Morgan, which ended its recent poor run at the federal level with a 53.5-46.5 result on the eve of the election, has produced the first post-election poll on voting intention. It shows Labor enjoying a honeymoon boost to 58.5-41.5, with a primary vote lead of 49 per cent to 36.5 per cent. Newspoll will presumably return to the fold in the new year.
Isn’t it worth Labor asking for a recount in Bowman? If Fran Bailey can get it, why not Jason Young?
BTW: won’t information on the McEwen recount start trickling out, despite the AEC’s edict that no results will be posted until the process is finished?
I have reservations about Belinda Neale, but it’s a mighty fine achievement winning Robertson and knocking off Jim Lloyd, so congratulations to her!
Overall: the surprise results for me were Labor picking up Forde, Dawson, Leichcardt AND Bennelong(I honestly didn’t think Maxine would get there).
My seat of Berowra: a 5% swing against Ruddock, and his 2PP vote down to 58/9%. And, the Labor party almost won the Pennant Hills booth near where I live – unbelievable!
Quite honestly I’ve never felt harassed or hoodwinked on election day by HTV people from the parties, I just walk right past them. I still don’t really see the need for party how-to-vote cards though. Surely it’s not hard to understand you put a 1 for who you want to be elected and then number all the rest for who you’d prefer your vote to go to should that person not receive enough votes.
Megan but other countries don’t have preferential voting, we do. Now if we had first past the post voting then nobody who have to be harassed by HTV people and it would be simple to count ballots with less chance of them being invalid for some reason or another.
If it’s good enough for Canada and the UK i dont see why it couldnt be good here. And before you say oooh what about the minor parties missing out, well look at the LDP in the UK who holds several seats in the House of Commons and the NDP in Canada who holds about 30 seats in their House of Commons.
I’m growing more in favour of first past the post.
Glen it’s got nothing to do with the minor parties missing out. It’s the fact that the most preferred candidate would not be elected. That is, the candidate should be preferred by over 50% of the electorate. If the Libs got 40% in one seat, ALP 39% and Greens 21%, quite obviously the people wouldn’t prefer the Lib candidate although they’d be elected.
But LTEP they are still the most preferred candidate, and what is democratic about having minor parties deciding which major party wins seats???
LTEP, you must be a local , used to running the gauntlet. I came here 20+ years ago and even though I have since been booth captain,etc., I still get the collywobbles. I have noticed that it is people from o/s and whose English is poor who can be hesitant and confused, and there is no non-aligned help available.
The AEC must be reading the blog! The analysis of declaration votes in Bowman has now been upgraded so that there are no outstanding votes. Lemming wins by 60?
Glen, you’re seriously suggesting the 19% of Greens voters in that hypothetical seat would prefer the Liberal candidate?
The minor parties don’t decide who wins the seat. The voters decide who wins the seat, which is exactly what the system should be. A first past the post system makes it much more likely for the country to have a government which more than 50% of the population would prefer not to have.
I think Grace expressed it fairly way back at 384 and the AEC submission at 814 gives it even more substance. Quoting Grace (384) – “I agree about the postal votes. They simply have to have better supervision. I can’t see why the AEC shouldn’t just do it all. The current system is simply too open to abuse, but of course none of that was addressed by the lovely Eric Abetz in his crusade to ensure the ‘integrity’ of the electoral roll. Frankly, I don’t think he’d know what integrity was if it bit him on the nose.”
Jenny, Eric Abetz initiated the Liberal Party crusade on the “integrity” of the electoral roll, but it was taken to its grubby completion by Christopher Pyne, as Chairman of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in 2001.
Over the past decade, the two major political parties have radically intervened in the independent administration of the electoral system by the AEC, without most australians knowing what is going on. By sending official AEC postal vote applications, attached to party political propaganda, right into your home, the parties have given themselves permission to corrupt an important aspect of the voting system.
Many voters innocently assume that the material has been sent to them by the AEC and trustingly post their applications back to the political party HQs in each division, using the printed envelope conveniently provided, assuming this is the way it should be done.
In the party offices the private information provided by the voter on the application is recorded and matched against computerised databases, where the name of every voter in that division is listed, plus any other personal information that the party might have added over time to describe the voters preferences.
The Privacy Act exempts these political party databases (Electrac and Feedback) from public scrutiny so you have no idea what information is held on you by the political parties (a good reason incidentally for using pseudonyms on blogs like these, that are regularly trawled by party workers for voter information to add to their databases).
The AEC regularly reports after elections, that a significant number of postal vote applicants have written in to complain that they never received their postal ballot papers after sending through their applications. Is it not a reasonable supposition that their applications were deliberately not passed on by political party workers, after they consulted their databases for those who might not vote their way? There is no outside supervision over any actions taken in party offices when they are handling your postal vote application.
