This post will be updated over the next few days with an analysis of the lower house election result.
For the moment I’ll just publish the final two-party preferred result and a new electoral pendulum.
Read More »South Australian Election – Results Analysis
A unique feature of South Australian elections is that registered how-to-vote material for lower house seats is displayed in front of voters in the partitions where votes are completed. I explained how this works in a previous post.
These preference sheets have been released for use in pre-poll voting. Below I summarise the preference recommendations in important seats.
You can find the how-to-votes for each district on the Electoral Commission SA website.
I’ve also published the Legislative Council recommendations. The posters for these are displayed in polling places but not placed inside the voting partition. You can find the Legislative Council tickets on my ABC election site and I hope to publish more on the LC preferences later this week. Some information on how the 2018 preference count unfolded is included in my Legislative Council Preview, again on the ABC site.
The problems for most minor political parties is a lack of volunteers to hand out how-to-vote material outside polling places. This disadvantage is lessened in South Australia by the display of the how-to-vote recommendations.
For instance, Family First for many years issued how-to-votes with preferences to Labor candidates in a small number of seats, mainly those associated with the conservative SDA union. Preferences in these seats were more likely to flow to Labor rather than the Liberal Party. It was a difference in preference flows rarely seen at Federal elections where influencing voters with how-to-vote relies on volunteers handing them to voters.
Family First was absorbed by the Australian Conservatives for the 2018 South Australian election, but continued with the practice of favouring selected Labor candidates with preference recommendations. In 26 seats Conservative preferences were recommended to the Liberal Party and flowed 77% in that direction. The five seats favouring Labor split evenly, only 51.5% to the Liberal Party, and the two seats with split how-to-votes flowed only 67% to the Liberal Party. They are remarkable differences in preference flows compared to flows at Federal elections.
Here’s the preference recommendation summary in key seats.
Read More »SA Election Preference Recommendations
UPDATE 2 February – The name change has been approved by by the WA Electoral Commission.
For a party that argues “Australian democracy is broken”, that claims to be “Australia’s most transparent political party”, the Flux Party of Western Australia has taken a breathtakingly cynical step ahead of next March’s Western Australian election.
As shown below, the party has proposed to change its name and hopes to appear on ballot papers in March as “Liberals for Climate”.
I can’t see this as anything else but an attempt to mislead voters into confusing Liberals for Climate with the Liberal Party. It is an attempt to boost the party’s Legislative Council vote and manipulate the group voting ticket system still used in Western Australia.
The question is, will there be enough objection to this cynical name change, and strong enough legal argument against it, to prevent “Liberals for Climate” appearing on next year’s ballot papers?
Read More »What’s in a Party Name?
If interest is measured by the number of nominations, then the 2020 Queensland election is certainly attracting a lot of interest.
A record 597 candidates have nominated, an average of 6.4 candidates per seat. It easily surpasses the record 453 candidates that contested the 2017 Queensland election.Read More »Close of Nominations for 2020 Queensland Election
The final data dump of results from the Eden-Monaro by-election has been published, including the distribution of preferences and data on preference flows by party. You can find all the data at the AEC website.
In this post I want to look at final flows of preferences, were there differences caused by when people voted, how did the count unfold on election night, and was it a good result for Labor?
Read More »Eden-Monaro By-election – Preferences and Commentary on the Result
(Final Updated – Friday 4 September)
This is a running blog post that I have updated through the two weeks of counting.
In summary, Labor had a certain 11 seats at the end of election night. The seats of Arnhem and Fong Lim delivered Labor 13 seats and majority government when the preference throws were re-aligned on Monday 24 August. Preference re-alignment also put Labor ahead in Blain, a narrow lead it still maintains, and Labor has also stayed narrowly ahead in Barkly. Postal votes saw the CLP narrowly win Barkly producing the final numbers Labor 14 seats, the Country Liberals 8, Territory Alliance 1 and Independents 2.
The count was finalised on Friday 4 September when the final postal votes were admitted to the count, and formal preference distribution of preferences undertaken in all seats.
This post has been blogging the counting for each day. I am supervising updates to the ABC’s NT 2020 Election website. The results in greater detail can be found at the NT Electoral Commission’s website.
The 2018 South Australian election saw a record vote for minor parties. This was largely due to the campaign by Nick Xenophon and his SA-Best party, polling 14.2% in the House of Assembly, a creditable 18.4% in the 26 seats it contested. The failure of the party to poll as strongly as published polling well out from the election suggested, or to elect a member to the Assembly, saw its campaign labelled a failure by political commentators.
In the end the party was used by voters as a conduit for preferences to the Liberal and Labor Parties. As you would expect for a party viewed by voters as sitting in the political centre, the party’s preferences split evenly, 51.6% to the Liberal Party and 48.4% to labor.
The release of preference flow data by the SA Electoral Commission provides an opportunity to analyse preference flows against party preference recommendations. Several unique features in the conduct of SA House of Assembly elections allows the comparison of preference flows with how-to-votes lodged by candidates and displayed in voting compartments.Read More »Preference Flows at the 2018 South Australian Election and the Influence of How-to-Votes
In this post I will keep track of the surging rate of early voting ahead of the Northern Territory election’s formal polling day on 22 August.
After the last day of early voting on Friday 21 August
Read More »2020 Northern Territory Election – Tracking the Early Vote
In proposing that South Australia adopt optional preferential voting for House of Assembly elections, the Marshall government is highlighting democratic principles in favour of making preferences optional. But you don’t have to be cynical to see that in backing principle, the SA Liberal Party is also backing its own self-interest.
Since 1982 there have been 26 South Australian electoral contests where a candidate trailing on first preferences won. Of these, 14 were won by Labor, 11 by Independents or minor party candidates, and just one by the Liberal Party. (Newland in 1989).Read More »South Australian Government Proposes Optional Preferential Voting
Whether candidates live in the electorate they contest is a question that induces rage with some voters.
Who are these blow-in candidates they’ve never heard of contesting the local seat?
It is a matter that raises particular attention in country seats, where being an outsider is a major disadvantage for a candidate.
But for political parties, trying to find candidates for your opponent’s safest seats is always difficult. It is an obvious truth of politics that the quality of a party’s candidates dips as the chances of the party winning a seat declines. It is a truth that becomes even more evident at elections where a party looks certain of defeat.
Serious political parties contest every seat, even if only to attract a few extra dollars from public election funding. But trying to find candidates that are qualified to stand, (think dual citizenship issues at Federal elections), doesn’t have an embarrassing social media history, and won’t start spouting loopy ideas that attract mainstream media attention, can be something of a challenge.Read More »Local Seats for Local People – Who Should be Allowed to Contest Elections