Tasmania Redistribution: Draft Scraps The Franklin Divide

 

The much-awaited proposal redistribution of Tasmania's federal (and by normal standards, state) electoral boundaries has been published.  I discussed the challenges facing the Redistribution Committee in my piece Clark Must Expand, But Where?  In the draft proposal, the winner is "south".

The Committee (note, it is not correct to refer to the Committee as "the AEC" as two members are AEC and two are not) has proposed one of the more radical options that was considered in the process.  Somewhat against my expectations based on the large movement of electors, they've decided that the further creep of Clark into Kingston, cutting parts further south off from their urban centre, really was unsustainable and it is now time to bite the bullet.  They have recommended the southern boundaries of Clark, Lyons and Franklin as proposed by former Clarence Mayor Doug Chipman (there was a similar proposal by current Clarence Councillor James Walker).  Clark becomes Hobart City, Kingborough and the Huon Valley, Franklin becomes Clarence, Brighton, Sorell and the lower and central east coast and Lyons becomes, well, whatever that is.  In the north they've gone for the orthodox approach of Blackstone Heights and Prospect Vale into Bass, so I don't think anybody got their exact suggestion in full.  

The approach that has been taken is to give each of the three electorates an urban centre, which means Greater Hobart is cut in three with each part getting a hinterland.  Taken this way, Tasmania's cities are split up between the five divisions, rather than having one almost purely city division and one almost purely rural one.  Lyons is also less sprawling reducing the number of tiny towns any new candidate has to canvass.

As a Clark resident (just under 2 km from the proposed border with Lyons) I think that proposed neo-Clark makes a high degree of thematic sense.  It no longer has the old Hobart/Glenorchy divide with two halves that were both decidedly left-wing but socially quite different.  Most of the proposed neo-Clark links in socially with aspects of Hobart City very well - Kingston and Blackmans Bay with Taroona and Sandy Bay, the very green Channel, Bruny and far south with South Hobart/Cascades/Fern Tree and so on.  Having traditional Huon Valley forestry and farming areas in the same seat as the inner city does stick out but I expect the seat would get used to it.

Most of neo-Franklin makes a lot of sense too though as it extends up the east coast held together by a relatively minor LGA that sense becomes a little stretched; Bicheno in the same seat as Bellerive etc.  It's neo-Lyons that I still find to be rather odd.  Glenorchy is the urban centre and it connects to New Norfolk, but its connection to the Midlands is interfered with by passing through the Brighton LGA, the main point of which seems to be making it easier for me to pass through all five electorates in one day.  This is strongly driven by a concern about boundaries not crossing the Derwent River but I'd be interested to know how many Bridgewaterians (I'm sure there is some shorter lingo, Bridgies?) connect more with Clarence than they do with Glenorchy.   Probably to me this lack of direct connection of Glenorchy to much of Lyons through the highway is the most difficult part of this proposal.  This said, as I've been stressing all along, every possible solution seems to have something big wrong with it.  Omelette, eggs.  

Initial feedback on twitter is quite positive but I can't tell if the respondents are Tasmanians or not!  I've started the same not-a-poll here in the sidebar.

Political Impacts

Ben Raue and William Bowe have compiled stats on redistribution estimates.  (EDIT: See also Antony Green).  William finds that the 2PP impact (if that's still a thing in 2028) is negligible save that Lyons becomes about a point better for Labor and Clark close to the reverse.  (Ben's estimate for the Lyons improvement is larger.)  Ben's Senate analysis is really helpful in steering around all the chaos of independents (and the Green candidate withdrawing from campaigning in Franklin) - on an underlying basis Labor loses 2.4% in Clark, largely to Liberals and a little to the Greens.  Labor gains two points in Franklin where the Greens lose 4.3 and the Greens improve nearly three points in the new Lyons  at the expense of the Liberals.  

Ben also has estimates for state level where Labor seriously struggles in the new Clark, though that is partly because both David O'Byrne and Peter George ran in the ex-Franklin section, when probably now only one would run.  New Franklin is notionally good for the majors on account of a reduced independent presence on the east coast, but O'Byrne would pick up votes in Brighton and Sorell LGAs.  The Shooters Fishers and Farmers lose ground from there no longer being a single non-urban electorate though One Nation might look at the new Lyons still with interest as they are capable of getting votes in northern Glenorchy.   

For parties there would be some interesting decisions to be made.  For instance based on local support levels for particular candidates the Liberals could shuffle Eric Abetz from Franklin to Clark, Jane Howlett from Lyons to Franklin and move Madeleine Ogilvie from Clark to Lyons to have an incumbent with connection to Glenorchy.  Labor could do the same thing with Dean Winter, Josh Willie and Jen Butler.  For the Greens there's a question whether they would keep Rosalie Woodruff in Franklin, or given her historic support base in the new Clark section run both her and Vica Bayley in Clark to shore up their chances of two seats and find a new candidate for Franklin.   Another factor here is that Tabatha Badger is currently contesting the Greens' Senate preselection, and if she wins that then Alastair Allan who lives in the Lyons part of the new Franklin may become an MP for the current Lyons.  

