All three outstanding Senate results were concluded today, leaving us with a new Senate of 32 Coalition members (including six Nationals, two elected on Queensland’s Liberal National Party ticket at one from the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory), Labor 26, Greens 12, One Nation two, Jacqui Lambie Network two, United Australia Party one and one independent. Today’s results in descending order of interest:
• Clive Palmer has not emerged completely empty-handed after Ralph Babet of the United Australia Party won the last seat in Victoria, unseating Liberal incumbent Greg Mirabella for a result of Labor two, Coalition two, Greens one and UAP one. I originally thought Mirabella likely to win based on how preferences flowed in 2019, but came to think Babet more likely to after seeing how preferences were flowing in other states. Consistent with the model I produced after using preference flows from the Queensland result, Mirabella actually fell to third place behind both Babet and Labor’s third candidate, Casey Nunn, after One Nation excluded, with Babet on 9.2%, Nunn on 7.9% and Mirabella on 7.2%. Babet’s lead then widened after the exclusion of Mirabella to 11.9% to 9.8%.
• The result in Western Australia was three Labor, two Liberal and one Greens, which always seemed highly probable, although I entertained vague notions towards the end that tight right-wing preference flows might result in Labor’s third seat going to One Nation instead. At the second last exclusion, third Liberal incumbent Ben Small went out with 6.5% of the vote to 10.2% for Labor’s Fatima Payman and 8.7% for Paul Filing of One Nation, but the distribution of his preferences left the gap between Payman and Filing essentially unchanged at 12.2% to 10.6%.
• As always seemed clear, the result in New South Wales was Coalition three, Labor two and Greens one. After the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis, incumbent third Liberal Jim Molan was elected with 12.3% of the vote, ahead of One Nation’s Kate McCulloch on 9.9%.
And for the sake of completeness, a summary of the earlier results:
• Queensland returned two Labor, two Liberal National, one Greens and one One Nation Senator, the latter being Pauline Hanson, who won out over the incumbent third candidate on the LNP ticket, Amanda Stoker. When the exclusion of Legalise Cannabis left three remaining candidates chasing two seats, Stoker held 10.3% of the vote against 14.2% for Pauline Hanson and 13.9% for Labor’s Anthony Chisholm, who were duly elected in that order. Hanson substantially outperformed my projection based on 2019 preference flows, which only got her to 12.1% compared with 14.2% for Chisholm, with Stoker on 10.9%.
• South Australia returned three Liberals, two Labor and one Green. The third Liberal, Kerrynne Liddle, finished with 12.4%, ahead of Jennifer Game of One Nation on 9.5%. At the previous count, third Labor candidate Trimann Gill was excluded with 8.0% to Liddle’s 9.5% and Game’s 8.7%, though Liddle would have won even if Gill had stayed ahead of Game.
• The result in Tasmania was two Labor, two Liberal, one Green and one Jacqui Lambie Network. Tammi Tyrell of the JLN was elected with a full quota after the exclusion of the incumbent third Liberal, Eric Abetz, whose preferences pushed her to 14.9% ahead of One Nation’s Steve Mav on 8.9%, with another 1.2% of the Abetz vote remaining undistributed at the point where Tyrell passed the threshold of a quota. Abetz was excluded with 6.6% in the previous round, behind Tyrell on 12.7% and Mav on 7.2%. Abetz’s campaign for below the line votes had little impact: he scored 4.27%, whereas the second Liberal, Wendy Askew, had 13.2% after the distribution of the surplus of the first Liberal, Jonathan Duniam.
• In the Australian Capital Territory, independent David Pocock was elected at the expense of Liberal incumbent Zed Seselja with 36.3% at the final count to Seselja’s 28.6%. Labor’s 33.37% share of the vote, fractionally over a quota, ensured there was no chance that Katy Gallagher was going to lose her seat to Pocock rather than Seselja, as one campaign poll suggested she might.
• The Northern Territory had an orthodox result of one seat for Labor and one for the Country Liberal Party, who fell just short of a quota on the primary vote with 32.97% and 31.70% respectively without any other party doing well enough to be threatening.
$100m for 1 seat for UAP.
