I’ve talked a bunch about the problems with group voting tickets in the upper house and the need for people to undermine the system by voting below the line, but today I thought I would explore what played out in 2018: who won the final seats in each race, and why.
My election guide includes profiles of the eight upper house regions, and these include a breakdown of the final rounds of each count – the order in which candidates were knocked out and where their preferences flowed. But today’s blog post will zoom out a bit to look at the forest, rather than the trees.
This post was inspired by a Herald Sun article last week that suggested that Labor’s lower-ranking upper house candidates could suffer from the party doing a deal with the Greens, suggesting that a loss of preferences from other minor parties would hurt Labor. What I’ve learnt from writing this piece is that Labor did not really ever benefit from minor party preferences. They didn’t gain any seats from this process. In a few cases they limped across the line to a win with very few preferences, and in one case (Northern Metropolitan) they missed out on a seat they would have likely won without group voting tickets.
This region has now been renamed North Eastern Metropolitan. In 2018, the tiny Transport Matters Party received preferences from pretty much everyone, including many parties going straight to TMP with preferences 3 and 4.
The main rival for the final East Metro seat was the Greens, and as a head-to-head every single other group except for the Victorian Socialists preferenced TMP above the Greens.
TMP started on 0.037 quotas, but managed to stay in the race long enough to accumulate preferences, eventually overtaking the Greens and winning on Liberal Democrats preferences. The Greens started on 0.54 quotas and barely gained any preferences, ending up on 0.62 quotas at the end.
There was no clear frontrunner on the primary votes, with the Greens on 0.4 quotas and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers on 0.3 quotas. These two ended up being the main two contenders for the final seat.
The minor party vote didn’t consolidate as strongly behind the Shooters as it did in some other regions behind a more inoffensive party like Transport Matters. Indeed it appears the primary party hoping to scoop up preferences was Aussie Battler Party, but they couldn’t gain enough votes to stay in the count. About 18% of the vote was cast above the line for minor parties who preferenced SFF, with 10% cast above the line for minor parties preferencing the Greens (including the Greens themselves). The Coalition preferenced SFF and Labor preferenced the Greens. The minor parties who didn’t fall in behind the Shooters were generally on the left: Animal Justice, Voluntary Euthanasia, Socialists and Reason.
The Shooters ending up winning on preferences from Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party (DHJ), with the Greens on 0.44 quotas and Animal Justice trailing on 0.36.
The final seat was a contest between Labor, DHJ and Reason. The first two Labor candidates and the Greens candidate were elected on full quotas, with the Liberal candidate stranded just short of a quota until finally winning the fourth seat towards the end of the count.
A majority of minor parties preferenced DHJ above Reason, with a minority breaking away to support Reason. Most minor parties preferenced both of these parties above Labor. Even the Greens and Liberal Party preferenced those two minors ahead of Labor.
A larger share of the above-the-line vote was pledged to DHJ ahead of Reason, although there was a lot more below-the-line votes cast for two of the parties that preferenced Reason: Reason itself and Victorian Socialists. Reason below-the-line preferences stayed with Patten but the Socialist preferences didn’t stick so strongly.
DHJ remained ahead of Reason for most of the count, until Labor was knocked out, and their preferences elected Reason ahead of DHJ.
This count was a bit more complex, with four parties seriously in competition for the last two seats: the Nationals (second on a Coalition ticket), the Shooters, the Liberal Democrats and DHJ.
The Nationals were very close to the quota on primary votes (0.87 quotas) with the Shooters in fifth place on 0.47 quotas. But most preferences flowed to the Lib Dems or DHJ, with only the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) favouring the Shooters and no-one favouring the Coalition.
While more parties preferenced the Lib Dems, DHJ had more pledged above-the-line votes (12.6% to 11.4%), which included votes from the Greens.
Labor, the Shooters and particularly the Nationals were all stranded receiving few preferences while DHJ and the Lib Dems consolidated most of the remaining above-the-line votes. The elimination of the Shooters elected the Lib Dems, and the Lib Dem surplus elected DHJ for the fourth seat, leaving Labor just ahead of the Nationals for the final seat. Labor had started out on 0.9 quotas but managed to get elected without a full quota, which indicates how poorly they performed in the preference race.
The race for the final seat was a clear contest between the Greens and Sustainable Australia. The Greens had a high primary vote on their side, but were severely handicapped in terms of preference flows. The Greens polled 0.8 quotas, with Sustainable Australia on 0.079, ranking them ninth out of the parties in the region.
Apart from the Victorian Socialists, every other party preferenced Sustainable Australia. Excluding Labor and Liberal votes locked up in four full quotas, Sustainable Australia were pledged 10.4% of the vote in above-the-line votes with the Greens on 10.7%, although the Greens had a lot more below-the-line votes. Sustainable Australia was also set to benefit from a Liberal surplus of about 0.2 quotas, which would ultimately give the the edge in a close race.
In the end, after receiving preferences from nearly every group, Sustainable Australia won the seat by a margin of less than 3000 votes or 0.04 quotas.
The second Liberal candidate ended up facing off against the Liberal Democrats. The Liberal ticket polled 2.74 quotas, compared to 0.05 quotas for the Lib Dems, but very favourable preference flows elected the Liberal Democrats.
Three small parties worth 2.5% of the total vote preferenced the Liberal Party, while 14 other parties worth 16% of the total vote (almost a full quota) favoured the Lib Dems. Only Animal Justice, the Victorian Socialists and an independent ticket flowed to the Liberals. Even the Greens favoured the Lib Dems. The Liberal Democrats ended up winning by a margin of just over 7000 votes, or 0.1 quotas.
Labor (0.77 quotas) and the Greens (0.52) were leading on the primary vote for the final two seats, but DHJ and the DLP did well out of preferences to catch up on the two more established parties.
Apart from Labor and the Greens themselves, the only other party to favour these two parties over the DLP and DHJ was the Victorian Socialists. The DLP gained the strongest preference flow from minor parties, with an above-the-line vote of about 13.7%, compared to about 11% for Labor and DHJ and 7% for the Greens.
DHJ and the DLP picked up most preferences, eventually overtaking the Greens. Greens preferences elected Labor to the fourth seat, and the Labor surplus then strongly flowed to DHJ, who overtook the DLP for the final seat.
The leaders on the primary vote were the Coalition (0.795 quotas) and the Greens (0.50), with DHJ and to a lesser extent Animal Justice gaining the strongest preference flows. Ten parties flowed to DHJ, six flowed to Animal Justice, and literally no-one preferenced the Greens or the Coalition above those two minor parties (not even the Socialists).
DHJ and Animal Justice kept picking up ground on the two larger parties. Labor’s surplus pushed Animal Justice into second place, then Shooters preferences elected DHJ.
That’s it for this blog post, but I have some other analysis about the upper house coming up soon.
