As I type, polling booths in South Australia are set to close at any tick of the clock. I do so from the studios of ABC Television in Adelaide, where I’ll be standing in for Antony Green, who spends the evening grappling with Tasmania’s high-maintenance electoral system. Obviously I won’t have much to offer in the way of live commentary on this site, but here’s a thread where you can call the toss as the results roll in.
Bob Such calling the Liberals “the silly Liberals”. He is not very happy with them for campaigning that he was a Labor backer. He says it makes feel like he should back the Labor because he got elected as a supposed Labor backer. Still he is not ruling out backing the Liberals.
He will look at second preferences of those who voted for him in Fisher. He will also take into account that the Liberals got the second preference donkey vote in the seat.
Also Fisher has the highest percentage of government employees in the state and Such wants to protect them.
He also dismissed as nonsense that the seat is a Liberal seat because he had to win it from Labor when he first took the seat when he was a Liberal candidate.
Such is really sounding like he is going to back Labor but is trying to pretend he is not going to back Labor.
Simon Katich,
Mayo came down to the line in 1998 against a Democrat John Schumann. Labor has no chance in Mayo.
ross
Still as a principle, a democracy should elect the party that is favoured by the majority of the voters.
Howie would have been cut short if that happened.
The SAEC has Libs ahead in Mitchell by 150 at close of counting so they will probably win that on prepolls.
That makes it Labor 23 Lib 22 and two Indies who are going to get a lot of advice over the next week.
[Psephos
Posted Saturday, March 15, 2014 at 10:53 pm | PERMALINK
It’s like the Playmander in reverse.
The Rednamyalp.]
Well, you can get “many red ALP” from that!
from end of age article:
[
Mr Marshall has focused his attack on the government over debt and deficit, and Mr Weatherill has warned that Mr Marshall would simply “set up a branch office in South Australia for (prime minister) Tony Abbott”.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/south-australian-state-election-vote-count-could-last-days-20140315-34tzr.html#ixzz2w2216q1h
]
Looks like Tony Abbott is a real Labor asset.
[Well, you can get “many red ALP” from that!]
not to mention dreamy plan.
I guess it is a dreamy plan if your opponents win 52.5% of the vote and get 44.7% of seats
Well, if they’ve just forced him into backing Labor…. Only have themselves to blame?
Also, maybe SA should just do away with attempting to redraw boundaries to make elections fairer to the majority and just let elections run a natural course.
Such and Brock were both pissed off with the Libs for campaigning so hard against them.
Why the Libs wouldn’t run dead in those two seats and put the extra effort into win the Labor marginals is beyond me.
@357
I suppose they have to try to make every effort to gain 6 seats from somewhere.
Raara
There was a lot more bang for your buck trying to unseat Labor candidates on 0.5% than getting rid of Such and Brock.
It’s obvious that the boundaries of the seats in SA seriously needs to be looked at.
If is was Labor winning a majority of votes but not winning the election, we’d scream.
Well, Victoria, WA rerun is next.
Seems people are smarter in SA than TAS.
Dio
Sorry, but democracy takes many forms. The Australian form is people vote in electorates and the the party that wins enough seats to control the parliament, either on their own or in coalition, is the government. Been that way for a while and seems to work.
[Also, maybe SA should just do away with attempting to redraw boundaries to make elections fairer to the majority and just let elections run a natural course.]
Problem is it needs a referendum and getting voters interested enough to vote yes on a question about the electoral system that essentially asks “Do you want to reverse that decision you made 20 years ago?”
But I agree it needs to go. Just have single member electorates drawn independently based on population and geography, or go for proportional representation, if you want overall results to be closer to seat tallies.
I think there’s a very good chance Victorians will deliver a change of govt.
Pedant (338), to say that it is unreasonable to complain about seats not reflecting the popular vote today because of Playmander is ridiculous. I am nearly 40. Playmander was gone half a decade before I was born.
Whether you support Labor or Liberal (or other), it is disturbing when the popular vote is at odds with the seat-by-seat outcome more often than not.
This is a real slap in the face for Abbott.
The Libs should have won this easily.
I wonder how much the decision not to support Holden has played here?
Heaps!
Last booth 2PP in Mitchell is in 150 (0.5%) behind. I guess it will depend on how good a local member Sibbons is how strong the effort to get postals was
Centre @ 360: You just don’t get it, do you? Just because it’s easy to engineer an unfair result (as Playford did) does NOT mean that it is easy (or even possible) to engineer a fair result. The fairness clause in the SA Constitution was devised by politicians with a mediocre understanding of electoral systems.
Edi Mahin,
my aplologies if I suggested the ALP could win Mayo. I definitely agree they have no chance in Mayo. But I do think it is possible for a non LNP to win.
Carey
It is a while since I lived in SA but I seem to recall they had quite restrictive electoral boundary rules which meant boundaries were basically redrawn every election. And that is why you get close elections. Here in WA there seems to be a bit more tolerance in the size of electorates.
The Victorian LNP cant take a trick at the moment.
But I worry that the ALP haven’t had the time to learn from the lessons of the unexpected 2011 defeat. I also hear their policies for the election are still not finalised. They need to get their act together very quickly. Victorians are pretty canny voters and will back the incumbent if they dont think the challenger is ready.
The Playmander was a system that was intentionally skewed to favour one party. This system is not designed to do that. Labor are just better marginal campaigners. Also, look at the margins of country seats. A lot of the Liberal popular vote comes from the fact that those margins are so one-sided they virtually go into the realm of unanimity.
Wow. The Liberals should have been able to walk all over a tired 12 year old government.
Even if they win, this is a pretty poor showing.
pedant
What are you talking about that I don’t get?
So you want a government elected whereby the majority of the people don’t support it?
