Group voting tickets for the Senate have now been unveiled by the Australian Electoral Commission. I’ll get stuck into these after I’ve finished a few errands.
Senate tickets revealed
Analysis and discussion of elections and opinion polls in Australia
Group voting tickets for the Senate have now been unveiled by the Australian Electoral Commission. I’ll get stuck into these after I’ve finished a few errands.
Queensland is going to be fun to predict. So many little parties with preferences all over the place.
One horse has really bolted early 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uWjZp3cndo
OK, you can all try this once the ABC published my calculators tomorrow.
Victoria: ALP 39.5%, LIB 38.0%, Greens 6%, Family First 4%, Climate Change Coalition 3% with donkey vote, Democrats 2%, What Women Want 1%, sundries elesewhere, you get 3 Liberal, 2 Labor 1 Green
Put Climate Chnage Coaltiion to 2% and Labor to 40.5%, Labor wins third spot ahead of Greens
But if you then put Green to 8.1 and Liberals to 36, you get 3 Labor, 1 Green 2 Liberals. You’re going to love my calculator.
That wasn’t quite the “horse” video I was expecting considering what has been going on with some of their candidates lately.
Antony,
Then there are the below the lie voters who given the fractal buttrfly effect will have an unpredictable impact.
[Antony,
Then there are the below the lie voters who given the fractal buttrfly effect will have an unpredictable impact.]
Have below the line votes ever changed the result?
drowner, the SEP are the former Healyite SLL, the second-maddest Trotskyite sect in the universe, second only to the Spartacists. All Trots are mad, and the Healyites are madder than most. Just recall that Lyndon LaRouche was a Healyite, but then become slightly less mad and founded LaRouchyism. That’s how mad they are.
They only have an effect if it is really close. They changes the result in Tasmania last time, but that’s with a 20% below the line vote, not 5%. And they determined the result in two Victorian LV provinces last year.
Adam… Off topic but in reply to your comments above
Ukraine is an interesting example. There you have the two round voting system to elect the president. With preferential voting there would be only one round at half the cost.
The recent political crisis in Ukraine is a power struggle between the president and the parliament.
The president Victor Yushchenko illegally/unconstitutionally dismissed Ukraine’s democratically elected parliament and intervened in the operation of the Constitutional Court to avoid the court from ruling against his unconstitutional dismissal.
Ukraine held fresh elections in September under a cloud of constitutional uncertainty.
The outcome is worst then before.
Ukraine now has an unstable government (elect) with a majority of 2.
The president talks about Ukraine joining the EU but at the same time opts for a US style presidential system as opposed to a European parliamentary system.
Ukraine should be looking toward Europe not the US for its guidance.
The government elect does not represent a majority of voters (Thanks to the party list system and a four percent threshold barrier) As Ukraine does not have preferential voting those who vote for minor parties that fall below the 4% threshold are denied representation. The major parties increase their size of the pie not based on voters choice.
A precedent has been now set where the opposition can readily force an elected government to the polls even though the government may retain a majority support of the parliament. All they have to do is cancel over 1/3rd of the parliamentary mandates and the parliament is forced back to the polls.
Imagine the instability that is created by affording a minority opposition the right to force fresh elections of their choosing.
To add to Ukraine’s destabilisation woes the EU turned a blind eye to the the requirements of Ukraine’s constitution and stood by and watched Ukraine’s President breach Ukraine’s constitution without any reprimand or condemnation.
This has set a very dangerous precedent indeed.
Politically Ukraine and Georgia are unstable countries. (more as a result of presidential power games then any sense of political revolution). Mass rallies in Georgia against the government as we speak. Ukraine will soon follow as people wake up to the economic realities and lies promoted in the so called colored revolutions. There is still uncertainty as to if the government elect will take up office. next week will be a defining step but even if they do manage to take up office it will not be for long. Of course the president hopes to secure more power as a result of his efforts to undermine democracy in Ukraine
You can expect fresh elections in a year’s time to coincide with fresh presidential elections. Hopefully Ukraine will consider and adopt a preferential system before then.
