Legislative Council 2025: Pembroke

PEMBROKE (2022 margin ALP vs Lib 13.3%)

Slightly delayed by a three-week bump to avoid a clash with the federal election, the Tasmanian Legislative Council elections will be upon us soon enough and I need to get cracking on my Pembroke guide because the fur is flying and things are gettin dirrrrty!  Recently I released my usual survey of the Council's voting patterns.  Link to Nelson guide is here and link to Montgomery here.  Nominations close on May 1.  There will be live coverage of all three seats here on the night of May 24 and as required through the postcount.

The current numbers in the Council are four Liberal, three Labor, one Green and seven independents, with the independents ranging fairly evenly across the political spectrum.  Labor gives up one vote on the floor and in the committee stages because it holds the Presidency, and as a result there are currently fine balances between major party and other MLCs (6-8 on the floor) and party and non-party MLCs (7-7 on the floor).  The balance between the major parties could be interesting if Labor actually opposes anything, but in the last year that happened only twice in contested divisions, leading me to classify the party's voting pattern as "Right" for the first time ever.  

This year sees a vacancy for the retirement of Leonie Hiscutt (Liberal), the first defence for left-wing independent Meg Webb, and the subject of this article, the first defence for Labor's Luke Edmunds.

The Payman Suspension

Party-hopping is becoming a pretty common occurrence in Australian federal politics.  The last time the Reps managed to complete a term without anyone quitting or being kicked out of their party in either house was way back in 1983-4, and that was a term with more than a year lopped off it by an early election.  Since then there's been an average of three defections/expulsions per term, with the last four terms scoring four, eight, four and so far five, and the five seems about to be six.

Genuinely interesting policy defections aren't abundant among the 42 I found in the last 40 years.  This roughly annual event seems to most often happen as a result of internal tensions, especially in minor parties.  Deselection and/or misbehaviour are also common triggers.  There was a Voice policy dimension to the recent departures of Andrew Gee from the Nationals and Lidia Thorpe from the Greens, but both were isolated cases that did not turn into broader breakaway movements from the party.  We now have at least the prospect (it could well happen tomorrow) that WA Senator Fatima Payman will leave the ALP, which will be a first case for the Australian federal party of an issue that has plagued its UK counterpart for years - losing or deciding to lose MPs for their positions re the Middle East.

If Payman leaves the party this will be the first defection from the Government in this term.  For comparison the Hawke/Keating government lost by my count just two MPs in 13 years, the first of them coming after ten years being Keith Wright who was kicked out after recontesting as an independent after being disendorsed.  The Howard government had three defections even not counting Pauline Hanson in its first term, another in its third and an internal party-switch in its fourth.  The Rudd/Gillard government's only casualty was Craig Thomson, while the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government had six in nine years (Jensen, Bernardi, Banks, Kelly, McMahon and tokenly Christensen).  

Tasmanian Election Day 2024

Live link to Mercury coverage here: https://www.themercury.com.au/news/politics/tasmanian-state-election-blog-with-political-expert-kevin-bonham/live-coverage/62c78a2ed4172adcfe9aa5ad77236ab9

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Well we're here again, wherever here is.  What a weird ride this has been.

Tonight the Rockliff Liberal government chases history, for never in Tasmania has a government won four majorities at elections in a row.  Four governments including the current one have won three*.  If the polls are right, history is unlikely to be caught.  One piece of history will be made today with the restoration of the house to 35 MPs.  

Tonight I will be doing live coverage for The Mercury.  The link will be edited in to this article when available.  It may be paywalled but there is usually a cheap introductory subscription for non-subscribers.  My live blog for the Mercury will probably start somewhere around 6:30 and go until not later than 11; it may be wound down late at night as I do interviews and if I need to file an article.  I will be based at the tally room.  I ask media outside of the Mercury not to contact me by phone or email between 5:30 and about 11 tonight; once I have finished the live coverage I should be available quickly for other interviews (feel free to say hi in the tally room when I don't look too busy to arrange).    Scrutineers are very welcome to send me news and figures by phone or email.  