LOLs
@ William: I think there’s a typo in your WA percentages at the 3-candidate stage. I’m assuming it should be 8.5% for One Nation at that stage.
Pollbludger: ‘All three outstanding Senate results were concluded today, leaving us with a new Senate of 27 Coalition members (including five Nationals).’
Should be *32* Coalition members (including five Nationals).
Fargo, I think that should be 27 Liberal (not Coalition)
Hi William, I presume you meant to say 27 Libs AND 5 Nats, not a coalition total of 27? Otherwise the total only seems to add up to 71 (5 short).
32 Coalition members as per Anthony Green.
Hi Zwaktyld – you are right, and probably think and type faster than I can.
“Holdenhillbilly says:
Monday, June 20, 2022 at 4:31 pm
$100m for 1 seat for UAP.
LOLs”…
Yep, the temptation to LOL is huge, but before I do that, I would love to know where did the money come from….
NEWSFLASH – And Ralph Babet (UAP) has won the $100 million seat in the Victorian Senate!
Interesting fact about the 2022 Senate election. Given all the previous fuss about the new preferencing system following the 2016 Senate reforms, preferences determined only 1 out of 40 seats (ie. Pocock in ACT). If I’m not mistaken, preferences didn’t determine any seat in 2019 – so that means that only one of the 76 senators in the new Senate from July 1st would have failed to be elected if preferences were not permitted in Senate elections.
I doubt that Mr Palmer will lose much sleep over the ~$100 million, unless his new senator decamps. He gets lots of possible publicity over the next three years.
He might get more UAP candidates elected Australia wide in at a half senate election, but according to the ‘recount’ calculation I looked at, would still have missed out in QLD this time, which would have come to 4 LNP, 3 ALP, 2 Green, 2 Phon, 1 LC.
The fifth LNP was only ahead of the UAP by about 9000 votes however. On the other hand I would expect people to be ‘over’ the UAP by the next election, whenever it is, so maybe he will give up.
The Liberals managed to lose 18 seats in the HoR and 4 senators as well? Social distancing should be easier to do in the party room for a while.
Damn. Molan is still lurking in the halls of power.
Not sure if this got mentioned already, but it’s pretty cool: an independent, Suzie Holt, has ended up second after preferences in Groom, despite coming fourth with just 8.3% of the vote – surely some kind of record. She got over One Nation on various minor party prefs, then over Labor on One Nation (plus all the rest) prefs.
The AEC website doesn’t seem to have the distribution up, but those numbers must’ve been pretty tight: she started more than 10% behind Labor. There was 13% for the Greens and another independent, and 16.3% for One Nation and two other right-wing fringe parties (plenty of those prefs would’ve gone straight to the Libs).
Former Wallabies captain David Pocock is now the pivot in the senate.
Big job for a young bloke.
I hope he makes a go of it.
Labor has no excuses regarding doing something about climate change, it has both houses controlled by progressives, NOW GET ON WITH IT. And also it should change our foreign ownership rules regarding ownership, and perhaps in doing so we should have no foreign owners of our media.
Thanks to mistake-pointer-outers. It should actually have been 8.7% for Paul Filing in WA.
There are 6 Nationals.
2 from Queensland
2 from NSW
1 from NT
1 from Victoria
I wonder if Clive Palmer was desperate to get control of the Senate to have his case before the courts changed? Asic is after him lets see what happens.
I’ve added a note of clarification on that point.
Any predictions as to how long before Babet falls out with Palmer and goes out on his own? Porleen might be keen to headhunt him to give ON another Senator
Are their figures for the breakdown in voting % in the senate? Did Labor match its 32.6% primary vote in the house for example?
See here:
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-27966-NAT.htm
No, in answer to your question, but the gap between its House and Senate vote did narrow.
Ah the Senate… The usual suspects have made a lot of noise pointing out that the primary vote for the ALP went down (slightly) in the H. of Reps…. But I wonder whether anybody here can explain to me why those same usual suspects haven’t mentioned that the vote for the ALP in the Senate has gone up by 1.30%…
@Bird of paradox: What I find particularly interesting (one might even say, paradoxical– heh) is that much smaller ALP leads were apparently not overturned in the districts of Hume and Page. We can infer from the fact that neither seat has been declared yet that AEC thought that might happen and thus were being uber careful to do all the preference distributions before announcing a winner, but they did not repeat the Groom phenomenon.
