by-election

Why Australia Doesn’t Have Novelty Candidates like Count Binface

As I wait to hear the result of the UK’s Clacton by-election, I thought I should ponder the question of why Australia doesn’t have novelty candidates.

The Clacton by-election was triggered by the resignation of Reform Party Leader Nigel Farage. The announcement came amid parliamentary scrutiny of Farage’s personal finances, and allegations concerning undeclared gifts and support. He is re-contesting the seat to, as he puts it, let the people rather than the establishment decide his fate.

It has rather backfired on Farage as none of the ‘establishment’ parties are contesting. His major opponent has turned out to be serial novelty candidate Count Binface, in real life known as Jonathan David Harvey, an Oxford classics graduate and television comedy writer.

The record field of 34 also includes Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, Howling Laud Hope and Baron Von Thunderclap, candidates for Britain’s ‘establishment’ novelty party, the Monster Raving Loony Party.

So how is this allowed and why doesn’t it occur in Australia?

Well, it sort of used to occur, but the law was tightened after several protest candidates representing the Abolish Child Support/Family Court Party adopted vvvveeerrrryyyy lloonngg names to contest the 1998 Federal election.Read More »Why Australia Doesn’t Have Novelty Candidates like Count Binface

The Financial Review’s Inaccurate Preference Analysis

One Nation’s polling surge has triggered an intense dissection of recent election results.

One Nation made the final preference count at the recent Farrer by-election. One Nation also finished in the final preference pairing in more than half of South Australian electorates at the state election in March. These results offer a mine of data where One Nation is a recipient of preferences rather than a provider.

Trying its luck dissecting the results on 7 June was the Australian Financial Review. It published an analysis piece on Farrer and South Australia headlined “How One Nation is winning the preferences war (with the Greens’ help)”.

As I will outline in this post, the article has confused published preference distribution data with more accurate but unavailable preference flow data. And the remark about Greens preferences isn’t backed by my analysis of the data.

The article was published three days before the Farrer flow data was released and the South Australian analysis has been attributed to preference flow data that is not available.

With the South Australian results, the article uses preference transfer data to draw some odd conclusions about Green preferences, and illustrates flows for other parties that aren’t justified given the quality of the data.

That the analytical problems, which I’ll explain in this post, have passed without much comment from anyone is due to the published chart included below. The chart tries to show SA preference flows from other parties to One Nation.

The chart’s meaning and data source are hard to unravel, but mirth has been the main reaction due to the inclusion of imaginary party names. It has caused the AFR to publish a correction and remove the chart from the on-line article.

LCP, an acronym for the Legalise Cannabis Party, is rendered as the Liberal Catholic Party. FGA, for Sarah Game’s Fair Go Australia, is transformed into the Family Guardian Association.

To the best of my knowledge, neither party name has ever been used in Australia.

It looks to me like a case of AI ‘hallucination’, AI asked to convert codes into party names and guessing it wrong. I doubt a human made those errors.

But enough cheap shots over party names. What I really want to explain is the article’s problems with data source and analysis.

With Farrer, I want to explain how the chart used to demonstrate the composition of One Nation’s winning vote uses the wrong data. It results in an incorrect emphasis on whose preferences were responsible for One Nation’s final margin.

With South Australia, the available data cannot be used to isolate the preference flows shown in the now deleted AFR chart. And the data that is available does not support the headlined conclusions about Greens preferences.

In both cases the problem comes down to limitations on how you can use preference transfer data from published distributions. The data must be treated with caution and can’t be automatically compared with more accurate preference flow data.Read More »The Financial Review’s Inaccurate Preference Analysis

2026 – Farrer By-election – Final Count Data Released

This morning the AEC finalised counting for the Farrer by-election with the release of detailed preference data.

It answers what I thought was a key question in the result – whether there was a difference between Liberal and National preference flows to One Nation. It was not possible to answer this question using the previously released full distribution of preferences.

Preference flow data tallies destination preferences from the primary votes for each excluded candidates to one of the final two candidates. In Farrer this data tallies preferences from ten excluded candidates to One Nation’s David Farley and Independent Michelle Milthorpe, the final pairing of candidates. Preference flow data ignores the intermediary stages published as part of the formal distribution of preferences.

The data released today reveals a difference in preference flows by supporters of the two Coalition parties . Liberal voter preference flows to One Nation were 59.0% compared to 69.1% for Nationals voters.

The flow data also reveals that One Nation’s David Farley did not need Liberal preferences to win. In the full distribution of preferences, Farley did not pass 50% until the Liberal candidate was the last excluded. Using the flow data where National preferences do not first flow through the Liberal candidate, Farley reached 50.2% on the flow of National preferences without the need for any Liberal preferences.

