Antony Green's Election Blog

Should 'Liberal' and 'Labor' be Quarantined as Political Party Names?

This morning's Sydney Morning Herald and The Age report that the government is considering changing the Electoral Act to quarantine the names 'Liberal' and 'Labor' to prevent minor parties piggybacking on the long established name recognition of the major parties.

The move is a reaction to the success of the Liberal Democrats at the 2013 NSW Senate election, when the party drew the first column on the ballot paper and polled 9.5%, putting at risk the election of third placed Liberal Senator Arthur Sinodinos.

Tasmanian Election Candidates Background 2014

For all information on the 2014 Tasmanian election including details and profiles of candidates visit my Tasmanian election website at http://www.abc.net.au/news/tas-election-2014/

Sorry for this strange post but Google seems to find everything I post on my blog but can't find my Tasmanian election site.

Record Short Voting Window for Redcliffe By-election

It has passed with little public comment, but the Redcliffe by-election timetable includes the shortest period for postal and pre-poll voting that I have ever seen.

Instead of the usual 17-18 day period between the close of nominations and polling day, the Queensland government is allowing only nine days between the close of nominations and polling day.

This creates problems for anyone who has lodged a postal vote application and is travelling or wants to vote while overseas. Nothing can be posted before 10 February, but it must be received and filled in in by polling day. It is an odd situation where longer is allowed for the return of postal votes (10 days) than for the sending out of postal votes (9 days).

There are also only five days allowed for pre-poll and declared institution voting, half the usual period.

Average Swings at Federal By-elections 1983-2013

Since 1983, the average swing against the government of the day in by-elections that finished as two-party contests has been 5.1 percentage points. The average swing against first term governments was a smaller 1.7 percentage points. The swing has been against the government at six of the eight first term two-party by-elections held since 1983.

2013 Federal Election Offcuts

Recently I was writing a book chapter on the 2013 Federal election results. As always happens, paragraphs you have carefully constructed need to be sacrificed to fit within the specified word limit, and to permit the retention of more substantial parts of the chapter.

Thankfully, blogs are a useful place to publish article off cuts, so here are some spare thoughts on the results of the 2013 Federal election.

2014 South Australian Electoral Pendulum

On Saturday 15 March South Australia goes to the polls with the Labor Party struggling to win re-election after 12 years in office.

Next week I hope to publish my election site for the South Australian election. In the mean time I am publishing the electoral pendulum the ABC will be using for the 2014 election, all margins re-calculated to take account of the 2012 redistribution.

I am publishing the pendulum now to provide an explanation of why the ABC will not be using the pendulum previously published by the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission (EDBC).

I explain below the pendulum why my calculations differ from those published by the EDBC and also why the ABC will be using my estimates.

2014 Tasmanian Election Guide Published

With the Tasmanian election now set for Saturday 15 March, my ABC election guide has been published at http://www.abc.net.au/news/tas-election-2014/

There's lots more to come on the site. Candidate profiles should be added next week with more information on where the key contests are.

According the the timetable published on the Tasmanian Electoral Commission's website, writs will be issued on 19 February, nominations will close on 27 February and be released on 28 February, with polling day two weeks later on Saturday 15 March. The electoral rolls will close with the issue of writs on 19 February

Soon to come, my South Australian Election Guide.

Timing and Causes of Federal By-elections 1992-2014

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, has today issued writs for a by-election to be held in the inner-Brisbane seat of Griffith. Polling day for the by-election will be 8 February and the by-election has been caused by the resignation of former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

You can read my background on the Griffith by-election and candidates via this link.

The table below shows the timing of all House of Represenatives by-elections since 1992. Had the Griffith by-election not been called today, it would have created the longest gap between vacancy and by-election in the last two decades. At 78 days, the period of vacancy for Griffith is slightly shorter than the 80 days for Gippsland (2008) and 81 days for Aston (2001).

The Remarkable Path to Victory of Wayne Dropulich

The most astonishing result of the 2013 Australian election was the extra-ordinary election of Wayne Dropulich of the Australian Sports Party in the Western Australia Senate.

With a first preference vote for his party of just 0.23%, it took an astonshing sequence of exclusions and preference flows to allow Mr Dropulich to increase his vote more than fifty fold to reach the quota of 14.3%. He was elected to fill the fifth seat ahead of the Greens who had polled 9.5% of the first preference vote.

At this stage whether Mr Dropulich will take his Senate seat depends on proceedings before the Court of Disputed Returns. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has petitioned the Court to void the result and order a new election for the WA Senate.

As will be outlined below, Mr Dropulich was initially defeated on the distribution of preferences performed after the initially tally of all first preferences. After the AEC permitted a re-count, Mr Dropulich was elected on the distribution of preferences that followed the completion of the second count.

However, 1,370 ballot papers could not be located for the re-count and these were not included in the second count and distribution of preferences. If the tally of the missing votes from the first count were added to the second count, the result would change again, with a critical one vote difference at a crucial point in the count resulting in Mr Dropulich failing to be elected.

Having been duly declared elected, Mr Dropulich is entitled to be sworn in as a Senator on 1 July if the Court has not decided the matter before then, or if the Court chooses to let the second count excluding the missing votes stand. If the Court orders a fresh election, Mr Dropulich would no longer be entitled to his Senate seat. If the Court does not issue orders for a fresh election until after 1 July, Mr Dropulich would be entitled to hold his seat until a judgment is given.

What was remarkable about Mr Dropulich's victory was how a party that finished 21st out of the 27 parties on the ballot paper managed to get elected. Of the 20 parties that contributed ticket votes to his quota for election, 15 polled more votes than the Australian Sports Party.

The path by which Mr Dropulich passed those 15 parties and gained their preferences was perilous. At three points in the count Mr Dropulich was the second lowest polling candidate remaining, and on each occasion he picked up preferences from the excluded candidate that allowed him remain in the count by avoiding last place.

Comparative Rules on Registering Political Parties

In my last post I illustrated the surge in party regsistrations that took place ahead of the 2013 election. (You can read the post here.)

Today comes news that the Palmer United Party has applied for registration to contest the 2014 Tasmanian election. In a process used only in Tasmania, the names and addresses of the 100 members on whom the party is relying for registration have been published in today's Tasmanian Government Gazette. (You can find the details here.)

So I thought it worth highlighting some of the differences between the Commonwealth, State and Territory registration procedures. The table below is taken from Annex 8 of the Rudd government's 'Electoral Reform Green paper: Strengthening Australia's Democracy'. It was published in September 2009 so there may have been changes to rules in some states.

I've included details under three headings, on the membership requirements, registration review process and requirements for party constitutions.

The Growth in the Number of Registered Political Parties

Despite political parties having been integral to the nation's politics since Federation, it was not until 1984 that party names first appeared on national ballot papers.

From 1901 to 1983, the full names of candidates were listed in alphabetic order with no party affiliation. One of the oddities of this was that candidates seemed to be disproportionately drawn from names that began with letters in the first half of the alphabet. The Democratic Labor Party had a wonderful ability to find candidates whose name started with 'A' or 'B', so ensuring they headed the ballot paper and gained the advantage of the donkey vote.

The suite of changes introduced before the 1984 election included a random draw for position on the ballot paper to eliminate alphabetic bias in candidate nomination; to allow candidates to have their known name rather than full name on the ballot paper; and the inclusion of party names on ballot papers.

(Random column draw had already been introduced for the Senate in 1940 after the famous Labor 'four A's' ticket in NSW at the 1937 Senate election, nominating candidates Amour, Armstrong, Arthur and Ashley to ensure the party received the first column on the ballot paper.)