There may be a "late night live" thread.  My plan, energy permitting, is to post postcount threads overnight (between 1-4 am) for all five Assembly electorates.  I will be home tomorrow and available for interviews but no calls or texts before 9 am except if booked tonight.   Also no interviews between 3-5 pm.  

My main guide page is here with links to individual electorate guides and effective voting advice.  For those seeking voting advice, I recommend to number all the boxes or at the least to number every candidate who you think is OK or better.  This may make your vote more powerful and it cannot harm your preferred candidates.  If you vote 1-7 for a party and stop, your vote can play no role in determining which other parties are successful.  Check that you have not doubled or skipped any numbers, especially not between 1 and 7. Do not use ticks or crosses.

EMRS: Liberals Have Big Lead But Still Well Short Of 50

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage - link to main article page

EMRS Liberal 39 Labor 26 (-3) Greens 12 JLN 9 IND 14 others 1 
Liberals would clearly be largest party

Seat estimate if poll is correct Lib 15-16 ALP 10 Grn 2-3  JLN 2-3 IND 3-5

Just one poll - there will be others!

Advance Comments

A quarterly poll by Tasmania's most experienced state pollster EMRS, which has a rather good track record, has just dropped.  It shows a complex scenario that is also, if correct, a sorry one for Labor.  This poll will have the Liberals happy in that it has them as the only party within reach of a majority while Labor are bleeding votes to independents and JLN.  It follows a YouGov poll that differed mainly in having the Liberals in the low 30s and a much higher Lambie vote.   The poll suggests that if there is a hung parliament, it will be one where Labor will only be able to govern deeply in minority with multiple partners, while the Liberals may have simpler paths to government if anyone will help them.  

Will The Spirit Of Hare-Clark Be Killed By Farce?

Update: As of 9 November the Legislative Council has fixed the issue reporting in this article by changing per-candidate funding to per-party/group funding.  

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Watch out which candidate you vote for next Tasmanian state election.  Your vote could cost the party you voted for $17,000.  That's if the Liberal Government's current electoral public funding model is passed through Parliament with the help of the Labor Opposition.

Of all the bizarre things that have happened in the current Tasmanian Parliament this is among the strangest. We are here not by design but by accident, largely because former Attorney-General Elise Archer was given (and relied upon instead of checking) incorrect advice on a technical point about elections in the ACT.  It may be that the Rockliff Government has no real intention of progressing electoral reforms inherited from Archer, or that an election intervenes before they can come into place.  But if the Government does go ahead and  the Electoral Disclosure and Funding Bill 2022 (No. 25) comes into force with Labor support, then that will create a public funding model that will distort the competition between candidates within the same party.  It will also unfairly advantage some parties over others, and expose voters to tactical dilemmas best left to defective voting systems like first-past-the-post.  This will be the worst reform in the 126 year history of Hare-Clark, the first change that is completely contrary to the spirit of the system.

Insane In The Balmain: Does Labor Really Need To Win This Seat?

 

A Labor flier from Balmain (source)

The district of Balmain (Green 10.0% vs ALP) would normally be of little interest at this NSW election given that it is on a large margin and the Greens have so far never lost a single seat electorate that they won at a previous general election.  What makes Labor think Balmain is worth taking a tilt at is the retirement of 12-year incumbent Jamie Parker, the first Green at state or federal level to retire from a single-seat electorate.  

One of the reasons the Greens have 14 wins from 14 attempts at defending state or federal single-member seats won at a general election (by-elections and multi-member seats are different stories) is that there tend to be oversize swings to them in subsequent elections.  For a first defence at state and federal levels the average swing is 2.9% on primary vote and 4.0% on two candidate preferred.  For a second and later defences it is 3.0% and 4.8% per election.  (The 2CP figures are affected in varying directions by Liberal preference recommendation changes, and a 2CP swing is not always available).  The obvious explanation for this is demographics, but another possible explanation is that sitting Greens may receive unusually high personal votes.  And if they receive them when they defend their seats, maybe they also lose them when they retire?  

