This is the final chapter in my series looking at electoral enrolment data in the Sydney region.
One of the things I noticed when I was looking at local trends in the last post was that, in some areas, enrolment has been declining over the last year-and-a-half.
Last week I put up a number of posts analysing enrolment data in the Greater Sydney region, with a focus on Camden and Blacktown. This is my last post on the topic, looking at a number of other councils.
While I made a number of charts and maps, the most useful one was the one showing the enrolment by ward for a particular council over time. It makes it easy to see the impact redistributions had on population trends, and how population growth has been distributed within a council.
It’s been two weeks since I first posted about the resignations of three Coalition MPs leading to impending by-elections, and the guides I’ve prepared for those by-elections.
This is a follow-up to Wednesday’s post about voter enrolment numbers increasing in Camden Council, this time looking at the equivalent growth taking place in the north-west of Sydney, primarily in the north-eastern corner of the City of Blacktown.
On Monday, I posted about the trends in population growth across Sydney as seen in the NSWEC enrolment data, with a particular focus on Camden, which has more than doubled in size over the last fourteen years.
This growth in population has not been even, but has rather been concentrated at the northern end of the council, totally transforming the political geography of the area.
I have been paying a lot of attention to local councils in New South Wales over the past year, with a particular focus on the more populous councils. As part of my analysis, I decided to draw a line under those councils with a population of over 100,000 people. When I prepared my guides for the 2016 and 2017 council elections, there were 23 councils meeting this criteria. But now there are 25, with Camden and Shoalhaven councils crossing the line since the last round of elections.
The resignation of NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian on Friday under a cloud of investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption has now led to two of her ministers also announcing their pending resignations, not just from cabinet but from the parliament. This means we will see at least three NSW state by-elections in the coming months.
I have now prepared a guide to all three seats which is free for all to check out:
The current voting system for the Western Australian upper house is set to be overhauled after the WA state government accepted the recommendations of its expert panel earlier today. The panel has recommended the abolition of all regions used to elect the upper house, with 37 members1 to be elected by one statewide electorate, thus abolishing the severe malapportionment that has given far more power to rural voters.
Papua New Guinea’s parliament is elected from single-member electorates which are meant to be regularly reviewed and redrawn, as they are in Australia. Yet the current boundaries have not been significantly changed since the 1977 election. The Boundaries Commission is having another go now, but the proposed changes have limited relationship to the actual population imbalances.
I’ve now completed my guide to the South Australian state election, due on March 19 next year.
The guide features profiles of all 47 House of Assembly electorates, as well as the Legislative Council contest.