With the election campaign now underway, I’ve done another update of my candidate list, which I posted about in February. You can view the whole list here.
This list now includes 878 House candidates, and I will be updating the seat guides with the updated lists over the next few days. This will probably be my last update before nominations are declared on April 22. This compares to a total candidate list of 1056 in 2019, and a record list of 1188 in 2013.
At the moment there are four parties or coalitions that look set to run full tickets.
I have 150 candidates for the United Australia Party (just missing Flinders), 141 for Labor and 140 for the Greens. I have 139 Coalition candidates. There are three seats with both a Liberal and Nationals candidate: Indi and Nicholls in Victoria and Durack in Western Australia, which means there are 136 seats with a Coalition candidate so far.
Despite a few comments along the lines of “maybe Labor won’t run here”, I expect all of these parties will put out a full ticket.
The Liberal Democrats are running 65 House candidates, with One Nation not far behind on 57. The next biggest parties are Animal Justice on 27 and TNL (formerly The New Liberals) on 16. Overall I have candidates from 29 parties, including the four Coalition parties.
At the moment I have identified 54 independents – the most recent being Fairfield deputy mayor Dai Le in Fowler. At the moment this is still down on the 97 who ran in 2019, although my anecdotal experience is that a lot of these independents are running more serious campaigns in the past, and I suspect we’ll see a surge of last-minute low-profile independents which will push the count past the previous number.
The average number of candidates is currently about 5.8, with the median at six. One seat has just 2 candidates (Blaxland in Sydney) while Robertson has eleven. 110 out of 151 seats have 5-7 candidates running.
Finally, an update on the gender balance.
At the moment I’ve identified 510 men, 367 women and 2 non-binary people. This is already in excess of the 340 women I identified in 2019, but with about 200 less men. As a percentage, this is still 42.1%, as it was in February.
Just over 50% of Greens candidates are women, as are 44.7% of Labor candidates. 35.3% of UAP candidates are women, and 29.5% of Coalition candidates are women. Interestingly the Liberal Party is doing much better than its fellow Coalition parties: running 35.1% women, compared to just 13.8% for the Liberal National Party and 21.4% for the Nationals.
Independent women continue to be strong, representing 64.8% of all independents running so far.
That’s it for now. Give me a few days to get the new list up on each seat guide, and I’ll return to this topic around Anzac Day.
Hi Ben. Do you have a source or any more information on Liberal candidate for Spence Ritan Zeid? Google gets me a Commonwealth Bank employee in Sydney, and neither federal nor SA Liberal websites list a candidate for Spence. As a safe Labor seat we seem to be ignored.
Thanks Ben!
Has the ALP nominated a replacement for, sadly, the former (deceased) Senator for Victoria?
I received a Greens postcard and an ALP glossy leaflet for their candidates in Macnamara today (13 Apr 22) in my letterbox. On F1-GP Saturday (09 Apr 22) the Liberal candidate had an A frame corflute poster in Armstrong St Middle Park which is near to Gate 1 (Middle Park Light Rail tram stop) for the now completed race.
I receive an Labor candidate card in my letter box today (14 Apr 22) and a letter, with a postal vote application form, from the Liberal candidate. However, I always prepoll on the first day pre polling is available to voters.
Andrew,
The excellent Jana Stewart has been appointed to the late Senator Kitching’s vacancy by the Victorian parliament and will be second on Labor’s Victoria senate ticket.
Ben – NSW Greens do not have a candidate for North Sydney on their candidate list – I have heard the candidate you have listed had s44 difficulties
S44 issues are a significant problem for all political parties. I can think of initial interviews picking up problems with citizenship of American, a couple of Brits, and ones that required senior investigation by NZ Public service. In the case of the American the advice we got from
AEC was clearly inaccurate with the fullness of time. My own Senate nomination in 1974 with “0ffice of profit under the Crown”! And which I have a Barristers written opinion stating that there were no issues to be addressed was now clearly wrong with hindsight.I was advised that a Trainee Teachers Scholarship was not an office of profit under the Crown but with the information about the contract I was under and with the information I now have the Barrister was clearly wrong.