Legislative Council 2022: Pembroke By-Election Live

Pembroke: CALLED (7:23 pm) Edmunds wins (Labor retain) 

Approx 4.6% 2PP swing to Labor after preferences

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Live Comments (Scrolls to top)

All updates are unofficial; check the TEC site for official figures

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Tuesday: The provisional preference distribution is underway and Edmunds has 43.84% to Brown's 33.29% with Brewer 22.87% to throw; Edmunds will be declared the winner after Brewer's preferences sometime later today.  Brown gained 50 off preferences from di Falco but lost 25 back off Willink so as expected the preferences of those two candidates had little impact.  

Rolling National Poll Roundup: 2022 Final Days

2PP Aggregate: 53.5 to Labor (-0.6 since last week) (not a prediction)
Cross-poll average of polls released in last week: 53.0 to Labor 
(Weighted for time only, no house effects or quality weightings)
If the normal range of polling to result relationships applies, Labor remains very likely to win, probably outright

Historically, Labor has underperformed when it has leads in final week polling

This article covers national polling since the update from mid last week and House of Reps federal polls will continue to be added until a final roundup which I intend to post overnight on Friday following the final Newspoll.  The aggregates and averages in the heading will be updated as new national polls come out. (Ipsos is expected, I am not sure if there will be another Morgan, while the Resolve was described as "final" by Latika Bourke.)  I aim to issue a seat polling and seat betting roundup tomorrow, and Senate polling will soon be updated on my Senate prospects page. 

In the last two days three polls have pointed to some narrowing in Labor's lead, but all this has done so far is put Labor back in about the same position as it was in after the gaffe-ridden opening week and a half, reversing minor gains since.  All four polls out this week have shown smaller leads for Labor than their previous offerings, but only in the case of Resolve is the change substantial, and Resolve is hard to take completely seriously on account of its forced-choice methods and overly high Green vote.  

Poll Roundup: Federal Hung Parliament Club Edition

CROSS-POLL AVERAGE 52.6 TO LABOR (-2.0 in two weeks)

Aggregate of recent polls assuming no overall house effects 53.2 to Labor

Recent Newspoll would not be likely to produce a hung parliament if replicated

Significant chance of hung parliament based not on most current polls, but rather on historic pattern of leads shrinking.  

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Welcome back to another edition of Poll Roundup.  At the time of the last edition the Labor Opposition was a very long way in front but things have since got a lot closer.  I covered some of this at the start of a more recent piece but following today's Newspoll, hung parliament talk has become widespread.  Sectors of the press gallery are embarrassing themselves more than usual, while sectors of the press gallery that always embarrass themselves are doing what they do best.  

"Hung parliament club" is my nickname for a circle of usual suspects in the Tasmanian left and commentariat who continually argue that hung parliaments in Tasmanian state elections are both extremely likely and uncontentiously desirable.  My view is that their constant public hankering after minority situations makes majority government more likely, not less.  Federally, there have been echoes of this in Adam Bandt's constant poll-spinning that uses various unsound arguments to claim a "power-sharing parliament" is highly likely.  However overall the federal variant of hung parliament club makes even weaker claims about the likelihood of a hung parliament than are seen in Tasmania, and then goes on to claim that a hung parliament could lead to crazy chaos and an immediate fresh election.  The main suspects here are innumerate types in the Canberra press gallery, who seem to have listened to each other too much (or perhaps to party hacks or low-grade pollsters) instead of seeking any kind of informed take on how to interpret the numbers. 