For independents Kristie Johnston is the former Mayor of Glenorchy, but over time her support has shifted into Hobart City (in part because Hobart City hates the planned AFL stadium but it's not really an issue in Glenorchy).  If Peter George ran again, his support is slightly stronger in the new Clark, and Johnston and George could be treading on each others' toes a lot if they ran in the same seat, but the Labor vote is so weak there that it's plausible both would still win - creating a rerun of Franklin 2025 where out of two independents, two Labor and two Greens somebody has to lose.  Overall the redistribution is a nuisance for several of the current state non-Greens crossbenchers, Johnston and Carlo Di Falco probably most of all.  

Federally, Ben has given an estimated margin of IND vs ALP 9.2% for Andrew Wilkie in Clark, based on simply giving him Peter George's 2CP results in the old Franklin.  I also think Wilkie would do better than that, but I will have a close look at how much better if the proposal is adopted, including studying how various modelling methods fared in the seats where incumbent teals moved into new territory.  

The other disclaimer I should add regarding the boundaries applying to state level is that there have been grumblings from some supporters of both major parties about the current 5x7 seat system, accompanied by very weak arguments.  The federal boundaries will flow on to state if nothing changes with the state electoral system, but I can't yet be absolutely certain that's the case. I would hope any attempt to change the system to either 7x5 or 35x1, at least, would get short shrift in the independent-dominated Legislative Council given that no party has a mandate for such vandalism.  

The Redistribution Committee has also indicated possible interest in renaming Franklin on the grounds that its namesake is extensively commemorated and relatively irrelevant and the change in the seat's shape is a major one, but it was not persuaded by any of the suggested alternative names that have been offered, in terms of connection to the new electorate.  An anomoly if the electorate name Franklin is kept is that the town of Franklin will now be in Clark.  The hunt is on for a persuasive and preferably pronounceable new name for the seat.  

What happens now?

Firstly there is now a feedback phase where people who are displeased by the proposed redistribution can make comments (which I will probably cover in an update to this article), and then a phase for comments on the comments.  People can also in this process support the proposed boundaries or suggest minor amendments.  (It is not clear what those would be given the current draft's near-total adherence to LGA boundaries).  It sometimes happens that radical redraw proposals encounter a tsunami of objections and are withdrawn, but we will see if this happens.  My recommendation to anyone objecting to the draft is to say what you would do instead and explain you consider it better.

There has been some misreporting to suggest that voters will receive new MPs representing them once the redistribution completes (if the proposal is adopted).  The current boundaries and representative arrangements remain in place until an election is held on the new boundaries (whatever they are), and this includes for any federal by-elections that may be held in that time.  

Why Did One Nation Win 11 Seats In Queensland 1998 But None In 1998 Federal?

The One Nation party (which I am on the verge of restyling Wuss Nation after its sobbing about its poor supporters being traumatised by filling out ballot papers) has been attacking compulsory preferential voting in the leadup to the South Australian election.

Linked into this I came across a narrative from Pauline Hanson which I thought deserved detailed examination.  Interviewed on Sky (and yet again, where else) Hanson told the tale of how in 1998 her party won eleven seats from scratch in the 1998 Queensland election and noted that it was optional preferential voting.  Then she moved on to the 1998 federal election where although her party won over a million votes, all the other parties recommended preferences against One Nation and they didn't win any seats.  Famously she lost Blair where the major parties cross-recommended against her.  

She doesn't in this excerpt mention what became of those eleven Queensland seats.  Every single one of those MPs quit the party or the parliament by the end of the 1998-2001 term, though One Nation did retain two of those seats and win a third with different candidates.    But my interest here is, is there really any causal link between the current OPV/CPV debate and what happened in those two elections?  Or are the explanations different?  A warning that this article is very numbery and has been graded Wonk Factor 4/5.

Preference flows in Queensland 1998

In Queensland 1998 One Nation won eleven seats and made the final two but lost in 22 others.  The Liberal and National parties recommended preferences to One Nation and Labor recommended preferences against them.  In general, One Nation therefore gained on preferences in seats where their final-two opponent was Labor and lost ground on preferences where Labor was eliminated.

Had the election had compulsory preferencing, the preference flows would have been stronger.  Seats that might have had different results under compulsory preferencing, therefore, are seats where Labor was eliminated and One Nation won narrowly, and seats where Labor was One Nation's final two opponent and One Nation were competitive but lost.

There were three seats that finished as One Nation vs National with One Nation winning - Barambah, Lockyer and Tablelands.  The standard method for estimating a result under CPV for these cases is to assume that the votes that were exhausted would flow at the same rate as the votes that flowed as preferences.  On that basis One Nation would still have won Barambah and (by less than 1%) Lockyer but would have very clearly lost in Tablelands.

Fourteen seats finished Labor vs One Nation with Labor winning, but most of these were safe Labor seats where Labor won on primaries or nearly so and would have clearly won in any system.  One interesting exception is Bundaberg, which Labor won 52-48.  My compulsory preferences estimate closes this to 50.4-49.6.  The other vaguely close ones are Cairns (52.3 in to 51.7) and Kallangur (54.0 to 51.9).

So on the surface, with compulsory preferencing One Nation would have won ten seats in Queensland 1998 and probably not got eleven, which is hardly a big difference.  But even this is missing something very important.

