The Tally Room

During the most recent NSW council elections, I wrote repeatedly about how party systems for local councils are not the same as the state or federal party system. A different electoral system and different limits to the size of the polity tend to spit...

There are 93 seats in the NSW Legislative Assembly. While a majority of these seats will be straight-out contests between Labor and the Coalition, a sizeable share of these seats are what the Australian Electoral Commission calls 'non-classic' - where the final two-candidate-preferred count...

I have previously written about the decline in the total vote for the major parties at federal elections and Victorian state elections, and there is also a story of a decline in the major party vote in New South Wales politics, although the story...

As we commence the NSW state election campaign, there's a bit of confusion about how many seats we should credit to each party as a starting point. This is understandable considering that we've had a redistribution, a seat changing hands at a by-election, and...

When results are reported for the NSW upper house, generally there's an expectation that the primary votes mostly tell us who will win. That's mostly true, but at the last three elections there's always been one seat that went to a party that benefited...

Former Liberal minister Alan Tudge announced yesterday that he will be stepping down from parliament, thus triggering a by-election for his Melbourne-area seat of Aston. Check out the guide to the Aston by-election Aston is one of only three Liberal seats held in Melbourne proper after...

The NSW upper house is elected to represent the whole state, proportionally. I have been wondering for a little while - in the absence of any geographical divisions, where do these members tend to come from? Are certain parts of the state under-represented or...

While there has been a lot of focus on the impending referendum to create the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice at the federal level, South Australia is on track to legislate a similar body on a shorter time frame. A Voice by its nature...

We're now seven weeks out from the NSW state election, and it seemed like a good time to take down the paywall for my guide to that election. The guide features profiles of all 93 electorates, along with a profile of the Legislative Council contest. You...

I have just finished an update of my Legislative Assembly candidate list and I thought I'd pop it up here for everyone to take a look. Over the next day or two I'll make sure every seat guide has its candidate list updated too. Check...