Nominations will close later today for the Western Australian state election (12pm WA time).
I have been keeping up a list of candidates who have announced they are running for my election guide.
The list features 266 candidates for the lower house, as well as 63 different groups running across the six upper house regions.
The list features Labor candidates in all 59 seats, along with 58 Liberals and 55 Greens. I assume all three parties will run a full ticket. The Liberal Party is missing a candidate in Baldivis, where the candidate withdrew in late January after her conspiracy theory views were exposed.
There are also 29 candidates from the Australian Christians, 24 from the Liberal Democrats, 11 from the Nationals, 10 from the Western Australia Party, eight from the No Mandatory Vaccinations Party, just six from One Nation and three from the WAxit Party. There are just two independents one from Socialist Alliance.
I don’t expect these to be final numbers but they give a sense of party strength. The low number of One Nation nominations suggests a weaker campaign effort than they achieved in 2017.
I’ve been tracking the gender of announced lower house candidates. Labor is running one more woman than they are running men. The Australian Christians are also running one more woman. 45% of Greens candidates are women, compared to 31% of Liberals and 36% of Nationals.
I’m aware of 14 parties running candidates for the Legislative Council. Eight of these parties have already announced candidates in all six regions, plus one other running in five. The Nationals and the Shooters are each running candidates in the three non-metropolitan regions.
There are advantages to running candidates in every region under the discredited group voting ticket system which gives control of preferences to parties, since you have something to swap. This has clearly incentivised most parties to run full slates, making the ballot bigger.
Only the Socialist Alliance, Liberal Democrats (one region each) and Rod Culleton’s Great Australian Party (two regions) have narrowed their focus, although this could also change in the final nomination list.
The ballot paper will have at least twelve columns in Mining and Pastoral region, nine in East Metro and North Metro, and eleven in the other three regions.
I have only bothered to include the name of the first candidate for most parties, in line with my conventions for candidate lists on my regional profiles. I do include the full ticket for Labor, Liberal and Nationals, who are the only parties with a history of winning multiple seats in the same region.
I will use the weekend to post the final candidate lists on my seat guide, and will return with further analysis of the final candidate list, as well as discussion of the group voting ticket system.
