Senate – New South Wales – Australia 2022

The only way I see this going is 3-2-1 or 2-3-1 (LNP, ALP, GRN). If the current COVID scenario plays out, the Libs won’t get three seats, but if it does get better, they probably will. The factional preselection (Right) between Keneally and O’Neill will be interesting, because the winner gets top spot and the loser gets the risky third spot. Only resolution excluding the ALP winning three seats is O’Neill going back to Robertson again.

Ryan, Jenny McAllister isn’t guaranteed to get 2nd spot. She could get 3rd spot. There is no rules in the ALP saying a left-faction senator has to be pre-selected in between. Unless you can show me evidence. I can give examples of times a state has had 2 right-faction senators from the ALP.

I believe McAllister’s already been confirmed. I read that in an article in January from the West.

From Sep last year:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fnation%2Fpolitics%2Fkeneally-v-oneill-labors-great-senate-showdown%2Fnews-story%2Ff1900914062a52a111e8510b3a1b67ed&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium

If NSW has a 2-3-1 result I will be very surprised. For context, I calculated 2019 3PPs of 3.2 quotas for the Coalition, 2.4 for Labor and .89 for the Greens.
So to get that 3-2-1 to a 2-3-1, we’re talking a half-quota swing from the Coalition to Labor.
Seven percent. That’s… rather a lot.

Well O’Neill’s got the top spot, and Keneally is running for preselection in Fowler, so we’ll have another preselection contest which is between a great candidate who is representative of the area (Tu Le) and a helicopter candidate from the eastern suburbs. It would be hilarious if Keneally lost that too.

theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/08/labor-senator-kristina-keneally-to-run-in-lower-house-seat-at-next-election?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

my understanding is right gets spots 1 & 3 and the left 2…….I have no idea how the rights internal processes work……. but spot 3 is dicey….. as greens may win here

Mick, I don’t think Labor are favourite to win a 3rd seat in any state.

In order to win a 3rd seat Labor in a state the easiest way is to have the state elect 4 “lefties”, defeating the Green is very hard. The mathematics of how votes for a senate group are counted means that it is disadvantageous to be electing multiple candidates from the same group, at least when compared to parties that are in the running to elect the candidate at the top of their group.

Most states will have 2 Coalition and 2 Labor senators elected instantly on 1st preferences and surpluses. NSW will be one of those states. Remaining in the count will be 3/7ths of ballots (with each full seventh +1 vote being the quota to elect a senator). In the last election the Coalition ticket remainder at this point was 0.70 of a quota, the Greens 0.61, One Nation 0.35, Labor had a tiny 0.09, the remaining micro parties had 1.25 combined but with Group Voting Ticket those votes slosh around and all those tiny parties will not win. The Greens do not need to gain in preferences to get their 0.61 up to a full 1.00, preferences from excluding candidates would delight them, but as long as they remain ahead of other candidates until their are only 7 remaining non-excluded candidates their candidate will be elected no matter how low their vote tally is, Labor in the meantime “wasted” a fair few votes stacking up 2 piles of ballots 1.00 quotas high that they wish they could get back for these shoot outs to come 6th out of the final 7 candidates.

The Labor party would have needed to take a massive chunk out of the Green vote, maybe 3% of voters in the state (4 in 10 Green voters), to have any chance of having their 3rd candidate get in en lieu of the green. Alternatively Labor could have gained ~6% of votes in the state from other sources, but at that stage you’re almost talking about 4 left wing senators from the state.

Re the senate In NSW: if I wanted to see the Greens take the “final” seat (assuming the Coalition was set to take 3 and Labor 2), would it make any difference to Labor if I voted, say above the line, for Greens and 5 minor parties, then stopped? If I did not preference Labor because I have already put the Greens number 1, does that favour the Coalition in anything but a theoretical way?

If you vote 1 for the Greens, no further preference will harm the Greens chance of winning – your vote will only get passed on if the Greens can’t use it anymore.

If you don’t give a preference to Labor, then your vote may end up exhausting at a point when the 3rd Labor candidate is competing with someone for the final seat, possibly someone you like less.

Your vote probably won’t flow because the Greens are unlikely to poll a full quota, so the Greens will either get elected to one of the last seats without any preferences to pass on, but are also strong enough that they’re unlikely to get knocked out until right at the end of the count if they lose. If the Greens lose it will probably be to the 3rd Labor candidate.

