, Libertarians, Shooters Fishers and Farmers and Gerard Rennick’s People First.

Including Hunter and Maranoa, there were 26 seats overall where One Nation was one of the final three candidates during the distribution of preferences. This point of the count is commonly called the three-candidate preferred count (3CP).

Of these, 25 were Labor-Coalition-One Nation contests. A 26th seat was Indi, held by Independent Helen Haines. I’ve left Indi out of the analysis that follows as I would expect Haines to do well with preference flows from all other candidates in a contest versus One Nation.

There are many other seats beyond these 25 where One Nation’s poll surge will put the party into the three-candidate count. And some of these may be more winnable than those I list inside the post. In some of the seats I list, Burt being a good example, it may not be possible for One Nation to win given how strong Labor’s primary vote was in 2025.

Of the 25 seats I list, 12 are in Queensland, six in New South Wales, three in Victoria, two in WA and one each in South Australia and Tasmania.

Splitting the LNP into Liberal and National holdings, 12 of the seats are National held, seven Liberal held, and six held by Labor.

Two-thirds of the seats are outside the capital cities, the rest generally in outer parts of capitals.

The table is inside the post.
Read More »One Nation’s Poll Surge – the first 25 seats to watch

Time to Change the Electoral Act to Fix Faults in Senate Counting

When NSW Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi reached quota and was declared elected at this year’s Senate election, something very odd happened with her votes.

Faruqi’s total of 761,249 votes on election included 3,145 Coalition first preference votes. These votes had been distributed to Faruqi based on the preferences Coalition voters had written on their ballot papers. These Coalition votes represented just 0.4% of Faruqi’s total vote.

The quota for election was 712,405, so the next step in the count was to distributed Faruqi’s surplus of 48,889 votes.

At which point the count went weird.

Suddenly the number of Coalition first preference votes increased to 7,549, an inflation of 140%. Instead of Coalition votes representing 0.4% of Faruqi’s surplus, they represented 15.9%.

Of Faruqi’s total vote on election, 72.4% were first preference votes. But this was reduced to 61.0% in her surplus. On the distribution of Faruqi’s surplus, Green votes and preferences received from all other candidates were crowded out and replaced by Coalition votes. And those Coalition ballot papers that were worth 3,145 votes on receipt, suddenly became 7,549 votes when distributed as preferences.

Only two candidates remained in the count after Faruqi’s election, One Nation’s Warwick Stacey leading Labor’s Emilija Beljic in the race for the final seat. Preferences split 31,233 to Labor and 4,117 to One Nation with 13,539 votes exhausting. This narrowed Stacey’s eventual margin of victory over Beljic to just 17,326 votes or 0.35%.

The distortion in Faruqi’s surplus was not responsible for Beljic failing to pass Stacey. But everything we know about preference flows for Green and Liberal voters tells us that the final margin would have been narrower without the distortion.

The threat of this problem altering the result in close Senate contests remains. But why does it happen? In this post I’ll try to explain the problem and outline how the Electoral Act should be changed.Read More »Time to Change the Electoral Act to Fix Faults in Senate Counting

FED2025 – Party and Voter Reactions to the Senate’s Electoral Changes

The 2025 Federal election was the fourth held since the introduction of major changes to the Senate’s electoral system. The changes were to deal with the rapid increase in nominations, their impact on ballot paper and font size, and the distortion of results produced by increasingly labyrinthine preferences deals under the now abolished Group Voting Ticket (GVT) system.

For overseas (and local) readers unfamiliar with the Senate’s electoral system, I’ll start this post with a brief background on the Senate’s electoral system and explain the changes introduced since 2016.

I will then look at the four elections since the changes and to assess how parties, candidates and voters have reacted to the new system with main focus on the 2025 result.

To do this I am analysing the Senate ballot paper data released by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).

There is more detail inside the post, but I’ll quickly summarise my findings –

  • The 2016 changes, and a 2022 increase in party members needed to register a political party, have seen the number of parties contesting Senate elections decrease from 52 at the last election using GVTs in 2013, to 28 at the 2025 election.
  • The average number of groups on Senate ballot papers rose from 7.7 at the first divided Senate ballot paper election in 1984 to 33.7 at the last GVT election in 2013 before falling to 17.2 in 2025. The result has been smaller ballot papers and a return to larger and more readable font sizes.
  • At the 2025 election, 81.2% of voters completed their Senate ballot papers with a 1-6 sequence of preferences above-the-line (ATL). 5.8% completed fewer than 6 ATL preferences, 6.6% filled more than 6 ATL preferences, and 6.3% of ballot papers counted as ‘below-the-line’ BTL votes. There has been little change over four elections in the percentage of ballot papers in each completion category.
  • Fewer groups and smaller ballot papers are likely to have played a part in the decline in the number of ballot papers with “exhausted” preferences at the end of the count.

Read More »FED2025 – Party and Voter Reactions to the Senate’s Electoral Changes

TAS 2025 – Lyons – Tracking the Distribution of Preferences

Result links – Bass | Braddon | Clark | Franklin | Lyons

Final Figures

Table of Elected and Defeated Candidates

  • Re-elected 1 – Guy Barnett (Liberal)
  • Re-elected 2 – Jane Howlett (Liberal)
  • Re-elected 3 – Tabatha Badger (Greens)
  • Re-elected 4 – Jen Butler (Labor)
  • Elected 5 – Brian Mitchell (Labor)
  • Re-elected 6 – Mark Shelton (Liberal)
  • Elected 7 – Carlo Di Falco (SFF)
  • Defeated – Casey Farrell (Labor)
  • Defeated – Andrew Jenner (Nationals, formerly Jacqui Lambie Network)

Final figures published

Both Labor candidates reached quota. After the distribution of Labor surplus votes, many of which exhausted, only three candidates remained for two vacancies and Mark Shelton (Liberal) and Carlo Di Falco (SFF) were declared elected to the final two seats, Liberal Stephanie Cameron missing out on election.

Read More »TAS 2025 – Lyons – Tracking the Distribution of Preferences

TAS2025 – Franklin – Tracking the Distribution of Preferences

Result links – Bass | Braddon | Clark | Franklin | Lyons

Count Complete

Table of Elected and Defeated Candidates

  • Elected 1 – Peter George (Independent)
  • Re-elected 2 – Eric Abetz (Liberal)
  • Re-elected 3 – Rosalie Woodruff (Greens)
  • Re-elected 4 – David O’Byrne (Independent)
  • Re-elected 5 – Dean Winter (Labor)
  • Re-elected 6 – Jacquie Petrusma (Liberal)
  • Re-elected 7 – Meg Brown (Labor)
  • Defeated – Nick Street (Liberal)

Franklin Final Figures

Read More »TAS2025 – Franklin – Tracking the Distribution of Preferences