A grim night for the Liberals in South Australia, who needing six seats to win have only clearly won two from Labor (Bright and Hartley) and one from an independent (Mount Gambier), and will require sharp late-count reversals to add any more than Mitchell to that list. Labor can yet get to a majority if they can hold on to Mitchell, but the most likely result seems to be a hung parliament with the two returned independents, Geoff Brock in Frome and Bob Such in Fisher, deciding the issue. Another loser of the evening is “electoral fairness”, with the Liberals weak showing coming despite what looks like a win of about 52.5-47.5 on two-party preferred. I’ll have a lot more to say about this of course, but not right now.
The Libs have 52.4% before declaration votes. After declaration votes it should finish around 53%. That’s more than what Kevin Rudd got in 2007 (52.7%) The Liberals also won the TPP in 1989, 2002 & 2110 but lost the election. In 3 of the 4 Elections now won by the Rann / Wetherall government , the ALP actually lost the TPP.
After yesterday the most marginal ALP seat is currently on 1.8%. This should come down after dec votes, but in all likelyhood, a further swing of about 1% will be needed next time ie they will need 54%.
The SA Redistribution Commission is to blame for this!
The CONSTITUTION was changed in 1992 so that redistributions would be held every 4 years and the boundaries adjusted so that the group that wins 50% of the votes wins 50% of the seats.
In the last redistribution the committee decided to IGNORE these constitutional provisions because they said the boundaries were fair. How an appointed, non judicial body can ignore the constitution and get away with it i can’t understand.
I’ve read commentators excusing this because it would be “too hard” to adjust the boundaries. Community of interest has also been invoked. The introduction of One vote, one value has the same issues, are we to abandon this too?
True ,the Liberals are disadvantaged because their votes are locked in safe seats, but this does not just apply in the country but also in Adelaide itself. There are no ALP seats in Adelaide as safe as Liberal Bragg, yet this borders highly marginal Hartley. The key seats of Elder and Ashford are surrounded by safe Liberal seats with Morphett on one side and Waite & Unley on the other. It would be a simple matter to have corrected these boundaries. Light would also be relatively simple, just remove urban territory into Napier and add more rural areas in the northern end.
It would seem there has been political interference here. There needs to be a thorough investigation into the appointment, makeup and backgrounds of the commission that drew these flawed, unconstitutional boundaries. Perhaps the whole constitutionality of the whole election can now be challenged.
[It would seem there has been political interference here.]
There is no evidence for that.
[ There needs to be a thorough investigation into the appointment, makeup and backgrounds of the commission that drew these flawed, unconstitutional boundaries.]
The boundaries are not unconstitutional.
[ Perhaps the whole constitutionality of the whole election can now be challenged.]
Good luck with that.
The best solution rather than torturing boundaries would be some form of PR.
There were plenty of marginals for the Liberals to win. Perhaps if they didn’t run such a god awful campaign they might have won them. They can bellow about the system not being gamed enough for them all they want but the fact is they kind of deserved this result.
It is ridiculous that the Liberals couldn’t win even though they probably got a decent 2PP lead but a lot of that falls onto them.
It also should be noted that, even though he didn’t explain it well, John Rau was right on the ABC when he explained that rural independent seats are Liberal on 2PP normally (and they probably will be this time.) So the notional Liberal tally is probably +2. However, I do agree that ECSA should’ve been more aggressive with its redistribution last time.
Ultimately the fairness clause is a flawed system. It doesn’t actually do what it’s supposed to do, it’s effectively gerrymandering and, when used heavily, it punishes marginal MPs for being good, popular local members.
If you want a system based on the popular vote, you need to go for a PR based one. It’s time we had a discussion about that.
Oh, and incidentally, if this is a hung parliament, I do want the Libs to win because it is a bad look to have a party not win government with 52+% of the vote and because it will save Labor a wipeout at the next election (in fact, they’d probably win) and also would make the federal vote better.
I believe they are unconstitutional because they were not drawn so that the grouping that won 50% of the votes at the previous election would win 50% at the next on the new boundaries. This requirement is stated in the constitutional provisions.