But it is theoretically possible the final race could end up with Labor vs Coalition and your vote, if it hasn’t been fully used up, could end up exhausting, when it could otherwise flow to Labor. Probably that’s most likely if the Greens have a big swing towards them and poll over a quota, or if their vote collapses.

@Ben how’s the current breakdown looking for this:
– 2 LNP
– 2 Labor
And last 2 up for grabs?
Jason Yatsen-Li who is the former Labor candidate for Bennelong, and is 3rd on the Labor ticket in NSW, has been doing a lot of joint fundraisers with the Labor Candidates for Reid and Banks, tapping into community ties. However, I’m doubtful he can get enough below the line votes to get across the line.
I do think though he will pick up the 3rd spot, as the Greens vote Federally has not been gaining traction, with it either going back to Labor or going to Independents like Stegall.
David Shoebridge is quite a qualified candidate for the Greens but I think NSW voting tendencies would want a decisive vote for Labor if the wing is on
I’m thinking the final spot goes to either One Nation or UAP. Especially, how well Latham did at the NSW election (picking up 2 spots)- is this feasible? Especially if preferences are horded between the minor right wing parties.
The above comments seem to neglect the fact that when there is a swing to a Centre-Left government, the right normally splits and this creates a vacuum for minor right wing parties like One Nation, Shooters, CDP, Family First, etc. to then spring up.
So that would mean:
– 3 x ALP
– 2 x LNP
– 1 x PHON

UAP/ON will get up for sure imo. Whether the Greens do is harder to say, but I’m optimistic. Labor really would have to do fantastically well, and the Greens would need to bomb pretty hard- they collect a lot more micro-party preferences in NSW than they do in Queensland. It’d be quite a turnaround after the gains they just made in the locals.

The big question is whether the UAP and ON do a preference swap – if they do, then they have a damn good chance of one of them getting a seat – especially if you add the LDP to the mix. Does the Clive / Campbell love in extend beyond Queensland? 2 Lib, 2 ALP, 1 Green and 1 from the populist right seems a definite possibility. And this could happen across the country.

Has Labor shown its hand already conceding it will only be able to win a maximum of 2 Senate seats in NSW?
Given that its initial 3rd listed candidate, Kristina Keneally, is now running for the seat of Fowler, and her replacement on the ticket, Jason Yat-Sen Li, has now vacated this spot to run for the state seat of Strathfield.
Not a very good look.
Apparently polling in NSW for Labor is still pretty low (not that LNP vote is that much higher), and Albanese has not had too much progress in improving name recognition and repairing Labor brand. I think for a start, he can probably get rid of that oversized akubra he insists on wearing in press conferences (even when he is in metropolitan Sydney)

I think the reason Labor is likely to only get 2 seats is because of the Greens rather than the Coalition. It’s a tall order for Labor to get three quotas before the Greens get one (or for Labor + Greens to get four of six seats).

It’s very difficult for Labor to get 3 seats in most states due to how strong the Greens vote is. However, the Coalition getting 3 seats is pretty normal as there aren’t any minor right-wing parties that have a vote as strong as the Greens (except for One Nation in Queensland).

If we suppose that the Roy Morgan proportions from 20th of January, for NSW specifically, hold as a proportion of left vs right, then Left is at 58%, while Right is at 42%. Let’s suppose that the proportion of the lower house 2pp (representing “left” and “right”) that is reflected in the senate remains the same (I know, it’s imperfect).

Coalition got 51.78% of 2pp in NSW, and 38.55% of senate vote. That’s about 75% of total. So at 42%, they’d get 31.5%, or 2.2 quotas. Labor got 48.22% in NSW, and 29.82% of senate vote, or 62% of total – at 58%, that would be 35.8%, or 2.5 quotas. The Greens, by the same reasoning, would get about 0.74 quotas. That leaves about 0.74 quotas for the Right and 0.82 quotas for the Left remaining to be distributed.

Even on raw numbers, this would be enough to push Labor+Greens over the line, as the Right only has 2.94 quotas in total. For the Right to get a third seat on these numbers, they would need to get enough leakage from the Left (compared with leakage the other way), and exhaustion makes this a shaky proposition, as a lot of voters aren’t likely to list more than a few parties.

The strongest-performing Right party in 2019 was ONP, with about 0.35 quotas. Either the Coalition would need to convert their 0.2 quota into enough to get ahead of ONP, or ONP would need to gain enough from preference flows to get to close to a full quota. I can’t see either one happening.

So I do think ALP 3, LNP 2, Greens 1 is very plausible.

