Voters in Canberra go to the polls tomorrow to elect the ACT’s Legislative Assembly for the next four years.
The ACT Legislative Assembly is elected from three districts for a total of seventeen seats, using the Hare-Clark proportional representation system.
At the 2008 election, the Labor government led by Jon Stanhope lost its majority (after winning a majority for the first time in the Assembly’s history in 2004).
Labor won seven seats, the Liberals won six seats and the Greens won four. The election was a big win for the Greens, winning two seats off Labor and one off the Liberals.
Following the election, Labor and the Greens formed an agreement for the Greens to support a Labor minority government.
In 2011 Stanhope retired, and Labor chose Katy Gallagher as the new Chief Minister. Zed Seselja has served as Leader of the Opposition throughout the term, and after leading the Liberals to the 2008 election will again be contesting the next election. Meredith Hunter leads the Greens into the election as party leader.
Earlier this year I prepared a guide to the ACT election, which includes profiles of all three electorates, including history, electoral analysis and maps showing geographical variations in support.
On Saturday night I will be blogging results from this website.
Over the last few months this blog has largely been in hiatus while I have been working on a job that has prevented me from doing blogging, but over the next few days you will start to see the blog spark to life. It’s four years (last week) since I started this blog, and amongst the first elections I covered were the 2008 elections in the United States and the ACT. I plan to cover the upcoming elections as I prepare my coverage of next year’s Australian federal election.