You have a problem in SA – fix it!
I hate this UK single member electorates. While it might work for the non-Rightists this time, it is a system, not only dishonest but it is bad for the country as it preserves a moribund and unrepresentative political system that prevents real challenge and change.
This is potentially disastrous for the country. But obviously attractive for the political power brokers.
Jay neglected to thank the architect of his victory…Mr rabbott
Adam Rosser @ 365: Fine if you are an unaligned voter, but if you are a Liberal supporter in SA (as of course is your right), you are living in an inherited glass house. Anyway, if you don’t like the way the current system works, the only certain cure is proportional representation.
[ Mayo came down to the line in 1998 against a Democrat John Schumann. ]
I loved the music of Redgum and Schumann, but not sure about him in politics.
Labor got a swing towards them in a lot of country seats, safe Liberal seats because they ran a country campaign as a result of them running an upper house campaign for the first time since 1973.
It is things like this that the electoral campaign just cannot take into account. It does not matter for the result of the election that Labor gains a few votes in safe Liberal country seats but it puts the result further at odds with the 2PP count.
Centre @ 374: What you obviously don’t get is that the problem can’t be fixed by just playing around with boundaries.
pedant
So you are saying that boundaries cannot be redrawn where areas that heavily support a particular party cannot be split?
John McEnroe (you cannot be serious)!
345
Belinda Neal and Debora O’Neill were members for Robertson, not Senators.
[If is was Labor winning a majority of votes but not winning the election, we’d scream.]
That’s what happened to federal Labor in 1998, and we didn’t scream. It also happened in 1954, 1961 and 1969. But to repeat what I’ve said several times, if you want a proportionate result, you have to legislate for PR. You can’t torture a single-member seat system to produce proportionate results.
Neal was a Senator before she was an MHR, and O’Neill is a Senator now.
Pedant (377), no argument that single member electorates have an inherent flaw. I also agree that the fairness test is unmanageable. Whether proportional representation or some sort of top-up system is the way to go, I don’t know. I just know that at the moment it is broken. There is every possibility of the same problem arising next time, and that is bad for the State (whoever forms government).
Personally, I don’t mind either Weatherill or Marshall. I strongly disapprove of PM Abbott, but that did not influence my vote in my local electorate.
Psephos @ 383
Don’t bother. Conservatives in Australia just make up the rules as they go along (they are of course, exempt from these rules).
PR with 47 seats gives a quota of a little more than2%
With a result of Lib 22 seats, ALP 18 seats, Green 4 seats Family First 3
A Liberal/Family First Coalition – is that what the people of SA wanted?
383
The ALP probably did not win the 2PP in 1954. Here are some figures you may remember writing about that election (scroll down to the bottom of the page).
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/1954/1954reps1.txt
[PR with 47 seats gives a quota of a little more than2%
With a result of Lib 22 seats, ALP 18 seats, Green 4 seats Family First 3
A Liberal/Family First Coalition – is that what the people of SA wanted?]
PR with a 5% threshold. Otherwise you have Israel. (And of course no-one here would want Israel!)
Centre @ 381: Not unless you want to create districts that look like Arachnids, and have big local fights about breaking up sacrosanct “communities of interest”; and even then it couldn’t be guaranteed to work.
[The ALP probably did not win the 2PP in 1954. Here are some figures you may remember writing about that election (scroll down to the bottom of the page).]
It’s at least 20 years since I wrote that, but I think I said they would have won the 2PP but not the primary if all seats had been contested.
@Rossmore
The 2010 defeat was not that unexpected, at least from a Government point of View, we knew it was coming.
However 2014 is shaping up to be very interesting, the Vic LNP are very slow learners and the need for actual policy responses to things like Manufacturing closures is now essential – the current image is more sitting around like scrouge counting $$ from job cuts while the state closes down.
And being seen, quite correctly as a do nothing government does not play well anywhere.
I mean under this dishonest system, ALP won over a 25% of the votes in QLD but got less than 10% of seats.
The Country Party gets about 5% of votes and gets double their share of seats.
The Greens get about 10%of votes and no seats.
How anyone can think our parliaments reflects the wishes of the voters, is beyond me.
A fair electoral system might actually be more supportive of leftist views so is obviously opposed by the ALP!
The obsession with winner-takes-all politics by the power brokers will keep Australia the predictable, and controllable, right wing country they want.
I mean under this dishonest system, ALP won over a 25% of the votes in QLD but got less than 10% of seats.
The Country Party gets about 5% of votes and gets double their share of seats.
The Greens get about 10%of votes and no seats.
How anyone can think our parliaments reflects the wishes of the voters, is beyond me.
A fair electoral system might actually be more supportive of leftist views so is obviously opposed by the ALP!
The obsession with winner-takes-all politics by the power brokers will keep Australia the predictable, and controllable, right wing country they want.
Well when you have a result of 52.5 to 47.5 and still lose, the boundaries should be at least looked at.
I mean 51/49 and still losing or 51.5/48.5 tops would be acceptable but any more I’d lodge in a protest!
Psephos
Unfortunately that result is with a 5% threshold.
SA would be run by a group of people supported by 6% of the electorate and believe that the world is 6000 years old
Ashford had its boundaries altered drastically for this election which slashed its estimated margin to less than one percent.
They tried to make it winnable for the Liberals, but, no, Labor has retained it.
There were three seats that the Liberals just had to turn up to win and somehow they managed to lose one of them.
What are you supposed to do to make boundaries fairer when things like that happen?
Remember how, the other day, there was much insistence by some people on here that Mark Henley had a lot of supporters and that he was a contender for the LC?
His ticket is currently polling last.
At least we won’t have to put up with any guff from either side about having a “mandate” to do anything.