26

Don’t like senators winning with 77 primary votes? Here’s how to fix it

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on August 6, 2016

There’s been a lot of attention over the last few days on the newly elected One Nation senator from Queensland, Malcolm Roberts. His election was a bit of a surprise, whereas we were confident that Pauline Hanson would win her seat, and her two other Senate colleagues were predicted as likely to win since election night.

There’s a lot to pick over about Roberts’ record, but a lot of the focus has been on the fact that he received only 77 primary votes – less than any other successful candidate.

I actually think there is a real problem with our Senate voting system which is exposed by Roberts’ tiny primary vote, but it’s not the one that most media has focused on. This problem isn’t unique to Malcolm Roberts. The reality is most senators, from major and minor parties, receive very few personal votes, and rely almost entirely on voters preferencing according to their party’s ticket to win a seat.

It is remarkable that someone won a seat off only 77 personal primary votes, but I would argue that it isn’t significantly different to the many major party candidates elected on a few thousand votes in large states.

The phenomenon of unpopular candidates winning seats with no public profile is not limited to One Nation – the major parties have a history of gifting Senate seats to party hacks who couldn’t win a seat in the House of Representatives. It doesn’t have to be this way.

In this article, I’ll explain the broader issue, and what I think can solve it.

Read the rest of this entry »

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0

ACT 2016 – the guide

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 29, 2016

Screen Shot 2016-07-28 at 9.11.40 amVoters in the Australian Capital Territory go to the polls on October 15 to elect a new Legislative Assembly.

The current 17-member assembly will be replaced by an enlarged 25-member assembly. To achieve this, two new electorates called Murrumbidgee and Yerrabi have been added, and the central electorate of Molonglo has been shrunk and renamed Kurrajong.

I have completed a full guide for each of the five electorates.

Read the guide here

As usual, you can comment on each seat’s guide.

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3

Senate preferences – unpacking the data

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 29, 2016

One of the exciting things about the new Senate voting system is that we are on the verge of gaining a lot of new data on how people preference. The AEC has released the full dataset of Senate preferences for the last few elections, but the vast majority of preferences followed pre-registered tickets, so the data was less interesting.

This time, everyone chooses their own preferences, and it appears that the vast majority of voters have marked their own preferences. Using this massive dataset we can do a lot of things to learn more about how voters preference, how many follow how-to-vote cards, and how they preference if they don’t. We can also see how these trends vary between seats, states and booths.

I haven’t had time to do any of this at the moment, but some others have done some cool things with the data. I just wanted to shout out to these people, and then address a possible problem with the method of deciding which senators get six-year terms.

David Barry, who does a lot of cool things with election data at his website, has put together a preference explorer. For voters who voted above the line (most of whom numbered six boxes), you can see how many people followed any particular preference flow.

Grahame Bowland has made his own software which takes the AEC preference data and runs his own count, to verify the accuracy of the AEC count. So far the Tasmanian count has passed the test. His page shows how the count progressed in a more user-friendly way than the official AEC PDF file.

Finally, there was some discussion last night around the interpretation of the section of the electoral act which deals with the special count to identify the top-six senators in each state (section 282).

Under section 282, a special count is conducted between the twelve candidates who have been elected from each state. Any votes which give a first preference for anyone other than these twelve candidates is distributed to one of them, and if there is no preference for an elected candidate, the vote is treated as informal. A new quota is struck as 1/7 of the remaining votes, and a new count is conducted. The Senate is then free to use the results of this count, if they choose, to determine who gets a six-year term and who gets a three-year term.

Grahame Bowland and Dean Ashley (who has built his own version of the counting software) both attempted to do a special recount as specified under section 282, but have discovered an ambiguity which makes it unclear who gets elected.

Dean goes into much more detail at his blog, but the short explanation is that it is unclear whether a below-the-line vote which is originally formal, and has a preference for at least one of the elected candidates, but has less than six preferences for elected candidates, is treated as formal in the recount.

It seems likely to me that any vote that was formal stays formal, as long as there is someone to receive the preference – but I can’t say the definitively from my reading of the legislation.

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13

Tasmanian Senate button-push – summary

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 28, 2016

I’ve got a piece prepared for the Guardian today which discusses the Tasmanian Senate result but I had some thoughts that didn’t fit in to include here.

Firstly, the challenge in winning a seat from below the line isn’t just in gaining enough primary votes to be a contender. On primary votes, Richard Colbeck looked like he was in a strong position to win a seat. He was actually on track to win the tenth seat at the point where there were 24 candidates still racing for the last four seats.

