Does incumbency help minor parties in the Victorian upper house?

When people defend group voting tickets, they often talk about the benefits of electing small parties and having a more diverse parliament. I have addressed this by arguing for an abolition of regions and thus making it easier for small parties to win without...

Why the vote shifted but the seat count didn’t

I bang on a lot about proportional representation on this website. Part of the argument for PR is about ensuring the representation of smaller parties and preventing the construction of false majorities, where a party that hasn't won a majority of the vote still...

Podcast #84: Victorian election results

Ben is joined by William Bowe from the Poll Bludger to discuss the results of the Victorian state election. This podcast is supported by the Tally Room’s supporters on Patreon. If you find this podcast worthwhile please consider giving your support. You can subscribe to this podcast...

Victoria 2022 – the state of play in the upper house

It's early days in counting for the Legislative Council, but there are already some trends emerging. The Druery alliance has been broken, with only a handful of aligned parties on track to win. Minor parties of the left are on track to win in almost...

Victoria 2022 – the next morning

Labor won a comfortable victory in yesterday's election, losing only a handful of seats against an opposition that performed poorly. By the latest count at the time of writing, Labor has won 49 seats and is ahead in another seven. The Coalition has won 24...

Election night – where to find me

Polls have now closed. I won't be trying to do a Tally Room liveblog tonight - you can find me at the Guardian liveblog. I also won't be tweeting - if I want to do my own little updates I'll do it at Mastodon -...

Election day open thread

Polls have now opened for election day for the Victorian state election. Please use this post to discuss today's events, and also tonight's results. I won't be posting a liveblog as I will be blogging at the Guardian, but I will be back with further analysis...

Victoria 2022 prediction thread

Today's post is a quick one. I've mostly finished my list of ideas for blog posts, so for today I'm just going to ask: who do you think will win? Post your thoughts in the comments below!

Record early vote suggests a minority will vote on election day

With two days of pre-poll voting to come, the statistics so far suggest that a clear majority of voters will cast their ballot before election day. The VEC is publishing daily updates on the number of people voting at pre-poll, applying for postal votes and...

Victorian voting patterns by type of vote

Last week I wrote about the growing numbers of people casting a pre-poll vote over the last few Victorian elections. For this blog post, I'm looking at how the people who use different voting methods actually vote - for which party, and whether they...