Supporting First Past The Post For Australia Is Pointless

Lately I've been seeing a lot of social media griping about the current government and/or the Greens and teals, mostly from alternative right-wing accounts, in which the writer attacks the Government and says it was only elected because of preferential voting, and we should get rid of preferences by switching to first past the post.   I don't think there is much significant advocacy for first-past-the-post in Australia though Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner has unfortunately supported it (what, optional preferences is not enough for him?), as has Resolve pollster Jim Reed in 2022, and a steady flow of petitions to the Commonwealth Parliament generally with tiny signature numbers.  

The following alone is sufficient reason to dismiss all such calls: First past the post is a discriminatory system that violates the Australian value of a fair go.  Under first past the post, a voter whose most preferred party or candidate is unpopular must make a strategic decision between voting for someone who is not in fact their first preference and effectively throwing away their vote.  However a voter who is pretty sure their most preferred candidate will finish first or second does not have to face that strategic dilemma.  On this basis, having first past the post, in a country able to afford and count a fairer system, is not treating all electors fairly.   I do not think there is actually any valid excuse for keeping single-member first past the post anywhere (though the transition out of it needs to be carefully managed in those places that do have it) but this article is confined to the argument re Australia.  

Australia has a proud tradition of fair voting that started over 100 years ago when preferences were introduced to stop conservative parties from losing conservative electorates when voters were split between two different conservative candidates.  The famous case is the 1918 Swan by-election, but in fact the Hughes Government was working to introduced preferential voting months before it occurred but the legislation had not yet passed the parliament.   When I see supposed patriots with Australian flags in their social media profiles propose that we junk this fine tradition and replace it with unfair and primitive crud voting systems used overseas, I can only shake my head at their claims that they really love this country.   I am not going to let these people get away with it; to paraphrase a slightly different Doctor, this voting system is defended.  

Similar to my polling disinformation register, I've written this article mainly as a labor-saving device so that I don't have to keep making the same long replies on the same points but can simply say "see point 3 here" with a link.  I hope others find it interesting and useful, and more points may be added.

I should note that this article also applies to many criticisms of compulsory preferences made by supporters of optional preferencing - especially part 7.

Upper Hunter By-Election Live And Post-Count

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UPPER HUNTER (National, 2.6%)

By-election caused by resignation of Michael Johnsen

2019 primary votes Nat 34.0 Labor 28.6 SFF 22.0 Greens 4.8 LDP 4.4 SA 2.2 AJP 2 CDP 1.9  

Seat called win to Nationals at 8:24 pm Saturday (final swing to Nats 3.26%)

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Saturday: Final 2PP 55.82 to Nationals (+3.26)

Monday: 2PP now at 55.7 after a strong performance for the Nats on initial postals more than cancelled out a comparatively weak performance on iVotes.  

Sunday 8:00 Good performances in the other prepolls have the Nats up to 55.4 now.  Still no sign of the iVotes.  

Sunday 2:20 Muswellbrook prepoll has come in dropping the live 2PP to 54.5.

Sunday 1:10 The 2PP in the live count is now sitting at 56.8.  Labor has stopped the rot in a couple of prepolls today and the 2PP will come down when Muswellbrook prepoll is added.  My projection has dropped to 54.6 but I believe that's on the low side.   Still no sign of the iVotes but I believe they're coming today.  

JSCEM's Recommendation For Optional Preferential Voting

Advance Summary

1. Coalition members of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters have recently recommended Optional Preferential Voting (OPV), but have provided very little discussion of that recommendation.

2. It is likely the government would have the numbers to pass OPV if both Coalition parties wanted to do so, but unclear as yet if they actually want to proceed.

3. Evidence from NSW state elections under OPV strongly suggests that it would significantly to severely disadvantage Labor if adopted federally. Evidence from Queensland is more confused.

4. The level of likely disadvantage to Labor under OPV could often result in a few federal seats having different results, but could be more severe when Labor holds majority government.   

5.Compulsory preferential voting leads to votes being disallowed because of irrelevant errors.  Reform to reduce or remove this problem is necessary.