That is that One Nation were only able to win as many seats under OPV as they did because the Coalition and One Nation cross-recommended preferences in (at least tacitly) exactly the kind of preference deal that One Nation 2026 model is now whinging about.  One Nation used Coalition preferences to overtake and beat Labor in Caboolture, Hervey Bay, Ipswich West, Mulgrave, Thuringowa and Whitsunday.  Had the Coalition parties run an open (just vote 1) how to vote card in these seats and had that caused even a quarter of their voters to switch from preferencing One Nation to exhaust, One Nation would have not won any of these seats - and the impact of such a card would most likely have been higher.  

The strategy of recommending preferences to One Nation dogged the Borbidge government on the campaign trail and contributed to its loss.  While the Coalition has recently been recommending preferences to One Nation in CPV elections as the political costs of doing so have reduced, would it really do so in an OPV election today knowing that it would cop flak for giving preferences to One Nation when it doesn't even need to?  And knowing that One Nation voters follow cards at a far lower rate than Coalition voters so it wouldn't even get very much back?  

1998 federal

Given that One Nation won 12.4% of seats in the 1998 Queensland election, why did it not win even a few seats at the 1998 federal election?  All and sundry recommending preferences against it didn't help, but there was a much simpler reason - its primary vote in Queensland crashed.

One Nation polled 22.7% in the 1998 Queensland election, which would have been in the high 23s had it contested every seat.  In 1998 Queensland federal, One Nation contested every seat and polled 14.3%.

As a consequence of this, One Nation only made the final two in one Queensland seat (Blair), which it lost, to be discussed further below.  But had One Nation polled as strongly as in the Queensland state election then even by uniform swing it would have won Blair very easily, and made a bunch of final-twos including leading on primaries in Wide Bay.  On the uniform swing model it still would have only won Blair because of unfriendly preferences.  But the pattern is that when One Nation has a good election, it surges more in its good seats than its bad ones.  Based on the modelling I am doing for South Australia, which is in turn largely derived from the vote spread in Queensland 1998, it's very likely that had One Nation matched their state vote in the 1998 federal election, they would have polled something like 40.8% in Wide Bay, which probably would have just got them over the line (not by very much), while Hanson would have won Blair on first preferences.

So even with compulsory preferences running against them, had One Nation held their state election vote they may well have won two federal seats.

What about if they had held their state vote and the system had been OPV and the Coalition had run "just vote 1" instead of preferencing against them?  In that case they would probably have gained one more, Hinkler - where on my model the three parties would have finished up pretty level with the Nationals most likely excluded in third.  In almost all the other candidate cases Labor would be eliminated in third which would mean One Nation loses under either OPV or CPV unless they have a hefty primary lead.  

Another factor is simply that the state seats were smaller and more variable in underlying support for One Nation.  A federal seat would contain the equivalent of three or four state seats.  Even if there was still enough support for One Nation to win in the same state seats, there would be cases where One Nation won in one state seat but lost too heavily in the others to win the federal seats.  The redistribution of Hanson's original seat of Oxley was a case in point - strong One Nation areas ended up split between two electorates and mixed in with less strong areas.  

Blair 1998 - Would OPV Have Saved Hanson? Dubious!

It's been generally received wisdom that Pauline Hanson probably would have won Blair in 1998 if only preferences were optional.  Eyeballing it from the perspective of later OPV preference flows this looks obvious.  There's a simple argument that Hanson would have won - the winner needed a 66.9% preference flow and got 74.9%.  Assuming the same flow of non-exhausting votes then an exhaust rate of anything over 32.1% would cause Hanson to win, and with what we know about exhaust and OPV it would surely have been higher?  But there are two things wrong with this.  Firstly 32.1% is not greatly different to the exhaust rates in Queensland 1998 in the days before "just vote 1".  Secondly there is one candidate in Blair 1998 who can't be modelled with anything near that exhaust rate: the National.

In Blair 1998 Pauline Hanson polled 35.97%, Labor 25.29%, the Liberals' Cameron Thompson 21.69% and the Nationals 10.25%.  Hanson's large primary vote lead here is an illusion, because the Coalition had two candidates.  By the three-candidate stage it was Hanson (ON) 38.91 Thompson (Lib) 31.78 Clarke (ALP) 29.30.  73.8% of preferences from the Clarke exclusion flowed to Thompson and Thompson won 53.4-46.6.

To look at what might have happened assuming OPV and that Labor recommended preferences against One Nation (as they did in the state election where it worked fine for them so they would have done it again) I can look at the 1998 Queensland election for cases where the final two was Coalition vs One Nation and the One Nation primary was similarly large.  There were twelve of these, conveniently and spookily with an average ON primary of ... 35.97%.

Less conveniently in Barambah the ALP candidate wasn't thrown, so I've kicked out Maroochydore (with the weakest One Nation primary and as it happens a very strong preference flow from Labor to National) from the sample to balance that out.  

On that basis, the average Labor 3CP exclusion flow in the remaining ten seats was 45.9% National, 18.7% One Nation, 35.4% exhaust.  The 71.1% flow of those preferences that did flow is pretty similar to the actual 73.8% flow in Blair.

If this OPV preference flow is applied to the 3CP point in the federal election, Hanson loses 49.53-50.47.  However, the primary vote numbers at the 3CP point wouldn't have been quite the same, because of exhaust at earlier stages of the count.  And the crucial difference with the state counts here is that the federal contest had both a Liberal and a National running.  If the federal seat was OPV the National wouldn't have run.  The National's voters would generally have voted so we can treat their preference flow as essentially zero exhaust, barring the preferences they received from other parties.  For other minor candidates, in Queensland state 1998 the exhaust rate without reaching the top three in such seats with multiple minor candidates was about 35%.