I have only had a look at the QLD ticket and so far I am confused. The fishing/lifestyle party has the Nations before Labor but the Liberals after. The DLP Democratic Labor Party has the coalition before Labor. The carers have the Coalition before Labor. The climate change coalition have some of the Coalition and Labor party above the Greens. There is a fishing and a fishing/lifestyle party. The socialist alliance has given their preferences to the Coalition above many of the other small parties. Is everybody else as confused as I am?
Dear oh dear, Steve Fielding being funny. Please can we get this election over with?
[Dear oh dear, Steve Fielding being funny. Please can we get this election over with?]
What, where, why, when?
I see you have become a stooge of the neo-Stalinist KGB thug Putin, MelbCity. Very sad.
Antony the below the line vote only effected one seat in Victoria Western Metro and this (Like Tasmania’s) was a small electorate. The below the line vote tends to mirror the direction of the main tickets. I doubt that it will have an effect on any mainland senate seat except for maybe ACT…
Briggs this morning suggested there’d be a Galaxy (national) tomorrow.
Has anyone heard whether this is the case or not?
If so, will we get anything before around 11.30 pm tonight?
There was nothing on Agneda at 930 tonight. I would have thought there might have been something. ANy clues?
Stephen,
No.
[Has anyone heard whether this is the case or not?
If so, will we get anything before around 11.30 pm tonight?]
It will probably be in the News Ltd tabloids at midnight NSW/VIC time.
I guess I just don’t know the senate.
In Victoria it was a close fight for a fourth ALP seat and optional preferential voting effected that outcome… less then 150 votes in the outcome. I am of the belief there should have been another recount govern the extent of stuff ups by te electoral commission. Votes went missing and were unaccounted for, the VEC failed to apply standard basic due diligence in the conduct of the election. Judging by recent public opinion polls we should be able to determine the thresholds required to be elected without any problem. This will also show up any likelihood of a close pivot point in the election
The Climate Change Coalition and What women want do well with preferences in Victoria,. They could be quite a wild card. If Climate Change Coalition stay ahead of Family First, they first get Family First preferences and then Liberal preferences. Keeping the Libs on 36%, Labor 40.5%, Greens 8.2, but putting Family First on 3.4 and Climate Change Coalition on 2.5, the result is Labor 3, Liberal 2 with the last spot going to the Climate Change Coalition. It depends how big the donkey vote is.
Stephen it is all in the order of elimination/exclusion. Allocate the percentage of each party and determine who is still in the count where and when then the preferences make more sense.
Speaking of Horses.
[PRIME Minister John Howard doesn’t know the name of his Melbourne Cup tip but he knows it comes from Ireland.
That means it must be Mahler, the lightly-raced stayer from Tipperary.
“I can’t go to Melbourne for the cup,” Mr Howard said in Sydney today.
“I’ll be spending Melbourne Cup day elsewhere.”
When asked if he had yet studied the cup form, Mr Howard replied: “I think one of those Irish horses looks alright.”
Mahler, trained by Aiden O’Brien, is the only Irish horse in the big race this year.
It is rated a $10 chance behind the more-favoured local hopes Master O’Reilly and Zipping.]
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,22702326-5005361,00.html
Stephen,
I was being flippant. Parties make preference deals that they think will advantage themselves; e.g., “We’ll put you No. 2 in Queensland if you put us No. 3 in Victoria as long as the No.3 is in front of the Electricity is Bad Party and we promise that whatever order we go in Tasmania the Socialist Equity – Afternoon Tendency will be somewhere after you.” is met with “That’s fine, but we must also insist that you rank the Socialist Front – Afternoon Tendency after the Guns are Great but Missiles Are Better Party in SA.” Out of all that comes the unfathomable result. It’s best to vote below the line, but it’s easier to go ATL.