Legislative Council 2022: Huon

HUON (Vacant, 2020 margin ALP vs IND 7.31%)

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If you find my coverage useful please consider donating to support the large amount of time I spend working on this site.  Donations can be made by the Paypal button in the sidebar or email me via the address in my profile for my account details.  Especially in these uncertain times, please only donate if you are sure you can afford to do so.

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This is my second seat guide to the Tasmanian Legislative Council for this year.  My guide to Elwick is up and a guide to McIntyre has been added now that Tania Rattray has opponents.    

I hope to find time to update my voting patterns analysis for the Council before the election as well, though that may be difficult given that there is a federal election impending.

I will be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night, Saturday May 7.  

For several years the Liberal government has had a difficult upper house to deal with.  The current numbers are four Liberal, two mildly right of centre independents, four Labor, four left independents, and one ex-Labor vacancy.  The good news for the government is that unless Rattray somehow loses to someone to the left of her, this year is a free swing, and the pressure is on Labor.

Huon is a by-election.  The winner will serve the remainder of Bastian Seidel's six-year term and face the voters again in 2026.  

Legislative Council 2022: Elwick

ELWICK (2016 margin ALP vs IND 3.18% - pre-redistribution)

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Donations welcome!

If you find my coverage useful please consider donating to support the large amount of time I spend working on this site.  Donations can be made by the Paypal button in the sidebar or email me via the address in my profile for my account details.  Especially in these uncertain times, please only donate if you are sure you can afford to do so.

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Welcome to my coverage of the Tasmanian Legislative Council elections this year. My guide to Huon has been posted and this is the guide for Elwick.  McIntyre, where independent Tania Rattray is seeking a fourth term, will be added if she gets an opponent.  I hope to find time to update my voting patterns analysis for the Council before the election as well, though that may be difficult given that there is a federal election impending.

I will be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night.  Election night is currently expected to be Saturday May 7, though if that is the federal election date then the Legislative Council contests will be moved to another Saturday in May.  

For several years the Liberal government has had a difficult upper house to deal with.  The current numbers are four Liberal, two mildly right of centre independents, four Labor, four left independents, and one ex-Labor vacancy.  The good news for the government is that unless Rattray somehow loses to someone to the left of her, this year is a free swing, and the pressure is on Labor.

EMRS: Voting Intention Pretty Stable In Tasmania

EMRS Tasmania (state) August: Liberal 49 Labor 26 (-2) Green 13 Others 12 (+2)
Results very similar to 2021 election (seat result 13 Liberal 9 Labor 2 Green 1 IND)

A new EMRS poll of Tasmanian state voting intention is out and it shows very little change since the previous poll or for that matter the 2021 snap State Election result.  The only change in voting intention since the last poll is a shift of two points from Labor to Others.  In all the Liberals are up 0.3% compared to the state election, Labor down 2.2%, the Greens up 0.6% (though EMRS has form for overstating the Green vote) and Others up 1.3%.

The only close seat at party level this year was the final seat in Clark, in which Madeleine Ogilvie (Liberal, formerly ALP and then Independent) defeated Sue Hickey (Independent, formerly Liberal) by 2.2%.  A 1.1% swing from Liberals to Others would in theory elect a second Independent.  However in this poll the swing on primary votes is 0.5%, and the swing after preferences would be slightly smaller because of the swing against Labor.  The circumstances of the 2021 election with two fairly evenly matched high-profile independents running will probably not be repeated.  The two-point move to others might be seen as reflecting success for Johnston in making an impact since her election, but it could be random sample noise or anything, and EMRS has seen larger surges for Others in the past without anything coming from them,

At the time of the previous poll there had been a lot of chaos affecting Labor between the poll being taken and its release.  Had the departures of David O'Byrne and Bastian Seidel from the party hurt it?  This poll suggests either not by that much or if so it was temporary.  Nonetheless Labor's primary vote of 26% remains inadequate.  The party has only recorded four lower primary votes during what is now nearly eight years in opposition - two polls back in 2014-5 and two at the height of the government's pandemic bounce last year. 