Bumping the minor candidate exhaust rate up to 40% because of the larger number of minor candidates but applying no exhaust to the Nationals primary votes, I estimate the 3CP point under OPV in this seat would have been Hanson 39.40 Thompson 31.58 Clarke 29.02.  And Hanson still loses in this model ... by 49 votes.

That's way too close for a reliable conclusion and any number of things could be out in such a model.  The exhaust rate off minor candidates might be higher (there were six of them), some Nats voters might have not bothered voting, and so on.  On the other hand, applying a small exhaust rate off the Nats preference flow for those preferences that reached them from elsewhere ignores the fact that the 1 Nats votes were probably stronger for the Liberals.  

And it may well be that Thompson as a Liberal would have got a better Labor preference flow than a generic National did in Queensland state 1998.  Indeed the evidence on both the 2CP and 3CP flows suggests rather strongly that he did, so I think that he would have won under OPV anyway.  Him winning also follows from the observations about overall exhaust flow and the impact of the Nationals candidate from that at the top of this section.

In any case the whole idea that Hanson wuz robbed by compulsory preferencing combined with a major party gangup is actually much shakier than I previously thought that it was.  The major reason she lost is that her primary vote was not that high and Labor were in third.  

In summary:

1. All but one of One Nation's wins in Queensland 1998 (state) had nothing to do with the preferencing system.

2. Several of One Nation's wins under OPV in the state election only happened because the Coalition recommended preferences to them, and under a just-vote-1 strategy informed by this election these wins wouldn't have happened.

3. One Nation would have won at least one seat with a good chance of two in the 1998 federal election had their vote been as high as the state election.

4. Even without compulsory preferences, it's not clear Pauline Hanson would have won Blair anyway.

Tall Cories: Bernardi's Bunkum About Preferences

I was going to leave a comment about this until the next SA roundup but I feel that Cory Bernardi's nonsense about compulsory preferential voting should be dealt with a little faster than that.  Normally writing a whole article about what may well have just been a two-word misspeak might be considered mountain/molehill territory.  However Bernardi's statement has been reported uncritically by at least one media source, circulated by the party, and strangest by far, given a free pass on social media by some people who have brains.  

One Nation have also claimed off the back of Bernardi's comments that "we will make preference deals a thing of the past by giving voters the choice to distribute their preferences or not. "  But in fact optional preferencing doesn't do that.  It reduces the rate of deals as some parties choose not to recommend preferences, but many parties do still recommend preferences (which is what people often mean when they say "preference deals") and may negotiate about these decisions (actual deals).  There were several accusations about "preference deals" in the 2023 NSW state election.  

Bernardi in an interview from Sky (where else) said this re One Nation when asked about what preferencing decisions One Nation might engage with for the upcoming SA election:

One of our actual key policies this year is to make compulsory preferential voting actually optional, so that people don’t have to, or are not forced to, vote for a party that is against their values, or is against their lifestyle or how they want to live their lives.

Now, firstly here, the hide of him!  This is Cory Bernardi spouting the virtues of people not having to have the slightest imposition that might be claimed to cut across their values, their lifestyle or how they want to live their lives. Cory Bernardi is best known for trying to stop same-sex couples from being allowed to get married.  

And secondly, the hide of him, again! This is Cory Bernardi who, seven months after being re-elected as a Liberal, ratted shamelessly and set up something called Australian Conservatives.  Did he ask those who voted 1 Liberal as to whether they minded having part of their vote in effect elect a party that was for sure against many of their values? (Not that they deserve that much sympathy).  

So we will not be lectured about respecting voter values by this man.  And indeed if I was voting in SA I would number every box on the Legislative Council ballot to put him absolutely last, because I don't forget.  Not that it would make any difference, but I must ask those who think his statement was OK, would I really then be "voting for" the person I put second-last?  

It's going to be eight years like fingernails dragging down a blackboard for SA voters of good taste to have Bernardi back in politics (if he lasts that long) and you all have my profoundest sympathies.  

The Misuse Of "Vote For"

But I do want to address Bernardi's rationale, because it is typical of the misleading emotional tactics employed by many OPV supporters, CPV objectors and so on.   That's not to say there are no valid objections to CPV (primarily, way too high uninteded informal voting rates), just that this is totally not one of them. And OPV is a superficially appealling but very overrated solution.  There are no shortage of better alternatives.

I called out much the same claim for the same reasons when it was made by David Crisafulli in the leadup to the Queensland election.  The core problem here is that Bernardi is using the term "vote for" to taint CPV with the idea that it is forcing someone to express positive approval of a candidate they do not like, which would if true be a morally bad thing to do.

But that simply isn't what "voting for" means.  You vote for the candidate you put 1.  You preference the candidates you put in high positions, particularly the candidate you put 2.  In a two-party context, you preference whichever major you put above the other.  You certainly don't "vote for" the candidate you put last, as despite putting a number in their box you've actually done everything in your power to vote against them and your vote can never reach them.  And it doesn't make the remotest sense to say you've "voted for" the candidate you put second last either, since the only thing you haven't done to vote against them is to put one even worse candidate below them.  For instance if there are 10 candidates in a seat, there are 45 possible final-two pairings, and your vote will only reach this candidate in one of those.  Nobody much when asked "who did you vote for in the election?" reels off their entire list of preferences.  They reply "I voted for X" or maybe "I voted for X and preferenced Y".

