The Tally Room

Nominations were announced today for the Tasmanian state election, as well as the Dunstan by-election in South Australia. I will get the full candidate lists up later tonight, but for now I wanted to dwell on some overall numbers showing how much bigger the ballot...

I often compare the City of Brisbane to a small state parliament. With its single-member wards dominated by parties and its large size, it often resembles a state election more so than a local council. But one of the main differences between the City...

The AEC last week officially commenced a redistribution of the Northern Territory's two federal electorates. I'll keep this blog post short and sweet. I won't bother with a map, since there are only two seats, making the equation simple. Antony Green's blog post from early February...

Ben was joined by Stewart Jackson from the University of Sydney and Tasmanian political scientist Mike Lester to preview next month's Tasmanian state election. We discuss the widening field of independent candidates, political events in the last term and the issues around the 25-member House...

Nominations will close next Thursday for the Tasmanian state election, and we've seen a surge in candidate announcements in the last few days. I've just finished updating my candidate lists, and they show that there is a real increase in independent candidates compared to...

The Victorian state government last week announced the final ward boundaries for 39 councils for this October's council elections. I've been compiling those ward boundaries as a shapefile and that's now finished. The VEC published KML files for every proposed set of ward boundaries. Unfortunately these...

Ben was joined by this week by Marcus Mietzner from the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at the ANU, and the author of The Coalitions Presidents Make, to discuss Prabowo Subianto's clear victory in the first round of the Indonesian presidential election. We discuss...

We've known it's coming for about four years, but the Victorian government has finally implemented the final stage of legislation first passed in 2020, imposing single-member wards on all but one council across Melbourne along with many regional councils. Legislation sponsored by then-local government minister...

I have focused my analysis of the upcoming Queensland council elections on the City of Brisbane for a number of reasons. It is the most populous council in Australia, but it also has elections that are strongly partisan, with Labor, the LNP and the...

Nominations closed on Tuesday for the two Queensland state by-elections and the Queensland council elections, all to be held on March 16. I have now updated my candidate lists for my Brisbane City, Inala and Ipswich West guides. For this post I'm most interested in...