Following on from my post earlier in the week after I posted new electoral maps for Victoria and South Australia, there was more news yesterday on redistributions.
The final boundaries for next year’s ACT Legislative Assembly election have been announced. The committee reverted to the first draft, which was a minor change bringing Ginninderra and Molonglo into quota. The second draft had proposed radical changes to the boundaries, reducing Molonglo to a 5-member district and making Ginninderra a 7-member district, but these were rejected after vocal opposition. I have now posted the final version on the maps page.
In other news, the latest report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on population for each state and territory makes it clear that there will be no changes in the number of seats for each state and territory at the next federal election. In the next month the AEC will make a determination about seat numbers, and this data makes it clear they will remain the same. This will mean that no more federal redistributions will be held in time for the next federal election once the current South Australian redistribution is completed.
An ACT redistribution is due in 2013, but won’t be finished before the election. Antony Green has also blogged about the new update.
So with the NT and ACT territorial boundaries now completed, the only redistribution map I need to work on now is the draft boundaries for next year’s WA state election. Later this year we will be getting final boundaries for the WA state election and for SA federal boundaries. I’ll keep you posted.
Apart from those, I am also looking to update my ward maps for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, as all three big states have council elections next year. Sorry Western Australia and South Australia, I just haven’t had time to cover those states.
Anyway, Victoria and Queensland’s state electoral commissions are doing a good job of covering the redistributions being held for council wards on their websites, but not in New South Wales, where it seems to be a job for the individual council.
So I’m calling on my readers to help me out by posting here any news about New South Wales council ward boundaries:
- A decision by a council to get rid of or implement ward boundaries.
- A clear decision to redistribute the boundaries, preferably with a link to the maps
- A clear indication that ward boundaries are not changing.
This will make it a lot easier to produce a state ward map well before the September council elections.
The ACT federal redistribution will be interesting as Canberra will have to move north of the lake….could get a bit messy in the Inner North. I wonder if they’ll also take the opportunity to get rid of the name “Fraser” in anticipation of using it for a Victorian seat one day.
Looks like NSW and SA may lose a seat in the next round of redistributions.
The impact of the final recommendation of the ACT Electoral Commission is that it will assist the Greens in what will be a struggle to retain 4 seats.
WA state redistribution was finalised this week.
A few minor changes from the draft boundaries, the main one being that Mandurah no longer takes in parts of metro Perth, and remains in South-West region
The interesting question about the 2012 ACT election is the extent to which the level of the Green vote at the ACT federal election in 2010 will be reflected in the ACT 2012 election. If any of the Federal vote represents a a long term shift of commitment then the Greens would have less difficulty in maintaining their representation than the commentators are suggesting.
The Greens vote in the ACT election in 2008 was:
Brindabella: 13.58%
Gininderra: 13.91%
Molonglo: 18.25% 33057
Total ACT:15.62%
The Greens vote in the House of Reps vote in 2010 was:
Fraser: 19.58%
Canberra; 18.56%
I have ignored the higher Senate vote as that included tactical voting by ALP left voters.
Also in the Greens’ favour in retaining all their ACT LA seats is the “sophomore surge” factor, amplified by the importance of personal votes in the Hare-Clark system.
The ACT will be interesting in terms of the extent of the impact of the personal vote. The Liberal leader Zed Seseltja(?) is moving from the Molongolo electorate leaving the Liberals in a very weak position in that seat – John Stanhope will not be pulling votes for the ALP in Gininderra.IN that respect it is going to be a quite open contest.
Hey Ben,
I was hoping you could help me with some technical problems accessing your maps. Upon download my computer opens your maps in Adobe and precedes to tell me that the file is “damaged” or “not a supported file type”. Is there a program I need to download or something that can allow me to view them?
Cheers!
Tom,
You need to use Google Earth to open the maps. It sounds like for some reason your computer is trying to open KMZ files in Adobe.
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