What one is really doing with candidates near the bottom of the ballot is not "voting for" them, it is ranking them.  And on that basis, the moral outrage Bernardi, Crisafulli et al are playing for with this loaded "vote for" nonsense just collapses, because what can be so bad about giving a bad candidate a bad ranking?  

In fact, your vote only gets down to the bad candidates if the good and mediocre candidates have all been excluded, and at this point a bad candidate is certain to win anyway, so you'd not actually assist any cause you care about by leaving a few nasties unranked.  Indeed, if some of the nasties are nastier than others, if you do so you could be helping the nastiest nasty to win.  

It is true that when you rank one bad candidate above another, that can cause your preference to reach that candidate.  It contributes to their final vote tally after preferences - but that doesn't make it a vote for them.  Rather it's a vote that reaches them, although you tried your best to send it to others.  But the typical audience for Bernardi's claim is a voter who hates both Labor and the Greens, and there won't be many seats (if any) in SA where a vote putting those two parties in the last two spots hits either of them.  

Such claims are also often applied to voters who hate both the major parties and put them in the last two spots, but I think such voters are actually quite rare.  Fringe right voters rarely find the Coalition worse than very disappointing and minor left voters ditto re Labor.   And plenty of either rank the major party on their side in the first few places.  

Those coming at the issue from a left perspective lately often raise the example of voters who can't stand the Coalition but are disgusted by Labor's stance or lack thereof on Gaza as a case of voters who should be able to withhold their preferences from either major, as a form of conscientious semi-objection to the voting process.  But it seems from Senate voting that where they had the chance to do so in 2025, these voters largely didn't do it anyway.  The main party supported by such voters was the Greens, but the 2PP rate of Senate exhaustion from Greens voters in fact went down substantially in every state (and was below 10% everywhere but Queensland) though these voters could have easily avoided ranking either major if there was an upsurge in desire to do so.  (The drop was probably largely caused by a reduction in the number of columns.)  

It is not new that One Nation have this position; I have seen them express support for OPV on their website going back several years.  However, whinging about preferences of any kind from the non-Coalition right has got particularly feral in the wake of the 2025 federal election, which is bizarre given that One Nation won two Senate seats on semi-optional preferences from behind.  It is so common to see One Nation supporters support first past the post that if the party ever did win government I wonder if that base would let it get away with stopping at OPV.  (Not that they would know the difference anyway. I have corrected numerous posts that hail Crisafulli for "scrapping preferential voting" when he is actually just saying that his government will make it optional.)  This continues even while we're looking at polling numbers like the latest SA DemosAU (Labor 44 One Nation 19 Liberal 18) in which the further one moves away from full preferences the worse the right could be obliterated.

Can false claims on this matter be illegal?

Bernardi's comment has in effect made the electoral system an election issue, however small the scale on which it does so.  This claim was something he said in a media interview, not party advertising.  But if One Nation attempts to repeat this claim in campaign advertising, they could be in breach of the law.

The reason for this is that South Australia has fully fledged truth in electoral advertising legislation.  Under S 113(2) of the South Australian Electoral Act, during the campaign period:

" A person who authorises, causes or permits the publication of an electoral advertisement (an "advertiser") is guilty of an offence if the advertisement contains a statement purporting to be a statement of fact that is inaccurate and misleading to a material extent."

Bernardi's statement is certainly inaccurate - indeed as read literally it's flat out false.  And it is materially misleading too because even if one accepts that when he says "vote for" he cannot really mean "vote for", it still implies that the current system forces voters to take a generally positive action in respect of a party they deeply oppose.  In fact the system does no such thing.  

Although Bernardi's claim misleads about the voting system, I doubt it would be found to fall within the narrower laws elsewhere re "misleading a voter in relation to the casting of their vote".  It is a false statement about the voting system, but not one that goes obviously to the mechanics of the voting process.  And this is not saying such advertising would be prosecuted in SA either, the normal initial response of electoral commissions to material that even looks like it might be in breach being just a firm request not to do it again.  

Added: The Wimpiness Of One Nation!

The One Nation twitter account now has a long statement up backing up its support for OPV and I'd like to quote this one in full: 

"What many Australians do not find fair is being forced to number every box on a ballot paper, including having to choose between the final two candidates when they may strongly reject both.

Under compulsory preferential voting, you are required to help decide between parties you may equally oppose. For many One Nation voters, the Greens and Labor are two toxic and repulsive choices. In inner city contests it often comes down to exactly that choice. Greens or Labor.

Being compelled to direct your vote to one of them, even if it is your last preference, means your ballot ultimately lands in a pile that helps elect a party you fundamentally disagree with. That does not sit right with a lot of people.

An optional preferential voting system allows Australians to rank only the parties they genuinely support. If there are parties they consider equally toxic, they can simply leave them off. Their vote would not be used to prop up someone they reject.

That is fair. That respects voter intent. That is democracy. Democracy should not be about making a choice between who they dislike the most. For many people, being forced into that position actually turns them off democratic participation."