Neither Colbeck or Singh received a single above the line vote. Not one. Colbeck was knocked out before Bushby was elected, so he wasn’t able to receive any. Singh was elected just before Bilyk, on preferences from Colbeck.

Colbeck was successively overtaken by Bushby, then Bilyk, then McKim, then finally McCulloch. Singh only survived because she was close enough to a quota to stay ahead of the pack, and to limp across the line with below-the-line preferences.

As long as we have above-the-line voting, this will remain a significant hurdle for any insurgent candidate. Ideally, they need the candidates ahead of them to drop out of the race early to open up room for them to gain preferences, because it’s hard to see any candidate getting close to the much higher half-Senate quota on their own steam. Singh wouldn’t have won a seat if this was a half-Senate election.

The second thing to note is that preferences are critical. Before this election we relied on tremendous speculation about how an election might work under this new voting system. Some suggested that all votes would exhaust, and it would become a “first past the post” race. That has well-and-truly proven to be wrong. I’m personally surprised by how few votes exhausted in Tasmania, and how close the final seat was to a full quota.

Less than 2.8% of votes exhausted. The last seat went to a candidate on more than 80% of a quota. Over 85% of above-the-line votes were numbered 1-6. It appears that a similar phenomenon is taking place in other states, although you’d expect that more votes will end up in the exhaust pile in states with bigger ballots.

Considering this information we have, we need to assume that a lot of preferences will decide the last seats in every state.

Gee wouldn’t it be nice to have daily interim distributions of preferences, as they do in ACT territory elections!

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0

Double NSW elections – the guide

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 22, 2016

Screen Shot 2016-07-22 at 4.08.43 pm

There are two New South Wales state seats which are due to hold by-elections this year, after the incumbent MPs resigned to run (successfully) in the federal election.

Labor MP Linda Burney resigned from the inner-west Sydney seat of Canterbury to run for Barton, and Nationals MP Andrew Gee resigned from the central west NSW seat of Orange to run for Calare.

I don’t know when these elections will be due, but it will be some time this year.

I’ve completed guides for both seats.

Click here for Canterbury

Click here for Orange

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18

QLD redistribution – the numbers

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 21, 2016

Screen Shot 2016-07-21 at 4.44.44 pmQueensland is about to dive into a redistribution of state electorates, to update the existing electoral map which was created in the lead up to the 2009 election.

Queensland currently has 89 electorates, but will be adding four additional seats for the next election, thanks to legislation passed earlier this year. For this reason, most existing electorates are above the required average for the new electoral map.

The electorates are required to be roughly in line with the average enrolment as of 2016, and the average projected enrolment as of 2022. The following table shows the quotas in each region of the state.

Seat Seats 2016 quotas 2022 quotas
Brisbane North 16 16.56 16.42
Brisbane South 20 20.12 19.53
Central QLD 11 11.32 11.09
Gold Coast 10 11.00 11.31
North QLD 11 11.42 11.38
SE QLD 10 10.84 11.60
Sunshine Coast 8 8.80 8.94
Western QLD 3 2.94 2.73

It appears that three of the four new seats will be added in the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, and in those parts of South-East Queensland outside of Brisbane (such as Ipswich, which is growing fast).

Below the fold I’ve posted a map and run through the likely impact on each region. Read the rest of this entry »

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2

Map update – ward maps for NSW and Victoria

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 19, 2016

Screen Shot 2016-07-18 at 5.46.39 pm

As we get close to the conclusion of the federal election, I’ve started work on some upcoming elections.

There will be council elections in New South Wales in September this year, and in Victoria in October. These elections will cover the whole of Victoria, and roughly half of all NSW councils. Those NSW councils up for election in 2016 are those unaffected by the council amalgamations. Those which have been amalgamated (or who escape amalgamation) are due to have elections in September next year.

I’ve now completed my ward map of Victoria.

I’ve also completed a local government area map of NSW showing the amalgamated councils and, where no decision has yet been taken, the proposed new council.

I’ve also completed a ward map of NSW for all of those councils with confirmed wards. This map includes wards for all of those councils which have elections in 2016, as well as wards for all of those new councils which have been formally created.

For those new councils already formally created, the NSW state government announced new ward boundaries at the same time as the amalgamations were announced. There is a series of councils where the state government has indicated in-principle support for amalgamation pending court challenges, or where no decision has yet been taken, so no wards have yet been announced for these councils.

The Hills Shire is a special case. It won’t be amalgamated, but has lost its southern edge to Parramatta, which means it will require new wards. Those wards have not yet been decided.