The question is whether the different flows tell us anything about how Liberal and National preferences would flow at a general election. In Farrer there was no Labor candidate in the final pairing. I suspect both National and Liberal preference flows to One Nation would have been higher in a final contest involving Labor rather than an Independent.

But it does suggest that Liberal preferences to One Nation will be weaker than those of National candidates. That was the case two decades ago in Queensland before the formation of the LNP. It in part reflects the different appeal of One Nation in rural electorates contested by Nationals versus the flows in urban electorates contested by Liberal candidates. One Nation polled a high enough first preference vote in Farrer for this difference not to matter. But a lower primary vote and weaker Liberal preferences would hamper One Nation hopes of winning urban seats.

Against this view, that the Liberal candidate drew top spot on the ballot paper with Milthorpe in second position suggests that the donkey vote may have played a party in the weaker Liberal preference flows to One Nation.

And it has to be remembered that preference flows from voters on the right of politics have always been weaker than from voters on the left. One Nation and the two Coalition parties rarely achieve the sorts of flows produced by the Greens in Farrer. Despite polling only 2.3% of the vote, Greens preferences flowed 91.8% to Independent Michelle Milthorpe. At general elections, Green voter preferences to Labor are consistently above 85%, a figure that the Liberal and National parties struggle to achieve from their supporters in three cornered contests.

I haven’t had time to pull apart the data by polling place, but the swing to One Nation was smaller in Albury, by far the largest regional centre in the seat. It was also in Albury where Liberal and Milthorpe support was strongest. Farley was better known in the west of the electorate where National support was also strongest. It may be the different preference flows reflect this familiarity with local candidates and the weaker One Nation support in Albury.

There’s more data on the preferences inside the post, along with an effort to graph the preferences data. Read More »2026 – Farrer By-election – Final Count Data Released

SA2026 – huge win for Labor but a warning in the result

The result of the recent South Australian election was clear with Labor the biggest winner, the Liberal Party the biggest loser, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation the big improver.

In the aftermath Labor can bask in its massive majority and the smiting of its political opponents.

Division on the other side of politics eased Labor’s path to re-election, but the strong performance of One Nation in Labor’s safest seats has delivered Labor a serious warning.

Hidden in the detail of the results is that One Nation turned Labor’s side of the electoral pendulum upside down. Liberal seats and Labor’s most marginal seats swung to Labor, but many of Labor’s safest seats swung strongly to One Nation.

Much of this comes about because the South Australian election was not a two-party contest. Only 13 of the state’s 47 lower house seats finished as Labor-Liberal contests. The majority of seats, 25, finished as Labor-One Nation contests.

The result is the Electoral Commission of South Australia (ECSA) has abandoned past practice of undertaking alternative two-party preferred counts in contests that weren’t Labor-Liberal finishes. In 2026 the Commission will do a two-party re-count in seats where Labor did not make the final pairing, but in every other seat report a count that is Labor versus whoever finished second.

In the past there has been Coalition criticism of academics for analysing Australian elections as Labor versus Non-Labor. For the 2026 South Australian election, there is no other alternative.

It creates a post-election pendulum that is a mix-and-match of party contests, perhaps a portent of where Australian politics is heading. All swings since 2022 will compare a Labor-Liberal finish with whatever pairing is produced for 2026.

Which is where the Labor-One Nation swings in safe seats are startling. Sometimes a change in final pairing can create an artificially large swing caused by the vagaries of exclusion order and unexpected preference flows.

That’s not the case in South Australia. The two-candidate swing against Labor with these mix-and-match results correlates with the decline in Labor’s primary vote and the rise in support for One Nation.

The chart below shows the relationship between Labor pre-election margin and 2026 swing. Labor’s safest seats are to the right of the chart, and the array of points below the horizontal axis show how many of Labor’s safest seats swung strongly towards One Nation. The blue points for Labor-Liberal contests are all to the left and show a clear pattern of swings to Labor. But the swing against Labor increases as Labor’s pre-election margin increases.

The swing was to Labor in areas where the Liberal vote held up, but against Labor where the Liberal Party slipped to third and the swing is measured against One Nation. And this swing is heavily correlated with the decline in Labor’s primary vote and strong support for One Nation.

In safe Labor seats, there was a switch in primary vote from Labor to One Nation. There are safe Labor seats in northern Adelaide where One Nation polled above 30%, levels the Liberal hardly ever achieves.

The trend in the above chart stands out as starkly in the tables below which aggregate results for Labor seats based on pre-election margin. Labor came out of the election with a higher primary vote and after preferences vote in the seats it defended on margins under 15% than it recorded in the seats with margins above 15%. There was a 5.9% swing to Labor in seats with margins under 15%, but 6.7% away in very safe seats with margins above 15%.

