The Tally Room

Over the last few days I have been frenetically trying to keep my candidate lists up to date as many candidates announce last minute, and as we started to see official nominations appear on the NSW Electoral Commission website for the September 14 NSW...

South Australia's Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission is due to publish draft boundaries this Thursday, 15 August. The boundaries will be used at the 2026 state election. Electorates need to be drawn so each seat's enrolment is within 10% of the average enrolment as of mid-2024...

We are now less than five weeks away from the NSW local government elections. This year I have profiled the 27 most populous local councils in New South Wales. This covers all councils with a population of 95,000 or more. I've added Tweed and Mid-Coast...

Nominations have closed, and been announced, for this month's Northern Territory election. The main story is the reduction in the field of candidates, with just eighty candidates running for the 25 seats. The main reason for the reduction in ballot size is due to the...

Ben is joined by Chris Terry-Enescu, British psephologist from the Ballot Box podcast, to discuss the implications of the recent UK general election for the electoral system and the party system. Chris mentioned this book: Electoral Shocks This podcast is supported by the Tally Room’s supporters...

Today I'm announcing a new project, one I haven't done before and was quite a bit of work. I have prepared profiles of the 16 most populous councils in Victoria. I'm hoping this will be the first instalment and I can do some or all...

The Victorian Electoral Matters Committee has today published their report into the last Victorian state election. While the report covers a number of matters, the main point of interest is that the committee has clearly endorsed reform to the Legislative Council electoral system, which would...

Ben is joined by Ferran Martinez i Coma from Griffith University to discuss his research on how election campaigning differs in Spain in districts electing odd or even numbers of representatives. We end up discussing more broadly the unsual impacts odd- and even-numbered district magnitudes...

Objections to the federal redistribution proposals for Western Australia and Victoria were published last week. Objections to the NSW proposal close this Friday. The Victorian objections were dominated by a large number of simple objections in opposition to the abolition of Higgins. North Sydney MP...

Ben is joined by Murray Goot to discuss the two-party-preferred vote: the history of the metric, how it is used today, how it influences how we think about our party system, and whether it still works in the more complex party system we have...