Tasmania Senate 2025: Prospects and Guide

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SUMMARY: 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN unless something very unusual happens

Tasmania's list of Senate candidates has been released.  Tasmania has 33 candidates in 12 groups with one ungrouped, down from 39 candidates in 14 groups plus two ungrouped in 2022.  Of the groups that ran columns last time, one has disbanded voluntarily (Local Party/Network), one isn't running, and two have in a messy sense merged forces.  One group that didn't run last time is running (Australian Citizens); they ran as Citizens Electoral Council in 2019.  FUSION had declared a candidate for 2025 but weren't able to lock in a second so didn't run.  

This piece gives some basic information and views about the parties and lead candidates, and some general background to the contest.  The party candidate section includes a lot of opinions about candidates and parties, and it is normal for this article to display more whims, snark and subjectivity than some of my other guides.  Parties that are not what they seem and candidates who don't impress me will be called out as per normal.   More content will be added in as time permits, so it may be worth checking back before voting to see if I've added any more details re candidates.

2019 New South Wales Postcount: Legislative Council

Legislative Council NSW Summary:

Seats assumed won based on incomplete count Coalition 8 Labor 6 Green 2 One Nation 1 Shooters Fishers and Farmers 1

(2015 results and continuing MLCs were Coalition 9 Labor 7 Green 2 Shooters 1 Christian Dems 1 Animal Justice 1).

Summary of contest:

Close multi-party contest for remaining three seats.  Count is extremely complex.  The ABC website has been projecting seats as won directly off the check count and this is very unreliable.

Labor (#7) and One Nation (#2) currently appear well placed for two of these seats after preferences, though One Nation is vulnerable to leakage.

A preference race will occur between four parties for the final seat: Christian Democrats (now leading), Liberal Democrats, Animal Justice, Keep Sydney Open.   Keep Sydney Open appears to be struggling to catch Animal Justice.  Animal Justice appear to have at least realistic prospects of beating the other two after preferences.

Sustainable Australia was competitive earlier in the count but its primary vote does not appear to be sufficient.

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%)