Moving to PR is to radical a change and unlikely to happen. An alternative to redrawing the boundaries, could be a top up solution as applies in Malta. If a grouping loses the election but wins the TPP (say by more than 51%) then they are awarded an additional 5 top up seats, made up of their 5 most narrowly defeated candidates. This would mean the defeated Liberal candidates in Ashford, Colton, Elder, Light and Newland would also sit in the house as members at large.
There would need to be a proviso that for this clause to apply a certain number (say 80%) of all contests would need to have ended up as TPP contest between the two leading groupings.
I looked up the SA popular vote compared with who formed government since WWII.
Out of 20 elections, the winner of the popular vote only won 11 times, assuming Labor win this one.
peter
I agree something has to be changed.
As Carey says, it’s a very bad look for the party with 6% more of the vote not to win.
54
That top up system is pretty much what would be in the SA Libs bets interests and the most democratic thing to do without adopting full PR. Either a 2PP winners bonus (best for the LIbs) or a modified version of MMP (mixed member proportional) with the existing single member seats and the allocation of overhang mandates based on the 2PP.
A fixed winners bonus would make it very hard to have hung Parliament, virtually impossible if the “fairness” seat criteria are not removed, and make the winners victory even larger in a landslide victory.
A 2PP based MMP style overhang system would still allow hung parliaments, unless the overhang seats were issued based on the overall 2PP winning party winning the seat rather than just the 2PP in the seat, and would mean that a landslide election would not result in a lopsided parliament.
To all those blaming the SA Redistribution Commission, are you sure the SA Libs arent just terrible campaigners irrespective of where the boundaries are ?
Seriously, when the party losing the popular vote manages to govern in 9 out of 20 elections, you have to look at how fair the system is.
I think this one was simply a poor Liberal campaign. They should’ve taken everything under 3% 2PP margin at the least. Then they should’ve got half of everything under 3-5% 2PP margin after that. Plus a couple of seats higher up the pendulum.
To only pick up two of three seats between a 0-1% 2PP margin and have swings against them in seats like Adelaide and Dunstan where they should’ve expected a sophomore surge on top of the statewide swing really says it all.
It was the campaign that decided it this time, not the electoral system.
Diogs,
So you reckon the political parties might have worked out by now that winning elections is about winning the most seats. And, to win seats you need to develop policies that are attractive to tranches of people who have not voted for you in the past.
I’m hearing the Lib campaign was insipid and uninpiring and that the new Leader, Marshall did not engender confidence that he could do the job because of lack of experience.
If the Libs lose, which is looking the likely outcome, perhaps they need to step back from their internecine fighting and start looking at policies that will allow them to penetrate to voters in areas where they have not been able to gain a foothold.
So, instead of blaming the electoral system, they should focus on their own short comings for their loss.
[SA Electoral system yada yada]
Erm: Isnt this just really a case of the LNP failing to win enough urban marginals?
SA is an extremely urbanised state after all. You can get rural swings up the wazoo, all day long, and it isnt going to win you an election, especially if you already held the damn seat.
Go to the ABC site and check out the swings. the LNP has got all their big ones in the very few seats outside Adelaide.
The problem isn’t the prospect of hung parliaments. They’re fine and work in SA (the last federal one has hurt their reputation but it will heal) – the problem is having a situation where a party can get 53% of the vote and not win government. Or, more appropriately, the fact that it’s not uncommon. The fact similar stuff happened last time. The fact that when analysing an opinion poll that has the Libs leading 54-46 we are asking “is it enough?” That’s the problem.
Yes, I know that’s the risk you take in a parliamentary democracy and, yes, if Weatherill retains power it will be completely legal and constitutional but it really does shatter voters’ faith in the system.
The Libs’ campaign effort was my first point, as I noted in the first paragraph in post 53. They wear the majority of shame on this because government was extremely gettable for them.
This is obviously a very embarrassing result for SA, and they will have to have a good long hard look at their system. It is clearly not apporiate for SA to continie to think of itself as NSW or Victoria – it simply doesn’t have the population. They should be looking to the systems in Tas or ACT, rather than looking down on them and pretending they are with the “big boys”.
Also though, this was pretty much predicted by Antony’s calculator. For example, when one plugged the Newspoll 54-46 result in, the Libs still could not get a majority. If 54 TPP wasn’t going to cut it, then the Libs were dead on arrival…
I recall some posters dismissing the calculator and still claiming the Libs would get a majority “easily” — they now look as silly as the SA system itself.
