Eastern Victoria – Victoria 2018

It will be interesting to see how much profile the SFF MLCs have garnered in their 4 years to pump up their primary vote. That’s a big test of a “micro” party trying to become a “minor” party.

They certainly cannot rely on 2-4% primary vote to keep winning them seats.

Tom Cummings is the Greens Lead candidate for Eastern Victoria & ran in La Trobe in 2016.

With a Labour -DLP, Country Party and Vern Hughes all standing with virtually identical policies the question they should face is why are uou standing when others have identical policies? Why are you not all in same party?
Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson, because putting more above the line boxes greatly increases the chances one of them wins in the preference harvesting fun and games.

Benee
I understand preference harvesting but it only works when you are harvesting from outside of voting range. I just think that splitting vote before merging votes is counter productive.

You get flat out more votes by having more boxes above the line, especially when one of the feeder parties starts with the word “Labour.”

It’s pretty obvious if you think about it. Imagine the 2013 federal senate election in Victoria with only 7 candidates in 4 above the line groups.

Liberals
1. Mitch Fifield
2. Scott Ryan
3. Helen Kroger

Labor
1. Gavin Marshall
2. Jacinta Colins

Greens
1. Janet Rice

Motoring Enthusiasts
1. Ricky Muir

What would Ricky Muir’s primary vote be? 5% of the vote? Certainly nowhere near the 14.5% he crawled to on preferences in the actual election

Benee
Ricky Muir got over the line by harvesting from those who did not want majors. If
He had been only candidate of this group where would the votes have gone? As someone who would vote for Country Party, Labor-DLP or Vern Hughes I see no advantage in splitting vote and then merging it again.
Interesting point is that no one addressed the question I put what is difference between the three of them?
Andrew Jackson
apjackson2@bigpond.com

Andrew, you have no idea what the motivation was for the voters who voted for other minor parties and ended up electing Ricky Muir. You assume that their primary motivation was to prevent a major party from winning, but evidence from voters marking their own preferences in 2016 suggests that isn’t true. People support one party they like and then will often go to a major party they know, certainly not willing to support a minor party with very different principles.

If Ricky Muir had been the only micro-party candidate standing I suspect a lot of those voters would’ve preferred a major party over him.

On a big ballot paper, voters won’t have the ability to assess each candidate fully, so having multiple options on the ballot paper (and thus a chance one of them gets a good ballot draw) gives you the ability to draw in more voters.

Former AMEP MP Ricky Muir turned out to be a good federal parliamentarian until idiot Turnbull called a double dissolution election. Liberal Helen Kroger mentioned here was a dud Senator while Jane Garrett has been a great MP in Victoria’s lower house.

An article in today newspaper (15 Nov 18) states that UFU fuhrer Marshal says voters should put Garrett last on the ballot paper, what rubbish. While the MFB do a good job fighting fires for the most part these over paid firemen sit around the station playing card or cleaning equipment and mostly attend false alarms caused by idiot office workers and CBD businesses who are lax in fire prevention and building maintenance.

Ben
Firstly once again thankyou for a most informative medium
Secondly I “do not assume that the primary motivation of minor party voters is to prevent major party candidates from getting in” Most minor party voters ( at least those who voted for Country Party Aussie BAttler DLP and Katter) are socially conservative supporters of a mixed economy. I described this as Deakin Compromise a few months back. They want Arbitrated wages, govt ownership of natural monoplies, centralised marketing of farm produce, a fair go for pensioners, cheap electricity and gas. The parties describe this in different ways DLP talks about Social Justice and Distibutism, Katter is not offended to be called an agrarian socialist but in reality these are the same things. ALP and Liberals would now both prefer powe to ideological victory. I guess it is difficult for those of us driven by ideology to be enamoured by either major party but my goal is a break up of both major parties with the good men in both forming the government. Too much time taken up on talking about crime and not enough in limiting judicial failures. Too much time on Islamic terrorism and not enough on successful Islamic integration. Too much time on power stations and not enough on making electricity affordable. Government has a role in running all schools all hospitals primary, secondary and tertiary industry in a hierarchy of involvement stating at advising followed by gentle regulation increasing to heavy regulation with a final step of ownership where regulation is a failure.

My motivation is to use my preference s till it flows to the least objectionable candidate. For this reason both majors went ahead of 3 extremist candidates the last vote I cast ie One Nation were better than the Greens and the Greens were better than an ex NAZI.

The two advantages of making voters number every one of 212 boxes is that:
1) the increased informal vote will come from the politically ignorant (ALP and One Nation) and
2) the influence of the politically informed will increase
The disadvantage is that many of the politically informed are informed by the wrong informtion sources (Greens, Lyndon LaRouche or League of Rights)

Andrew Jackson
apjackson2@bigpond.com

Do you have any evidence for your claim about those supporters? There’s quite a lot of evidence in the 2016 Senate preference data to disprove your argument.

As an example, the DLP had 16,934 primary votes in the Senate in Victoria in 2016. When they were first distributed, 1896 went to Family First, but 1532 also went to Labor, 1212 to the Greens and 1184 to the LNP. That doesn’t sound like people “who did not want majors”.