Changing voting patterns slow down declaration of seats
Most people who read this website would have a reasonably good sense of the formal process of counting ballots: the counting of a primary vote, a two-candidate-preferred count, and the full distribution of preferences, where each candidate is excluded one-at-a-time until there are only...
Podcast #76: Federal election wrap-up
Ben is joined by William Bowe from the Poll Bludger to wrap up the 2022 federal election. We discuss the undecided Senate races, the close House races, and the paths to victory for the Coalition and chances for future hung parliaments.
This podcast is supported...
Is the Coalition one party, two parties or four parties?
There's been a lot of chatter online in the last few days challenging calculations about the low primary vote for the newly-elected Labor government, not by disputing that figure, but by arguing that it is higher than the vote for the Liberal Party. It's...
How might an election have played out under PR?
On Wednesday I published a blog post arguing that the House of Representatives electoral system needs to change to proportional representation, but I stayed away from any discussion of specific models. Since then, there's been a lot of discussion of various models, so I...
Time to talk about PR
There's been a lot of chatter about the low primary vote for the major parties, and Labor in particular polling their lowest primary vote in many decades.
There are plenty of excuses to explain why the vote is so low, such as strategic voting for...
Defining and mapping the teal vote
There has been a lot of talk about the "teal vote" at this last election, identifying a movement of independents almost like a party, and trying to gauge levels of support for their agenda.
In a sense this is doomed to failure. This group shares...
The Coalition’s potential paths back to power
Since the election, there have been numerous arguments from right-wing Liberal Party figures that the party should give up on winning back the inner city seats they have lost, and instead look elsewhere to rebuild their numbers.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott published an op-ed...
Metropolitan Australia in power
This isn't the first time I've discussed the significant shift away from the Coalition in urban Australia, but in today's post I wanted to zoom out a little and look at the historical perspective, and look at how much more polarised Australia has become...
Tasmania moves to expand lower house
The new Tasmanian premier, Jeremy Rockliff, announced on Wednesday that the government will proceed with long-discussed plans to expand the size of the House of Assembly from 25 to 35.
This is taking place a quarter century after the Assembly shrunk in size as an...