optional preferential voting

The Pattern of One Nation support in NSW

In the near three decades I’ve been following One Nation’s election results, one thing has been constant. Whatever the party’s overall level of vote, its geographic distribution or pattern of support by electorate, has not changed.

One Nation support is always stronger in rural and regional city seats. It is stronger in outer suburban seats with a lower proportion of residents from a non-English speaking background. One Nation support declines as you approach the centre of cities.

The party’s performance at the South Australian election in March 2026, and its results in the Farrer (Fed), Nepean (VIC) and Secret Harbour (WA) by-elections, fit the same pattern. Just with a much higher level of support.

I expect this geographic pattern to repeat at Victoria’s state election in November, and at the NSW state election next March.

In this post I’m going to look NSW, at one Nation’s support by state seat. To get state-wide figures, I’m using electorate level One Nation support using 2023 Legislative Council (upper house) results.

In 2023 One Nation contested only 17 lower house districts, giving it an oft reported but misleadingly low 1.8% of the state-wide vote. Looking only at seats the party contested, One Nation polled a more impressive 9.7%. The party’s best results were 14.6% in Wyong and 15.3% in Cessnock, boosted in both seats by the Coalition being forced to disendorse candidates. In the other 15 seats, One Nation’s vote ranged from 5.1% in Parramatta to 13.8% in Camden.

In a larger upper house field, One Nation polled 5.9%, not far from the 6.0% the party polled at the 2025 House of Representatives election.

2023 saw One Nation leader Mark Latham win a new eight-year Legislative Council term, swapping from the eight-year seat he had won in 2019. It brought to three the number of One Nation MLCs. That representation has since fallen to zero.

In August 2023 Pauline Hanson removed One Nation’s NSW state executive and sacked Mark Latham as party leader, resulting in Latham and fellow MLC Rod Roberts resigning from the party. The next year they were followed by the party’s third member, Tania Mihailuk. The terms of Roberts and Mihailuk expire at the 2027 election while Latham’s term continues until 2031.

One Nation’s state-wide 5.9% in the Legislative Council hides a wide range of results by lower house electorate, from 1.75% in Newtown to 12.75% in Wollondilly.

One Nation’s LC result was 7.2% in rural and regional seats, the same in the Hunter and Illawarra, and 5.1% in greater Sydney. Rural support was stronger west of the Great Diving Range compared to along the coast. Support was stronger in outer Sydney with support trailing away in seats closer to central Sydney.

One Nation’s rural vote in 2023 may have been suppressed by on-going support for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party. The SFF polled 7.2% in country seats, 3.7% in the Hunter/Illawarra and only 1.3% in greater Sydney.

The interaction of One Nation and SFF support is backed by 2025 Federal House results. From a state-wide vote of 6.0%, One Nation polled 8.4% in rural and regional seats, 8.1% in the Hunter/Illawarra and a lower 4.6% in Sydney.

In this post I’ll map One Nation’s Legislative Council vote distribution across the state to speculate on where One Nation has its best chance of winning seats next March.

Let me stress these maps are not predicting what One Nation will poll at the 2027 election. I expect One Nation’s percentage to be three to four times as high in 2027. But the distribution of where One Nation support will be high or low will be similar to the pattern of support mapped in this post.

So in seats where One Nation’s LC vote was around 10% in 2023, it could be 30-40% in 2027. In these seats One Nation is likely to finish in the final pairing after preference and have a good chance of winning, dependent on preferences.

Data Source

Data mapped in this post is drawn from three publications I prepared for the NSW Parliamentary Research Service. All are based on the NSW Electoral Commission’s published results.

You can find the One Nation Legislative Council results in this two-page document. It also includes comparisons between One Nation’s upper and lower house results.

These two pages are extracted from a longer publication on the 2023 Legislative Council result. There is also a previous publication summarising the result of the 2023 election in both houses.
Read More »The Pattern of One Nation support in NSW

How many NSW contests would have had different results under full preferential voting?

Unlike the Commonwealth and every other mainland state, NSW uses optional preferential voting (OPV) to elect its lower house of parliament. OPV was adopted by the Wran Labor government in 1980, the only state where a Labor government implemented what at the time was party policy. The Whitlam government tried and failed to implement OPV for Federal elections.

Labor’s embrace of OPV followed the Labor Party’s experience with losing seats to the Coalition on DLP preferences between 1955 and 1972. There was also a desire to make it harder for the Coalition to win seats where both parties nominated candidates.

The Wran government not only introduced OPV, it entrenched it in the state’s Constitution. OPV can now only be repealed by referendum. I doubt that a referendum to repeal OPV would pass.

Labor’s hope for advantage from OPV has failed to live up to expectations. The Coalition has largely abandoned three-cornered contests to avoid losing seats. The emergence and growth of the Greens as a left-wing competitor has cut into Labor’s first preference vote and left the party more reliant on preferences to win seats. Labor regularly comes from behind to win at Federal elections under full preferential voting, but come-from-behind wins are harder under OPV at NSW state elections.