Now firstly, if the voter equally opposes two candidates, then it doesn't matter to them which one wins (if those two are even the final two anyway) and so there's no reason for them to care which one they put above the other.  The Royal Australian Mint produces calibrated high-tech devices that can help them with the making of such choices.  

Secondly only 3.3% of all One Nation voters in 2025 even voted in a seat that finished Labor vs Greens, and by the time I take out those who can be easily shown to have put one of these above the Liberals, that figure drops to at most 2.4% (and some of these votes were cast in Grayndler and Sydney where the winners won on primaries anyway).  But these voters had already strongly rejected these two parties by leaving them to the final two positions.   If they both deserve to go last then surely putting one of them there is better than putting none.

But thirdly what I find most notable about all this is its wimpiness!  One Nation is notorious for inflammatory statements that have offended any number of ethnic and other groups in our community yet here we are told that One Nation voters (men among whom often masquerade as rough-hewn alpha males on social media)  have feelings about putting numbers in order on a piece of paper and are too weak to handle it.  Nooo not choosing which of Labor and the Greens to put last!  Save us from this terror!

No, Wuss Nation.  Harden up and number all the boxes.  

EMRS: What Happens When You Take A Mess And Then Throw In One Nation?

EMRS Lib 29 (-5) ALP 23 (-2) Green 15 (-2) IND 15 (-4) ON 14 (new) others 4 (-1)

Seat estimate off this poll if election "held now" Lib 10-13 ALP 9-10 Grn 5 ON 4 IND 4-5 SFF 0-1

EMRS have released basic details of the first Tasmanian voting intention poll to include One Nation in the readout (I will add a link to the full report when it is up).  One Nation are in the process of registering for state elections but are not registered yet.  This follows a federal poll for the state they released on Friday.  

The addition of One Nation has immediately seen them record a substantial 14%, but this is well below the 24% they recorded in the Tasmanian federal poll, with the Liberal vote in particular holding up much better.  One Nation's gains have come from across the board, but especially from a government that was already down on its election result in the previous poll, meaning that when this poll is compared with the election, most of the 14 points is at the expense of the Government which is down 11.  Labor and the Greens are not so far off their state marker, Independents may in effect be down somewhat given that Tasmanian state polls offering a generic "independent" option tend to overestimate election support for independents by about 4 points.

South Australia 2026: What Can The Right Still Win?

Polling for SA election is very lopsided with right very fragmented

Estimate if Newspoll is correct: approx 1 Liberal and 3 One Nation seats

Off YouGov: approx 4 Liberal and 1-2 One Nation seats

Polling may moderate by election day

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I've been hoping for enough material to start substantial coverage of the South Australian election and it's finally arrived with polls by Newspoll and YouGov.  Prior to that there had been a string of extremely lopsided polls last year, and a Fox&Hedgehog poll in a similar vein early last week.  The YouGov poll pretty much replicates Fox&Hedgehog's finding that the conservative side is split in two with the Liberals bleeding greatly to One Nation while Labor enjoys a massive lead.  The Newspoll is even worse for the Liberals and could (if it happened) even wipe them out completely.  My estimate is that on average for the Newspoll voting intentions the Liberals would win one seat and One Nation about three, and for the YouGov poll that the Liberals might manage three or four and One Nation just one or two; it's possible there will be about as many (or more) independents as right-party MPs.  However there is a lot still to unfold with where One Nation support goes during the campaign and whether the Liberals can improve.  

What is suggested by the polls so far really aint supposed to happen.  The Malinauskas government is only at the end of its first term, but it is federally dragged, and not even by a first term federal government at that.  John Bannon in 1985 was the last State Premier to get a seat share swing at all in that circumstance.  But these are incredible times in polling and Peter Malinauskas is very popular (with a +40 Newspoll netsat).  At the same time we have what looks like a severe disruption if not a realignment on the right nationally and the SA Libs are a disaster zone.   One has to roll one's eyes repeatedly at news that "Liberal strategists" are hoping for a sympathy vote they don't deserve and trying to argue that a viable opposition is needed.  That worked so well for the similarly hapless outfit that was reduced to two seats in WA 2021.  

Farrer By-Election 2026

Farrer (Lib vs IND 6.2%, Lib vs ALP 12.9%)
By-Election date TBD, perhaps late April/early May
Cause of by-election resignation of Sussan Ley (Lib)

The rolling of Sussan Ley as leader of a floundering Liberal Party has led to a fascinating by-election for her seat of Farrer.  This guide will be updated from time to time with any polling news and with items of interest re candidates etc.  I aim to provide live coverage but I will be overseas for two weeks in late April and may or may not be able to do so if the by-election is on then,  

Farrer

Much of the electoral history of Farrer has been told in Antony Green's post here.  It has had just four MPs since 1949, three Liberals and a National.  Until very recently it had only ever been of the slightest interest when vacant.  Tim Fischer easily won the seat for the Nationals at the 1984 general election.  On his retirement in 2001 Sussan Ley gained it for the Liberals by 206 votes after preferences, the result being so close only because Labor ran and recommended preferences to the Nationals.