6. Optional Preferential Voting has been defended on the grounds of allowing greater voter freedom, but it can also result in misleading campaigns to discourage preferencing and in cases where parties are disadvantaged because voters make incorrect assumptions.

7. Having OPV as a savings provision rather than a direct instruction to voters would solve most of the problems that OPV addresses with less disadvantages.

8. Labor's arguments against OPV in the report are weak.  

How Should We Solve The Problem Of Unintended Informal Voting?

Advance Summary

1. In single-seat elections using compulsory preferential voting, high rates of unintended informal voting occur.

2. Informal voting is especially high where there are many candidates, where there is confusion between voting systems, and where electoral and/or English language literacy are low.

3. It is unclear whether unintended informal voting creates a significant two-party preferred advantage for one side of politics, although it appears to deflate Labor's primary vote.

4. There are many ways to reduce the number of votes that are disqualified without having to adopt Optional Preferential Voting.

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Nats Under The Gun In The Orange Postcount

ORANGE, NSW (Nat 21.7 vs ALP)
GAINED by Donato (Shooters Fishers and Farmers) by 50 votes after recount

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Key questions:

1. Will Labor overtake Shooters Fishers and Farmers for second place?  (If yes, Nationals win)
Assessment: No

2. If no to 1, will the Shooters Fishers and Farmers catch the Nationals on preferences?
Assessment: Very close, currently Shooters appear to be ahead

Three state by-elections were held in New South Wales today.  Labor very easily retained Canterbury against token opposition, and held Wollongong now that their regular Independent opposition there no longer has the Noreen Hay factor to capitalise upon.  But the third by-election, the one that was always likely to be the most interesting, has lived up to its billing, and then some.

In the by-election for Orange, held by the National Party (and its precursor the Country Party) since 1947, the Nationals have suffered a primary vote swing that is currently running at 35.4%.  Their candidate Scott Barrett leads on primaries on 30.27% with 73.6% of enrolment counted, but is closely followed by the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers' Philip Donato on 24.73%, with Labor's Bernard Fitzsimon on 18.85%.  The rest of the field includes one Green, one Christian Democrat and three independents.

Even if the Nationals retain the seat, the result is still dismal.  This is best seen in the stunning booth swings.  The Nationals were down well over 20 points in all but two booths.  This is partly down to the greater number of candidates running (the SF+F and three indies have replaced only No Land Tax at the last election).  However in three booths they are down by 60 (!) points or more and in two more by over 50.   If these were tiny rural booths with small samples this might be less surprising but one has over 1200 voters!  SF+F are the main beneficiaries of the swing.

At some booths over 80% of voters who voted National last time didn't do so at the by-election.  These are staggering numbers, even by by-election standards, and will come as a very rude wake-up call to the party after a strong performance at the federal election.  The swing is thought to be driven primarily by proposed forced council amalgamations, with the now-retracted ban on greyhound racing also prominently in the mix.  Some are even seeing a Donald Trump factor at work, which seems a pretty long bow to draw, though there is little doubt the US result emboldened the Nats' opposition in the final days.

Queensland: Compulsory Preferencing And Recent Polling

Because of other distractions (see articles below) I've been a bit slow dealing with Queensland's sudden return to compulsory preferencing, but fortunately in this time a new state poll has arrived that is highly relevant to the issue.

For those who spent a couple of hours asleep last Thursday, that was about all it took for Labor to amend an LNP motion to expand the parliament from 89 to 93 seats and make it conditional on a return to compulsory preferencing.  The LNP voted against the amendment but the KAP and ex-Labor crossbenchers supported it and in the end the LNP didn't even vote against the amended bill.  It was vintage roughshod Queensland politics in its execution - moving it as an amendment meant it could be passed without prolonged discussion or a committee process, and Queensland of course has no upper house to get in the way.  It all gave the appearance of a tactical disaster for the Lawrence Springborg-led LNP (allowing such a major concession while fishing for crumbs) and again raised concerns of friends and foes alike as to whether the Queensland Opposition has all that much upstairs strategically.