No one should be too hard on political party officials over this issue it is a quagmire of confusion.
Our great LNP will win this election by a landslide and ALP will be in opposition for 10 years
“There are three seats with both a Liberal and Nationals candidate: Indi and Nicholls in Victoria and Durack in Western Australia, which means there are 136 seats with a Coalition candidate so far.”
Did I miss the WA Nats rejoin the Coalition? I thought they were seperate.
Wayne, More like the other way around, stop trolling.
You offered no analysis whatsoever as to why you believe what you think and it seems that you either are a party worker/volunteer or MP who just came on here to be funny.
This election WILL BE CLOSE, everyone on here believes that although it looks like a narrow ALP win as of now anything can happen although if there is going to be a landslide it will be an ALP one not an LNP one.
Daniel
Completely agree if no information in the post other than x will win the post is a waste of time and effort. My prediction is that Australian Labor Party is on track to scrape in. This is based on all polls which seem to favour Australian Labor Party by about 5% and the fact that great majority of Australians do not like neither Morrison nor Albanese.
I would love to see the ALP polling on indivoidual seats.
Having negotiated with both Australian Labor Party and LNP over preferences I have always found ALP know what is going on behind the scenes. Political campaigning is beyond the capability of the Canberra Press Gallery they just lack the contacts outside of Parliament House. They want everything fed to them in ready formatted text so they can get away with chasing Two Parliamentary leaders and will the wonder why the likes of Rob Oakshott timed his media releases so that local provincial paper in his electorate had the scoop. If a candidate spent all day speaking how many reporters would give them five minutes time.
Bennee
The important thing missing from your assessment is the fact that Tony Crook joined The National Party team in Canberra, as the difficulties in being ‘one out’ (with a handful of staff) caused him to fold his ‘separatist’ position – and tap out on grounds of stress.
What this means for their subsequent WA Nat solemn declarations of separatism, you could probably guess.
So, they’re in – even if they don’t know it.
In Macnamara (formerly Melbourne Ports) I will “donkey vote” from top to bottom as the ballot order suits me fine but I am no donkey. Hopefully the independent at the top of the ballot paper will get less than 4% of the primary vote and therefore no taxpayer funding per vote receive by him. As Macnamara is a safe ALP seat since 1906 the ALP in 3rd spot will not change the result and the ALP will win while the 2nd spot Liberal vote will make the election a tighter race between the two major parties which I like as it makes them both work harder.
I prepoll voted today 09 May 22 in the Division of Macnamara. When I got to the Deaf Institute in St Kilda Rd there was no AEC directing sign so I walked up a parallel street and found the entrance. An AEC staff member said that they only had two AEC signs which was inadequate. Unlike other election there where many candidate helpers on the footpath were I voted at about 3pm including two candidates from major parties. On entering the polling place an AEC staff member tried to hand me a pencil to fill in the ballot but I said I had a biro. He then thought I had to use a pencil but another AEC staffer intervened to say a biro was OK. The only reason the AEC has pencils are that some voters are to stupid to bring a biro with them when voting – how dumb is that.
I did not watch the silly Channel 9 debate as neither of the two major party leaders represent my electorate. I watched SBS free to air TV from 7:30 pm to 11:10 pm. The documentaries I watched were on Empires, The Mayans, and Laurence of Arabia. They were all great and informative unlike the debate as the news later advised.
Adrian going back to your comment from 25 April, I don’t think the ballot order will do anything to make Macnamara a closer contest. It’ll make a 1% difference tops.
As a Labor vs Liberal contest it won’t be close. The margin is in excess of 6% and I expect a further 2-3% (at least) away from the Liberals this time, the 2CP will be close to 60-40.
