Who would’ve won without GVTs?
We now have an increasing sample size of elections conducted using single transferable vote with above-the-line voting but no group voting tickets: NSW since 2003, the Senate since 2016, and South Australia's upper house since 2018.
This makes it possible to analyse the results of...
How did upper house preferences play out in 2018?
I've talked a bunch about the problems with group voting tickets in the upper house and the need for people to undermine the system by voting below the line, but today I thought I would explore what played out in 2018: who won the...
Podcast #81: Introduction to the Victorian election
Ben is joined by Benita Kolovos from the Guardian Australia and Geoff Robinson from Deakin University to discuss the upcoming Victorian state election. We set the scene, looking at the major issues which have defined the last four years and this campaign, the position...
The Prahran paradox
The Greens won the seat of Prahran from third place on the primary vote in 2014. They won it again in 2018, again from third place. Yet in 2022 it's quite plausible the Greens could lose the seat despite potentially increasing their primary vote...
The non-classic surge in Victoria
Politics in Victoria has been gradually becoming more multipolar over time, with a dropping vote for the major parties and an increasing presence for a variety of minor parties. Despite this trend, the vast majority of single-member electorates for parliamentary chambers like the Victorian...
The declining major party vote in Victoria
One of the major stories of the recent federal election was the share of the vote for the major parties (defined here as Labor, Liberal and Nationals), and how it has been declining for decades, with a big drop in 2022.
I decided to look...
Friends don’t let friends vote above the line in Victoria
If you're voting in the Victorian state election, you should vote below the line on your Legislative Council ballot paper. While the party how-to-votes will undoubtedly tell you to vote above the line, there is absolutely no reason why you need to do that.
Voting...
Group voting tickets – here we go again
I feel like I've been banging on about group voting tickets for a long time, but with the upcoming Victorian election again featuring this anti-democratic feature for its upper house elections, I thought I needed to summarise some of the worst problems with this...