At recent NSW elections it has been the Coalition advocating ‘Just Vote 1’ and the Labor Party encouraging voters to complete more preferences.

I explained more about the political impact of OPV in this post published before the NSW election.

Inside this post I’ll look at the results of the 2023 election and the seats where preferences determined the winner. Many seats had preference distributed, but only six seats saw preferences change the result by allowing a trailing candidate to win.

Using preference flows from last year’s Federal election where full preferences were required, I look at several state seats where there might have been a different result had full rather than optional preferential voting been used.

My conclusion is the Liberal Party probably won four three extra seats due to OPV, two at the expense of Independents (Pittwater, Willoughby), and two at the expense of Labor (Ryde, Terrigal). (A few people are arguing that Willoughby should not be included in this list. They have a reasonable argument. When the result is final it may just be a matter of the result narrowing substantially rather than changing.)
Read More »How many NSW contests would have had different results under full preferential voting?

The Political Impact of Optional Preferential Voting – NSW 2019 Preference Flows

As mentioned in my previous post, New South Wales is the only Australian jurisdiction that uses optional rather than compulsory or full preferential voting for single member lower house elections. It is also the only state that data enters all lower house ballot papers and publishes the data for outside research.

Optional preferential voting (OPV) means that voters do not have to number a preference for every candidate on the ballot paper. A ballot paper requires only a first preference to be formal. All further preferences are optional.

If during the distribution of preferences, a ballot paper for distribution has no preference for a candidate remaining in the count, the the ballot paper is put aside as having “exhausted” its preferences. Exhausted ballot papers have no direct involvement in determining the winning candidate, but they have an indirect role in altering the winning post a candidate must pass to win. As explained below, OPV works in favour of leading candidates over trailing candidates.

This can be explained by comparing the maths of full versus optional preferential voting.

  • Under full preferential voting, the winning candidate must achieve 50% of the formal vote after the distribution of preferences. The winning post of the votes needed to win is set at the start of the count and does not change.
  • Under optional preferential voting, the winning candidate must receive a majority of the votes remaining in the count, that is the formal vote minus exhausted preferences. The winning post is lowered with each exhausted preference making it easier for the leading candidate to win by making it harder for the second placed candidate to catch and pass the leader.

The chart below shows the two-party preferred preference flows for minor parties and Independents at the 2019 NSW election.

I'll explain the political implications of the above graph inside the post. But if you want more detail of the preferences flows by electorate by candidate, or by party by electorate, you can find all the details in this pdf document I've prepared.
Read More »The Political Impact of Optional Preferential Voting – NSW 2019 Preference Flows

Preference Completion Categories – 2019 NSW Election

New South Wales is the only Australian jurisdiction that uses optional rather than compulsory or full preferential voting for single member lower house elections. It is also the only state that data enters all lower house ballot papers and publishes the data for outside research.

Over the next few days I’ll publish more information on lower house preference flows, but this first post concentrates on preference completion rates.

For this analysis, all ballot papers have been categorised into one of three categories.

  • Single – ballot papers that counted with only a single preference.
  • Full – ballot paper with all squares filled completing a formal sequence of preferences.
  • Partial – formal preferences between 2 and (Max Candidates -1).

Overall 64.3% of ballot papers counted as 1-only votes and had no further preferences. 23.7% of ballot papers counted with all preferences correctly completed, and a further 12.0% had partial preferences. The median number of preferences completed was 1, the average 2.4.

The rate of completion varied substantially by party and also varied from electorate to electorate. This variation in rate is clearly related to published and distributed how-to-vote material. As I don’t have access to the how-to-votes, this post won’t include analysis based on recommendation.

But if you want to see the numbers by electorate by candidate, or by party by electorate, you can find all the details in this pdf document I’ve prepared.

Read More »Preference Completion Categories – 2019 NSW Election

Candidates, Informal Voting and Optional Preferential Voting

In the final week of parliamentary sittings, Queensland LNP Senator James McGrath tabled the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM’s) inquiry into the conduct of the 2019 Federal election. (You can find the report here.)

One of the controversial proposals in the report, and one opposed by Labor and Green members of JSCEM, was a recommendation to move from full or compulsory preferential voting (CPV) to optional preferential voting (OPV) for House of Representatives elections.

The report provides few arguments in favour of OPV. The recommendation for OPV appears suddenly at the end of a brief discussion on informal voting, in particular noting the impact OPV’s use at NSW elections has on informal voting at Federal elections. Senate McGrath presented a different argument for OPV when tabling the JSCEM report in the Senate, referring to OPV as a measure “to maximise voter choice”.

I’ve written on OPV many time previously, and I would suggest reading this post I wrote in 2013 after a previous suggestion from the Coalition about introducing OPV.

Informal voting will always be higher under compulsory preferential voting because ballot papers with faulty numbering have few options for salvation available. This compares with OPV where ballot papers with incomplete, duplicate or missing numbers, or completed with a single tick or cross, can count for candidates to the extent that a voter’s intent is clear.Read More »Candidates, Informal Voting and Optional Preferential Voting

South Australian Government Proposes Optional Preferential Voting

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