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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

QLD2024 – Candidates and Parties Contesting Election

A total of 525 candidates have nominated for the 2024 Queensland, second only to 597 in 2020 as the most candidates to contest a Queensland election.

The Labor Party, LNP, Greens and One Nation have nominated for every electorates, followed by Family First with 59 candidates and Legalise Cannabis 29. Full breakdown by party inside the post.

More to come and I will also post a link here when I have all candidates posted on the ABC website.Read More »QLD2024 – Candidates and Parties Contesting Election

SA Election Preference Recommendations

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

What’s in a Party Name?

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?

Eden-Monaro By-election – Preferences and Commentary on the Result

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

Northern Territory Election Updates

(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.

Read More »Northern Territory Election Updates

Preference Flows at the 2018 South Australian Election and the Influence of How-to-Votes

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