It is a very long way til the next election and perhaps if the federal party manages to sort the state party out it will start to poll better.  In the meantime, members are free to keep freelancing and branches continue to rumble about it - as seen with preselection threats against Josh Willie over the recent poker machines bill.  Since there's nobody really in charge of the mess, whether these threats represent a handful of members or a more serious number, who can say. 

The poll's leadership ratings continue to show Peter Gutwein with a large lead over Rebecca White, up one point to 31 points (59-28) though such indicators skew to incumbents.  Something has changed since the days when White used to compete remarkably strongly with Will Hodgman and an early Gutwein on this measure, even when her party's primary vote was not that strong. However we don't have ratings for the leaders individually, so it's not clear if this is about White being less personally popular personally than she used to be (which was at one point very popular), or about Gutwein being personally very popular. I suspect that it's a lot of both.  Think that's all I have to say about this poll.

EMRS: Old Poll Could Have Been Worse For Labor

EMRS Tasmania (state) August: Liberal 49 Labor 28 Green 13 Others 10

Results more or less identical to 2021 election (seat result 13 Liberal 9 Labor 2 Green 1 IND)

A new EMRS poll has been released today, and it shows ... er no, strike that and start again.

For whatever reason Tasmanian pollster EMRS has just released a state voting intentions poll that came out of field 23 days ago.  EMRS has often not released polls close to the time they were taken in recent years, in some cases hanging on to results for 3-6 months before back-releasing them with other results.  I'm not a pollster but it seems to me that one of the advantages of polling for publicity for a company is releasing it at a time when it is topical and fresh rather than only unveiling it when it looks like something from the antique store.  In the meantime there have been significant developments with David O'Byrne leaving the Parliamentary Labor Party after leader Rebecca White said he should quit parliament, and Huon MLC Bastian Seidel announcing he would quit Caucus and would also resign his seat at the end of the year, citing disgust and demoralisation over Labor's ongoing infighting.

A Record Begging To Be Broken: Labor's Low Winning 1990 Primary

One of the most tedious aspects of Australian polling commentary from time to time is obsessive focus on Labor's primary vote.  Somehow the Labor primary vote gets more attention than the Coalition's when the Coalition is more dependent on its primary vote than Labor is.  In current aggregated polling, Labor has a primary vote in the high 30s (BludgerTrack has it at 37.7%) but there will always be people who say this isn't high enough and that the party needs very near 40% or it can't win a majority. 

There may well be truth in this in terms of projecting from the present day to an election (because oppositions tend to fade and therefore have usually needed big leads at some stage of the term to win) but in that case the primary vote is not telling us anything we couldn't have determined from 2PP polling and its history alone.  The idea that Labor needs a primary vote with a 4 in front of it to win a majority on election day, premised on it only once having won a majority with slightly less, is incorrect.  The fact is we haven't seen a lot about what primary votes Labor wins a majority with these days, because it has only once done so since the rise of the Greens.  This article shows that at recent elections, Labor has missed four in-theory chances to win a majority with a lower primary vote than its record low 1990 majority-winning score of 39.4%.  While total minor party votes remain relatively high, it is very likely that if Labor ever wins federal elections again, it will someday break that record.  The primary-vote-to-win history - based overwhelmingly on elections either run in different minor party environments, or else lost heavily - is meaningless. What matters is whether Labor can assemble a decent enough 2PP result and a good enough vote distribution to win a majority of seats.  

Could A Major Party Soon Take Control Of The Tasmanian Legislative Council?

