Over the break I’ve been working to expand the size of this website’s data repository. If you’re new to this, the repository publishes state and local election results that may not otherwise be available in an easy-to-access format.
I’ve added five more datasets over the new year:
- 2015 NSW election
- 2016 NT election
- 2016 ACT election
- 2016-17 NSW by-elections
- 2015-17 Victorian by-elections
This is in addition to other datasets added in late 2017, including the results of the 2014 state elections in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.
This data is all available on the internet but in a bunch of different places. Each dataset includes a list of all polling places with addresses and coordinates, which is often not otherwise available on the internet. It also includes full lists of candidates, and results at the polling place level.
In the case of the NSW 2015 dataset, the NSWEC publishes a single spreadsheet with the primary vote totals for each candidate at the booth level, but doesn’t do the same for two-party-preferred and two-candidate-preferred (the NSWEC does publish very impressive datasets of two-candidate-preferred distributions at the booth level between every possible combination of candidates, but it’s a hassle to, say, pull out the data for Coalition vs Labor in all 93 seats). The NSWEC doesn’t easily publish a spreadsheet of Legislative Council totals by seat, and the Legislative Council booth totals spreadsheet doesn’t break down below-the-line votes between groups.
All of that is now available in my repository.
The repository now includes the datasets for the last election in every Australian state and territory (and the one before that in Queensland, WA, ACT and NT), as well as council election results from New South Wales and Brisbane City Council (although I haven’t yet added the last election from each of these jurisdictions), and by-election results from the last term in New South Wales and Victoria.
I plan to keep adding the latest data and slowly progress backwards in time. I also would like to at some point look at adding old booth data at the federal level (the most recent elections are published in a very useful format anyway).
If you’d like to support this work, and find it useful, please sign up as a patron. Patrons who give $5 or more get a heads-up about this kind of stuff before I publish it on the website, and other updates about my work.
Hopefully this data is useful – please let me know if you do something cool with it!
