We’re due for two state by-elections in New South Wales later this year, and I’ve just finished guides for both electorates, which you can read now.
Former NSW opposition leader John Robertson has announced plans to resign. Labor should easily retain this seat.
The 2015 Queensland election was very close, with neither party winning a majority of seats. Labor is estimated to hold 48 seats, while the LNP holds 42 seats. There are two Katter’s Australian Party seat, and one independent seat. 47 seats are needed for a majority.
Queensland has recently undergone a redistribution of state electoral boundaries, the first in almost a decade. The existing boundaries were used at three elections: 2009, 2012 and 2015.
The number of seats was increased from 89 to 93. This resulted in the creation of five new electorates, with two seats merged.
The inner-city electorates of Indooroopilly and Mount Coot-tha were merged into the new seat of Maiwar. Maiwar is a marginal LNP seat, with a margin of 3%.
There is speculation that the next Queensland state election could take place in the next few months, and in preparation for this election I’ve now completed my guide to the 93 electorates which will be contested.
Each guide, as is usual, contains a history of the electorate, maps and tables showing the results of the previous election, and a list of candidates running in the seat. The candidate lists will be regularly updated over the coming months.
This is just a quick post to note that nominations closed last Wednesday in the NSW council elections. I’ve posted the full candidate lists for the fifteen largest councils on my council guides.
Read the guides via these links:
In the process of putting together my guide to the Queensland election, I had to consider how to handle the potential vote for One Nation, who have polled as highly as 23% earlier this year and were sitting on 15% in the most recent poll. Normally I assess a seat’s vulnerability based on its margin, but a new party polling 15% is likely to upset the apple-cart, threatening seats which look very safe on paper.
Tasmania is currently undergoing a redistribution of its federal boundaries – the second of six federal redistributions due during this parliamentary term. The boundaries will also apply to Tasmanian state lower house elections, but probably not until the 2022 state election.
I’ve made a number of updates to the data repository in preparation for the next round of state elections.
I’ve added to the data from the 2017 WA state election. Originally I had a limited dataset for the Legislative Council election, without below-the-line vote breakdowns by polling place, and without a seat-by-seat breakdown of the special vote for the upper house. This gap has now been filled.
In addition to the eleven councils which have already been profiled, I’ve now added four more guides. These are the four remaining councils with populations of over 100,000. Each of them is facing the prospect of council amalgamation, but will still hold an election in September.
Following on from the recent publication of the final Queensland state electoral boundaries, I’ve updated Google Earth boundary maps for three other jurisdictions: