Fear And Loathing With Victorian Upper House Preference Flows

Following the launch of Antony Green's Legislative Council calculator I've been playing around with some possible scenarios for the Victorian upper house group ticket flows.  Quite a few people are doing this and so there are a number of different estimates about what might happen out there.  What we know from the past is to expect the unexpected - we can say that it looks like preference harvesters will win several undeserved seats, but it's hard to say which ones they will be and who.  The whole exercise is incredibly sensitive to starting assumptions - one micro-party you've never heard of might get 1% instead of 0.5% and suddenly something completely different happens.  Snowballs from very low vote shares have a higher chance of crashing because of below-the-line votes, especially as voters for micro-parties, with the exception of the Liberal Democrats, are more likely to vote below the line.  In 2014 the BTL rate for most micros was in the range 8-22%.

At the last Victorian election, five candidates won seats as a result of preference-harvesting:

* In Eastern Victoria, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (2.44%) beat ALP-2 (8.68% over quota) and Green (8.23%)
* In Northern Metro, the Sex Party (2.87%) beat Labor-3 (7.06% over quota)
* In Northern Victoria, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (3.5%) beat L-NP-3 (7.84% over quota) and Greens (7.68%)
* In Western Metro, Democratic Labour Party (2.57%) beat ALP-3 (10.65% over quota) and L-NP-2 (6.90% over quota)
* In Western Victoria, Vote 1 Local Jobs (1.28%) beat Greens (9.19%)



There weren't any cases of candidates winning from well below 1%, but based on our experience of the new Senate system since, none of the above would have won had voters made their own preferencing decisions.  These parties only won because the Group Ticket Voting system created completely fake near-100% preference flows.  Perhaps, had the Senate system been implemented in Victoria before that election, some of the minor parties would have merged into larger groups and polled higher primaries, but that doesn't seem all that likely.

With the release of the new round of Group Tickets it seems that almost all parties have been involved in backroom preference-trading.  There are again tight flows between the micro-parties, largely believed to be networked by Glenn Druery, that seem designed to elect a particular winner or choice of winners in each seat.  Labor has preferenced a range of, for progressives, dubious parties above the Greens in what looks like an attempt to replace the Greens with Druery parties:

* The Aussie Battler Party, an anti-immigration populist outfit that wants to place juries of randomly selected citizens in control of many aspects of the political system, and that promotes illiberal law and order policies including indefinite sentences. This party is the latest home for long-time conservative party-hopper Vern Hughes.
* Sustainable Australia, a seemingly environmentally focused party that is actually a home for old-style pre-Tampa immigration-cutting Dick Smithery.
* The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.  Guns!
* The Liberal Democrats.  More guns!

(etc)

The Greens are far from blameless themselves, having preferenced the anti-vaccination, anti-fluoridation Health Australia Party, the aforementioned Aussie Battlers and Sussos, and also the law-and-order-loving Derryn Hinch's Justice Party all above Labor in various seats.

This basically means that if you want to vote for either Green or Labor and preference the other in the Upper House without your vote going to at least partial right-wingers or crackpots first, you have no choice but to vote below the line.  

The Liberals, for their part, seem to think that the only parties worse than Labor and the Greens are the Australian Liberty Alliance and Victorian Socialists.

Some of the micro-party preference orderings might be taken as vaguely logical (Fiona Patten's Reason Party) while others (eg Animal Justice) are simply all over the place.  I mention the Victorian Socialists (see comments) as one party that has produced an ordering that very closely reflects its likely voters' views.  The Liberal Democrat and Hinch Party orderings of the major parties and Greens jump around between individual candidates in a way designed to confuse the average voter out of having the slightest idea who is actually being preferenced and what the effect will be.

Some possible scenarios

In trying to test some ranges of possible outcomes, here were some assumptions I made:

* Labor currently seems on track to win the election with a modest swing to it, based on state polling.  I assumed this would be the case, all else being equal, and that the Labor primary might be up a shade.

* The field of micro-parties looks mostly weaker than last time, especially on the religious Right.  So even if Labor wins the election I assumed the Liberal primary would be little changed.

* Generally I gave new and unknown parties about half a percent of the vote, unless they seemed hopelessly limited in appeal (Hudson For Northern Victoria won't get a lot of votes outside Northern Victoria, if even there).

* Logos are now displayed on ballot papers.  I assumed this would reduce the strength of the link between ballot position relative to the majors and votes for the confusingly-named parties (Liberal Democrats and Labour DLP).

* I thought the vote for Labour DLP might be down somewhat as the party has lost all the MPs it formerly had at state and federal level.

* The calculator assigns votes for the Sex Party to Fiona Patten's Reason Party.  But as with the change from Family First to Australian Conservatives, the name change switches from a name with a certain appeal to low information voters to a name that is more obscure (and I also think, in Reason's case, pretentious.)  I could be wrong but Reason might not do as well as the Sex Party did, outside of Patten's home seat.

* It's hard to predict what vote Derryn Hinch's Justice Party might get without Hinch on the ballot paper.  In states outside Victoria it polled less than 1% in the 2016 election.  I think it should do quite a bit better here and have guessed 2-3%.

On my first run of this and with some subsequent fiddling, here were some possible outcomes I got:

* Eastern Metro: In my first attempt I got Transport Matters off 0.5% beating the Greens off 10.4%.  If Transport Matters dropped out early or the Liberal Democrats polled 5% off name confusion (seems unlikely) then the Liberal Democrats took the seat instead.  Either way I seemed to get a preference harvester alongside two of each major party.

