election

When will the next Federal Election be? Will it be early?

With an agreement reached between Labor and the Greens to pass the government’s housing legislation, even the remotest prospect of an early double dissolution election has vanished.

The only way for a joint House and Senate election to be held before August 2024 was via a double dissolution election. With that already unlikely option now removed, an election before August 2024 is only possible if Anthony Albanese breaks with 50 years of Prime Ministerial tradition and holds separate House and half-Senate elections.

In theory a House election can be called at any time, but as has been the case at every election since 1974, the next House elections will be held in conjunction with the next half-Senate election due at latest in May 2025.

Fixed terms and a constitutional restrictions mean that writs for a half-Senate election cannot be issued until 1 July in the year before a Senate term expires. This restriction creates an election window between August and May every three years.

The next election window opens on Saturday 3 August 2024, the first possible date for an election if writs are issued on 1 July. The election window will stay open until mid-May 2025, the last date being 17 or 24 May.

There remains a chance the government could go to a House and half-Senate election between August and October 2024. But the option is unlikely due to redistributions and a series of state and territory elections. Everything points to the government going full term to May 2025.

Of course, events over the next 20 months could unfold differently. And if they do, the election could arrive earlier than April-May 2025.
Read More »When will the next Federal Election be? Will it be early?

2023 NSW Election – the Race for the Final Legislative Council Vacancy

Final result: Final votes by group, the names of elected candidates and final composition of the new Legislative Council can be found on the Legislative Council Page at the ABC website.

I had intended to write something more detailed here about the final result but other pressing work intruded so just a few points at this stage.

Liberal Rachel Merton won the 21st seat defeating Animal Justice’s Alison Waters by 10,628 votes. Preferences did not change the order of election and the 21 elected candidates were the ones that could have been predicted based on first preferences at Count 1. Merton led Waters by 0.07 quotas on first preferences, a lead that was narrowed to only 0.05 quotas after preferences.

On exclusions from the point where the second Green was elected, 72.1% of preferences exhausting. 7.5% of preferences flowed to Animal Justice, 6.4% to the Coalition, 5.7% to Legalise Cannabis, 4.3% Liberal Democrats and 4.1% Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. Merton’s lead fell to under 4,000 votes before increasing to the final margin after receiving 10.2% of One Nation preferences on the exclusion of Tania Mihailuk.

At several exclusions, preferences that might have flowed to Animal Justice instead flowed to Legalise Cannabis. Animal Justice received a boost with a reasonable flow of preferences from Christian conservative Lyle Shelton, almost certainly due to donkey votes where voters preferenced left to right from Shelton in Column A to Animal Justice in Column C.

Original post inside.Read More »2023 NSW Election – the Race for the Final Legislative Council Vacancy

Summary of Candidates and Parties Contesting the 2023 NSW Election

A total of 852 candidates have nominated for the NSW election, down from 914 in 2019. In the lower house, the Legislative Assembly, nominations are down from 568 in 2019 to 562 in 2023, while the Legislative Council is down from 346 candidates to just 290 in 2023.

The record number of lower house candidates was 732 candidates in 1999, and the record for the Legislative Council was 394 in 2015.

The number of columns on the Legislative Council ballot paper has risen from 21 to 22, both totals including one ‘Ungrouped’ column. Of the 21 groups on the 2023 ballot paper, six have nominated fewer than 15 candidates which means these six groups will not have an ‘above the line’ group voting square. It is effectively impossible for a group to elect a member without a group voting square.

At this stage I only have Assembly total numbers. Details of candidates will not be released until ballot paper proofing is complete.
Read More »Summary of Candidates and Parties Contesting the 2023 NSW Election

VIC22 – 2-Party Preferred Results and Swings by District

Inside this post I am publishing corrected two-party preferred (2PP) results, state-wide and by district, for the 2022 Victorian election.

The post is based on the Victorian Electoral Commission’s (VEC’s) published two-party preferred totals. At the moment the difference in my table is that I include corrected the two-party preferred totals for Brighton and Werribee.

These two corrected totals have been calculated from the data entered ballot paper files for both seats. The VEC did not publish a completed preference distribution for either seat but the correct 2PP can be calculated from the data files. I recently analysed the preference flows for seven districts where data entry was available, including for Brighton and Werribee.

In February the VEC intends to undertake formal preference distributions in districts where a distribution was not required. I will update the table and this post as the new figures become available.

As well as publishing two-party preferred totals, the post explains the VEC’s counting procedures that are responsible for me having a different state-wide 2PP, and also why there will be further changes when the VEC conducts the additional distributions in February.Read More »VIC22 – 2-Party Preferred Results and Swings by District

VIC22 – Results by Vote Type and Vote Type by Electorate

During the Victorian election campaign, I had a daily updated post tracking the record rates of pre-poll and postal voting.

With the results now complete, it’s time for a post looking at the final pre-poll and postal vote rates as a percentage of the vote rather than of enrolment.

It is also possible to look at two-party preferred results by vote type, though these may change slightly with the Narracan supplementary election and some additional preference counts to be completed in the new year.

I have also included a chart showing the percentage of each vote type by district.

In summary, the swing against the Andrews government was much larger on election day than with pre-poll votes, and there was a swing towards Labor with postal votes.

In 2018 the gap between polling day results and for early votes meant that the Andrews government’s 2018 victory looked much larger on election night than it turned out to be once all the votes were counted.

So large was the pre-poll and postal gap in 2018 that I built that trend into the ABC’s 2022 election computer model. That the gap was much narrower means that with complete twenty-twenty hindsight, it would have been possible to make a clear election call earlier in the evening.

More comments and tables inside the post.Read More »VIC22 – Results by Vote Type and Vote Type by Electorate

2022 Victorian Legislative Council Election – Party Vote Totals

UPDATE: Table has been updated with final figures.

