The New South Wales election was finalised today with the pressing of the button for the Legislative Council count, which turned up a surprise win for Mark Pearson of the Animal Justice Party. It had been clear that the last seat would go to a micro-party, but the expectation was that the winner would be Peter Jones of the No Land Tax Party, who had made a very considerable investment in his party’s campaign and won the ballot draw lottery by securing first place.
Despite that unanticipated win for what might broadly be defined as the Left, the Coalition has achieved its objective of an upper house in which it requires only one out of the Christian Democrats and Shooters & Fishers to win votes. In a chamber of 42 members, the Coalition has secured 20 by adding nine to their total of 11 from 2011, amounting to a net gain of one given they won eight seats in 2007. The Christian Democrats and Shooters & Fishers have as usual won a seat each, leaving them with two apiece. Despite their triumphs in the lower house, the Greens have been chastened in only winning two seats compared with three in 2011, leaving their total unchanged at five. Labor won seven seats for a total of 12, a net loss of two given they won nine seats in 2007.
Pearson’s win over Jones for the last position was achieved when the third Greens and tenth Coalition candidates were excluded, at which point five candidates were chasing four seats – Pearson, Jones, Robert Borsak of Shooters & Fishers, Fred Nile of the Christian Democrats, and seventh Labor candidate Courtney Houssos. Jones led Pearson by 2004 votes prior to this point, but the Greens exclusion boosted Pearson by 4887 relative to Jones, perhaps reflecting a surprisingly low rate of exhaustion among Greens voters. Furthermore, Pearson made a further net gain of 294 with the Coalition exclusion, which might also have been thought a bit of a surprise. That left Jones in last place with a 3177 deficit compared with Pearson, causing him to be excluded and the final seats to be allocated to Pearson, Borsak, Nile and Houssos.
In the Legislative Assembly, the final scores are 54 for the Coalition (the Liberals down 14 to 37 and the Nationals down two to 17), 34 for Labor (up 14), three for the Greens (retaining Balmain and further gaining Newtown and Ballina), and two re-elected independents (Alex Greenwich in Sydney and Greg Piper in Lake Macquarie). A quick round-up on how the close seats played out, seeing that I dropped the ball in following the late count:
Lismore. After an early scare, Thomas George ended up retaining the seat for the Nationals with a margin of 2.9%. The Greens were looking good on election night with 29.2% of the primary vote to 39.8% for the Nationals, but they got poleaxed on postal votes which favoured the Nationals by 53.7% to 16.6% (although iVotes, which bit into the postal vote total compared with 2011 and were recorded separately of them for the first time, were more like polling day votes), and absent votes were not more favourable for the Greens than polling day votes, like they had been in the past. The Greens were able to make it to the final count after finishing 417 votes clear of Labor, but by this point they needed a preference share exceeding that of the Nationals by an unlikely 52.7%, but were in fact able to manage only 35.5%.
Ballina. Tamara Smith has won Ballina for the Greens in convincing style, finishing 2258 clear of Labor at the second last count and winning ahead of the Nationals by 3.1%.
Gosford. Labor’s Kathy Smith eked out a 203-vote victory over the Liberal candidate, for a margin of 0.2%.
The Entrance. Labor candidate David Mehan’s long quest for a parliamentary career finally paid off with a 338 vote win over the Liberal candidate, a margin of 0.4%.
East Hills. Liberal member Glenn Brookes finished 372 votes clear of Labor’s Cameron Murphy, a margin of 0.4%.
Reposting from the other thread:
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The preference flows from the NSW Legislative Council are very funny. You’d normally expect that the right-wing party voters would preference another right-wing party over an obviously left party like Animal Justice but nope.
Animal Justice gained over No Land Tax on the exclusions of the Coalition, the Fishing Party (seriously), the Outdoor Recreation Party and the Motorists. The only parties No Land Tax gained on were Building Australia and No Parking Meters and the latter only very marginally.
These gains were such that the logic that the AJP needed a 10% flow off the Greens went completely out the window. But they got it anyway.
