The number of distinct electoral contests in Victorian councils has shot through the roof this year. There were 260 in 2016, 298 in 2020, and 465 this year, as the mandate imposing single-member wards across all large councils outside of the City of Melbourne has finished rolling out.
411 of those 465 contests are single-member, and it’s been interesting to look at the number of candidates nominating in each contest. There is some genuine variety within a council area, with some wards having a large field and others much smaller. Some of this variation is undoubtedly down to expectations about who might win, or just luck about who wants to run where.
I suspect in some areas there is a clear frontrunner and others have avoided the field, but it’s hard to analyse when so many councils have completely redesigned their structure so there isn’t a clear incumbent in each ward. It does appear that in the biggest 32 councils (outside of Melbourne), the average ballot paper is about 0.5 candidates shorter if there is an incumbent councillor running. There are nine uncontested wards in these areas, and in every case the successful candidate in that ward is an incumbent.
I’ve previously found evidence that an increase in magnitude reduces the number of uncontested elections, but it’s hard to do this analysis in Victoria now because multi-member wards are so rare. The other factor in uncontested elections is being a low-population council area, and those are the only places that now have 2-member wards.
All the same, there has been an increase in the number of uncontested seats, from 36 to 47, although the number was about the same, at 46, in 2016. There has been a particular increase in urban wards. In the 32 large councils, there are nine uncontested wards, up from six in 2016 and three in 2020.
This chart shows that there is a strong relationship between the size of the ballot paper and the enrolment in the ward, but there are still some stand-out wards with high enrolments but an uncontested election. Two wards of Yarra Ranges have over 13,000 voters each, but no contest.
I have also produced this map showing the number of candidates for each single-member ward across Victoria. There aren’t particularly strong patterns. You can also toggle to see which wards are uncontested.
The Dendy Ward of Bayside Council has 18 candidates. 14 of these are associated with two ‘camps’ of the Liberal Party it seems. Current Councillor El Mouallem defeated former Councillor Michael Heffernan 4 years ago. Both of them have 6 running mates each on the ballot, or at least 6 people who have recommended a second preference in the Candidates statements, taking the form “Vote1 Lurie, and 2 Heffernan.” or “Vote 1 Bryant Joanne, Vote 2 ElMouallem Hanna”.
After I published this blog post I did a different map showing the number of candidates per seat for each Melbourne council and Bayside stood out despite most SE councils having less candidates than NW councils and I wondered why. Looks like Castlefield also has 15.
The defeated Liberal Candidate for the Federal Seat of Macnamara, Colleen Harkin, has organised I think 7 running mates in Castlefield, which explains the large number.