The only real contest is between Labor and the Greens, but the ballot order having Josh above Steph means whatever small percentage the donkey vote contributes to the result will widen the gap between them, not narrow it.
Trent, I spoke to Steph at pre polling today (09 May 22) and asked her if she wants to defeat the ALP candidate why did she put him second on her HTV card? The real reason the Greens and other candidates not likely to win is to get all that commonwealth funding to pay for their campaign and to make more “Stop Adani” posters etc.
Does anyone have any indication of what the donkey vote actually is other than gut feeling? My gut feeling is somewhere between 1 and 2 % but I can not justify that.
With a return to compulsory voting there is also a hidden partial donkey vote. I know that the old pre 1974 DLP paid great attention to the preference order until a major party reached and then just effectively had the simplest preference order possible which effectively was a donkey vote from selected major party to bottom of ballot paper and then recommencing at top. This was just a recognition that once one of majors reached the preference would not be redistributed.
I remember hearing (might be from Kevin Bonham, but not sure) that the donkey boost from being ranked higher on a ballot appeared to be no more than about half a percent in most cases.
Adrian –
The way the electoral funding system works now is thus:
Assuming you crack 4% of the vote, you get your deposit back and an additional $10,000 (inflation-indexed). Beyond that, you can only claim based on demonstrated electoral expenditure, and you can’t claim back any more than (payment $rate * primary votes).
In other words, it’s impossible for a candidate to make a profit on the election unless they crack 4% while spending less than $10,000 (plus deposit). You can get a colour A4 flyer for about 8c each and bulk corflute signs are about $7 a pop, so with 100,000 voters in an electorate it’s pretty easy to spend $10k.
https://aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/public_funding/
Hi AlexJ – Thanks for this information. Other than the 4% comment I am out of date on the other points. However getting a $10,000 freebie from the AEC (taxpayer) is a disgrace.
The AEC (taxpayer) paying $10,000 to candidates who get 4% or more of the primary vote is not on. Taxpayers are not here to prop up candidates financially regardless of if they do well in the vote or not.
As of 13 May 22 (Friday the 13th) we now have for a week from the election a new softer PM who is not going to behave like a bulldozer (bull in a china shop) plowing through other peoples views. His conduct in relation to the lady CEO of Telstra was uninformed and disgusting but what can we expect from a bible bashing, beer drinking and Sydney centric rugby supporter. I think a lot of coalition staffers and media PR folks will be reading the employment section of the newspapers this week.
Opposition Leader Albanese had surname pronunciation problems at his National Press Club speech in 18 May 22. He mentioned Katy Gallagher but did not emphases the “h” which should sound like “ha”. He called Susan Ley, Susan Lay too. Ley is pronounced Lee not Lay. If elected as the leader of the government after 21 May 22
it may be interesting how he handles the names of Foreign Sovereigns, Presidents and Prime Ministers with difficult to spell and pronounce names.
ABC TV Q&A tonight (19 May 22) was broadcast from Melbourne. On the panel were two parliamentarians from Victoria and a former independent MP from Victoria too. Senator Patterson made an odd remark saying he would prefer a Labor government instead of a hung parliament with independent holding the balance of power. This supports the claim by some that both major parties are very similar in some areas with the main similarity being to see a major party holding power at all costs even if it not your major party.
In Macnamara, at the Middle Park Primary School polling place, the Greens were very active setting up all their environmentally unfriendly plastic wrap on the boundary fences near all entry gates on Friday afternoon. This will cheeze off the Liberal and Labor booth workers tomorrow morning. A decade ago this polling place was attacked in the dead of night by ALP right winger Andrew Landerou and his Zionist mate who tried to remove both Green and Liberal plastic wrap that had been put up already but they were caught and mobile phone filmed. Later the police investigated this vandalism of private property (the wrap). Sadly Andrews wife, Senator Kimberly Kitching, died of a heart attack recently, after being hounded on social media and the like, by the left factions of the ALP it has been alleged.
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