COPIES OF THE SENATE PREFERENCE DATA FILES HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED.
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/SenateDownloadsMenu-27966-Csv.htm
Formal preferences
New South Wales [ZIP 43 MB]
Victoria [ZIP 35 MB]
Queensland [ZIP 29 MB]
Western Australia [ZIP 14 MB]
South Australia [ZIP 11 MB]
Tasmania [ZIP 5 MB]
Australian Capital Territory [ZIP 3 MB]
Northern Territory [ZIP 754 KB]
Re Alpo on Mon at 1001 pm
The figure you give for Labor’s Senate vote rise of 1.3% is national, but senators are not elected from a national electorate. Now, how much of that rise was caused by the very strong Labor vote in WA?
Looking at the detailed quota figures compared to 2019 (see below), most of that rise was due to WA, with a good bit from Qld and bugger all from the other states. For the first time since the Senate was enlarged in 1984, Labor won 3 WA senators out of 6; the Libs have won that at every non-DD election since that enlargement, until 2022. Nationally Labor won 15 Senate seats, the same as ProMo’s circus.
Labor’s quota in NSW increased from 2.09 in 2019 to 2.13 in 2022, a marginal rise, despite the third Labor candidate, Dr Shireen Morris, having much more potential than the politically vanquished Keneally. Morris is the author, with Harry Hobbs, of a forthcoming article in volume 48 of the Monash University Law Review entitled “Imagining a Makarrata Commission”.
Labor’s quota in Victoria increased from 2.18 to 2.20, a very marginal increase; this low increase was one factor that helped Palmer get a senator in Vic (who should be irrelevant, apart from being an ugly reminder of the need to ensure laws stopping billionaires from buying elections are enacted soon). Victorian Labor should get the “please explain” memo, because Labor now holds more than twice the number of Reps seats in Victoria than the Coalition (24 compared to 11) but got a lower Senate vote quota than the Coalition (2.20 compared to 2.26, with Coalition dropping from 2.51 quotas in 2019, which shows that, in net terms, not many of the votes that left the Coalition ended up with Labor).
Labor’s quota in Queensland increased from 1.58 to 1.73, a bigger rise than in all states except WA, but Qld Labor still gets the wooden spoon, despite the struggling Tassie branch running them quite close.
Labor’s quota in WA jumped from 1.93 to 2.42, by half a quota (Labor sandgropers campaigned well).
Labor’s quota in SA increased from 2.125 to 2.26, a very poor result in the circumstances of a new and popular state Labor government, with the only consolation being the election of SA’s first Indigenous senator, Kerrynne Liddle. For comparison, the SA Labor Senate vote was 32.3%, nearly 5% below the SA Legislative Council vote in March 2022, which was 37%. SA Labor clearly won the “Farrell award” for performing well below expectations, despite benign conditions (including Xenopohon’s fizzer).
Labor’s quota in Tasmania dropped a lot, from 2.14 to 1.89 (not as big as that sounds in actual votes, since senators from Tassie need fewer votes, but still a pathetic result given that Lambie’s secretary was her candidate, rather than somebody with any independent public profile).
Labor’s quota in the ACT dropped marginally from 1.18 to just over 1, as predicted in the D. Pocock era. The remarkable own goal from Labor nationally is that they had Julia Gillard, a croweater growing up and by recent connections, campaigning for Katy Gallagher but not evidently campaigning a lot in SA. Because of preferences, there was never any serious risk that Senator Gallagher would be defeated.
Labor’s quota in the NT dropped marginally from 1.12 to 0.99, a drop of no consequence whatsoever apart from being partly a result of the bureaucratic limitation of the franchise for Indigenous people living in remote communities as a result of inadequate funding for AEC operations.
