Nominations closed yesterday for the upcoming Northern Territory election. 111 candidates have nominated, with three parties running in most seats. I’ve put together a dataset with all the candidates, and some analysis on who is running, and where.
The incumbent Labor Party is running candidates in all 25 seats, and they are the only party to run in every seat. The opposition Country Liberal Party is running 24 seats, but is sitting out the race in Mulka in the remote north-east of the territory.
Mulka is a new name for Nhulunbuy, and is being defended by incumbent independent MP Yingiya Mark Guyula. He is being challenged by his predecessor, Labor’s Lynne Walker, and no-one else. It’s the only seat where only two candidates are running.
The new Territory Alliance is running 21 candidates, while the Greens are running ten. There are another six candidates running for small parties, and twenty-five independents.
This is a slightly smaller field of candidates than in 2016, when 115 people ran. This is still the second-largest number of candidates to run in an NT election, with the next highest number being 88 who ran in 2001.
My dataset also includes the gender of the candidates. Labor came close to gender parity, with 14 men and 11 women, as did Territory Alliance, with eleven men and ten women. The CLP are running 18 men and six women. The Greens are running six men and four women. Overall there are 70 men and 41 women running – that’s 63% men.
You can view the dataset here.
You can also check out my guide to the NT election, which now includes the final candidate lists for each seat.
Elsewhere: Antony Green also covers the nominations closing, with some historic data on past nominations.
I think the number Of candidates in your first sentence might be wrong? You’ve got 115, which is also the number you use a few paras later for the number who ran in 2016. Antony’s post says it is 111?
Yep you’re right. I meant 111.
Who ends up holding government will make the most difference of course, but the individual contest I find most interesting is that of Mulka – the name for Nhulunbuy.
The Independent MP there got elected on a very strong self-determination/Treaty (at least as best as I could tell, living somewhere so very different) & best Labor’s Deputy Leader in doing so in what had been seen as a very safe seat.
Given it is only Labor versus the incumbent this time, personally I’d be a bit surprised if Labor won it back.
And if Labor does lose a few seats, as seems likely, it’s not that unlikely that should retain the seat the incumbent Independent – Yingiya Mark Guyula ends up with a balance of power role.
Andrew, the other factor in Mulka is the decline of Nhulunbuoy’s population. It fell precipituously after the smelter closed, but as far as I know the population decline has slowed since the last election. The population decline matters because it is predominantly white LAB/CLP voters leaving.
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