There’s been a lot of talk about expanding the size of Australia’s federal parliament in the last few years. Some of us have been talking about this for a lot longer, but it has seemed feasible since Labor took power in 2022.
We now have a quiet period following the federal election and the Tasmanian election, and I’m using it as an opportunity to complete my election guides for the elections next in the queue.
The South Australian election guide has already been published for some time, but today I’ve published my Victorian election guide.
With a few elections finishing up, I have now made a number of additions to the Tally Room’s data repository.
With the resignation of Gareth Ward this morning, shortly before his expected expulsion from Parliament, a by-election will be needed to replace him in Parliament. The Kiama by-election should happen soon, likely in September.
I won’t be delving into the issues around Ward’s legal situation, or the potential expulsion – the focus here is entirely on the impending by-election.
There has been a clear trend in all Australian elections over the last twenty years of voters moving away from voting on election day, with an increasing number of voters choosing pre-poll voting as an alternative.
Now that we have the final booth results for the Tasmanian state election, I’ve decided to add another chapter to a series of blog posts analysing the geographic trends of individual candidates within each party within each electorate. You can read my blog posts about the 2021 election and the 2024 election here.
Casting a formal vote in a Tasmanian lower house election isn’t the easiest vote to cast, but in some ways it’s easier than it would be in other places.
While the overall seat numbers in the Tasmanian House of Assembly have been very stable, that disguises more changes at the level of the individual MP.
For today’s post I am going to look at the statistics for how many MPs were replaced at each Tasmanian election, and how 2025 compares to the historical trend: MPs retiring before or at the election, or losing their seat, either to another party or to their own.
If you’ve been following my live blog, you would have seen that the preference count in the Tasmanian state election finished on Saturday, with the count in Bass being in doubt right up until the end.
Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system is proportional, but it’s not purely proportional. Each division elects seven members, and results are not just about how many votes each party receives – results are dependent on how preferences flow and how votes split within each party’s ticket.