The Tally Room

Ben was joined by William Bowe from the Poll Bludger to discuss the Tasmanian state election. We run through the five state electorates one by one, and discuss what we'll be watching for on election night. This podcast is supported by the Tally Room’s supporters on...

In yesterday's post I explored some of the intra-party dynamics you get under Hare-Clark when multiple candidates from the same party are competing. In this post I wanted to map out the relative strength of different candidates from within a single party across an electorate. There's...

One of the almost unique features of Tasmania's Hare-Clark electoral system is the potential for voters to choose individual candidates over others in the same party, and on occasion achieve the outcome of an individual MP losing their seat to a fellow member of...

The trend of voters choosing to cast their votes has been progressing for a long time, but there was a major shift in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic moved a lot more voters away from casting their votes on election day. The 2020 Queensland council...

Tasmania's lower house will be expanding in size from 25 to 35 at the upcoming election. Usually when we analyse election results, a key tool is to compare the results to the last election. Swings, or changes in seat count. But with a big increase...

Yesterday I was informed of a website from Tasmanian Labor that has been used in text messages to Tasmanian voters. I don't normally comment on campaign rhetoric like this, but in this case the website name-drops me a number of times, and selectively quotes from...

Ben is joined by Alexis Pink from community radio station 4ZZZ and Andrew Messenger from the Guardian Australia to discuss the upcoming council elections across Queensland and the two state by-elections to be held on the same day. We discuss the Brisbane City Council campaign...

Tasmanian state elections often play out across a north-south divide, with the two southern electorates playing out differently than the northern remainder of the state. In this post I thought I would try and map out some of these dynamics over the last 35 years...

In cases where members are elected to represent single-member wards, or divisions, Queensland councils use the optional preferential voting (OPV) electoral system to elect members. This covers all mayoral elections, as well as council seats in most urban south-east Queensland councils. Under OPV, voters are...

Brisbane City's single-member wards lend themselves to two-party competition, but in recent decades we've seen the rise of the Greens, first by just contesting wards that had previously been two-candidate contests, and eventually by winning their first ward and increasing their vote citywide. This post...