The recent Tasmanian state election featured the holding of Legislative Council elections on the same day as the House of Assembly election for the first time ever.  This was controversial in fairness terms, and there were suggestions that parties might be breaching the Electoral Act, in particular by their candidates benefiting from generic party advertising that fell outside the strict Council spending requirements.  All has gone quiet on the challenge front following the election so far, but the Tasmanian Electoral Act allows a snoozy 90 days (!) for would-be challengers to get their act together, so it's too early to be certain that we've heard the last of it.  The strikingly different voting patterns in the overlapping booths could make it difficult to satisfy the court that Lower House generic advertising affected the upper house results, if that was something that the court considered relevant.  

One of the three seats contested saw a change in party status, with Liberal Nick Duigan picking up Windermere on the retirement of three-term conservative independent Ivan Dean.  This took the Liberals up to four seats out of 15, with Labor on five and six remaining independents.  

Tasmania 2021: What Was The Point Of This Election?

LIBERAL 13 LABOR 9 GREEN 2 IND 1 (Unchanged from before election)

This is another state election where I think a post-election washup post is in order, some of which will cover similar ground to the 2018 washup.  I started writing this a few days after the election but found it was hard to assess the result without knowing for sure who had won and lost.  I ended up rewriting this piece quite a few times and have stripped out a lot of commentary because the article was getting way too long.  

This election's been a crazy and fascinating ride.  The interest levels in it, especially Clark, have been extremely high on this site.  The post-election Adam Brooks news just adds more weirdness to the mix, and now we have a Labor leadership election as well (the first since Michael Field defeated Neil Batt in a party room ballot in 1988, and the first under new rules with voting by members and delegates).  

When Federal Polls Are 50-50, Oppositions Rarely Win

For nearly a year of federal polling, an unusual situation has existed.  The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has polled very high personal ratings, and large leads on Better Prime Minister scores, but the Coalition has struggled to build any meaningful two-party voting intention lead.  If polling is to be believed, an election held right now would be a close thing, though the government would probably survive.  

However, many observers just don't believe Labor is really at 50-50.  This is not surprising given that Newspoll was 3% out on the two-party preferred vote at the last election, so perhaps that's still the case and the government is 53-47 ahead and cruising.  (The history of polling failures elsewhere suggests probably not - every election cycle is different.)  But what I've noticed a fair bit is that people who don't believe the voting intention polling cite the PM's personal polling (or in some cases the primary votes) as evidence that the 2PP voting intention polling is wrong.   This doesn't make sense - why should voters give misleading answers on their current voting intention but not on what they think of the PM?  Or if sampling issues are causing the voting intention polling to be wrong, surely they would also drag the PM's personal ratings down (in which case he would actually be amazingly popular, and there would be a new issue of why he had only a modest 2PP lead instead of a massive one.)  

2020 Federal Polling Year In Review

 At this time I normally release a review of the year in federal polling that, among other things, states the number of federal polls released that year.  See the 2019 review here. Things have got so weird in Essentialville and Morganland that for 2020 I can only report on how many have been released so far (since others with 2020 data are likely to belatedly appear next year), and in both cases, "released" becomes a stretch in the case of 2PP readings that have no public existence beyond a dot point on a badly labelled graph.  Such is life in the days after the 2019 polling failure.

How many polls?

This year saw 16 federal Newspolls released, the fewest since 1991.  Essential released 13 "2PP+" results (see my comments on this method here) as figures, and a further sixteen as dots on a graph. Morgan provided this mess:

* five polls for which it issued polling reports

* two further polls on its voting intention table

* at least one further poll result where the poll was not published but the 2PP can be inferred based on the stated poll to poll changes

* fourteen graph dot points (giving the impression of being weekly breakdowns from fortnightly polls) that include:

- eight readings that align exactly in time with four polls for which fortnightly 2PPs were public

- two consecutive readings that are out of whack with one of the public 2PPs by a week

- four readings that don't align with any of the otherwise public polls. 

Thus the total number of Morgan 2PP readings of which some kind of evidence was available publicly is at least 22 (to date) but this includes at least four double-counts.  