Again, this is a mixed swing based on One Nation replacing the Liberal Party as the second placed in seats. But the swing occurred on primary votes as well as two-candidate preferred votes, so its not an artifact of the change in final pairing.

At a normal election both the above tables would swing in the same direction. But in South Australia in 2026, marginal seats swung to Labor and very safe seats against Labor. The seats of Elizabeth, Light and Taylor had margins above 19% before the election, but after the election are three of Labor’s four most marginal seats under 5%.

There’s more on the results inside the post with a link to a draft analysis I’ve prepared. It includes results for all seats, tables of preference flows and a new electoral pendulum.

But I’ll start with some comments on the looming Farrer by-election.
Read More »SA2026 – huge win for Labor but a warning in the result

NSW State District of Kiama set for By-election

Result Declared – Final Figures

Kiama By-election Result
Candidate Party Votes Pct Change
Katelin McInerney ALP 18,622 37.3 +2.9
Serena Copley LIB 13,226 26.5 +14.5
Kate Dezarnaulds IND 5,225 10.5 +10.5
Tonia Gray GRN 4,074 8.2 -3.0
Don Fuggle LCA 2,550 5.1 +5.1
Felix Nelson SFF 2,543 5.1 +5.1
Joshua Beer LBT 895 1.8 +1.8
Lisa Cotton IND 676 1.4 +1.4
Ellie Robertson AJP 622 1.2 +1.2
Andrew Thaler IND 544 1.1 +1.1
Roger Woodward IND 429 0.9 +0.9
Ken Davis SAP 420 0.8 -2.8
Cyrille Jeufo Keuheu IND 69 0.1 +0.1
…. (Gareth Ward) IND .. 0.0 -38.8
Formal 49,895
Informal 1,995 3.8 +0.7
Total / % Counted 51,890 83.0
Roll 62,486
Two-Candidate Preferred
Katelin McInerney ALP 23,313 60.2 +10.9
Serena Copley LIB 15,421 39.8 +39.8
…. (Gareth Ward) IND .. 0.0 -50.8
Exhausted 11,161 22.4 +9.0
Two-Party Preferred
Katelin McInerney ALP 23,313 60.2 -9.5
Serena Copley LIB 15,421 39.8 +9.5
Exhausted 11,161 22.4 -10.4

Analysing the by-election swing is complicated by Gareth Ward’s victory as an Independent in 2023. Comparing Labor’s result to the contest against Ward in 2023 there is a 10.9% swing to Labor. By the alternative two-party preferred count from 2023, there is a 9.6% swing against Labor. But in 2023 there was a massive exhaustion rate caused by 69.5% of Ward voters having no preferences which inflated Labor’s two-party preferred result. As a result the two-party preferred swing is distorted which makes the two-candidate preferred swing a more reliable measure of the by-election swing.

Pre-election comment: My view since the start of the campaign is that Labor will win easily, as they would have won easily in 2023 had Gareth Ward not been on the ballot paper. Labor may even win a majority of the first preference vote and will certainly have the highest first preference vote. Based on the published how-to-vote preference recommendations, it is difficult to see how any other candidate can close Labor’s lead. Two weeks of bad headlines for the Federal Liberal Party can only have helped Labor’s cause.

Update: the campaign will be short with the by-election announced for Saturday 13 September. The writ will be issued on 22 August which in NSW electoral law is also the date when the electoral rolls closes. Nominations will close at noon on Thursday 28 August with early voting to begin on Saturday 6 September.

Draw for Ballot Positions 29 August – 13 candidates at the close of nominations. Labor drew the last position but will still be favoured to win. Details of the ballot paper inside post.

How-to-vote preference recommendations – details have been added

The resignation of former Independent MP Gareth Ward has set the stage for a by-election in his south coast seat of Kiama.

Ward has first elected as Liberal member for Kiama in 2011 at the Coalition’s landslide defeat of the Keneally Labor government. As outlined in this post, Kiama at the time was a traditional Labor seat, having been held by the party since its creation in 1981. He was re-elected in 2015 and again in 2019 with no swing against him. He resigned from the Liberal Party in 2020 after being charged with the sexual offences for which he was eventually convicted.

Ward was re-elected as an Independent in 2023 despite the charges hanging over his head. Two weeks ago he was convicted on the charges and placed in custody last week. Earlier this week he gained an injunction against the NSW Legislative Assembly moving a motion to expel him. His case was dismissed yesterday and the Assembly was due to debate an expulsion motion this morning. Before the debate could take place, Ward sent a resignation letter to the Speaker of the Assembly.