* Eastern Vic: On my first attempt the Liberal Democrats off 4% beat the Greens off 8.4%.  If I reduced the Lib Dem vote, the Shooters Fishers and Farmers won off 2.4% instead.  Again I kept getting two majors apiece and a preference harvester.

* North Metro: My first attempt elected two Labor, a Liberal, a Green and one from Hinch Justice, with the latter on 2% beating ALP-3 on 10.4%.  When I tried to elect Fiona Patten instead of Hinch Justice, I found I had to jack her vote up to around 7%.  Depending on how much of that I took from the Greens, in some cases I could leave the Greens short of quota and elect both Patten and the Hinch candidate (this seems unlikely.)

[EDIT: As commenter hoddlegrid notes, and as others have confirmed on Twitter, the Victorian Socialists in this district are well above average "socialist" ballot clutter level, and seem to be running a well organised union-backed campaign with a lot of street presence and a reasonably high-profile candidate who has polled several percent in the lower house in the past.  The Socialists have poor preference flows but a strong result for them at least improves the chances of the Greens and Reason compared to Hinch Party; it seem the Socialists would need about 6% themselves for any chance of winning.  If the Greens and Patten do well it becomes more like 9%.  Anything in this range seems unlikely.  If the Hinch Party bombs out I also found chances for Animal Justice and Liberal Democrats].

* Northern Vic: My first attempt here got two of each major and a Liberal Democrat, with the latter off even 2.5% beating the Greens (8%) and Lib-3 (the same).   I had to knock the Liberal Democrat down to below 1% before they lost to Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.  Another thing to bear in mind here is that Hudson For Northern Victoria can win as well as the Lib Dems; I found he could do this off a primary of about 3%.

* SE Metro: Here I got a sane result of 3 Labor, 2 Liberal at the first attempt, and 2 Labor, 2 Liberal 1 Green was just about as easy to get.

[EDIT: David J in comments has found, and I have replicated, that if Tarang Chawla (Group D) can poll a primary of around 2%, Chawla can possibly take the third Labor seat.  Also, if the Transport Matters party can poll around 0.6-0.7%, Transport Matters can win the seat.]

* Southern Metro: On my first attempt I got an unlikely snowball with two of each major and Sustainable Australia (0.5%) beating the Greens (15.6%).  However, see note at the top (I had a crunch point where SA would need almost every preference to get over at least one major), and the snowball is very prone to collapsing early if the primary vote is low, or failing because of below the line votes.  So probably 2-2 with 1 Green was a more realistic outcome for the range of numbers I was looking at.  However if I give Sustainable Australia a non-trivial vote, over 1%, in some cases I get them up with the Greens and with Labor getting only one.

* Western Metro: Here on my first go I had 3 Labor, 1 Liberal and then Aussie Battler Party (0.5%) beating Green and Liberal-2 (each 10.5%).  If I knocked out Aussie Battler early then the Greens or in other simulations Shooters (even off 1.3%) won the seat.

* Western Victoria: The most dramatic one til last - I got a 2-2 major split with DHJP (2.5%) easily beating Greens (9.4%).  I tried cutting the Hinch candidate down to see how low I had to go to beat them and they didn't lose on the calculator until reduced to 0.32%.  [EDIT: It is also plausible for the Animal Justice Party to beat DHJP if AJP poll about 2% and get over Reason, then over Labor and hence over the Greens, though this path to victory is fragile.]

Overall the Greens seem to struggle - while North Metro might not realistically fall, their other three chances are all shaky.  Both the Liberal Democrats and Hinch Justice seem to have some very good flows, though a note of caution is required because if it is close and comes down to Below The Line votes, then the Liberal Democrats will tend to lose.  With varying degrees of likelihood I found micros possibly winning off c. 0.5% of the vote or even less in up to four seats.

These were just my experiments and others doing the same thing (with varying levels of idea what they are doing) are getting different possible outcomes.  Check the Poll Bludger thread, and also Tim Colebatch's Age piece (written before Antony Green's calculator was unveiled).  Also Antony Green has more voting advice - though I am not so sure that some of these specific disasters will actually happen as he is.  Feel free to leave exciting finds in comments!

Just Don't Vote Above The Line. For Anyone!

Voting below the line is easy in Victoria - you only need to vote 1-5 for candidates.  If you're a major party voter you can even vote for your own party's candidates and then stop if you like.  For a minor party voter, you might need to pick a few more.  Your vote won't be as powerful as if you keep on going, but even stopping at 5 is better than voting above the line.  If your vote exhausts at 5 it still doesn't help candidates with no actual voter support beat candidates with voter support, in the way that an above the line vote often will.  The best thing to do is to keep going, ranking any micro party you do not know either last or only above parties you utterly can't stand - especially if the micro has a gimmicky-sounding name like, oh, "Aussie Battler".  Numbering all the boxes below the line - if you have time - will make your vote most powerful and can never help a candidate further down on your list beat a candidate who you prefer.  (If you're short of time, feel free to leave out the second candidates from all the micro parties, since they'll never get elected anyway.)

Voting above the line instead of taking the effort to number a mere five boxes is an act of cowardice and shirking.  Willingly handing out how to vote cards that encourage voters to misdirect their preferences with a 1 above the line is on a par with giving cigarettes to children and then lighting them.  If parties are too lazy and self-interested to fix group ticket voting in the few states that still have it, maybe voters have to do it for them by making aiding and abetting preference harvesters socially unacceptable.  Just remember, everybody: friends don't let friends vote above the line.