Applying a minimum standard that a pollster must publish a 2PP (and not just by reference to changes from a previous poll) to be included, there were 16 Newspolls, 13 Essentials and seven Morgans, for a total of 36 polls.  If this figure is used it continues the downward trend in the number of published polls per year.  However the number of 2PP readings compiled by the pollsters but not published other than as dot points is considerably higher; there might be as many as 63 independent readings, with others still to be (maybe) retro-released.

The mess created by Morgan in particular does no favours for the image of polling and I hope the new Australian Polling Council will recommend to its members standards that will avoid and discourage ad hoc decisions about when to retro-release polling data.  If a pollster wants to release voting intention polls in batches, as Essential are doing, that is one thing, but the pollster should then at least be transparent about when they will poll and ensure that all the readings are retro-released, not just some.

Do Green Preferences Matter At Tasmanian State Elections?

Quick note added 9 Mar 2024: I believe that a Labor page linking to this article has been the subject of an SMS campaign.  I should note that this article analyses the actual impact of Green preferences, which is not the same thing as analysing every way a Green voter might use their preferences (eg if someone votes Greens and then preferences Labor, then the point about votes exhausting becomes irrelevant for that voter.)

Beyond that the reason Green or independent prefs don't have as much impact in our system is that they are more likely to be used electing Greens and independents, unlike federal where the vast majority of Greens votes go to Greens who are excluded.  If voting out the Liberals is all-important to you and you're considering voting for a Green or Independent, you might consider how committed that candidate is to voting out the Liberals if they win.  

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Secular seasons greetings to all, except the IPA, who get a great big HAPPY HOLIDAYS for the grinchy effort on the crosstabs in their latest scientifically unsound poll-shaped object.  It is a nearly annual tradition on this site to release something every Christmas Day.   I've now added a "Xmas" tag to all the Christmas Day articles so anyone sufficiently bored can see how varied these offerings have been.  

This year's Christmas Day article idea arose in mid-November following reactions to Tasmanian Labor's decision to letterbox fliers attacking the Greens and promising never to work with them in government again, a promise that I expect to expire immediately the next time Labor gets a majority then loses it.  Whatever might be said of the authenticity of Labor's messaging, I can't help thinking of the whole thing as something that you might see in a vintage British comedy skit:

"The Greens!  They're holding Tasmania back!  They're leaving people behind!"

"That's very unfortunate.  How many of these, er,  Greens are there?"

"Two!"

In online commentary about this, a theme sprang up that Labor was biting the hand that feeds it preferences, and that this (perhaps together with Labor's junking of its 2018 poker machines policy) could very easily backfire.  However, my own experience is that Greens preferences are not as big a deal in Hare-Clark as they are in other elections.  I thought it might be worthwhile to examine the history of Green preferences in Tasmanian state elections since the rise of the Greens in the late 1980s, and look at how much difference they have actually made and might make, or not make, in the future.

Legislative Council 2020: Huon

This election will be held on August 1.

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Donations welcome!

If you find my coverage useful please consider donating to support the large amount of time I spend working on this site.  Donations can be made by the Paypal button in the sidebar or email me via the address in my profile for my account details.  Especially important in these difficult times: please only donate if you are sure you can afford to do so.
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Welcome to my page for the 2020 Legislative Council elections for the seat of Huon.  My Rosevears page is already up and an article on Legislative Council voting patterns is probably not far away, and will be linked here when it is written.

The election was originally slated for Saturday May 2, but was postponed to Saturday May 30 to allow more time for the TEC to prepare for a campaign with a high rate of postal and early voting. However the government then announced an indefinite deferral with an intention to hold the elections by August 25, pursuant to section 13(1) of the COVID-19 Disease Emergency (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020 (see http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/bills/pdf/14_of_2020.pdf) and section 5 of the Public Health Act.  As the COVID situation eased, August 1 was announced as the date.


This piece will be edited through the campaign from time to time for updates, campaign information, added candidates and changed assessments.   Other relevant pieces will be linked here.