Interesting analysis, Glen, however wouldn’t it make more sense to compare primary votes with Senate votes for the majors rather than 2PP? As it stands, you’re double-counting the Greens somewhat by measuring the Greens Senate vote against what I assume was their lower house primary, but measuring the Labor Senate vote against their 2PP figure which would already include a good proportion of first-preference votes for the Greens.

Going off primaries I get the Coalition Senate vote at about 90.6% of their lower house primary and Labor’s at 86.3%. I’m not sure exactly which poll you’re referring to so I can’t do a like for like comparison but applying these to PollBludger’s NSW figures I get 33.98% for the coalition and 35.12% for Labor. So a bit better for the Coalition vs One Nation (which makes intuitive sense, compared to using 2PP) and a bit worse for Labor wrt reaching the third quota. Still, though, the Labor surplus being greater than the Coalition’s makes a fourth seat for the broad left that much more likely.

Likely 3/3 so 2 alp 2 liberals.. one for right so if libs win onp doesn’t and visa versa. Last seat between alp and gr . Again an either or

Dryhad – I wasn’t double-counting Greens, I just assumed that, on the statewide 2pp measure, Greens votes would roughly flow to Labor. It’s an imperfect estimate, but a sufficient one for the purposes of discussion.

The problem with using lower-house primary votes is that it’s strongly affected by number of other candidates in each seat, creating a substantial skew in the data. Since we’re trying to estimate senate patterns, the simplest estimate is to simply go “roughly how much of the vote is going to left-leaning parties”, and extrapolate where possible.

It is, of course, very rough. It assumes that side of politics is the only influence, and thus if Labor sees a 10% increase in vote count, so will the Greens, and that’s clearly inaccurate. It also ignores that some people often split votes, voting one way in the House, and another in the Senate. And primary quotas in the Senate will naturally also depend on how many candidates, the order of the candidates on the sheet, and a number of other factors that can’t be accounted for at this moment.

The poll information can be found here: https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8913-federal-voting-intention-february-2022-202202211048 – specifically under the “Voting Intention by State shows the ALP again leading in all six States” section. It also appears in Poll Bludger’s poll data for NSW federal.

Thanks for the clarification, Glen!

You’re certainly right that any method is going to have its drawbacks and imprecisions, although I feel like you’re overstating the significance of the number of lower house candidates on such an inherently rough estimate. Such a thing may cause discrepancies between individual seats, but for state-wide figures it ought to produce a good enough starting point for measuring probable Senate support – especially considering as you note that a good number of minor party candidates also run in the Senate.

Nevertheless, your logic makes sense and it seems like the different methods only result in a few percentage points of difference – a good sign that they are at least as bad as each other!

Liberal Party have confirmed their line-up.
No surprise that Marise Payne took position 1 but Jim Molan has beaten out Connie Fierravanti-Wells for the 3rd position on the joint ticket, meaning that Fierravanti-Wells is done in parliament.
TBH, good riddance to bad rubbish. Connie played a leading role alongside Marie Ficarra in the HR becoming more and more toxic and then got burned after her protege, Christopher Rath, jumped ship to the left.

Fierravanti-Wells leaving parliament is a good thing for Australia. She didn’t add anything positive to the state of politics.

High Court rejected Morrison’s pleas to escalate the NSW Lib’s preselection stoush past the Court of Appeals, and rejected Kitching’s/Shorten’s Labor faction’s appeal outright. Big win for Albo while NSW Libs remain in disarray.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/high-court-rejects-pm-s-attempt-to-resolve-liberal-preselection-feud-20220331-p5a9so.html

I’m really surprised the bureaucracy has been allowed to get involved in the Libs case. I don’t see how they have any standing whatsoever.

@ FL that’s what happens when you have no long term structural corporate governance or no visible external financial or procedural audit performed.
Both parties are run by people who are only there for a short time and want to get in and out to either further their political and/or business careers.
NSW Head Office would’ve had nearly 10 General Secretaries in the last decade.
It’s good in a way as I think both Labor and Liberal need to reform their internal practices or will die natural deaths via the gradual erosion of their primary vote.
Ultimately brings up another issue of branch stacking vs central committee override. The latter seems better on paper but it also causes a mass bleeding of members and subsequently votes.
Even a 2 party state like the US has a more open preselection process.

