Most of the media attention tends to focus on the lower house, but voters will be casting two ballots, and the Legislative Council is also very important.
There are fifteen groups running for the Legislative Council with a box above the line – they are really the only groups with any chance of winning a seat.
I think of the contest in terms of a number of different categories of parties. Of course there are the Coalition and Labor. Amongst the minor parties of the left are the Greens, Animal Justice, Legalise Cannabis, Public Education Party, Elizabeth Farrelly and Socialist Alliance. On the right we have One Nation, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, the Liberal Democrats and Lyle Shelton. It’s a bit harder to define Sustainable Australia, Informed Medical Options and Riccardo Bosi.
Thirteen of these groups are registered parties. Shelton and Bosi are independents, so there will be nothing above the line except for the box.
I think the potential winners can be divided between Labor, the Coalition, the minor left and the minor right.
The minor left has consistently won three seats at every election since 2011 – three Greens in 2011, and two Greens and one Animal Justice in 2015 and 2019.
The minor right consistently won two seats at every election from 2003 to 2015 – one Christian Democrat and one Shooter. In 2019 the Christian Democratic Party missed out on a seat after having won a seat at every election since 1981, but One Nation won two seats, adding up to a total of three seats.
Labor has won seven seats at each of the last two elections with the Coalition winning nine in 2015 and eight in 2019.
That adds up to seventeen Coalition, fourteen Labor, six minor left and five minor right in the current Legislative Council. That’s a split of 22-20 in favour of the right, although that metric wipes out a lot of nuance, with both One Nation and the Shooters having a difficult relationship with the Coalition. Nonetheless, it is true that there is no centre-left majority in the current chamber.
Let’s run through each of the blocs.
The Greens will definitely regain the second seat they lost when Justin Field left the party shortly after the 2019 election.
There is definitely room for one more seat on the minor left.
Animal Justice won their seats in 2015 and 2019 with the lowest primary vote that has ever elected a member under the current electoral system.
AJP could potentially lose their seat to the third Greens candidate (the Greens managed three seats in 2011), but another strong contender is Jeremy Buckingham of Legalise Cannabis. This party polled strongly at the federal election and at the most recent Victorian and Western Australian elections. If they poll as highly as they did in Victoria or in NSW at the Senate election, they will win a seat.
There are a number of other centre-left parties such as Elizabeth Farrelly and the Public Education Party but I can’t see those others winning a seat.
There’s also a chance we could see four minor left members elected. That would probably involve Legalise Cannabis winning a seat in part by pulling in votes that would otherwise be right-wing votes, while the Greens and AJP win three between them.
On the right, Fred Nile’s seat is up for grabs. Nile is running second in a group behind his wife Silvana but the group doesn’t have an above-the-line vote so their support will be negligible.
The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers will probably retain their seat even if their vote drops back from their impressive 2019 performance.
One Nation aren’t defending any seats, but they should win at least one seat with a prospect for a second seat. Mark Latham has resigned his seat after just four years to contest a different seat, and his personal profile may help the party boost their vote.
I struggle to see any other right-wing minor parties challenging for a seat – maybe a small chance for the Liberal Democrats, but their ballot position is poor.
It seems most likely that the minor right will again win three seats, as they did in 2019: two One Nation and one Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.
That brings us back to the major parties. If the minor left and minor right each take three seats, that leaves fifteen for the major parties. Those seats split 8-7 to the Coalition in 2019.
We don’t get Legislative Council polls, but the lower house polls we’ve seen suggests a swing of less than 5% from Coalition to Labor. It suggests that a flip of one seat from Coalition to Labor is quite plausible.
If the result were to be 8 Labor, 3 minor left, 7 Coalition and 3 minor right, that would be a swing of one seat from right to left and produce an overall split of 21-21.
If Labor were to form a government with those numbers, they would need at least one vote from the right along with the left members to govern. This likely would mean getting the Greens and the Shooters on the same page, which seems to be a challenge.
The last Labor government was able to ignore the Greens part of the time and instead work with four right-wing crossbenchers, but they won’t have such an easy option with One Nation being the dominant part of the right-wing crossbench.
If the crossbench plays out as is most likely, with 4-5 Greens, 4 One Nation, 2 other left crossbenchers, 2 Shooters and 14-16 members of each major side, whatever government comes out the other side would need the Greens, One Nation or the opposition onboard to pass legislation.
Of course it’s also possible we could see two seats flip to the left – perhaps helped by Legalise Cannabis attracting some votes from the right – and also possible we could see the 22-20 balance maintained. While there are a lot of variations that could take place, it’s hard to see either side exceeding 22 seats. You just don’t get that much variation in such a proportional system, particularly when half the chamber is not up for election.
Wherever the primary votes fall, it’ll be important to consider the impact of preferences. We’ve seen one seat flip on preferences at each of the last three elections, and the left has usually benefited.
