At the risk of turning this site into Amazon.com, a plug is in order for Crikey’s multi-media election blitz. Readers are invited to inspect my own contribution to the project at the Crikey website: 33 sets of marginal seat maps displaying booth-level two-party and swing results from 2004, as previewed earlier on this site’s long-lost Seat of the Week series (to be reactivated any day now, I swear). Next week sees the Crikey Guide to the 2007 Federal Election hit the bookstores, courtesy of the good people at Penguin Books. Edited by Christian Kerr, the book promises to “lift the lid on the political issues set to dominate the election while explaining the significance of polling, campaign styles, new media, the press gallery, lobbyists and more”, featuring contributions from “political luminaries including Malcolm Fraser, Fred Chaney, Barnaby Joyce and more”. “And more” includes Peter Brent of Mumble, who offers a chapter on opinion polls (and Andrew Denton, who writes the foreword). All this for the low low price of $19.95.
Hooray for the return of the booth maps! I’ve already spent a good half hour or more poring over them.
Nitpick: You’ve used National green rather than Liberal blue for the Herbert figures.
Oh dear. Thank you for calling that to my attention David.
i got my copy yesterday ? is the offical , book signing next week!
The Crikey book events booked in so far will be held at Paperchain at Manuka on August 8, Readings at Carlton on August 16 and Gleebooks on August 30.
There will also be something(s) around the Brisbane Writers Festival and more to come.
Full details are available here http://www.penguin.com.au/readers/events.cfm#August2007
mine is free 🙂
Plus I know when Labor last won Corangamite, which Crikey does not.
William,
I believe the following statement in the Senate analysis is in error.
“If the Coalition’s opponents want to end its control of the Senate, then they need to win more than half the seats in at least one state or territory.”
This needs to happen in at least two states as pointed out by OzPolitics.
http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/2007/04/16/the-next-senate/
“The Coalition holds currently 39 of the 76 Senate seats. Whereas in government this is a bare majority of 50 per cent plus one, in opposition it would give the Coalition an effective majority of two. Under the Australian Constitution, when the Senate votes are equal the question passes in the negative.”
Your electoral maps are informative, and I understand the font size for the numbers are representative of the number of votes cast at each booth. However, in my electorate of Makin there are 34 booths, yet I only count 23 numbers. Have you combined booth numbers to reduce clutter?
Ray, I only provided the maps – the analysis you cite is Crikey’s. I have indeed combined booth results in some seats, more to save time than to reduce clutter. Boothby, for example, gets the full booth-by-booth treatment. Sorry your own electorate was short-changed.
William, I was filled with rage and jealousy at your splendid polling-place maps. So I attempted one of my own:
That took me four hours. Four hours x 150 seats = 25 days fulltime work. And country seats would be much more difficult: there are over 80 booths in Parkes. So I think I will have to leave polling-place maps to you. 🙁
I wrote the Senate analysis that Ray (10.18pm above) objects to, and on the normal meaning of “control” I think I’m right. If the Coalition fails to win half the seats in just one state or territory then it will have half the votes, so yes it will still be able to block legislation, but won’t be able to pass its own motions (without support from e.g. Family First) – that doesn’t really count as control.
But in order for the combined Labor-Greens-Family First-whoever to be able to pass legislation against Coalition opposition, they need to win two extra seats, which is what I said: “If it happened in both states [Victoria and Tasmania], the Coalition would drop to 37 seats and therefore lose the ability to block legislation.”
BTW William – awesome maps!
Adam, how on earth did you find that Corangamite blooper so quickly?
I have special powers.
A question to all you experts. If Bracks formally resigns from parliament before Howard can call an election what does that to the federal election time frames? I presume it limits federal options unless Howard calls an election today! I wonder if the ALP thought this one through!!!
I can’t resist a cartographic challenge – a Kingston polling place map:
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/2007seats/kingston.shtml
These maps take about two hours each so I won’t be doing 150 of them, but I will do the key marginals.
The last Labor MP for Corangamite was in 1929-31, he had been defeated as Liberal MP for Corio in 1910. Does this make him the only sucessful Liberal ‘rat’? Although wasn’t labor’s 1998 McEwen candidate the 1972 Liberal Scullin candidate?