Antony,
The donkey vote is very small for the Senate. In 2004, the first group on the ballot got 0.5 per cent according to Adam’s website.
Antony,
Do you really think FF will get 4%? would you say there’s a >50% chance FF will get around 4%?
I thought Mahler was German, not Irish. Maybe he’s thinking of O’Mara.
Depends who the group is, and I reckon an appealing party name is guaranteed 1%. I reckon a group called ‘Climate Change Coalition’ will do better than the Citizens Electoral Council in Victoria in 2004, or the un-labelled groups that got the donkey vote elsewhere. On a big ballot paper, the first couple of columns have a distinct advantage. Unknown parties at the left of the ballot paper do better than unkown parties at the right hand end. And the first column on the ballot paper gets a constant drift of below the line preferences, as people eventually just number all the remaining squares for parties they don’t know. Those observations are based on research I conducted on the ballot papers at the 1999 and 2003 NSW Legislative Council election.
Take the overall percentage of each parties vote. Calculate the value/number of quotas. Remove the integer value (They are elected) and then you fold up the remaining percentage of the quota as would normal be the case in a single member election. You need to look at the percentage of quotas..
Total Votes /(positions +1) +1 * percentage of party vote gives you the quota percentage You then take the remainders. There are peculiarities and distortions in the system used (Paper based as opposed to value based surplus transfer calculation and the method of segmentation of distribution of exclusion – Although they can have an effect they are unlikely to do so with above the line voting in large electorates)
Play with the percentage of quota remaining after removing the integer value..
Have fun… Oh an take a look at the http://upperhouse.info site. The calculator should be up and running soon. Good for General idea of how the preferences come into play. If it is close (Unlikely at this stage) then yes you need to look at below the line votes and the system itself.
Melb City,
I know its off topic, but you gave a good summary of the so-called coloured revolutions. They were CIA con-jobs. Now watch as the new “democratic” governments use every trick in the book, fair and foul to hang on to power, and the US/EU look the other way.
For me the interesting thing will be SA Xenaphone and FF.
Will either or both be above the point where the majors are below them for the 3rd place
eg after smaller preferences,
FF 7%
Xenaphone 7%
greens 7%
Labor 40%
Liberal 40%
Greens fall short, Xenaphone makes it
Liberals fall short, FF make it
Labor falls short and Xenaphone makes it
FF fall short and Xenaphone gets in
X falls short and his vote is split FF and green and then Labor goes green and Liberal goes FF
Below the line is better but I find practical considerations preclude it these days: I normally have a small child (or two) in tow when I vote. It’s just not worth the aggro of taking five minutes to fill in the ballot.
So if my party of choice has second preferenced the Free Whisky For Cats Party, FWFCP gets much of the benefit of my vote!
All this talk of Healyites and SLL splits reminds me of a fascinating (if somewhat Tory, for a UK Labour MP) book by John Tomlinson called “Left, Right” – all those old UK trot parties like the Workers Revolutionary Party, Workers Socialist League, Revolutionary Current, League for Socialist Action, Marxist Worker, International Communist League, Workers Power, Revolutionary Workers Group, Revolutionary Communist Group, Revolutionary Communist Tendency, Workers League, Workers Fight, not forgetting the Socialist Workers Part, International Marxist Group Militant Tendency and the Spartacist League. And that was in 1980…
Nic, once the calculators are up, you can all make your own guesses and I’m not going to say anything else. At the 2006 South Australian election, I was constantly asked if Nick Xenophon would be elected because he received a bad flow of preferences. In the end I used my calculator to construct a model explaining how Xenophon could be elected if his vote got to 4%. He got 20%, and ever since I get accused of having predicted he would get only 4%. No, I modeled him getting 4% and went on to say I didn’t know what he would get. That’s why I will be publishing a calculator and everyone can make whatever assumptions they like. I think 4% is a reasonable vote for Family First, 3-5 would be my guess at the range. They got 4.3 in the Vic LA last year and 3.9 in the LC.