We will probably get some idea of the Legislative Council results late on election night. The NSWEC is only planning to do counts on the night where they expect to finish them by 10:30pm, but they do plan to commence upper house counts in each booth while a small number of staff members conduct the two-candidate-preferred count. They will only be counting above-the-line votes for the fifteen groups with an above-the-line box, with all other votes grouped up as ‘others’. But that should mean we’ll have a general sense of support for those main groups.
I wonder why Informed Medical Options Party is considered not likely to win an upper house seat? My understanding is that less than 5% of votes are needed to win a seat and I am sure that there are more than 5% of people in NSW frustrated because they were not allowed to make their own informed medical decisions.
Can’t help it but there’s an obvious typo in the 7th paragraph where you describe the seats taken by a second minor *left* grouping including One Nation et al. I’ve never thought of ON as a left party, but there has to be voters & candidates further to the right of ON and from their POV …. 🙂
Fixed already l… you’re quick. 🙂
Why is Fred Nile not above the line.
@Andrew a party needs to have 15 registered candidates to be eligible for a box above the line.
Excuse my ignorance, but why and how do the electoral officers conduct a 2PP count?
Antony Green said to win a seat in the upper house a candidate would need half a quota at the end.. normal quota 4.5% Labor likely to go from 7 to 8.. coalition 7 Greens 2 to 3.. maybe sff 1 maybe onp 1. This still leaves 2 seats any ones guess
Tijana: If you go back to the 2022 Senate election in NSW (when Covid was a *more* hot-button issue) IMOP themselves only got about 0.4%, under a tenth of what they’ll need.
You could plausibly say that a big chunk of the 3.7% in the UAP column was motivated by the same issues and that those voters could come over to IMOP.
But I would personally expect most of that UAP vote to scatter without the millions of dollars worth of advertising.
Labor won’t get 8 seats in the upper house given their trend of a declining primary vote, I fully expect the Left to win 11/21 seats this election however.
Wondering if the extra seat that ON pinch might not be from LNP?
There has been some effort to divert UAP vote and that crowd to the LDP, given the LDP have that, favourable preferencing from the Liberals HTV and a baseline of about 2% from 2019 and 2022 fed I’d be surprised if they weren’t able to pick up the last or 2nd last seat
Legalise Cannabis will pick up a seat too, I wouldn’t be surprised if they got well over half a quota on primary alone
@Ben Raue, why do you think Labor would have a harder time with One Nation? Assuming Latham gets up at least 2 will be ex ALP so will know the ALP inside out. I know they both left in acrimonious circumstances, but…
From Labors POV, didn’t Adern go from the most popular politician in the world when Winston Peters held her in check, to not making the next election when in coalition with the Greens? Would a similar dynamic play out here?
“It’s a bit harder to define … Riccardo Bosi”? I was under the impression there was no dispute about his position on the extreme right. Perhaps in the unlikely event he is elected he will act at odds with the broader centre-right spread of parties but the same could be said for the SFF or Liberal Democrats (at least on some issues), as far as the broad left-right strokes go I didn’t think Bosi was the least bit ambiguous.
He is definitely right-wing. But I don’t think he fits in with the other group. Don’t interpret my comments as implying he is centrist or anything.
Fair enough then
How is the renters’ vote skewing?
How is the upper house looking at this stage?
Looking like 8 for Labor and 6 or 7 Coalition at this stage. The Greens have two quotas but are quite far behind the third, and One Nation is similarly far behind their second. On partial quotas, Legalise Cannabis, Liberal Democrats, SFF, and Animal Justice are competitive.
Of course, with only a third of enrollment counted and particularly with Below-the-lines not yet included this could change dramatically as the count progresses.
from the early count…..
8 lab
2 green
1 LCP
1x AJP or Greens3
= 12 lefty seats
6 LIB/Nat
1 onp
1 libdem
1 SFF
final seat should be LIB/Nat? but its not certain with a few cooker party preferences flying about
= 10 righty seats
Will be interesting to see how Jeremy Buckingham of the Legalise Cannabis Party and the Greens get on in Parliament. Don’t forget that the Greens forced Buckingham out over sexual harrassment/assault allegations. The allegations were never proven and Buckingham maintains his innocence. The NSW Greens were hopelessly split at the time. The current Greens lead candidate Cate Faehrmann supported Buckingham in the fall out from the allegations, whereas Jenny Leong used parliamentary privilege to basically force him out. The dynamics will be interesting to watch, particularly as Buckingham and the Greens share many similar policy positions.
James, there’s only 21 vacancies. If the final result resembles these numbers then the 7th Coalition and 1st AJP will be competing for the final seat. I don’t see a third Green being plausible on these numbers.
Again want to underline the significance of the “on these numbers” caveat particularly because these numbers don’t include below-the-lines. So don’t take what I said as a prediction, but it is still possible to construct hypotheticals on the basis of the current count.
21 – You are of course correct :). Lib/Nat should have the advantage for that final spot.
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