The Tally Room

We rely on independent mapmakers to draw electoral boundaries at each redistribution. There is an extensive process of public consultation, and there are rules about how seats can be drawn, but ultimately the mapmakers have quite a lot of discretion about how they apply...

The Tasmanian government has announced plans to "reform" Tasmanian local government by slashing the number of councillors across the state. The government has put up a discussion paper on the topic, but in short it would reduce the number of elected officials on councils...

11:20 - I don't think we'll get any more voting data tonight. I've done a quick video summing up the results on Instagram. That's it for tonight. 10:13 - Kiama pre-poll and postal two-candidate-preferred has reported. Labor is on 60% of the two-candidate-preferred vote, a...

Ben was joined by Matt Dennien from the Brisbane Times to discuss the Queensland state redistribution, specifically the first round of submissions. The conversation focuses on the Labor and LNP submissions, and also run through some of the other public submissions. This podcast is supported...

The first round of public submissions for the Queensland state redistribution were published last week - about three weeks after they were submitted to the Commission. So I thought it would be useful to examine what they say, with a particular focus on the...

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. Expanding the parliament...

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,...

With a few elections finishing up, I have now made a number of additions to the Tally Room's data repository. The repository is something I made to deal with the poor state of election results data stored by state electoral commissions when it comes to...

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,...

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. Tasmania has lagged behind the rest of the country...