Dyno,
Five minutes every three years – not much to spend for democracy.
More neo-Stalinist Putin apologists. How depressing. It seems to be one of the defining characteristics of the far left that despite the pretensions to omniscience of historical materialism it never actually learns anything from history.
Stewart, the first law of Trotskodynamics is that the smaller and less consequential a Trot sect is, the more bitter will be its internal disputes and the more bits it will eventually split into.
Actually CC it’s a trade-off – I take the kids and explain to them what I’m doing, so they have some idea from a young age.
Which I reckon is better than not taking them, so I can number 1 to 200 in peace.
Antony your talking minor preferences I do not think it will generate any more then 0.5% as to the above the line donkey vote even less. yes a catchy name can deliver but not as much as you suggest. This is not a small local election. They are only marginally ahead of the well known ungrouped candidates. the main advantage is that they can direct preferences thanks to the above-the-line voting system. I know Philip Adams and he is just philo-Adams-bustering.. He may have an effect in Johns seat but not the senate. Family First is a catchy name and they have a network of active followers they still only attract 2-3% . the Greens appeal to the environment vote but they really are extreme left fanatics. It would be nice if the Climate change group received the lions share of the environment vote but they wont.
I need to calculate the various percentage outcomes.. but until the AEC publish the data file it is not worth the time and effort to extract the data from the pdf… I can wait one day… What we need is an opinion poll showing support for all parties broken down into states, then we are in a better position of determining the senate outcome.
Pollsters here is your chance to be the first… Publish state poll breakdowns showing all political parties, Give the sample a ballot paper and then calculate the results.. Happy to assist in the analysis/calculations.
Good evening all!
Any rumours about tomorrow’s polls?
If there’s a swing back to Howard, wouldn’t it have been leaked to the TV News tonight?
Antony,
do I read it correctly when I see that all the senate predictions operate on the principle that voters follow HoR into the Senate?
If that is true how did Don Chipp ever get the Dems in on and hold the balance of power?
Is it not possible that voters who want to see the end of Howard and co. might also want to see another voice (ie The greens) in the senate?
Oh I don’t know, Adam, the trot left is a wonderful example of market competition in action – a clearly defined market (the revolutionary left) with a number of competitors constantly improving their (revolutionary) price, with the odd ex-acolyte going freelance (splitter) to introduce new competition. If the old party wasn’t strong enough it withered (split too far), with its place taken in the political competition by new parties (more splitters).
All a bit Peoples Front of Judea for me…
Burgey, Briggs definitely said there would be a nation-wide Galaxy poll tomorrow.
D,
I think of all those people in the world who lived under communist or fascist tyranny and how wonderful it is that we have a democracy, that we can vote for whom we wish in the order that we wish. Voting ATL is better than not voting at all, but I like to make my own decisions – all the way to 66.
That video of FF had an error. He said “you heard it from the horses mouth” when in fact it actually came from the other end of the animal.
Eeeer Melbcity, you do realise that your request for a breakdown of minor parties in each State would require a very large sample size to get any idea what the figures might look like, don’t you? I doubt that even the major political parties could afford to pay the huge amount of money for that sort of survey. And someone would do it for free? I don’t think so.
Antony at 10:32. I agree there is a big difference in calculating the threshold of being elected and predicting the percentage of the vote. Two different things.
Green in 2006 required more then 8.5% with the ALP above 39% and the liberal party below 42% if I remember to be elected in Victoria. Problem was the ALP vote and the Green was lower then the threshold. We knew well in advance that Family First could be elected and the Greens miss out. A bit like the DLP being elected in Western Victoria last year. The calculators how nit a possibility and the scenario predicted by te upperhouse fortune calculator came true.
CC,
Not quite sure what the connection is between my original comment and resisting tyranny, but it’s obviously clear to you …
Antony What is your take on the ACT outcome now that the ATL preferences have been released… William wrote an excellent article earlier on that predicted immediate loss of a majority.. (Although the National party just come into play)