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And reposting daretotread’s reply which I enjoyed:
daretotread@579
The Coalition preference flows were:
C Dems 4680
Labor 2561
AJP 1700
NLT 1406
Shooters 1023
So I would say that daretotread is right – the Coalition voters don’t preference parties they see as redneck and instead preference the Christians, Labor and even screaming lefties ahead of them.
Now it might be that the proverbial battlas would preference the Shooters and No Land Tax if they preferenced at all, but the battlas do not preference, they just vote 1. So we’re probably seeing the educated end of the Coalition vote here.
Oh my commiserations to NSW on having Fred Nile with a slice of the balance of power, especially alongside a religious Premier. Could be a grim four years for secularism in our largest state.
(largest by population of course, not by area!)
Well, well, well…..the long awaited NSW election Upper House results.
A mixed bag for the LNP. Control with 20/42 votes + any 2 others from the 2 CDP, 2 Shooters or 1 Animal Justice party (once they supply a President of the Chamber).
I think that is right isn’t it William rather than your comment that they only need 1?
To defeat the government the ALP 12 + Green 5 need 4 of the 5. If the CDP and Shooters vote together (which they do I think), then the ALP/Greens needs to win BOTH these minor parties over to block anything.
The LNP didn’t win the 10th seat which would have meant that they could give the Presidency over to a CDP or Shooters member and control the floor, but they can still win with the CDP onside.
Dear Mr Bonham how did you enjoy @ 1 re daretotread@579 – was it only bogans vote shooters and fishers? who are somehow more extreme than the fred nile and the animal justice AKA PETA/Animal Liberation/ ? Really? I guess I’ll get the flannelette shirt and thongs out of storage. Obviously I do not agree one bit. Look forward to cows roaming the street of Sydney.
It’s funny how the preferences coming from seemingly anti-AJP parties favour the AJP over NLT.
[I think that is right isn’t it William rather than your comment that they only need 1?]
They only need one party. They need both of that party’s votes.
Keyman@4
Oh I just like it when someone challenges my analysis in a spirited, amusing way that seems to have some actual merit. Frankly I think you’ve missed the point of daretotread’s post as a satire of the kind of classism mentioned rather than necessarily an endorsement of it. It’s talking about how a certain kind of voter sees things, not necessarily endorsing their view of the world.
Of course Fred Nile is more extreme than the Shooters and Fishers but his is a kind of extremism that it is somehow unfortunately semi-acceptable for old-school conservatives to associate with. Thus Baird praying with Nile but I doubt he’ll be joining the Shooters in whatever is their nearest equivalent. I personally find Nile’s politics to be extremely repulsive and generally would rather see his mode of political religiosity rendered permanently unconstitutional.
Oh and I didn’t much enjoy being called “Mr Bonham”, a title I reject. My correct title is the gender-neutral “Dr” but I am also entirely happy for people to refer to me without a title at all.
A final result that should barring a 2007-2011 style term give the Libs 2 more terms.
Meanwhile the Tripodi / Obeid faction rebuilds and waits faithfully for masters return. They are after all only 4 votes away from regaining control of the NSW Labor parliamentary caucus.
The second time in a row that preferences have meaningfully affected the LC count, which I think is a very good thing. The recent Qld and NSW elections have both eased a lot of my concerns with OPV, I have to say.
ESJ, I tend to think that kind of thinking is a fairly dangerous way of making predictions. Given increasing volatility, predicting the result of an election four years from now seems a fairly pointless exercise.
I agree with Frickeg – it is good to see genuine voter choice including preferencing trumping a shabby attempt to game the system.
I do get the impression there are too many voters who do not understand preferencing in the NSW upper house system and do not realise it is different from the Senate. I saw one saying he had just voted Green above the line and saw that the AJP had been elected on Green preferences, and was pleased that he had helped them. Well actually no he hadn’t; his preference exhausted.
10
Changing the Senate to the NSW system would help the situation.
I don’t think OPV is a perfect system by any means but it seems to be delivering broadly equivalent and perhaps slightly superior outcomes to preference deals, from a representation perspective.