The seat has never been 2PP-competitive, only sneaking into technical 2PP-marginal territory by a handful of votes in 1972.  It saw its first serious independent attempt when Albury Mayor Kevin Mack ran against Ley in 2019.  This attempt was so hyped that betting agencies gave Mack a roughly even chance of winning but Ley won very easily, clearing 50% on primaries with a 60.9% 2CP.  

Until the 2025 election Ley had the longest active streak of wins on first preferences in the parliament (seven) but the challenge from Voices of Farrer and Climate200 endorsed Michelle Milthorpe severely dented Ley's primary vote and Ley finished up with only a 6.2% margin after preferences.  However, Farrer remained one of the most conservative seats in the country, ranking 11th on Coalition House of Reps 2PP down from 8th in 2022.  Some might think its 2PP being near the top of the list was down to Ley's personal vote but this is actually not true at all; on above the line Senate 2PP Farrer was in fact the Coalition's fourth best seat nationwide. 

Who's in the mix?

So far there are five possibly competitive forces in Farrer.  Comments re candidates will be added when known but this is not intended as a candidate guide.  I do not believe Labor will be competitive if they run and I cannot see much reason for them to risk embarrassment by doing so.  Independents will miss that portion of their Labor preferences that comes from how to vote cards, but it is also possible in such a crowded field that an ALP run could squeeze out independents and stop them winning.

* Liberals.  Will contest.  Justin Clancy (MP for Albury (Lib 16.3%)) has been reported as a possible Liberal candidate; he would have to resign his state seat to contest.

* Nationals.  Will contest.

* One Nation.  Will contest. Sooner than they might have liked, One Nation faces a potential get off the pot moment.  If their national polling is still as high as at present following the change in Liberal leadership then they would be expected to poll strongly in this by-election and failure to do so would damage their momentum and raise some questions about their standing in the polls.

* Milthorpe (IND).  Will contest. Michelle Milthorpe immediately announced she would run for Farrer again.  

* Dalton (IND) (Unconfirmed)  Helen Dalton is the state MP for the district of Murray, which is the western end of Farrer.  She won the seat in 2019 as an endorsed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate but running a largely independent-style campaign.  She quit said party in 2022 over water issues, and was returned as an independent in 2023 with an outright majority in a field of ten candidates.  Dalton was already canvassing a possible run for Farrer in 2028.  She would have to resign her state seat to contest.  

Also-rans 

Interesting by-elections often attract large fields of uncompetitive micro-party and obscure independent candidates, some of whom are often paper candidates from nowhere near the electorate.  Farrer could easily have a total field well into double figures.

* The Greens will run according to a post by upper house state MP Amanda Cohn.  

* Family First (v 2) immediately announced they would re-run Rebecca Scriven who polled 2.15% in 2025.

* Gerard Rennick People First announced they were running, to the vivid interest of nobody; they came last with 2.02% in 2025.  

* The unregistered Riverina State Party (which supports a new state covering the Victorian/NSW border areas) has expressed interest in running but this may be contingent on its registration being approved in time, which appears extremely unlikely.  The party submitted a list of 1646 putative members to the AEC in late October 2025 but has not been advertised yet.  The advertising phase followed by AEC assessment takes more than a month and party registration freezes once the writ is issued for the by-election.  (I've heard they may have passed AEC checking prior to advertising.)

I am aware of at least one possible minor independent but in the case of stray Facebook posts I like to wait until things get more concrete before reporting them.  

Prospects

This section will be edited where needed to update it but for the moment this promises to be a messy four or five way battle where it is not obvious who the final two will be.  I am assuming Labor will not run; they can't win and might be embarrassed by finishing fourth or worse if they do.  It might in theory be a case where the exclusion order is not obvious after election night, or it might end up as something more prosaic with a clear enough final two or three.  The AEC will have a challenging task in picking which candidate pair to use for the notional two-candidate count on the night (they may go with Liberal vs Milthorpe just because those were the final two last time, unless there is information to suggest something different).  

Farrer is a relatively strong seat for One Nation, but not super strong.  Their Reps primary of just an average 6.6% is misleading because it would have been affected by Milthorpe and the relatively large field.  In the Senate, One Nation polled 9.96% in Farrer, compared to a NSW total of 6.06%.  

At the 2025 election, minor right preferences did not assist Ley vs Milthorpe, with One Nation, Family First and GRPF breaking only slightly to her and Trumpet of Patriots and Shooters Fishers and Farmers preferences breaking to Milthorpe.  This suggests a lot of the voters in Farrer while anti-Labor aren't wildly pro-Coalition either and are looking for any alternative ahead of the majors (something we also saw with strong ON flows to independents in the 2022 SA election).  I'd expect on that basis that any independents that run and One Nation are to a more than obvious degree fishing in the same pond.  Perhaps this will make it hard for One Nation to get a really high primary.

Probably the most dangerous opponent on preferences if she runs and makes the final two would be Dalton as an independent as she has the right combination of right-wing and indie cred to gain in any matchup.  Whether she would actually make the final two as an independent with her profile much stronger in one end of the electorate is the question.  

Dalton as a One Nation candidate [EDIT: ruled out, she is not standing for preselection] would have a hybrid appeal that could make the Coalition parties' task very difficult.  Questions would be asked: do One Nation actually care less about water issues?  (I'm told that Malcolm Roberts does.)  She has quit the Shooters and retained her state seat massively, is there any reason to believe she would stay with One Nation if elected? (Then again given One Nation's historically woeful MP retention rates, that question should be asked very loudly re any candidate the party runs.)