The swings in Bright and Hartley are way smaller than what I was expecting. The fact that Hartley’s only got a 2% or so margin now speaks volumes to me!
The Liberals seem to have been just as aggressive in sandbagging their marginal electorates as Labor, so if they do ever win Government it seems likely something similar could occur to a Labor opposition. Morialta and Stuart both had large swings to the Liberals, with swings in Dunstan and Adelaide nowhere near enough. I do imagine Adelaide to be a bit of an exception, a seat that ordinarily wouldn’t be in Liberal hands…
Quite so: shit LNP campaign, but that shouldnt thave been a problem after so many years. I think we’re looking at Abbott’s job-killing in the manufacturing sector. I predict he wont be invited to VIC later this year.
As for the electoral system: hey, if anybody wants MMP, Im in. Let’s have a conversation.
In the meantime, this is how single member district electoral systems work punters: its not about the overall vote. Its about winning individual seats. Go tell it on a mountain.
This is a pretty good summation of why the “It’s the electoral boundaries” excuse is not a very good one this time
http://stopitiloveit.com/post/79697502716/south-australia-the-2014-election-and-who-is-gerry
Will any new votes be counted and/or published today? Or will it be a re-check of existing totals?
In fact I find the behaviour of marginals in SA to be a little creepy. How is it SA politicians/party machines are so good at targeting marginal seats than their federal or big state counterparts?
The Electoral Commission cannot defeat popular local candidates and unpopular local candidates. They produced a system which would have a Liberal Govt with 50.1% of 2PP all things being equal. All things are not equal when poor candidates are put up. And the current system is unfair to good candidates – potentially putting the hurdle higher each time.
All of the pre 1972 wins by less than 50% 2PP were the Playford gerrymander – so they are not proper comparisons. And the LCL were perfectly happy to have the benefit then.
In a multi party system topup votes are also unfair. The Greek system being a classic and Italy not much better.
There is a demographic bias towards the ALP in SA because of the concentration of Liberal voters in certain areas, particularly, but not exclusively the country. This was recognised by both parties in the early 90’s which was why the fairness clause was introduced. The Boundaries Commission made a value judgement (which they are not entitled to do) that they would not apply the fairness clause because the ALP won last time because of superior campaigning.
Whether the ALP has superior campaign skills is besides the point. The boundaries were not adjusted according to the constitutional specifications.
[ In fact I find the behaviour of marginals in SA to be a little creepy. How is it SA politicians/party machines are so good at targeting marginal seats than their federal or big state counterparts?]
The seats are so sparsely populated that one can shower voters more effectively and intimately with “gifts” and other electoral goodies?
GG
Bottom line is that if you get the most votes, you should be elected. That’s what should happen in a democracy.
The outcome should reflect the will of the people.
On the Leg Council votes – I pointed out that Powerful Communities could have got elected with less than 1% of the vote and seemed the only chance of left of centre groups getting 6 of the 11 seats.
Thats not a prediction of how they would poll but there was nothing lost by promoting the PC group.
Someone did foolishly say Multicultural Group would get a seat. They didn’t.
I predicted a much lower vote for X group – as it turned out they ran a good campaign and got a very good vote because they got the Xenophon brand name out there.
SA’s population is irrelevant. Places with similar or smaller populations have managed to have successful single member legislatures that mostly reflect the will of the popular vote.
I agree with Corey that Labor’s best outcome would be to defer to the Libs/Indies and willingly enter opposition and play the game as hard as Abbott did. The Indies hopefully will knock off any bad legislation after allowing for a bit of pork for Frome and Fisher. The Lib’s lack of experience in government and their reliance on a large rural backbench as well as the Indies will inevitably cause conflict as is the usual way with the SA Libs. Labor will hopefully recharge their batteries and prepare for a smashing victory four years hence. It will also make it easier for federal Labor simply to ‘blame the Libs’ for any problems.
Incidentally, ALP retirements have introduced quite a few newbies at this election, so regeneration will be well advanced after the next election.
Diogs,
Bottom line, if you win the most seats you win the majority of elections.
‘Carey’, not ‘Corey’ …. sorry!
[Bottom line is that if you get the most votes, you should be elected. That’s what should happen in a democracy.