Something to mull in the inevitable Senate overhaul.
As I said in the other thread, the way to fix the Senate system is simply to abolish Group Voting Tickets and allow for an elector’s preference order of parties/groups to be expressed above the line.
By all means retain the BTL vote for those who wish to vote for ungrouped candidates and/or indicate a preference order contrary to a party’s ticket order (for example, Left-leaning ALP voters in WA at the Senate election rerun last year did this in a noticeable quantity), but most people will avail themselves of the ability to preference ATL, I think.
Sorry for being a bit parochial here but what was the position of the Christian Nutters and the Lets Kill Things parties over the legislation needed to close the Newcastle rail line?
Dr Bonham @ 7 I did not even realise I posted you as Mr – apologies.
cud chewer @14, the Christian Democrats oppose closing the rail line to Newcastle. The Shooters’ platform implies that they would oppose it too (they are explicitly supportive of regional rail). In either case, though, it’s not a core issue for them and I would imagine they would both be prepared to bargain on it, as they have both done in the past.
teh_drewski@12
I’m beginning to be convinced that OPV really works well in a PR system used in most upper houses. OPV in the lower house, not so good though.
Edna
[A final result that should barring a 2007-2011 style term give the Libs 2 more terms.]
Bulldust. If you don’t understand how elections work, just say so.
Antony Green on his blog mentioned that about 35-40% of the Green preferences went to Labor. I wonder if that gave Labor a full quota on its seventh candidate.
No, I said that about 35-40% of Green votes had preferences, that is they were not ‘1’ only above the line votes. I said that 21.3% of Green votes flowed as preferences to Labor. These preferences did not get Labor to a quota, the seventh Labor candidate elected to position 18 around 12,000 short of the quota. Labor would have won the seat even if they had received zero Green preferences.
The upper house becomes interesting in the last 21 counts. At this point you still have 3 Labour, 3 Liberal 2 Green and one from the other parties.
So the first 5 to go are 2 from Lab and Lib and one from Green. Their votes are all BTL. The Libs went 72% Lib, 12% Exh, 2.5% CD, 2.5% Lab 1% Shoot and 1% NLT. Labor went 69% Lab, 20% Exh, 3% Green, 2% Lib. Greens went 58% Green, 24% Exh, 9% Lab and a whole bunch around 1%
The next 5 to go were all the groups without a party eg Group D. They went 83% Exh, 3% Lib, 2% Green, 2% Lab, 2% AJ 1% NLT
As each of the others fell, none of them gave stronger preferences to NLT than some other party and all but 2 gave stronger preferences to the Animal Justice over NLT.
I like to think that this is an indication that voters recognised the NLT as a cynical attempt to get the balance of power and that voters prefer a single issue party above that.
As well as the majors, the CD and NLT had candidates in all lower house seats. The top FP votes for NLT in upper and Lower house were (upper first)
Fairfield Fairfield
Liverpool Wollongong
Cabramatta Auburn
Rockdale Liverpool
Bankstown Mount Druitt
Mount Druitt Cessnock
Kogarah Londonderry
Prospect Camden
Canterbury Heffron
Auburn Mulgoa
And the top 10 for CD were
Granville Lakemba
Lakemba Granville
Fairfield Canterbury
Prospect Fairfield
Canterbury Liverpool
Blacktown Prospect
Liverpool Blacktown
East Hills Mount Druitt
Mount Druitt Riverstone
Seven Hills Cronulla
Pretty much all areas you would expect Labor to do well in. So Labor isn’t just being wedged by Greens, they may well be losing votes to everybody.
Why is it a “surprise” that 11.5% of Green voters passed on a preference to an Animal Justice Party?
Antony GREEN@20
Sorry and thanks for the clarification.
Greens out polled Labor in 9 seats
Newtown
Vaucluse
Balmain
Manly
Pittwater
Ballina
North Shore
Lismore
Davidson
Whilst most are safe Coalition seats it will make the Two Candidate Preferred count interesting next time round.