As I start this article my feeling is that the final two won't both be Coalition.  

All kinds of modelling and calculations may be entered into as to what might occur here but in a rural electorate and with this being a by-election and not a general, I suspect a lot of it will be about candidate quality and the outcome could therefore be quite different from any modelling attempt.  I will have more comments when the field settles down.  

Polls etc

At the time of writing (15 Feb) no seat polls have been reported, nor are any useful at this time with the field yet to settle.

A projection tweeted by the 6 News @auspoll6 Twitter account (with One Nation very narrowly winning) was incorrectly claimed to be a poll by some accounts despite being explicitly labelled as a projection based off Newspoll and as not being a by-election prediction.  The tweet has now been deleted following criticism, including from Pyxis who conduct Newspoll.  What was not stated in the tweet was that the projection (with One Nation narrowly beating Liberal) was not even a uniform swing projection off Newspoll but was a projection of what would happen in Farrer if a general election was held now based on various (as far as I'm aware) unpublished assumptions about how the primary votes found by Newspoll would be reflected in particular seats.  There is a danger even if someone grasps that such a model is a projection of them thinking that there is one particular way to project a seat off a national poll, or even that projecting a seat off a national poll is any kind of reliable exercise.  

Other projections such as MRP outputs are of limited value too.  MRP outputs are meant to be collectively indicative of groups of seat types, and not reliable for a single seat at the best of times.  But also they are not designed for by-elections.  For a by-election what we want to see is seat-specific polling, preferably neutrally commissioned, transparent and certainly without any "aided vote" preambles.

Betting

Amusingly, seat betting has been seen.  Seat betting is not reliably predictive.  As of 16 Feb an early offering was NAT 2.00 Ind 2.99 ON 4.50 Lib 4.75 ALP 34 Greens 67.  

23 Feb: Ind 2.50 Nat 2.60 ON 3.50 Lib 7 ALP 51 Greens 101,

More will be added through the campaign.  

DemosAU: Status Quo-ish Poll, But Is There An Elephant Outside The Room?

DemosAU: Liberal 35 Labor 23 Greens 15 IND 17 SF+F 4 others 6

Although poll finds Liberals down five on election, most likely result based off this poll would be no seat change from the 2025 election

The new quarterly Tasmanian state DemosAU poll is out (link to Pulse coverage), with the pollster joining EMRS in regularly canvassing Tasmanian state politics being a most welcome development.  It's my habit to write a separate article for every new Tasmanian poll that appears at least outside campaign season, but I don't have a huge amount to say about this one.  It's actually quite similar to the November EMRS with primaries of 35-23-15-17-10 compared with 34-25-17-19-5.  

The slight improvement of the Independent vote compared to the election is of no consequence given that Tasmanian polls tend to overestimate the Independent vote anyway.  The Liberals have dropped 5% on the primary vote, which on a uniform swing places Braddon in danger to the Greens (given they beat the Greens by 5.3 points there in 2025) but I would expect some of the losses to go to candidates whose preferences would help the Liberals more than the Greens.  As for the Labor primary, hmmm ... 23%, that's not good.  DemosAU does have some tendency in polls elsewhere to have major parties a bit lower than other polls, but at this stage compared to EMRS this is not apparent here.

Not-A-Poll Reset 1 of 2026: Ley Rolled

Well at least she lasted longer than Alexander Downer.

As expected by a strong plurality of voters in my sidebar Not-A-Poll, Sussan Ley, who replaced Peter Dutton, was the next of the canvassed leaders to depart.  However for a while prior to the 2025 Tasmanian election, Jeremy Rockliff was in the lead.  Rockliff would have got a fair few more votes except that I closed off the poll while the Tasmanian election was being resolved.  This is something I do so people don't get credit for voting for a leader who was in the process of losing an election in the count on the night, but in Rockliff's case the uncertainty about whether he had survived dragged on for over a month.  In recent weeks almost all the action has been on Ley, who between 28 and 31 Jan got 37 votes in a row, but there was still the odd flash of dissent (someone voted for Chris Minns on Tuesday!)

This is Not-A-Poll's fifth successful prediction in the last six changes, improving the overall record for this series to 7/14.  

The Low Impact Of Independent Preferences In Labor's 2025 Federal Win

At the 2025 federal election, more votes that were 1 One Nation or 1 Trumpet of Patriots (combined) finished up with Labor candidates as preferences than votes that were 1 Independent!

Among the various forms of whinging and nonsense I continue to see on social media about the election result, one of the commonest is that Labor were elected on "Greens and teal preference deals".  

Labor were, of course, ahead on primaries in 86 seats and would have won in any system (though well short of a majority without single-seat electorates) but the blaming of teals for the strength of their win reflects some limitations of looking at overall preference flows instead of examining the results seat by seat.

If one looks at the overall 2PP flow by party it appears that independents (particularly teals) were a huge contributor to the size of Labor's 2PP win and so must have had a lot to do with them winning so many seats.  After Labor's 5.35 million primaries and 1.67 million preferences from the Greens, independents (756K preferences) are easily the third biggest contributor, way ahead of the minority of preferences assigned to Labor from One Nation candidates (253K).