Final Figures Published 16 April – 16 Labor, 10 Liberal, 4 Greens, 2 National, 2 One Nation and one each for Australian Christians, Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice. I’ve published the final figures and the names of all those elected over on the ABC Elections site.
Read More »2025 Western Australian Election – Projecting the Upper House Result
This post will update over the next two weeks as counting for the 2025 Western Australian Legislative Assembly (lower house) election is finalised.
Originally the post just covered changes in members elected at the election, but I’ve now added a long analysis comparing the result of the 2017 and 2025 elections. This compares Labor’s then best but now third best ever result at a WA election, with 2025 which is now the new second best result. It is hard to compare either with the mega-landslide result in 2021.
But comparing 2025 to 2021 state-wide, Labor’s primary vote in the metropolitan area was down 18.3%, but the Liberal primary vote was up only 6.8%, nearly two-thirds of the lost primary vote since 2021 went to third parties before translating into an 11.9% two-party preferred swing. That still left Labor with a better result in vote and seat terms than in 2017.
Updates to the changing membership table since the post was first updated are –
Read More »2025 Western Australia Election – Lower House Results
Nominations closed yesterday for the Western Australian election. At this stage I have been unable get hold of the published data file of nominations but have been able to confirm the lower house numbers. I believe I have also sorted out the upper house numbers.
A total of 398 candidates have nominated for the lower house, the Legislative Assembly. There are four electorates with only four candidates (Cannington, Carine, Hillarys and Perth) and eight electorates with nine candidates (Albany, Bateman, Geraldton, Joondalup, Kalgoorlie, Kwinana, Nedlands and Southern River). This is down from 463 candidates in 2021.
I await formal confirmation but I understand the Legislative Council numbers are as follows. There are 148 candidates across 13 groups and an ungrouped column. This is well down on the 325 candidates that contested the upper house in 2021. New party registration rules mean there are fewer parties, and instead of nominating two candidates in each of six regions, parties need only nominate five candidates on the state-wide ballot for access to an above-the-line voting square on the ballot paper.
More on party affiliations and the candidate numbers inside the post. Read More »WA 2025 – Summary of Parties and Candidates
Last October, eagle eyed observers spotted that there was something wrong with enrolment projection data released by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). The data had been released as base data for redistributions in Victoria and Western Australia. Data for the NSW redistribution was not affected.
The same enrolment growth rate had been applied across both states down to local statistical area level. This was a ridiculous assumption. It turned out the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) had provided the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) with the wrong data.
In the last few days the has AEC released corrected enrolment projections with growth rates that vary across both states. This post examines how this new data will influence the redistribution in Western Australia. A second post, hopefully tomorrow, will run through a similar analysis for Victoria.
In a previous post I explained why the seat numbers by state are changing. Another post, now superseded by the post you are reading, looked at boundary change implications from last October’s initial release of incorrect enrolment projections.
What doesn’t change is that Western Australia is gaining a seat in the current redistribution, restoring the 16th seat removed three years ago. Population trends mean the new seat will be created in a different part of Perth than the previously abolished seat of Stirling.
In short, the projected enrolment data makes even clearer that WA’s new seat will be created in Perth’s east. The other 12 Perth seats will shuffle west towards the Indian Ocean. Current enrolment data, and last October’s incorrect projected enrolments, indicated that a Perth seat would need to cross the metropolitan boundary. The new projections remove this prospect meaning the redistribution will be largely confined to metropolitan Perth.Read More »WA Federal Redistribution Prospects using Updated Enrolment Data
The WA Electoral Redistribution has released the final version of the electoral boundaries on which the next election will be fought.
The most significant change introduced by the new boundaries is the merging of the rural seats of Moore and North West Central to create a new seat called Mid-West. This merges two National-held seats into one, a decision that has already had consequences with National MLA for North West Central Merome Beard defecting to the Liberal Party.
The abolition of a regional seat is matched by the creation of a new seat in Perth. The new seat is called Oakford, covering growing suburbs between Armadale and the Kwinana Freeway. Unsurprisingly given the Labor landslide result in 2021, Oakford is a notional Labor seat.