The table displays total votes by party, percentage vote, change in vote since 2018 and the percentage of below-the-line votes by party. It also includes seats won and change in seats.

I’ve been providing commentary on the results by region which you can find at the ABC election site’s Legislative Council results.

Vote total table inside the post.Read More »2022 Victorian Legislative Council Election – Party Vote Totals

2022 Victorian Election – Early Voting by District

UPDATED – figures to Thursday 24 November

The table inside this post shows the rate of Early voting by district. Separate totals are provided for Postal applications and Pre-Poll votes.

The table is sortable by all four columns but here’s a summary of the three lowest and highest values.

Taking pre-poll votes and postal applications together, more than half of all electorates have passed 50% of enrolment.

Total Early Vote

  • Highest % – Nepean 67.6, Mornington 66.0, St Albans 65.3, Niddrie 65.1
  • Lowest % – Eildon 47.0, Lowan 47.7, Preston 47.9, Monbulk 48.3

Postal Vote Applications (now closed)

  • Highest % – Caulfield 21.1, Box Hill 19.4, Bulleen 18.6, Glen Waverley 18.2
  • Lowest % – Murray Valley 7.6, Morwell 7.7, Ovens Valley 7.9, South-West Coast 7.9

Pre-Poll Votes

  • Highest % – St Albans 53.0, Nepean 51.7, Melton 51.7, Niddrie 50.5
  • Lowest % – Eildon 31.0, Monbulk 33.9, Albert Park 35.5, Preston 35.5

Full details for all districts inside the post.
Read More »2022 Victorian Election – Early Voting by District

Group Voting Tickets Published for the Victorian Legislative Council Election

Group voting tickets for the Legislative Council have been published this evening on the Victorian Electoral Commission’s (VEC’s) website.

The double deck ballot papers being used for the 2022 election are bad enough, but their use has thrown out the ticket layout of the VEC’s published tickets. You can find them at this link but they are very difficult to read or understand.

Fortunately, I’ve done a lot of the work for you. I have managed to reformat the GVT data to produce much more readable versions of the tickets for each region.

Processing the tickets to prepare my Legislative Council Calculators has taken all afternoon. As a by-product I’ve produced these easier to use versions of the tickets.

The work setting up the calculators, and preparing the data set-up for the ABC election computer, means I haven’t had time to analyse the tickets and won’t have time tomorrow either.

But I have decided to make the tickets available for others to use. Feel free to make use of the linked documents below. All I request is a credit if you make use of the documents. It’s taken quite an effort to prepare them.

Calculators will hopefully be published by mid-week and there will be html versions of the tickets on the Victorian Election site on Monday morning.

Links for each region are contained inside the post.Read More »Group Voting Tickets Published for the Victorian Legislative Council Election

Summary of Candidates and Parties Contesting 2022 Victorian Election

A record 740 candidates will contest the 88 Legislative Assembly seats at the Victorian election on 26 November, well up on the previous record of 543 candidates in 2014.

The average of 8.4 candidates per lower house vacancy is the highest ever recorded at an Australian election, beating the previous record of 8.0 at the Federal election in May.

There are also a record 454 candidates contesting the Legislative Council, up from the 380 candidates in 2018. The number of candidates in every region is between 54 and 62. There are 24 groups in Western Metropolitan Region where two Independent groups have joined the 22 groups that have nominated for every region. Counting the Nationals’ joint ticket with the Liberals in three regions, all 22 registered parties have nominated in all regions. The number of columns means that all Legislative Council ballot papers will be printed in a confusing double-deck format.

The table and graph below gives the numbers of candidates contesting lower house elections since the current 88 seat chamber was first used in 1985.Read More »Summary of Candidates and Parties Contesting 2022 Victorian Election

Should the Victorian Liberal Party Change its Lower House Preference Policy?

(Two updates to this post – The Australian is reporting that the Liberal Party is considering the tactic I describe in this post. Second, the Liberals are using a lot of “Put Labor Last” slogans. In an era when fewer voters see how-to-votes, planting a “Put Labor Last” message can influence a voter, which as a by-product produces stronger flows of Liberal preferences to the Greens.)

During the 2010 Victorian Election campaign, the Liberal Party sprung a surprise by announcing that it would recommend preference to the Labor Party ahead of the Greens on Liberal how-to-vote material.

At the time it seemed an odd decision as it ensured that the Labor Party would not be under threat from the Greens in inner-city seats.

I’ve heard alternate views on whether the decision was a clever tactic to win the election or an admission the party didn’t expect to win. Either way, the decision was definitely in line with what many party members wanted. Many had been unhappy that Liberal preferences elected Greens’ candidate Adam Bandt as the new member for Melbourne at the August 2010 Federal election. Bandt polled 36.2% on first preferences to Labor 38.1%, an 80% flow of Liberal preferences responsible for Bandt winning.

It was becoming hypocritical for the Liberal Party to criticise Labor for being too close to the Greens when Liberal how-to-votes were actively helping to elect Greens in both upper and lower houses.

So the decision made for the 2010 Victorian election, and repeated at Victorian and Federal elections since, put Liberal preferences in ideological alignment with the position of the three parties on the political spectrum. Labor was put ahead of the Greens because the Greens were further to the left than Labor.

Putting the Australian Democrats ahead of Labor had always made sense for the Liberal Party. The Democrats were a more centrist party on many issues than Labor, and were also a party the Coalition could negotiate with in the Senate.

There have been rumours that there may be a change of strategy for the coming Victorian election.

If so there is logic as to why. It comes down to deciding whether strategy or ideology is the better tactic for deciding on preferences.Read More »Should the Victorian Liberal Party Change its Lower House Preference Policy?