The new Senate from 1 July will provide no obstruction to the Albanese government’s agenda, so there is no prospect of any DD election this term. But, even with Pocock’s win, there is indeed very little for Labor to crow about, in terms of its Senate quota results by state, except for the terrific result in WA.
As much as I dislike Clive Palmer being able to claim his $100 million bought anything at least we’ve got another cross bencher to help Labor and the Greens make up the numbers for some of their agenda. It remains to be seen if the new senator will be a tool for Clive’s agenda or not but if so then we can expect no help on Climate change but perhaps in other respects.
I daresay Clive’s influence will restrict what the new Senator will do however having a UAP senator is preferable to another Liberal drone.
@Holdenhillbilly – The Senate seat was only part of what Palmer was seeking to purchase. He was also seeking to purchase another term for Morriscum or, failing that, an intractable Senate for the incoming Labor Government. As such, don’t expect his Senator to be remotely helpful – unless/until Fat Clive loses his grasp over the fellow.
If I’m reading this correctly, the composition of the Senate is:
Labor – 26
L/NP – 32
Greens – 12
PHON – 2
JLN – 2
Ind – 1
UAP – 1
What does this mean in terms of passing legislation, not getting regs disallowed, etc. etc.? Simple. Labor needs the Greens on board, plus any one of the smaller crossbench blocs. As such, while I certainly don’t think Bandt should get open slather, he does have a fairly strong negotiating position vis-a-vis Albanese.
As a coda – Labor only has 13 of its 26 Senators up for re-election next time round; the Coalition, meanwhile, has 18 of its 32. A status quo (or better, a swing toward Labor) would see the Coalition reduced to near-total irrelevance in the Senate. Which is why I think Albo’s best political strategy going forward would be to call a set of Royal Commissions into the various misdeeds of the late ATM Government – dodgy grants, self-dealing, no-bid contracts, corrupt appointments and all. And set their deadlines such that in the year leading up to the next election, one of those RCs is issuing a damning report into Coalition malgovernance/corruption every month or so.
We talk and get excited by a swing of less than 1% in the Senate and fail to take into consideration the flaws in the way the Senate vote is counted.
The Surplus transfer value is not weighted. (It is based on the number of ballot papers not the value of the vote) The method of distributing preferences further distorts the value of the vote and the voters intention . Yes 95% of the time the outcome is the same.
A reiterative count where the count is reset and restarted following every exclusion would ensure that each vote is treated the same eliminating segmentation (the last bundle) It would also take into account votes that exhausted by recalculating the quota on each iteration. This would ensure that no candidate is elected below quota.
We could and should reconsider as a separate issue the need to have the Droop “Wasted’ quota.
These distortions far out weigh the 1-2% Swing variance. For those who are familiar with Meek in all the counts I have reviewed (Over 100) a reiterative count has always produced the same outcome as Meek.
Meek is good but somewhat convoluted and harder for non informed observers to follow. A reiterative count is far easier to understand and monitor. It is the same process for a single member electorate as for a multiple member electorate.
If you have any doubt about the impact of the method of counting the Senate vote try independently counting the QLD 2007 Senate vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_system
Clive’s senator will be an interesting case study. Several things could happen.
1. He could remain loyal to Clive. Whatever that means.
2. He may defect to someone else, possibly joining Pauline.
3. He could sell his seat to Clive. He could blossom. A look this internet history, largely deleted, shows that he has some very interesting(!), and some troubling views.
4. profit.
Will the mirabellas finally get the message? Victorians do not want them representing us. How many times do we have to tell them?
“As much as I dislike Clive Palmer being able to claim his $100 million bought anything at least we’ve got another cross bencher to help Labor and the Greens make up the numbers for some of their agenda.”
Complete nonsense. UAP are Liberal attack dogs in yellow shirts. I wouldn’t count on anything from them and will vote 90% of the time with the Liberals despite painting this myth they are against both major parties.
Another potential win for the ALP/Green block of 38, is that all of the remaining will have to show up and vote to negative a motion.
Pauline for one will often ‘abstain’ by not showing up. No pairs for PHoN.
And Senator Deej Babet might get waylaid by the agents of the World Economic Forum, and fail to attend a crucial vote.