Should we not be concerned that our voting system is gradually being skewed by the ever increasing number of postal votes (recorded well before polling day) at each succeeding federal election? Voters are increasingly bypassing the AEC and using this political party system to apply for postal votes because of its undoubted convenience, apparently oblivious to the fact that the privacy of their voting information is being compromised by partisan players who have no business intervening in the administration of the electoral system.
Anyone who objects to this creeping corruption might consider sending a submission to the parliamentary Joint Standing Commission on Electoral Matters, which will convene early next year to review the 2007 federal election.
End of rave (for the moment).
Neophyte says: Whatever the vested interests in keeping the status quo, it makes me pretty uneasy. But then I am only a neophyte.
Lose the election at 811: There has been some concern expressed about the changing tallies and other data on the AEC website over the past few days, which must be very annoying for the dedicated psephologists here (and MelbCity).
But its worth noting that the formal Declaration of the Poll at the office of the Divisional Returning Officer is the only legally sound basis on which to assume the counting in that division is really finished.
The formal declarations for all divisions are then centralised and collated, the list of winning candidates is signed off by the Electoral Commissioner, and the Writ for the Election is then forwarded to the Governor-General (and at this point the starter’s gun goes off for the 40 day period in which petitions can be made to the Court of Disputed Returns).
See section 284 of the Electoral Act here: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cea1918233/s284.html
What is on the AEC website may be subject to errors and omissions as electoral officials try to get on with the real job of counting ballot papers in the 150 divisional offices across the country, and keep up a running data record on the website for those who are interested. I think Antony Green has made this point previously.
At present preferential voting works in Labor’s favour, so we should retain it. The only situation where it doesnt would be those three cornered ones where Labor manages to finish just ahead of the Libs and Nats. Not that there are many of those, maybe a handful
PM Kevin Rudd, wow still not used to it, is adderssing the Bali Conf live!
on skynews
No im saying that out of the 3 parties you made reference to the Liberals out of the 3 were the most preferred candidate with 40% thus they win by FPP system.
LTEP, check how many seats Labor won with Greens preferences over the past decade and they add up.
Some countries dont have a choice with that LTEP like Canada who has a minority conservative government in power with 125 seats out of 300 odd but they’re still a strong country.
Thanks,LTEP. Am intrigued by all the complexities in what seemed a fairly straight -forward process.
This preferential system must be to politics what Cricket is to Sport.
The crowning glory, Megan?
Glen, Labor won those seats because they had the more preferred candidate in those seats. That means, if the Greens voters couldn’t get their most preferred candidate then they wanted a Labor member over a Liberal member.
Whether it’s Labor or Liberal that win the seat is of no interest to me. What matters is that the person elected gets the majority support in a seat.
Countries with first past the post systems have it because they won’t change. We’ve already made that change and it’d be ridiculous to deform back to an older and less democratic system. Canada almost always has a minority government due mostly to Montreal (I think). This brings about unstable governments. I think the average term of government is less than 2 years. Whether or not they’re strong has nothing to do with whether their government is conservative or not and in fact, in Canada a progressive party is usually in Government.
Is Bennelong declared yet or what? Centrebet still hasn’t paid out! 🙁
Glen, here’s an example:
31% The Extreme Right Party
29% The Very Right Party
40% The Loony Left Party
With first-past-the-post the LLP candidate would be elected, even though only 40% of the electorate is lefty. With preferential voting, the ERP and VRP would exchange preferences and the ERP candidate would be elected, and 60% of the electorate would be happy with that. The preferential system works well, but preferences should be optional (as should voting at all).
No LTEP in many seats Labor finishes blow the Tory candidate and wins because of the minor parties. The Tory candidate was the most preferred out of each individual candidate but because of preferences they lose.
Canada has only had minority governments in the last two elections and very rarely in their long history have they had minority governments even with first past the post voting LTEP.
The Duke… not yet. You can see if a division has been declared yet on this page:
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionMenu-13745-NAT.htm
aspidistra, if preferences were optional if noone decided to direct preferences the loony left party candidate would still be elected, even though they would not be the most preferred candidate. Optional preferential has the exact flaws that FPP has.
I also believe voting should be compulsory, but that’s a much longer argument I believe we’ve all had on a few occasions.
869
aspidistra S – but they were the most preferred candidate out of the three therefore they are elected. Agree with you on your last two points though.
Glen, you don’t seem to be following the argument on most preferred candidate.
Arguments for preferential voting:
CHUAVE OPEN
===================================================================
Candidate Party Votes %
——————————————————————-
David ANGGO NTP 4,495 09.0
Temai Timothy Komane 2,853 05.7
Mann Kurupo Michael PLP 2,494 05.0
George Goi Mume 2,720 05.4
Jim Nomane PMCP 4,033 08.1
Felix Nime Tapie PAP 3,190 06.4
31 others 30,124 60.3
——————————————————————-
Total 49,909
Informal 62
Total 49,971
——————————————————————-
Anggo wins with 9% of the vote. 91% voted against him. There were 37 candidates, not a high number for a PNG seat. Some have over 50.