The two open plebiscites – in Bennelong and Willoughby – have thrown up the unexpected – and reports suggest both performed well enough to persuade the preselectors on the day. This would suggest that the same person could also persuade the average voter. The downside is that the candidate might reflect the local members more – either unrepresentative or a branch stack – and then be out of touch on election day. Losing candidates have fewer causes for complaint on their being dudded after a stitch up.

If the parties did have a more open process and did it on the same day then there might be more public engagement as the frisson of activity would generate coverage and excitement.

Unpopular view here but I don’t think branch stacking is as bad as central appointments by party apparatchiks.
Open primaries would be optimum, especially for a state wide spot like the Senate but short of that if you can raise money off your own bat, and organise effectively that is demonstrate capacity to recruit members, volunteers and notoriety you should be given preference as a candidate.
The Senate spots are now becoming such diminished guarantees for the majors.
I think Molan misses out, CFW would’ve too.
1 Lib, 1 Nat, 2 ALP, 1 GRN, 1 UAP/PHON

Yes a broad base primary type preselection is a good thing but the US has shown that those who vote in Democrat primaries are to left of the psrty spectrum and Republicans to the right so the the extreme tail wags the donkey or elephant. Not sure how that type of issue can resolved in the Oz situation.

Redistributed, the situation in the US has evolved because there are no strong minor parties to break the duopoly. At least in Australia, like the UK and Canada we have some significant minor parties who can gather at least 20% of the vote. This should help to reduce the echo chamber effect somewhat.

Also the US became polarised from the 90s because federal members and senators started spending more time in their electorates and less time in Washington, often flying in and out on the same day. This meant they couldn’t interact as much with opposition colleagues which isn’t a problem in Australia where members and senators will spend a week or two in Canberra for each sitting.

Might be true of Republicans but recent history suggests Democratic primary voters have been, if anything, really obsessive about centrist theories on electability. It dominates most downballot primary debates and it was obviously dispositive in the presidential primaries.

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/aus2022/nswsen2022/comment-page-1#comment-765671

Primaries for the Australian Senate would presumably be somewhat proportional for the Liberals and ALP, given they both win multiple Senate seats each in almost every a half-Senate election, meaning a more ideologically diverse range of Senators. Also as in the USA, the primary voters` political opinions in single member seats would vary from seat to seat, in a manner generally connected to local opinion.

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/aus2022/nswsen2022/comment-page-1#comment-765672

Having more than 2 parties does reduce negative partisanship, which makes US politics so divisive as there is no serious party competing for the votes of voters strongly opposed to 1 of the parties and almost triangulation of parties is possible. However, primaries reduce the pressure that creates minor parties because they focus a lot of the tensions that otherwise could create minor parties onto primary competition.

Polarisation in the USA is due to various factors, such as partisan news silos that started with cable news and have continued with the internet, the realignment of Southern conservatives from the Democratic party to the republican party and less conservative republicans to the Democrats meaning that both political parties represent more ideologically cohesive blocks than had been the case for decades, etc.

I doubt that shorter times in Washington had much to do with it and politicians being closer to their voters hardly seems like a problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/06/nsw-liberal-seeking-to-challenge-federal-intervention-in-high-court-expelled-from-party

Not sure how making your own party hate you as much as anyone else in the country is supposed to work as an electoral gambit but apparently Morrison’s all in on it. And on the same night the Michael Towke interviewed aired too.

Who is Labor’s third candidate?

@Marko

Its constitutional law expert Shireen Morris. Morris was Labor’s canidate for Deakin at the 2019 federal election.

23 Groups! Hope you enjoy the size of this ballot paper! A variety of professions, was curious to see a couple of Councillors leading their minor party tickets. Georgia Lamb [North Sydney] for Sustainable (SAP) and Shane Djuric [Hawkesbury] for Shooters (SFF). Side note, I thought I recognised one of the names in the Ungrouped, Guitang Lu who ran as an independent in the council elections for The Hills District.

@PN
Thanks for the info.