In 2021 Labor won 53 seats to two Liberals and three Nationals. On the old boundaries the Liberals and Nationals needed a uniform swing of 23.4% to gain the 24 seats needed for government. The new boundaries do little to alter the swing needed.
Full detail of the change of margin for all seats can be found inside the post. But first, here’s my calculations for the new electoral pendulum. Seats gained by Labor at the 2021 election are underlined, which gives perspective on the size of the swing needed just to bring the Coalition back to its position after the 2017 election.
Read More »Western Australia State Redistribution – Final Boundaries Released
Proposals for the re-draw of WA’s federal electoral boundaries closed on Friday with submissions published today by the Australian Electoral Commission today.
There are 21 submissions in all. Understandably the greatest interest is in the proposals submitted by the Liberal and Labor Parties.
Both parties create a new seat based on the Darling Range in Perth’s east. The Liberal submission is for a new seat named Court that extends east into rural areas. Labor’s proposal is for a new seat called Farmer that runs south west into the Perth metropolitan area.
And the two submissions adopt different strategies in key parts of the Perth metropolitan area.
Note – maps taken from party submissions. The Liberal Party submission included maps of all proposed divisions. The Labor Party’s submission only included a map of the proposed Farmer.Read More »Submissions Published for WA Federal redistribution
This post is a detailed look at Western Australia’s zonal electoral system ahead of a major review of how the Legislative Council is elected.
The malapportionment that applied to lower house boundaries was abolished with the introduction of one-vote one-value electoral boundaries at the 2008 election.
But malapportionment remains for the Legislative Council, and was in fact made worse by changes to region representation in 2008.
The bias in the electoral system against Perth has drifted out from 2.80-to-1 when the current system was adopted in 1989, to 3.07-to-1 in 2021.
But this hides another developing bias, an increased weighting against voters in South West Region. Where in 1989 average enrolment per MLC in the three non-metropolitan regions was equal, by the 2021 election, average enrolment in Agricultural Region and Mining and Pastoral Region had blown out to a ratio of 2.81-to-1 against voters in South West Region.
Western Australia’s current electoral regions defined by land usage rather than population is unsustainable given demographic trends.
The McGowan government has appointed a Ministerial Expert Committee chaired by QC and former WA Governor Malcolm McCusker to examine reform options for the Legislative Council. The existing malapportionment of the Legislative Council’s electoral system is one amongst several issues it will be addressing. (You can find details of the Committee here)
In this post I set out in detail the problems with the current malapportionment. In future posts I’ll return to other issues such as whether Western Australia should follow the Commonwealth, New South Wales and South Australia by abolishing group voting tickets for elections to the upper house.
Read More »WA’s Zonal Electoral System and the Legislative Council Reform Debate
News 2 February – My election guide for the WA election has now been published.
5 February – the proposal to re-name “Daylight Saving Party” as “Daylight Saving Party – the National Liberals” with ballot paper abbreviation “National Liberals” was rejected.
2 February – the first of the contentious name change applications has been approved. The Flux Party will now appear on ballot papers as ‘Liberals for Climate’.
29 January – registration of Great Australian Party and Legalise Cannabis Western Australia Party approved.
19 January – the Small Business Party name change to WAXit Party has been approved.
13 January – the No Mandatory Vaccination Party has now been registered.
In December 2020 I published posts on controversial applications to change the names of two Western Australian political parties. Both applications are attempts by minor parties to adopt ballot paper party names that could easily be confused with the Liberal Party.
The first post dealt with an application by Flux the System! to appear on ballot papers as Liberals for Climate. The second was an application by the Daylight Saving Party to appear on ballot papers as the National Liberals. There is also a good article on the applications on the ABC News site.
Both changes, plus applications to register new parties, indicate that WA voters are set to face large upper house ballot papers from a record number of registered parties. It’s all part of a typical preference harvesting strategy by minor and micro-parties, still possible in Western Australia as the state continues to use group ticket voting to elect the Legislative Council.
Such arranged preference deals were abolished federally with reform of the Senate’s electoral system in 2016.
To keep track of what’s going on as the WA election approaches, I’ll use this post to follow the late rush of applications to change and/or register parties.
Read More »Updating the Parties Registered to Contest the 2021 Western Australian Election