The outcome should reflect the will of the people.]
Which is a fine sentiment, but one completely unrelated to how single member district (SMD) electoral systems work.
Dont forget British parties normally get 35-39% when they win in a landslide. Its only Australia’s pref system based calculation of a thing called “2PP” that gives people the (incorrect) impression that the overall vote matters a toss in SMD systems.
It doesnt.
Good or bad campaigning do not remove responsibility from the Commission. Last election, the popular vote did not produce the government. They were required to redraw the boundaries such that if the vote was repeated then the party that got 52% of the vote would achieve government. Well, the vote was repeated and the popular choice was denied.
All they have done is create a hung parliament, minority government supported by 2 independents from constituencies that would by nature select the other side. Combined with a government that got less of the popular vote. Been there, done that.
DL,
The swings are, again, all over the place. In the 2010 Victorian election, the only swings to the ALP were in electorates along the Murray held on big margins by the Nationals or in contests against the Greens.
Not that similar complaint couldn’t be leveled against Victoria, as a 51.5%2PP should return more than a one seat majority, as some of the worst swings against the ALP were in the Libs eastern suburban heatland
Peterk,
yes the electoral commission did decide to be very conservative on the change of boundaries and keep them largely as they were. However they did provide 3 seats of under 1% swing required by slashing Ashford’s margin in the redistribution.
Steph Key had a large number of new people in her electorate but somehow she managed to get a swing towards her. The Liberals blew Ashford, it was their seat to win, it should have been an easy win for them.
In the end the boundaries commission is not there to compensate for poor local campaigning, it is not there to give the election to the opposition. The Liberals need to admit they made huge mistakes in the last two elections that cost them victory. If the Liberals want to win marginal seats they need to select candidates who will go out there and ensure victory in them.
The system can be improved, it is certainly not perfect but the Liberals failed in this election more than the system did. Marshall failed as leader.
GG
That’s why we should have MMP.
A proportional voting system with topup for all parties like New Zealand is clearly the best way to ensure a fair outcome. It is impossible with single member electorates.
The get lucky and live in a marginal seat process is bad for community overall. But in this election apart from Colton I can’t think of too many examples of Govt largesse being a significant factor.
Voters in Bright got a brand new electric train system and decided it was a bit disruptive getting there and tossed out Ms Fox.
First, I agree that a good margin over 50% should see you elected. In the Playford era, the impetus to change what was then a shocking gerrymander was him winning with, I think, less than 46% of the vote.
As for where the votes are, I would expect those who complain about this to also be outraged that the National federally win many seats with far less of the vote than the Greens, who get 1 eat with up to 10% of the vote.
To fix the current SA system would probably REQUIRE a gerrymander, to take small Liberal areas into current marginals, probably producing odd-shaped electorates with no commonality of interest.
It is correct that the two independent seats (previosly 3 with Mt gambier, are generally Liberal seats, so this also skews the seat result. Bob such, the likely new Speaker, was a Liberal and fell out with them. this isn’t Labor’s fault.
Given all that, I do agree that a loss with 52.5% isn’t particularly democratic, but there’s a fair bit of Liberal self-inflicted damage to take into account also.
Thanks for the info about currently informal votes eventually being counted. I had no idea of that.
I think Steven Marshall played right into the Labor theme about him by not turning uop to several debates or interviews, walking away from some also and the Tony Abbott snub of Jay Weatherill at the drone announcement would also have underlined Labor’s theme about not standing up to Abbott.
One or tow other random thoughts. Various experts declared the elction lost for Labor over the Farrell/Weatherill contretemps on the ABC. I think many people saw that as Weatherill standing up to Farrell. The eventual candidate, John Gee, from the little I’ve seen of him, seems to be the model of the union candidate who will probably contribute little and serve out his term for the parliamentary pension.
I also offer my condolences to Matt and Dave, the ABC political radio duo, who did their utmost to give the Liberals a leg up, even to the point of pre-arranging Liberal ‘gotchas’ during the Leaders’ debates on their show.
[Marshall failed as leader.]
Yep. And if he can’t get a government out of this, he’s finished.