So, I did this with the territories and the first three states. What would have happened if all of the major party candidates were deemed ineligible? It gives some insight into where voters are. So here are the last three states…
WA: Greens x3, plus Christians, WA Party, LDP
VIC: Greens x3, UAP x2, plus Hinch
NSW: Greens x3, plus UAP, LDP, PHON
And for reference, here were the results in the other states/territories:
The possibility of Babet resigning and having the vacancy filled would be interesting to watch.
I personally think we should have all Senators up for election every election. It would make it harder for the Greens to win two seats. The Territories should return 3 members and we should rethink the need for the ‘wasted’ quota
Try counting the Senate vote using a weighted transfer value and only the last 7 or 9 candidates standing. Then apply a reiterative count where you reset and restart the count following every exclusion. Hopefully I can do this Analysis tomorrow if I can find time.
A quick run through of the numbers suggest Greens get two senators from every state if all 12 are elected.
What happens is the major parties lose senators to ON and UAP.
As for 3 senators for the territories the numbers suggest it will be 1 LNP and 1 green who get the extra spot
“Dr Doolittle says:
Tuesday, June 21, 2022 at 11:01 am”
Well, in my post I was comparing the ALP national vote in the H. of Reps and the national vote in the Senate, and my point was that there was some media brouhaha about the ALP going down nationally in the H. of Reps., but no comment on them going up in the Senate.
But thanks for your more detailed analysis of the Senate vote.
Although the detailed patterns for this election are obviously worth analysing, my view is that this election was more about judging 9 years of Coalition government than anything else. One would suspect that such an approach would mean an automatic benefit for the ALP, but there was quite a substantial propaganda pointing to Libs and Labs being just the same (both Greens and Palmer used the concept). That effect, obviously didn’t benefit the ALP. The next federal election is going to be more interesting, because there will be the actual performance of the federal ALP government to judge. If they do well in government, their situation should further improve.
We will see…..
Melbcity @ #36 Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 – 1:27 pm
Catprog @ #38 Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 – 1:45 pm
Just to add to Catprog’s point, we can actually get a good sense of what the result would be using https://vote.andrewconway.org/Federal%20Senate/2022/NSW/Recount.html (and the equivalent page for each state/territory).
There are limitations – contrary to the traditional pattern (where majors would run enough candidates to win every senate spot if they did well enough), in some states, Labor or Liberals didn’t run enough candidates to cover a double dissolution number of wins. To deal with that, I’ll examine how much quota they had at the final election of one of their candidates, and determine whether it’s likely they would have had a chance to win additional seats.
This applies in WA (ALP and Libs with 4 candidates each), SA (Libs have 4 candidates), and TAS (Libs have just 3 candidates!).
The following shows what would happen with the existing sets of candidates, with commentary noting where changes might occur due to lack of available candidates.
NSW
—
LNP x5
ALP x4
GRN x2
PHON x1
VIC
—
LNP x4
ALP x4
GRN x2
UAP x1
LCA x1
QLD
—
LNP x5
ALP x3
GRN x2
PHON x1
LCA x1
WA
—
ALP x4*
Lib x4
GRN x2
PHON x1
WA Party x1
This is the first complicated case. Labor has about half a quota left over once all four of its candidates are elected. It’s not entirely clear how this would change the result, but I suspect it would take either the PHON or WAP seat. It looks like the Greens would still get their second seat, so I’d say it would be a race between PHON, WAP, and ALP for two seats (the last excluded candidate is LCA, so they’re technically in the race as well).
SA
—
Lib x4*
ALP x4
GRN x2
PHON x1
UAP x1
The final Liberal is elected with nearly a quarter of a quota remaining. However, it is also worth noting that the Nationals have their own group in SA, and didn’t get a seat. It’s hard to tell, but I suspect PHON would lose their seat to the Liberals, as the final excluded candidate was Xenophon, and I’d expect his preferences to flow stronger to Liberals than PHON.
