ALL NUMBERS HERE ARE UNOFFICIAL - CHECK THE TEC PAGE FOR OFFICIAL NUMBERS
LYONS (2024 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN)
This is my guide for the May 4th election for the Legislative Council seat of Prosser. Prosser gets to go first because it has the most declared candidates! On Wednesday I released a brief survey of the Council's voting patterns. Links to other guides: Elwick Hobart . There will be live coverage on the night of May 4th.
At the start of this year the Legislative Council consisted of four Labor, four Liberal and seven independents, with three of the independents strongly left-leaning, one centrist, and three somewhat right-leaning albeit still left of the Liberal Party. Council voting has also seen a rapid increase in "Laborial" bipartisan voting patterns where the major parties combine against some or all of the indies. The 2024 Legislative Council elections follow hot on the heels of an extremely messy lower house election, and for the first time since 1909 three seats fall vacant on the same day. The three vacancies are one Labor, one Liberal and a left independent, so the elections are very important for both the left-right balance of the Council and the independent-major party balance.
Seat Profile
Prosser is a fairly large rural and satellite-town seat in the midlands, east and south-east of Tasmania (see map). Its largest population centres are Brighton, Dodges Ferry and Sorell (all in the south) and other significant centres include Bagdad, Bicheno, Campbell Town, Swansea, Triabunna, Nubeena and Oatlands. Industries include farming, fishing and what remains of forestry, but around Sorell there has been a rapid increase in young commuting families.
This is my guide for the May 6 elections for the Legislative Council seats of Murchison. On Wednesday I released a survey of the Council's recent voting patterns. Yesterday I released a guide for Rumney and today a guide for the fizzer in Launceston. There will be live coverage on the night of May 6th.
The Legislative Council currently stands at four Liberal, four Labor and seven independents. Three of the independents are conservative, three are well to the left of Labor and one (Ruth Forrest) has moved from the left to the centre in recent years. While the Liberal Government therefore has a relatively easy time of it and wins the majority of contested votes, it still needs to convince someone from the left or centre to support it on major legislation.
This particular guide can have a stronger than usual disclaimer that I will include my own opinions in these guides from time to time, and if anyone doesn't like that they are welcome to GYOB.
Legislative Council 2022: ALP 15 L-NP 14 GRN 4 LCV 2 AJP 1 SFF 1 PHON 1 LDP 1 LDLP 1
The buttons have been pressed on the Victorian Legislative Council election for 2022. This election yet again employed the long-discredited Group Ticket Voting system even though the same system wrecked the 2018 election . Nearly all members of the 2018-22 parliament, and most of the parties contesting the 2022 election, did nothing about the fact that at least eight of the 40 MLCs in the parliament were not there on electoral merit.
And so, this garbage system in which parties beat other parties with several times their vote and win regional seats they would not have won in any other system on the earth continued. That said, the 2022 results aren't nearly so bad as last time. Yet again, there have been many individually incorrect results (including one which focuses attention on yet another undemocratic junk feature of Australia's worst electoral system) but all the same, the overall balance of this parliament is remarkably representative. There have also been hilarious doses of karma. Parties that supported preference harvesting or did nothing about it have in many cases been hoist on their own petard while several parties that opposed Group Ticket Voting have had success. Glenn Druery's "alliance" has not been nearly as successful this election after a campaign in which Druery got stung not just once but twice. While its members did get three seats between them, they may well have won one of those anyway. Nearly all the randoms who got in at the last election lost, and both major parties lost a seat they should have won as a price of their inaction on the problem.
ELWICK (2016 margin ALP vs IND 3.18% - pre-redistribution)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
The much-awaited Eden-Monaro preference flows are finally out, following some time after the distribution of preferences, and it's useful to make some comments about these. (Also see Antony Green's comments.)
Labor won the by-election by 735 votes (50.39% 2PP). This means that had 368 voters who preferenced Kristy McBain instead preferenced Fiona Kotvojs, Kotvojs would have won. This is relevant for checking various claims about preferences of particular parties deciding the result. In my Eden-Monaro live thread I set some markers at the time for particular preference shifts causing or not causing the result.
Did Nationals preference flows weakening cause Labor to win?
Answer: Yes - but this isn't necessarily what it looks like. In Eden-Monaro in 2019 an unusually strong 87.16% of Nationals preferences flowed to Fiona Kotvojs. At the 2020 by-election the flow was only 77.73%, making a difference of 571 votes to each side's total, and a difference of double that to the margin. While it was unrealistic for the very high flow from 2019 to have been maintained, any flow above 81.08% would have resulted in the Liberals winning the seat. That figure is almost exactly the 2019 national average in contests where the Nationals were excluded, so the switch from an above-average to a below-average Nationals to Liberals preference flow can be said to have cost the Liberals the seat.
