This article is mainly a resource page for studying the preference flows of the Greens, One Nation and United Australia after the election. It is often difficult to find how-to-vote card material online after elections, but where a party's recommendations vary between seats, it can be useful for getting a handle on how many of that party's voters copied the card. It's not always that simple, because (for instance) an independent who the Greens choose to recommend preferences to is usually one their supporters would have liked anyway. But there are some interesting cases with One Nation and UAP at this election.
I should add the usual disclaimer that most voters don't actually copy how-to-vote cards. For minor parties it appears to be around 10-15% of their voters in the Reps and even fewer in the Senate. Not only do minor party voters think for themselves, but they're less likely to be handed a card in the first place.
And I should add the strong disclaimer that how to vote cards are only recommendations. No matter where a party puts another party on the card, the voters for that party decide where to send their preferences.
Additions and corrections welcome. In the case of UAP I'm especially interested in sightings of cards that put significant independents or Labor above the Liberals.
Greens
The Greens were claiming on their website that "The Greens have put the Liberals, Palmer’s United Australia Party or One Nation last across every seat in Australia" but this isn't quite true. For whatever reasons they've issued an open how-to-vote recommendation for Clark, which is firmly occupied by Andrew Wilkie, who was twice a Greens candidate prior to his 2010 election as an independent. When I drew attention to this the false claim was at least temporarily removed with the open HTV in Clark remaining up.
In many seats the Greens have placed micro-parties such as Fusion, Animal Justice, TNL, Victorian Socialists and Indigenous-Aboriginal Party of Australia above Labor. I expect these parties to get excluded before the Greens in every case. The Greens have preferenced the Local Party (an unknown quantity) above Labor in Braddon and Franklin (in Braddon the Local Party might plausibly outpoll them, though I doubt it.) The Greens have also placed independents above Labor in 30 seats and the Centre Alliance (Sharkie) above Labor in Mayo. As I can't know for sure which independents will outpoll the Greens, here is the list:
Bean (Christie), Bradfield (Boele, Kitson), Calare (Hook), Cowper (Heize), Farrer (Duncan-Strelec), Grayndler (Kilham), Hughes (Seymour, Steele), Hume (Ackery, Meneripitiyage Dona), Mackellar (Scamps), North Sydney (Tink), Page (Luke), Warringah (Steggall), Wentworth (Spender), Lingiari (Gravener), Groom (Holt), Herbert (Egan), Hinkler (Dempsey), Wide Bay (Jerome), Boothby (Dyer), Grey (Habermann), Casey (Ferres Miles), Flinders (O'Connor, Russell), Goldstein (Daniel), Indi (Haines), Kooyong (Ryan), Mallee (Haenel), Nicholls (Priestley), Wannon (Dyson), Curtin (Chaney), Hasluck (Williams).
A notable independent not recommended above Labor is Dai Le (Fowler), who has historic Liberal connections.
One Nation
One Nation nominated candidates in 149 seats (all except Higgins and Kennedy) but their Banks candidate was found to have also nominated for the Australian Federation Party in Brand (making both nominations invalid) and they have no page for him.
At the time of writing their site shows no HTV order in Bean, Canberra, Greenway, North Sydney, Parramatta, Reid, Richmond, Wannon and Whitlam. Of these only Wannon is in their dropdown, while Gellibrand is missing from the dropdown but does have a card. North Sydney was of interest as the party was supposed to be targeting Trent Zimmerman. The HTV for Hawke was informal until today when it was repaired.
In general One Nation has recommended the Coalition above Labor and above any competitive teal or similar independent. The following are the exceptions I found, though I may have missed some:
Bass, Cook, Franklin, Goldstein, Lyons, Sturt: Labor above Liberal
Clark: Wilkie-Labor-Liberal
Notable INDs preferenced above Coalition in Flinders (Russell), Fowler (Le), Gray (Habermann), Hughes (Seymour, Steele), Hume (Ackery), Hunter (Bonds), Indi (Haines above Liberals but below Nationals).
United Australia
At this stage UAP do not have House of Reps how-to-vote cards online. Tracking UAP how to vote cards is difficult because the party continually trash-talks and changes its mind. They were released by accident on May 5 according to a report in the West Australian which stated that all WA incumbents were being put last (including the incumbent party in vacant seats). I do not know if these orders are now being seen in the field. The SMH also reported that the UAP had put the Liberals last in Banks, Cook and North Sydney, but their actual HTV card for North Sydney places Trent Zimmerman behind independent Kylea Tink but above Labor. They have put Peter Dutton below Labor in Dickson.
I have seen scanned UAP cards that recommend Labor ahead of the Liberals in Cooper and Griffiths (presumably a strategy to blunt the Greens.) Also Maranoa.
(apologies if a double post, first try didn't seem to work).
ReplyDeleteIt seems that ON initially produced HTVs showing an invalid ballot in Hawke - it had two 10s but no 8. Might have fixed it since then, the one on their site seems to have a full set of numbers now.
The online one was fixed today.
DeleteOut of interest - is there any precedence for a party being penalised for creating an invalid HTV? As it was technically suggesting people make an invalid vote, even if unintentional, I'm wondering how the laws that put Albert Langer in jail would work in relation to this. At least people issuing an open ticket still state you need to number every box.
Deletethe UAP have their HTV in Swan as Greens-Labor-Liberal which is interesting.
ReplyDeleteHi Kevin - please forgive the slightly off-topic question. Is there historical information about ALP preference flows in the seat of McNamara? The three-cornered contest there raises interesting strategic voting dilemmas, eg for Greens voters worried that the Liberal might be elected on ALP preferences if the Greens finish second. I thought you might have useful data to inform their decision-making.
ReplyDeleteNot an issue because the Liberals were not close to winning last time and the difference in flows between ALP to GRN and GRN to ALP is likely to be slight. The flow in Prahran was slightly stronger in the direction ALP to GRN in 2014, and very slightly stronger in the direction GRN to ALP in 2018. The nature of the rest of Macnamara would probably make ALP to GRN a little weaker than that, but not hugely. In the Senate (where there is an exhaust option) GRN to ALP is slightly stronger than ALP to GRN, but this is also true of Kooyong where the reverse was the case in the Reps. Given that the Liberals lost the 2PP 56-44 last time and have had another candidate with major issues this election, whichever of Green vs ALP is over the other will win.
ReplyDelete