Strange Times In Queensland Polling

Galaxy Queensland: 52:48 to ALP based on composite preferences
Based on last election preferences 54:46 to ALP
Result based on this poll if election "held now": Easy Labor win (approx 54 ALP, 32 LNP, 2 KAP, 1 Ind)
However, most other polling so far has suggested little change since 2015 election

Update added for Aug-Sep Newspoll (53:47/55:45)

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A new state government has won a remarkable victory, ousting the regime that had thrashed it three years earlier after just one term despite having been almost wiped off the political map.  Six months into its term, and despite a significant scandal that has endangered its already fragile hold on power, its primary vote has been polled at two and a half points above its election result, the Opposition is down a similar amount and the most supportive minor party's share of the third-party vote has improved.  Not the greatest honeymoon in polling history but still, all things considered, pretty good?

Well, supposedly not.  According to reporting (?) of a newly released Galaxy of Queensland state voting intention, the Palaszczuk Government has "stalled", "stagnated", "received no bounce from handing down last month's state budget".  Apparently it "hasn't been much of a honeymoon period [..] in stark contrast to the burgeoning support being enjoyed by governments in southern states".  The Premier's popularity has "failed to prompt any new love for Labor".  Her government "could scrape over the line" but "would rely heavily on votes flowing strongly from preferences".  The government apparently should be concerned that it's been "unable to convince more Queenslanders they're a competent administration" and unless it can prove it is doing something then "the patience voters have shown will run out".

What is going on here?  What's going on is what happens when you take the Courier-Mail's oft-noted love of curious poll-spinning and combine it with an understandable, but nonetheless unusual, preferencing practice.  This article looks at how the Palaszczuk government is really going in terms of known public polling.

New South Wales Postcount: Ballina

Ballina (Nat 24.6) Kris Beavis (Nat) vs Tamara Smith (Greens) vs Paul Spooner (ALP)
Outlook: Greens favoured.
Outcome: Greens have won preference distribution.

This thread follows post-counting in the NSW seat of Ballina.  On election night this was widely called as a certain Green gain, the Greens being only slightly behind the Nationals on primaries.  However extremely strong post-counting performance by the Nationals has both placed the Green win in doubt and also created a possible exclusion order issue.  As absent votes have not been included yet, it is probable the seat now looks closer than it actually is and the Greens will still win fairly easily.  However we need to see if this will actually be the case.

Ballina is one of the two far north coast seats where the Nationals have copped an enormous swing over coal seam gas issues and because of demographic change, the other being Lismore where the Greens' position in the postcount is somewhat weaker.

The ABC has been projecting Ballina as a certain Greens win, but what the ABC is showing for the Ballina Nationals vs Greens two-candidate contest are not real figures.  Rather, they are ABC estimates of preference flow.  It is very difficult to know exactly what the preference flow will be, other than that it is safe to assume it will be stronger than in 2011.  In 2011 the net flow of all preferences in Ballina was that 58.8% of third-party preferences exhausted, and those not exhausting split 77% to the Greens and 23% to the Nationals.  That gave the Greens a gain rate of .191 votes per preference.  The gain rate required is the key statistic that I monitor for these contests.

New South Wales Postcount: Lismore

Lismore (Nat, 24.3%): Thomas George (NAT) vs Adam Guise (GRN) and Isaac Smith (ALP)
Assessment:  Nationals favoured to retain.
Result (provisional following button press) Nationals retain

Original Article:

As my paragraph about the Lismore postcount got longer I decided to give it a thread of its own so the potentially many updates do not swamp the main postcount thread.

Lismore is one of the far north-east NSW seats where there have been massive swings to Labor and the Greens as a result of a combination of demographic change and concern about coal-seam-gas and other mining projects. 

This seat caused a lot of confusion on the night as it swayed between being projected to the Greens and Labor on the ABC website.  Today it has swayed between being projected to the Greens and the Nationals.  

What is known is that current primaries as of Sunday are 39.9% Nationals, 29.4% Green, 25.4% Labor, 2.9% Christian Democrat, 1.5% Animal Justice and 1% No Land Tax.  

While the gap between the Greens and Labor may narrow in post-counting, four points is too large to close down and the preferences of the tiddlers (especially the AJP) will most likely be slightly worse than useless to Labor in that regard.  So the seat is between the Nationals and Greens.