21

Refuting self-interested garbage in the SMH

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on February 17, 2016

In yesterday’s Herald, Heath Aston ran an ‘exclusive‘ publishing supposed modelling from a couple of so-called “veteran players in minor party preference negotiations” claiming that Senate GVT reform would deliver the Coalition a majority in the Senate.

There’s a lot of massive problems with this prediction, and I’ll try to lay them out.

At the end I will apply some of the same logic, but using real polling data and come up with my own less sensationalised conclusion, which suggests a Coalition win would lead to Xenophon balance of power, but if Labor recovered to a winnable position then the Greens would likely win the balance of power.

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7

Fixed four year terms across Australia

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on February 16, 2016

I’m currently working on my guide for the Brisbane City Council election, as well as updating my ward map of Queensland, both for the local government election on March 19.

On the same day as that election, Queenslanders will be voting in a constitutional referendum, which would fix state elections to be held on the same date, and extend the term from three years to four.

If this referendum is successful, the only remaining elected body in Australia running on three-year terms will be the federal Parliament, and all state and territory parliaments other than Tasmania will have put in place fixed four-terms in their state constitutions.

If I read the proposed change correctly, the first scheduled fixed-term election in Queensland would take place in October 2018, which would put the three biggest states in Australia on a schedule where all three would take place within five months from October to March every four years, starting in 2018/19. As someone who appreciates some lead-time before elections, I can’t say I’m looking forward to these three big elections basically happening simultaneously on a semi-permanent basis.

UPDATE: Thanks to Edward and Michael in comments who pointed out that the amendment would not take effect until after the next election, so if the election is in 2017 then future elections will be in 2020, 2024, 2028 etc, and if it’s in 2018 they’ll be in 2021, 2025, etc. Either way Queensland elections would be significantly separated from Victoria and New South Wales in time.

Thanks to these changes, we now have reasonably predictable timelines for all non-federal elections in Australia, and we can plot them out on a timetable which I’ve included below the fold.

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27

Senate voting reform looks set to go ahead

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on February 12, 2016

According to a report in this morning’s Guardian, the Coalition, the Greens and Nick Xenophon appear close to an agreement on Senate voting reform. There’s also an accompanying media release from Lee Rhiannon.

The proposed plan, put to the government by the Greens, would abolish group voting tickets (the mechanism whereby preferences flow according to pre-lodged party preference decisions when voters vote ‘1’ above the line for a party), and would allow voters to number their own preferences for parties above the line or for candidates below the line.

This proposal is very similar to that proposed unanimously by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM), with a few exceptions:

  • Voters would be expected to number at least six boxes above the line or twelve boxes below the line. As I understand it, there would be a savings provision so votes that don’t number enough boxes would still count.
  • The Greens don’t propose any changes to party registration rules, whereas JSCEM had proposed raising the threshold for party registration from 500 members to 1500 members.

While the article is written as if agreement has been reached, it’s unclear whether the Coalition has agreed to the Greens’ demand that party registration be taken out of the package. It’s also unclear where Labor stands on the proposal – while some senior Labor senators are opposed, there are others in the party who support Senate reform.

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0

Ireland 2016 – map available

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on February 4, 2016

I was requested to update my Irish constituency map for the upcoming general election. I’m not planning any further coverage of the Irish election, which is due at the end of February, but if you’re interested you can download the map here.

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3

NSW and WA redistributions – updated maps

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on January 20, 2016

We are now nearing the end of the federal redistribution process which precedes the next federal election.

We had redistributions in New South Wales, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.

The AEC has a curious process where they announce the final boundaries but do not provide the maps and data which allow people to see the precise boundaries. This extra information is usually provided about a month later.

In the ACT, the final boundaries were identical to the draft boundaries, so no further maps are necessary (although the final data is expected next week). In Western Australia, the final maps were released yesterday, and I’ll post them further down in this post.

In New South Wales, the final boundaries were announced last Friday, without any maps. In most places it’s reasonably clear what boundaries they were using (although a few were confusing). I’ve done my best to put together a new map – I think it’s likely to be accurate but there may be a few errors (in particular the Hume/Whitlam boundary and the Parkes/New England boundary) and I will update it when the official data is released in late February.

Download the NSW final-ish electoral map.

Download the WA final electoral map.

Download the ACT final electoral map.

Below the fold you can see interactive maps for NSW and WA, although I haven’t added any other data to the maps, just the boundaries.

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26

NSW council amalgamations – proposals released

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on December 22, 2015

Screen Shot 2015-12-21 at 5.09.31 pmThe NSW government has released its plans for council amalgamations following a lengthy of period of reviews and submissions by local councils.

The government is proposing cutting the number of councils in the Sydney region from 43 to 25, as well as merging other councils in rural NSW.

In this post I’m going to focus on the changes to the region stretching from Port Stephens to Shoalhaven, covering the vast bulk of New South Wales, including about 6 million residents.

