The Tally Room

I've previously posted about the surge in political party registration applications, that was threatening to break the record for the largest number of political parties registered for an election. 40 separate political parties registered for the 1998 election. This number declined to 25 in 2010. Eight...

I haven’t been following the polls individually as they come out, and I don’t plan to do so for most of the upcoming campaign. There are other people who do this very well – in particular William Bowe at Poll Bludger, who has taken...

Now that the 150-seat election guide is complete and public, I've been noticing the level of activity on the blog increasing massively - regularly breaking 3000 hits in a day, and almost 80,000 hits for the month of June. In particular, the number of comments...

Last Thursday, the Victorian Electoral Boundaries Commission released the draft boundaries for the Victorian state redistribution. These boundaries are expected to cover the 2014 and 2018 state elections. Antony Green has produced his estimates of the margins for all eighty-eight electorates. In short, two Nationals and...

Voters in the New Zealand electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti went to the polls yesterday to elect an MP after the death of Labour MP Parekura Horomia. Labour retained the seat despite a significant swing against them. Ikaroa-Rāwhiti is a Māori electorate covering the west coast of the North Island...

The candidate list posted on Wednesday morning quickly went out of date, with Julia Gillard and three of her ministers announcing their retirement despite previous plans to run for re-election: Stephen Smith in Perth, Peter Garrett in Kingsford Smith and Craig Emerson in Rankin. Despite...

Julia Gillard has called a caucus meeting at 7pm for a leadership spill, and has said that if she loses she will leave politics. I don't have anything particularly to say at this point, so consider this an open thread to discuss the events of...

After independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott announced they would not be contesting their seats earlier today, we now have answers from all 150 members of the House of Representatives as to whether they are running for re-election. Twenty members of the House of...

Voters in the New Zealand electorate of Ikaroa-Rāwhiti go to the polls this Saturday to elect their local MP after the death of Labour's Parekura Horomia in April. Ikaroa-Rāwhiti is one of seven Māori electorates in New Zealand. In addition to the 63 "general" electorates, a parallel...

A substantial amount of analysis was produced yesterday about the draft boundaries for the NSW redistribution. You can look at the maps here. Antony Green has posted his estimated margins for each electorate. He estimates that the ALP has lost two seats net to the Liberal Party....