Articles from The Tally Room

No names above the line hurt independents

The Senate race in the Australian Capital Territory often promises to get interesting, but never really does. The quota for election in the ACT is just over one third of the total formal vote, and the two seats have been split evenly between Labor and Liberal at every election since the ACT gained seats in the Senate. This is despite Labor consistently outpolling the Liberal Party (and outpolling them by quite a lot when you factor in preferences from other parties).

Breaking up the Senate? Why it’s such a bad idea

The Australian reported on Sunday about an idea from Queensland LNP senator James McGrath that would see the Senate broken up so that senators represent “provinces” within each state.

Exhausted votes in the Senate drop in 2019

Opponents of Senate voting reform in 2016 focused a lot of attention on the danger of votes exhausting – which happens when a voter hasn’t marked a preference for any of the remaining candidates.

Below-the-line rates go up in 2019

This is the latest in my occasional series looking back at the final results of the 2019 federal election.

The 2019 federal election was the second election held under the new Senate voting system, which included changes to make it easier to vote below-the-line. The election saw the rate of below-the-line voting increase nationally, with particularly large increases in New South Wales and the ACT.

Voting system change boosts Labor and Greens in Brisbane City

I posted back in March about the Queensland government’s proposed reforms to local government in that state. The reforms include a bunch of other changes to electoral finance and council procedures, but I focused on two proposed changes: introducing compulsory preferential voting for single-member elections, as well as introducing proportional representation with compulsory preferences for multi-member elections.

NSW to raise council election costs to make private providers “competitive”

New South Wales council elections are due in September 2020, which means that local councils right now are having to decide who they will contract to run their election.

This may seem strange to people not familiar with NSW council elections. In most states, all council elections are run by the state electoral commission. Yet in New South Wales, local councils can choose to either use the NSW Electoral Commission (NSWEC) or a private contractor.

NT redistribution – changes to a handful of seats in second draft

I blogged about the draft boundaries for the Northern Territory redistribution before I took a break back in June. At the end of July, the NT Electoral Commission released a second draft (not a final map), which contained changes to the boundaries of five electorates. Because the changes between two seats were reasonably significant, this triggered another round of consultation, before a final map is released later this year.

Brisbane City – draft redistribution margins

The Electoral Commission of Queensland (ECQ) last Friday released the draft boundaries for the Brisbane City Council election, due in March 2020. I’ve now put together a map of the electoral boundaries, and I’ve also calculated margins in all 26 wards, as well as primary votes for the three main parties.

The changes have helped Labor in a couple of marginal LNP wards, but overall has not had a big impact on Labor’s prospects of gaining control of the council in 2020.

ACT redistribution finalised

Along with the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Brisbane City Council, the ACT has also been redrawing its electoral boundaries for the local Legislative Assembly, with the boundaries finalised in July.

In this post I’ll share a map showing the changes to the electoral boundaries, along with my estimates of the vote percentages for the bigger parties in each electorate before and after the redistribution.

WA redistribution – draft boundaries map

The draft boundaries for the Western Australian state redistribution were released three weeks ago, but it has taken me some time to put together the map of the new boundaries, which are available for download now.

The commissioners implausibly managed to avoid moving an electorate from the country to the city despite a growing gap in enrolments.

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