When people defend group voting tickets, they often talk about the benefits of electing small parties and having a more diverse parliament. I have addressed this by arguing for an abolition of regions and thus making it easier for small parties to win without preference manipulation. While it is true that group voting tickets have in recent times elected a more diverse upper house, it hasn’t been a sustainable process.
I bang on a lot about proportional representation on this website. Part of the argument for PR is about ensuring the representation of smaller parties and preventing the construction of false majorities, where a party that hasn’t won a majority of the vote still wins a majority of seats and claims a mandate on that basis. But there is another argument: that shifts in voting trends should be matched by shifts in seat trends.
Ben is joined by William Bowe from the Poll Bludger to discuss the results of the Victorian state election.
It’s early days in counting for the Legislative Council, but there are already some trends emerging.
The Druery alliance has been broken, with only a handful of aligned parties on track to win. Minor parties of the left are on track to win in almost every region, with the Greens currently tracking to pick up a number of seats.
Labor won a comfortable victory in yesterday’s election, losing only a handful of seats against an opposition that performed poorly.
By the latest count at the time of writing, Labor has won 49 seats and is ahead in another seven. The Coalition has won 24 seats and is ahead in three others (plus they will likely win the Narracan supplementary election). The Greens have won four seats.
Where are the seats still unclear?
Polls have now closed. I won’t be trying to do a Tally Room liveblog tonight – you can find me at the Guardian liveblog.
Polls have now opened for election day for the Victorian state election.
Please use this post to discuss today’s events, and also tonight’s results.
I won’t be posting a liveblog as I will be blogging at the Guardian, but I will be back with further analysis from Sunday.
Today’s post is a quick one. I’ve mostly finished my list of ideas for blog posts, so for today I’m just going to ask: who do you think will win?
Post your thoughts in the comments below!
With two days of pre-poll voting to come, the statistics so far suggest that a clear majority of voters will cast their ballot before election day.
Last week I wrote about the growing numbers of people casting a pre-poll vote over the last few Victorian elections. For this blog post, I’m looking at how the people who use different voting methods actually vote – for which party, and whether they vote below the line in the upper house.