Preferential Voting – Multi-Member

2019 SA Senate Election Part 2 – the Preference Distribution

Part 1 of my post on the 2019 SA Senate election analysed how voters completed their ballot papers under the new Senate system, how preferences flowed between parties and what was the impact of how-to-votes.

This post will be more descriptive in summarising the formal distribution of preferences. It highlights major exclusions and distributions during the count and comments on differences with how the count might have unfolded had the abolished group voting ticket system still been in place.
Read More »2019 SA Senate Election Part 2 – the Preference Distribution

2019 SA Senate Election – Ballot Paper and Preferences Analysis (Part 1)

This is my latest (and much delayed) post looking at the Senate’s new electoral system, how it worked at 2019 election, how voters completed their ballot papers, and what was the influence of how-to-vote material.

This post on South Australian is my first on a six-member Senate contest. The two previous posts in this series, on the ACT Senate race and the Northern Territory Senate race, dealt with elections for two Senators and were two-party preferred races.

At the start of 2020 I published two other posts with broad overviews of the 2019 result. The first looked at the breakdown of above and below the line voting and the number of preference completed. The second looked at measures of performance, why the new system produced different results to past Senate elections. In particular, it compared the 2019 result with the 2013 half-Senate election, the last conducted using the now abolished group voting tickets.

Part 2 of this post tracks the formal distribution of preferences for the South Australian Senate. The Part 1 post below provides a more detailed analysis of preferences based on examining the electronic ballot papers.
Read More »2019 SA Senate Election – Ballot Paper and Preferences Analysis (Part 1)

More Party Name Change Nonsense Ahead of the Western Australian election

Update: The proposal to re-name the Daylight Saving Party was rejected by the WA Electoral Commission.

First it was Flux trying to re-name itself “Liberals for Climate”. (See the detail in this post)

Now it is the Daylight Saving Party trying to change its name to the “Daylight Saving Party – The National Liberals”.

What in my opinion is politically scandalous is the application attempts to adopt “National Liberals” as the party name that will appear on the ballot paper.

So not only is the party trying to confuse voters looking for the Liberal or National parties on the Legislative Council ballot paper, but wants to adopt a name that does not let voters know the party’s one big policy, to introduce daylight saving in Western Australia. Voters in Western Australian have rejected daylight saving at four referendums over the past 50 years.

In my opinion, adopting “National Liberals” as the new party name to appear on the ballot paper instead of “Daylight Saving Party” is a clear attempt to mis-lead voters as to the party’s identity and policies.
Read More »More Party Name Change Nonsense Ahead of the Western Australian election

ACT 2020 Election – Post-election Updates

Updated: Friday 23 October

The ACT Electoral Commissioner has declared to the results (formal declaration on Wednesday) with Labor winning 10 seats, the Liberal Party 9 and Greens 6.

Brindabella As I suggested yesterday, Liberal Andrew Wall’s vote increased with the final count. With seven candidates left, 6th placed Green candidate Johnathan Davis was 82 votes ahead of third Labor candidate Taimus Werner-Gibbings. Werner Gibbings was excluded electing Labor’s Joy Burch (Re-elected 1) and Mick Gentleman (Re-elected 2). Andrew Wall was then excluded (Defeated) electing Liberals Nicole Lawder (Re-elected 3) and Mark Parton (Re-elected 4). Jonathan Davis was then Elected 5.

Ginninderra The trend against Labor’s Gordon Ramsay continued and at the critical count Liberal Peter Cain was 166 votes ahead. Labor’s Yvette Berry was Re-elected 1, followed by Liberal Elizabeth Kikkert (Re-elected 2), Labor’s Tara Cheyne (Re-elected 3), Green Jo Clay (Elected 4) and Liberal Peter Cain (Elected 5). Labor’s Gordon Ramsay was defeated, and Liberal Vicki Dunne retired.

Kurrajong As expected, the gap in the final race did narrow, but the Greens were still 407 votes in the lead. Labor’s Andrew Barr was Re-elected 1, the only candidate at the election to poll a quota in his own right. Green Shane Rattenbury was Re-elected 2, Labor’s Rachel Stephen-Smith Re-elected 3, Liberal Elizabeth Lee Re-elected 4, and Green Rebecca Vassarotti was Elected 5, Liberal Candice Burch defeated.

Murrumbidgee A straightforward result. Order of election was Chris Steel (Labor Re-elected 1), Jeremy Hanson (Liberal Re-elected 2), Giulia Jones (Liberal Re-elected 3), Emma Davidson (Green Elected 4) and Marisa Paterson (Labor Elected 5). Davidson replaced retiring Greens MLA Caroline Le Couteur, while Paterson defeated her colleague, Labor MLA Bec Cody.

Yerrabi Another straightforward result. In order of election, Alistair Coe (Liberal re-elected 1), Michael Pettersson (Labor Re-elected 2), Suzanne Orr (Labor Re-elected 3), Andrew Braddock (Green Elected 4) and Leanne Castley (Liberal Elected 5). There were two changes of member, Braddock gaining his seat by defeating Labor’s Deepak-Raj Gupta, while Castley defeated her Liberal colleague James Milligan.

A couple of notes on the wins and losses.