I will keep updating the local government area and ward maps of New South Wales as council amalgamations are finalised in the lead-up to the 2017 elections.

I will return with more analysis of these 2016 council elections as we get closer to election day.

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2

Toowoomba South results

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 16, 2016

Voters in the Queensland state seat of Toowoomba South voted today in a by-election to succeed Liberal National MP John McVeigh, who had resigned from the seat to run (successfully) for the federal seat of Groom.

I’d taken the night off after the last two weeks of counting so wasn’t able to cover it live, but there’s a few interesting things to look at in the result.

It’s the first election in Queensland state politics since the move back to compulsory preferences. This has caused an increase in the informal rate from 2.5% in 2015 to 3.3% today.

There was a drop in the LNP vote, but LNP candidate David Janetzki should win comfortably. In second place is former Toowoomba mayor Di Thorley, running as an independent. Thorley polled 35.6% of the primary vote, which is impressive for an independent, but it’s only slightly more than Labor polled in 2015, and Thorley isn’t facing Labor opposition this year.

Preferences haven’t been distributed tonight, but Janetzki should comfortably win the seat.

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31

Close seats – two weeks in

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 16, 2016

It’s now been two weeks since polls opened, and we are now getting very close to a conclusion of the House of Representatives count.

There is only one conventional seat still in play, which is Herbert. There will also be news today in Melbourne Ports which may either make the seat a serious seat in play or make it a clear Labor seat.

Herbert

The Liberal National Party, at the time of writing late on Friday night, led by 12 votes in Herbert.

There are 200 absent votes outstanding. Labor has won 51.5% of these votes so far. If the remaining votes break the same way, Labor will gain six votes.

There are 399 prepoll votes outstanding. The LNP has won 53.5% of these votes so far. If the remaining votes break the same way, the LNP will gain 27 votes.

There are at least 44 postal votes remaining, with yesterday being the deadline for postal votes to be received. The LNP won 56.6% of the postal votes counted so far. Assuming there are no postal votes to be processed, 56.6% of the remaining votes would give the LNP an additional five-vote lead.

There are 446 provisional votes outstanding. Many provisional votes turn out to be not valid, and thus are not counted. If there are the same number of valid votes as in 2013 (320 votes), then there would be 154 votes. Labor won 60.8% of those votes cast so far, and if this continues this would give Labor a 30-vote lead.

So that’s 36 votes gained by Labor amongst absent and provisional votes, and 32 votes gained by the LNP amongst prepoll and postal votes. That’s a change of four votes in favour of Labor, which would leave the LNP with a lead of four votes.

“This is too close to call” seems a massive understatement.

Melbourne Ports

Up until now we haven’t had any information about whether the Greens are gaining enough preferences to overtake Labor for second place, apart from vague scrutineer reports. If the Greens overtake Labor, the current Labor-Liberal two-party-preferred count would become redundant, and either Liberal or Green will win the seat off Labor.

I’ve heard that the AEC will today be conducting an indicative three-candidate-preferred count between Labor, Liberal and Greens in Melbourne Ports to identify which candidates are in the top two. If Labor does not reach the top two, presumably we will need a fresh two-party-preferred count between Liberal and Greens to determine who is leading in the race to win the seat.

I expect that we’ll know more before the end of the day.

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22

Close seats – Thursday morning update

By
Ben Raue
– Posted on July 14, 2016

We’re getting close to the end! In this update, I am calling two more seats for Labor, leaving only one seat up for grabs.

This leaves a total of:

  • 76 – Coalition
  • 68 – Labor
  • 5 – Others
  • 1 – undecided
Seat Absent Provisional Pre-poll Postal Current Labor lead Projected Labor lead
Cowan 2219 0 2774 216 1030 728
Herbert 276 969 867 1098 -34 -196
Hindmarsh 2644 1571 489 791 617 889

Cowan

There are still about 5000 absent and prepoll votes in Cowan. Labor has a substantial 1030-vote lead. Labor has only polled 45% of the prepoll vote, which is the reason why I’m expecting a drop in the Labor lead, but Labor should still win. This seat is called for Labor.

Herbert

There are very few votes left in Herbert, but the race is still extremely close. Most of the remaining votes are prepoll and postal votes. Labor has won 46% of the prepoll vote and 43% of the postal vote, which is why the model suggests the LNP will increase their lead. If Labor could win 50% in both these vote categories they would likely win a slim victory, but that seems unlikely.

Hindmarsh

Most remaining votes in Hindmarsh are absent votes, and Labor has won 56% of these votes up until now. Because of this, Labor is on track to increase their lead. Called for Labor.

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