Read on for more information on the Kiama electorate.
Read More »NSW State District of Kiama set for By-election

SA’s Black By-election, plus why SA needs to update how it counts early votes

(Update 20 November – I did not know when I wrote this post, but two days before polling day for the Black by-election, the Electoral (Miscellaneous) Amendment Bill was introduced into the Legislative Council. Its provisions include allowing the issuing Early votes as ordinary votes, a provision which allows Early votes to be counted on election night. A step forward compared to what happened at the Black by-election.)

Tonight I will be covering the Black By-election at the ABC’s election website.

As my blog receives a massive number of click throughs from Google whenever there is an election, I make sure to provide a link to where I’m reporting the results. So if you want to know Black by-election results, try the Black by-election page at ABC elections.

But it’s also worth me publishing a post on how the South Australian Electoral Act will probably prevent us knowing the winner of the Black by-election tonight.

More than 10,099 ballot papers for the Black by-election, 8,544 Early votes and 1,555 Postal votes, sit sealed in Declaration envelopes at the Electoral Commission waiting to be opened and counted. But the law prevents the SA Electoral Commission from counting these votes tonight. Counting of them cannot begin until Monday.Read More »SA’s Black By-election, plus why SA needs to update how it counts early votes

Final Wrap of the Dunkley By-election

The result of the Dunkley by-election was declared last month, but as usual it has taken a couple of weeks for the the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) to finalise and release its full suite of election statistics on the by-election.

This post wraps up the final figures, looking at turnout, preference flows by candidate and result by vote type.

In short, the by-election saw a normal change in turnout, the pattern of vote by type was normal, and the pattern of preferences flows was normal. The by-election produced an overall swing of 3.5% which is on par with an average by-election swing.
Read More »Final Wrap of the Dunkley By-election

Dunstan By-election Updates plus problems with the SA Electoral Act

After looking the clear winner of the Dunstan by-election on Saturday night, Labor has finished with a narrower margin than expected.

Dunstan had been held by former Liberal Premier Steven Marshall since 2010. He squeaked home with a narrow 0.5% margin at the 2022 state election which meant the seat was always going to be a hotly contested by-election on his retirement. (For background on the by-election and the results see my profile on the ABC Elections website. Final figures published.)

On election night the Labor Party finished on 53.8%, boosted to 54.0% on Sunday by check counting. At that point, based on declaration vote trends at the 2022 state election, Labor would have expected to finish with 52.7% once all votes were counted.

In fact the race has been much closer. On Thursday 28 March, Labor’s Cressida O’Hanlon is on 50.8% after preferences with a lead over Liberal Anna Finizio of 347 votes. The count is at 80.5% of enrolment with only a handful of outstanding postal votes remaining to be counted. Due to Good Friday, postal vote return closes on Tuesday 2 April to be followed by the formnal distribution of preferences.

Labor will win after a swing of 1.4%, down substantially on the 4.5% swing seen on election night.

The table below shows how the count narrowed with the release of each successive declaration vote count.Read More »Dunstan By-election Updates plus problems with the SA Electoral Act

Coverage of Tasmanian State Election and Dunstan By-election

This is one of my usual posts on election night designed to deal with the surge of visitors to the site driven by Google searches.

I will not be posting here this evening as I am involved in the ABC’s live coverage of the Tasmanian election. The coverage is being broadcast live across Tasmania from 6pm eastern daylight time on the ABC’s main channel, and across Australia on the ABC News channel. There will also be updates of the important Dunstan by-election in South Australia during the Tasmanian coverage.

The ABC will also be publishing live results at ABC-online. Access the Tasmanian live results site here. You can also find the Dunstan by-election results here.

Inside this post I have information on the early vote at both elections.Read More »Coverage of Tasmanian State Election and Dunstan By-election

Queensland State By-elections – Inala and Ipswich West

As well as the Brisbane City Council elections on 16 March, the Queensland Labor Party faces two state by-elections the same day.

The Inala by-election has been brought on by the resignation of former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Inala is Labor’s safest seat with a massive margin of 28.2% and the party’s primary vote in 2020 was 67%. Inala is so safe that it was one of the seven seats Labor retained at the party’s 2012 landslide defeat. You can read my by-election profile for Inala here.

The Ipswich West by-election has been caused by the resignation of backbencher Jim Madden. The Labor margin is 14.3% and the first preference vote in 2020 50.1%. It was one of the seats lost to the LNP for a single term in 2012 and was also lost to One Nation for a single term in 1998. One Nation finished second in Ipswich West as recently as 2017. You can read my by-election profile for Ipswich West here..

I will be covering both by-elections as part of my Brisbane City Council result coverage on 16 March. The reason for this separate post is to highlight material I’ve been adding to both by-election pages on preferences.Read More »Queensland State By-elections – Inala and Ipswich West