This region includes 53 councils, and the NSW government proposes reducing this to 32 councils, with only 14 councils unaffected.

I’ve done some analysis of the political make-up of each new local government area, examining allegations of gerrymandering, and posting some maps showing the stats for each proposed new council.

You can download the Google Earth map of the proposed boundaries here.

You can also download the dataset I used here.

My map does not cover rural areas – it only stretches from Port Stephens to Shoalhaven.

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0

WA state redistribution – map finalised

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on December 13, 2015

It’s a couple of weeks late, but I’ve now completed my Google Earth boundary map of the new WA state electoral boundaries.

Download the map here.

You can also download the 2017 map for the Legislative Council.

If you want to understand more about the redistribution, you can see Antony Green’s estimates of the new seat margins at the ABC website.

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5

North Sydney by-election – results wrap

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on December 8, 2015

The Liberal Party has retained the seat of North Sydney at Saturday’s by-election despite a substantial swing on primary votes.

At the time of writing, Liberal candidate Trent Zimmerman is on 47.8% (down 13.3%) with independent Stephen Ruff second on 18.8% and the Greens’ Arthur Chesterfield-Evans on 16% (up 0.7%).

While there was a substantial swing against the Liberal Party, it doesn’t appear to have aided the centre-left in defeating Zimmerman. When you add together the vote for Labor and the Greens in 2013, it was almost 1% higher than the combined vote for Ruff and the Greens on Saturday.

Instead, the vote leached to a number of other parties including the Sustainable Population Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Christian Democratic Party and the Arts Party. Having said that, some of those parties can be counted as ‘progressive’ so we’ll probably see a slight uptick in Ruff’s TCP compared to Labor’s TPP in 2013.

I’ve split the booths into the same four areas as in the pre-election guide, based on the four local government areas. We only have two-candidate-preferred vote-counts for about half the booths, so I’ve just focused on the primary votes.

The Liberal primary vote ranged from just under 46% in North Sydney and Lane Cove to 48% in Willoughby and 54% in Hunters Hill.

Independent Ruff got a very similar vote across most of the seat, polling around 19% in Willoughby, North Sydney and Lane Cove, but his vote dropped to 15.5% in Hunters Hill.

The Greens vote ranged from 14% in Hunters Hill to 18% in North Sydney and Lane Cove.

Voter group LIB % IND % GRN % Total votes % of votes
Willoughby 48.2 18.9 15.1 23,877 39.8
North Sydney 45.5 19.0 18.1 14,168 23.6
Lane Cove 45.8 19.3 17.9 14,241 23.8
Hunters Hill 54.1 15.5 14.0 5,817 9.7
Other votes 54.6 18.4 11.7 1,843 3.1

Below the fold I’ve posted the booth maps showing the primary vote for the three main candidates and the primary vote swings for the Liberal Party and the Greens.

Liberal primary votes at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Liberal primary votes at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Primary votes for independent candidate Stephen Ruff at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Primary votes for independent candidate Stephen Ruff at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Greens primary votes at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Greens primary votes at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Liberal primary vote swings at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Liberal primary vote swings at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Greens primary vote swings at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

Greens primary vote swings at the 2015 North Sydney by-election.

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18

North Sydney by-election live

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on December 5, 2015

8:29pm – The Liberal vote has increased to 47.7% and the Ruff vote has dropped to 18.8%, with about two-thirds of booths reporting.

7:55pm – Just under half the booths have reported, and the Liberal Party’s Trent Zimmerman is leading on just under 47% of the primary vote, with independent Stephen Ruff in second place on 20%. It’s unlikely that Ruff will be able to overtake Zimmerman’s lead on preferences.

6:00pm – Polls have just closed in the North Sydney federal by-election. I probably won’t be actively covering the results tonight but I’ll post major updates here, and you can discuss the results in the comments below.

4

ACT redistribution finalised

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on November 24, 2015

The Australian Electoral Commission today announced the final boundaries for the ACT at the next federal election. They haven’t made any changes to the draft boundaries announced in September.

This means that the northern seat of Fraser will be renamed ‘Fenner’ after virologist Frank Fenner, freeing up the former name for a Victorian seat to be renamed after former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.

Antony Green estimates that the ALP’s margin in Canberra will increase from 7% to 7.4%, and will stay the same in Fraser/Fenner, at 12.6%.

In other news, the AEC recently announced its final boundaries for Western Australia. Frustratingly, the AEC is delaying releasing the final detailed maps for both WA and the ACT until January. It’s not a big deal in the ACT where there are no changes, but the final announcement for WA refers to a number of “minor boundary changes” which aren’t explained, making it impossible to be sure of the new boundaries, although the substantive changes have been announced. For this reason, I’ll wait until January before completing the WA federal map.

You can download the ACT map here.

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