The ALP lost many seats in the 60’s due to DLP preferances so its petty to whinge about the preferance flow these days
LTEP (871), it’s up to the ERP and VRP voters to realize the importance of directing preferences in this case. It’s their choice if they want a right-wing representative.
Compulsory voting completely contradicts the principle of democracy. You must express your freedom to choose on threat of a fine. That is ridiculous. In a real democracy you should be able to express anything, including nothing at all if that’s how you feel. Also, every vote would really count. I have no doubt that some seats have been decided by the donkey vote before. These are votes by people who just don’t care. Why does any candidate deserve those votes?
Adam predicted 8-0 seats based on “gut instincts” which must have been influenced in part by polling. Possum predicted 89 seats based on regression modelling (using historical poll data.) One was 4 seats out, the other 5. Isn’t this just splitting hairs?
Would we be having this debate re voting methods Glen if the Libs had just scraped back in with some of their seats being decided on preferences? I think not.
aspidistra we’ll agree to disagree on both points.
875
Historic Election – i bet you would of been unhappy about that in the 1950s and 1960s. Plus it was your fault the split happened you have only yourselves to blame, the Greens sprung up from nowhere.
The problem is having to vote for parties you dont want and having minority groups decide election results that’s what i dislike.
Glen
Haha, wasnt alive in the 50’s and 60’s, just interested in what happened but yer the split was Evatt’s fault at the time. “Hope i dont spur emotions”. Its just that preferances have historically favoured both sides in different times
HE just as if the Liberals split into conservatives and small l liberals we’d be to blame for vote splitting, but we now have a system where radicals like the Greens can help decide election results.
The only thing that made me unhappy Glen about the 50’s and 60’s was having a so called Democratic LABOR Party preferencing the Libs, not the process.
But didnt the DLP help the Tories win seats when the ALP may have won on primaries???
At least with the Greens you expect them to favour Labor. You don’t have a Liberal off shoot purposely keeping the Libs out of office out of spite.
Glen
You may need to be a bit concerned about party stability during this time with ppl like Alex Hawke in the party
880
Glen, if I can’t have a Green for my MP then I’m happy – for the moment – to settle for the ALP. The point has already been made that it’s voters note parties who express preferences. And I seem to recall some commentary by you on how ornery Greens voters are when it comes to following a HTV. Kinda says it all really.
I absolutely do not want to be in a situation where I – along with maybe 65% of my fellow electors are represented by a politician whose platform we disagree with. That is plain anti-democratic.
Glen – preferential voting was introduced so the various conservative parties didn’t cannibalise each other’s primary votes. Don’t go crying to mummy because now the system benefits ALP more than the Coalition.
882
So you are saying that ‘radicals’ like the Greens shouldn’t have their vote mean anything? We’re talking about voters whose vote counts just the same as anyone else’s. Why not just disenfranchise them, then? If they are too stupid to choose a major party, then they are obviously too stupid to vote. I find your elitism breathtaking.
#881 just looking back over the past 24 hours or so. Since when have “hugs” or (retch) “big hugs” been allowed on this blog. Reminds me of a Christian fellowship camp I somehow ended up at as an 11 year-old.
Thanks William for getting rid of the hundreds of tedious posts relating to a certain rape case.
Ahhh
Yes Glen, but that doesn’t mean the process is bad. I can’t see how winning a seat by receiving 40% of the vote, while 60% don’t want you, is democratic. Explain to me how it is.
Possu,s 30 September article predicted 112 seats.
892
No it didn’t
Sorry Historic Election, wasn’t referring to you, or anyone in particular, with that last post.
Well if you count all the primary votes of the parties other than the ALP and you’ll find an interesting statistic dyspnoeia??
While 5,386,433 voted for the ALP…
7,539,373 did not vote for the ALP…
Hence more people didnt want Rudd than wanted Rudd if we are going by primary votes here.
No system is perfect and that includes ours IMHO.
Ah, but Glen because of our preferential system we know more people preferred Rudd than Howard. That is the strength of the preferential system right there in your figures and the weakness of the first past the post system.
Re: Adam,
Would someone be kind enough to tell me the name or link for Adam’s website. Both he and Possum Com are egregiously entertaining and incredibly cogent.
Duke,
IASbet and others paid off on Bennelong ages ago. I made a motza on Maxine. Lol
By the way Glen, how many voted for the conservatives and how many didn’t want them?
Actually no because Rudd was not the first choice of the majority of people Gary.