  • The two retiring members were replaced by party colleagues, Ginninderra Liberal Vicki Dunne replaced by Peter Cain, and Murrumbidge Green Caroline Le Couteur replaced by Emma Davidson.
  • The two members elected at countbacks were both defeated, Labor’s Deepak Raj Gupta in Yerrabi, and Liberal Candice Burch in Kurrajong. Both seats were won by the Greens.
  • The other two Green gains were elected by defeating sitting member of other parties, Johnathan Davis in Brindabella effectively defeating Liberal Andrew Wall, and Jo Clay in Ginninderra effectively defeating Labor’s Gordon Ramsay.
  • As sometimes happens under the Hare-Clark electoral system, two members were defeated by party colleagues, Labor’s Marisa Paterson defeating Bec Cody in Murrumbidgee, and Liberal Leanne Castley defeating James Milligan in Yerrabi.
  • The Greens gained four seats, two from Labor and two from the Liberals.
  • Of the 25 former members, 17 were re-elected, two retired and six members were defeated and there are eight new members.

Previous day’s updates are inside the post.Read More »ACT 2020 Election – Post-election Updates

2020 ACT Election – A Few Things to Watch For

The ACT uses the same Hare-Clark electoral system as Tasmania, but differences in the way voters use their ballot papers means that election counts can unfold differently.

Hare-Clark shares a common ancestor with the Senate’s electoral system, but several key differences mean that Hare-Clark operates as a contest between candidates where the Senate’s electoral system is overwhelmingly a contest between parties.

The difference starts with the ballot paper.Read More »2020 ACT Election – A Few Things to Watch For

2019 ACT Senate Election – Analysis of Preferences

This is the second in my series looking at how the Senate’s new electoral system worked. This post is on the ACT, which like the Northern Territory, has only two Senators. Both Senators face the electorate every three years in terms tied to the term of the House of Representatives. (See my previous post on the Northern Territory for an explanation of territory Senators.)

(My earlier overall analysis of Senate voting can be found in this post.)

Like the Northern Territory, the ACT has returned the same party representation at every election since 1975. Every ACT Senate election has elected one Labor and one Liberal Senator. With the quota for election set at 33.3% quota, support for a major party would have to be well short of this vote to miss out on a seat.

(Hint – if you are viewing this post on a mobile phone, the tables look much better if you turn your phone sideways.)

Read More »2019 ACT Senate Election – Analysis of Preferences

2019 Northern Territory Senate Election – Results and Preference Flows

Summary of findings –

  • Preferences were not distributed in the NT, the lead Labor and CLP candidates declared elected on the first count.
  • At 19.5% the Northern Territory had the highest rate of voters going beyond six preferences above the line, four times the national average. This was helped by there being only nine ballot paper groups in the NT.
  • 77.7% of Green preferences reached Labor, but not by following the Green how-to-vote. Of all Green votes, 45.5% went to Labor as a second preference, another 21.3% at the third preference after giving a suggested second preference for HEMP.
  • United Australia Party (UAP) preferences favoured Labor, against the party’s how-to-vote recommendation for the CLP, largely because one in five UAP above-the-line votes were donkey votes.
  • On how-to-vote concordance, 16.0% of Labor voters followed the how-to-vote exactly compared to 10.3% for the CLP and 10.2% of the Greens. Green concordance rates were lowered by the 2nd preference being given to HEMP rather than Labor.
    Read More »2019 Northern Territory Senate Election – Results and Preference Flows

2019 Senate Election – Above and Below the Line Vote Breakdown

The 2019 Senate election was the second conducted under changes introduced in 2016. The changes continued to use proportional representation by single transferable vote, and retained the divided ballot paper in use since 1984, and . A thick horizontal line continues to divide the ballot paper into two voting options, ‘above the line’ (ATL) for parties and groups, or ‘below the line’ (BTL) for candidates.

The changes abandoned full preferential voting in favour of partial preferential voting, and ended party control over between-party preferences.

Before the changes, voters could only mark a single square when voting ATL, the ballot paper imputed to have the chosen party’s full list of preferences as registered with the Electoral Commission.

The new system abolished the tickets and allowed ATL voters to give second and further preferences, ballot paper instructions suggesting at least six preferences. Above the line votes continued to give parties and groups control over preferences between their own candidates, but ended party control over preferences to other parties and candidates.

Previously a BTL vote required a voter to mark preferences for all candidates on the ballot paper. Under the new system, ballot paper instructions stated that BTL voters should mark at least 12 preferences.

In an earlier post I went into the political impact of these changes and how the system performed at its second test, its first at a half-Senate election. (See How the new Senate Electoral System Performed at its first Half-Senate Election test.)

In this post I’m going to look at how voters reacted to the new electoral system and  whether they voted above or below the line. For each option, I look at how many preferences voters completed.

This will be the first of several posts over the next fortnight going into detail of how the Senate count unfolded in each state, how preferences flowed, and what impact parties and their how-to-votes had on preference flows.
Read More »2019 Senate Election – Above and Below the Line Vote Breakdown

How the new Senate Electoral System Performed at its first Half-Senate Election test.

The Turnbull government’s changes to the Senate’s electoral system were first used at the 2016 double dissolution election, but the 2019 half-Senate election was always going to be a truer test of the changes.

Several of the minor party Senators elected in 2016 owed their seats to the lower 7.7% quota used for double dissolution elections. Two-thirds of minor party Senators were elected to the final vacancies in each state and were allocated to short term seats post-election. Those Senators faced re-election in 2019 when their chances of re-election would be made tougher by the 14.3% quota used at half-Senate elections, as well as the new electoral system.

As this post will explain, the new system worked as designed at the 2019 election, rewarding parties that polled well on first preferences, and disadvantaging parties that relied of harvesting preferences to win election.
Read More »How the new Senate Electoral System Performed at its first Half-Senate Election test.