AJP drawing Group A could mean a decreased Greens vote. They’ll be getting at least 1 vote (from me) as the Senate has just become an utter farce.
The size of this ballot borders on ridiculous- would it be so difficult to split states up into:
– 6 regions with 2 senators each; or
– 4 regions with 3 senators each; or
– 3 regions with 4 senators each

Better front-facing representation and allows for candidates to campaign more effectively. Current situation of 10 nobodies plus a couple known names representing nothing is not really democratic

Further gerrymandering an already horrifically unrepresentative body because you don’t like looking at a big piece of paper for a few minutes every three years 🧐

You sort of answered your own question though didn’t you dude. The reason why there is such apathy and the body itself is unrepresentative is because it is an overly contrived process topped off with an oversized ballot that in no way differentiates candidates from one other.
If you have 12 homogenous spots up for grabs, with no segmentation as to who or where they represent, other than a generic “state” this essentially becomes a perverted process.
The average voter tunes out when they see this, which is why the voter apathy and informal vote is so high when it comes to the Senate.
Why the number 12, why not 10 or 8? I understand the whole divisibility of the Reps but I don’t think citizens are any better served by 2 or 4 extra Senators.
At this stage we’re just wasting paper because a couple of twits who rustled up a few grand, want their name on a ballot paper with zero chance of winning. Half the ballot is “parties” with similar names to established parties and the other half are generic parties that are indistinguishable from each other.
Democracy maybe at work but this system does need reform

It’s unrepresentative because states and territories have such massive discrepancies in the relative worth of their votes, if you start breaking those states down into regions they will be even bigger discrepancies and, especially if they’re multi candidate electorates, almost certainly uncompetitive in the majority of regions anyway. And you likely wouldn’t achieve much of a reduction in ballot size, after all there are HoR seats with twelve candidates this year.

I struggled to come up with six groups to vote above the line for in Qld, I couldn’t imagine how I’d have made it with even less choice

Politics_Obsessed, if you think that’s bad, Queensland has 25 groups!

As to the point about Senate regions, it doesn’t solve the fundamental problem with the Senate: it’s unrepresentative because it treats Tasmanian votes as being worth 15 times as much as NSW votes.

Really I think minor reforms aren’t going to fix anything. We should rip up the constitution and start again. One house of government would be sufficient if it were elected by a system covering both geographic interests and national proportional representation. New Zealand-style Mixed Member Proportional Representation and the Tasmania and ACT-style multi-member geographic electorates would both be fine systems.

On IMOP National Committee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BepL7vXl4Cs They don’t know what they are talking about.

Arjay Martin, Juris Doctor.

From what I am hearing from NSW, I would expect the results to go:
ALP 2, Lib 2, Green 1, PHON 1

As much as I disagreed with him politically, my deepest condolences to senator Molan and his family.

However my question is, why on earth are the NSW liberals looking to replace him with a religious nutter on the christian right?

I read somewhere (SMH I believe) that as per an informal agreement, the Libs will replace Senator Molan (RIP) with another conservative right faction Liberal.

There’s also talk of Marise Payne retiring (mainly due to pressure rather than her own terms) mid-term.

yes – Jim was from the hard right faction so they will replace him with another member of that faction – which will be a religious nutter on the christian right

Absolutely pathetic that Maria Kovacic was chosen, And I say that only because she is a failed candidate at the last election. She lost Parramatta by about 54-46 or so.

Andrew Constance also lost, but at least be got a positive swing and came a few hundred votes of winning Gilmore.

This is a fundamental flaw, where the faceless men in the political parties can choose the replacement. What should be the system instead is the next person on the Coalition senate ticket takes it. (The person who was chosen as the 4th candidate) I believe that would have been former senator Wells.

The Tasmanian system of replacing MPs should be used at the national level for senate, this would stop the faceless men of both Labor and Liberal parties from appointing losers or bad candidates to senate seats. There are too many to list who were appointed.

Deborah O’Neil lost Robertson in 2013 but was appointed senator.

Kristina Kenneally lost Bennelong in the by-election yet was appointed senator.

Sarah Henderson lost Corangamite in 2019 yet was appointed senator.

It’s time to change the system. James Brown should have been appointed under the current system. I was very impressed by his Q&A commentary a few weeks ago.

Maria Kovacic may not be Daniel T’s choice but she did marginally beat Andrew Constance. She wasn’t chosen by a bunch of faceless men, but more like 700 or so ‘faceless’ Liberal members who voted on this yesterday.
There were a few other contenders including Fiona Scott who held Lindsay from 2013 to 2016.

There’s merit in having the top non-winning candidate from the party’s last election Senate ticket to get in. It’s more democratic in theory because voters voted for that particular group ticket. The problem is that the next in line was a National and not a Liberal, so there might have to be some pre-election agreement that allows each party to replace their own when a senator resigns or dies. Also, what if the losing candidates have moved on and don’t want have political ambitions anymore? Or if a losing candidate turns out to be controversial and becomes a huge risk to the party?

I’m actually more surprised that the Libs didn’t choose a Right faction member.