If it were a case of the Liberals getting 50.1 2PP or this being a one-off incident, one would probably just shrug it off as the quirks of parliamentary democracy. But that’s not the problem. I am not carrying on about this to undermine Labor’s right to retain government but because I want the state to start actually having a serious debate about the kind of electoral system it wants because the fairness clause is a failure in my view and we need to talk about alternatives.
I think I’ll play Devil’s Advocate and say it may be worth the ALP forming minority Government in the name of the greater good to stymie the excesses of the Abbott Government and Liberal control of COAG.
On a serious note I can see COAG being so one sided being a serious problem. Marshall doesn’t seem to have many original ideas and like Hodgman may just agree with the Abbott agenda (which is undoubtedly a stupid strategy, but there you go).
On Abbott campaigning in Victoria, I think Abbott and his team will campaign to be allowed to campaign in Victoria, to boost his profile in the state, but I doubt the state executive team wants him there, especially after SPCA.
If it does get down to ALP 23 seats, Libs 22, I think there is a case for the two independents taking into account the much higher 2PP of the Libs. It would be awkward having a Liberal government with these numbers because of the necessity to have a Speaker, but it would be workable, and I think more democratic.
Diogs,
Apart from the unashamed tinkerers like yourself, the transparent self interested Libs blaming something other than themselves for their loss and the usual Greens whine that they aren’t allowed to Govern everybody with less than 10% of the vote, I doubt there is much interest in changing the electoral system all that much.
In the booth I observed the ticket vote was almost equal between Labor and Liberal which was a slight improvement for Libs. I had thought watching votes that Labor were doing better – but not so in the final count.
Any system which removes about 3% informal votes is worth looking at. Electoral officials are supposed to encourage full preferential vote because the ticket vote is only meant to be a safety net. Prior to 1985 change to above the line Leg Council voting a lot of people voted 1 or X only and were informal.
As Adam alluded to last night, the so-called ‘Playmander’ was not a given. As a politics undergraduate decades ago, my research proved difficult to validate the Playmander thesis as quite a few unwinnable electorates in the ’50s and ’60s were uncontested by the major parties. This skewed any analysis.
Another thing I noticed was to do with Polling Booth posters. I’ve always thought the Libs did this better with the messages they highlighted, but this time I thought the opposite.
i don’t know that it makes much difference, but Labor’s posters querying Marshall’s suitability looked more effective than the Libs ’12 years’ type slogans.
Did others feel the same?
I realize the politics are fraught and the ALP might not see any advantage for them, but is there any way that the independents could support the LNP but ensure an ALP speaker to both provide a speaker who isn’t a partisan government hack and mean regular votes don’t tie?
I don’t buy the superior campaigning skills meme.
The ALP did much better in the marginals in 2010, probably because of the sophomore effect with all the new members from 2006.
This time they did slightly worse in marginals. So far there has been an overall swing of -0.8%. Heres the results in the key ALP marginals according to the ABC: Ashford +1.6%, Bright -3.2%, Colton -2.1%, Elder -0.1%, Florey +0.3%, Hartley -1.6%, Light -0.6%, Mawson +1.1%, Mitchell -2.9%,Newland -0.9%.
Remember the swing was only -0.8% overall, so with that in mind then Libs haul of 3 seats is what was to be expected from the much maligned pendulum.
What is significant is that the ALP improved in the non-outback country seats, seems to be 3-4% swings TO the ALP in these. I suspect the “Legislative Council” campaign was actually a disguised attempt to improve their overall TPP, to save embarrassment.
Given the Libs already high vote last time, improving on it significantly was never going to be a lay down misere, given that they are now in power federally and the dynamics have completely changed.
One other thing before I exit for a while: I believe there will be demand for electoral reform in this state this time and the state will be much more open to voting yes in such a referendum, so Labor really need to take the initiative here and step forward with a sensible idea because the Libs are already bringing it up and they’re suggesting things like FPTP and OPV voting.
If labor end up on 23 seats that would be 48 % of the seat in parliament in line with the 2pp vote. The system not issue it’s the liberal party and its candidates in the keys seats
Lets see how the late counting plays out – but it seems the “fairness” provisions of the SA electoral law may have done the trick for Jay.
No big deal – Weatherill will be SA’s Iemma. Paradoxically it might help Abbott pick up 1 or 2 SA seats if Jay hangs on.