TAS
—
Lib x3*
ALP x4
GRN x2
JLN x1
LDP x1
PHON x1
This one is particularly interesting, because the Liberals would have more than a whole quota in excess, so they’d definitely win an extra seat. The remaining 0.15 or so quota would likely not get a fifth Liberal over the line. A big chunk of Liberal preferences flowed to JLN and LDP, with PHON not being much of a beneficiary of the flow. This would probably mean the LDP would lose their seat to the Liberals, but again, it’s hard to tell.
ACT
—
ALP x1
Lib x1
Pocock x1
No prizes for guessing this result – Seselja would be on nearly a quota, and Pocock gets over the line without needing Labor or Greens preferences (both ALP and Greens remain in count when Pocock gets over a quota).
NT
—
ALP x1
CLP x1
GRN x1
So interestingly, the Greens would be doing better under Melbcity’s proposal, with 13 senators (thanks to NT). Labor would be either on 25 or 26, depending on whether they get a fifth seat in WA. Coalition would be down to 28-29 seats (rather than 32). PHON would be on 3-5 seats (but only one from QLD), LCA would hold two, UAP two, and JLN and Pocock with one each, with a possibility that WAP and LDP might have a seat each.
Melbcity really shooting for the commenter’s wooden spoon award here with weird ramblings about iterative STV (apparently the goal is to develop a system that no non-mathematician can comprehend) and, worse yet, arguing to further malapportion the already horribly malapportioned Senate.
A better recommendation would be to simply abolish the Senate altogether, or at least limit it to a Bundesrat-type function where it votes only on matters affecting state powers. New Zealand’s got it right on this one.
It is a relatively simple if you understand how the count is processed. Not difficult. First you need to replace the flawed paper based Surplus Transfer Value calculation with a value based system as is used in WA. The rest is simple the count is reset and restarted on each exclusion. A single transfer per candidate no segmentation. If there was a double dissolution I do not think the greens would get two seats in South Australia or Western Australia Victoria would be a challenge. It is harder to win seats in a double than a half Senate election. We I get the chance I will run though a full Senate Count based on the current election data set. There are a number distortions in the system that effects the outcome. Segmentation being the main issue of uncertainty. Applying a mathematical assessment based on the primary vote is open to misrepresentation. A full Senate election has a lower wasted quota. Quota being 1/13. not 1/7.
Melbcity @ #42 Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 – 4:03 pm
You might want to have a look at the results I got using a system that does all of the full count for you. Perhaps you thought I was just estimating using primary votes? If so, you didn’t read my post very carefully (or perhaps you didn’t even read my post? It would explain why you seem to think you’re making salient arguments when the evidence contradicts you).
Obviously, using the “reset after each exclusion” approach, there would be some subtle changes, but it would be unlikely to make it harder for the Greens.
I’m also not sure why you think it would magically be harder for the Greens in WA, specifically – the only place they did better was Tasmania, they got a full quota in WA which would equate to nearly two full quotas in a 12 seat election. Greens’ worst state was NSW, not SA, and even in NSW, the Greens would be on nearly 1.5 quotas. It’s hard to see how, even before seeing my use of Andrew Conway’s recount system, you would conclude that it would be difficult for the Greens to get two seats in SA or WA.
Re sprocket at 12.28 pm and Alpo at 1.53 pm
Hanson and Palmer/Babet are irrelevant on the numbers, unless the LNP splits and a less reactionary group arising from it decides to negotiate with Labor. However, negotiations with that rabble will be much more complicated than with the Greens + Pocock. Albo et. al. must assume the Greens will still have a role similar to their current one in the following term, whatever Bandt’s antics (and if Bandt makes too many errors then, because of the growth in the Greens numbers, he risks replacement).
Babet will make a squeak when legislation to stop billionaires distorting election results is passed, but otherwise the media should ignore him completely. If they don’t, they merely reveal their laziness, and their gutlessness in not simply repeating that he is a billionaire’s stooge. His vote is irrelevant.
Regarding Labor’s very mediocre Senate vote in SA, the result was a complete flop compared to WA.
Labor lost 4.7% of upper house votes in SA in May 2022 compared to the Legislative Council in March.
By contrast the SA Liberals lost only 0.5% of upper house votes comparing state and Senate elections.
Even the clown Xenophon, Mr Group O, got a boost to 3%, when compared to 1% for SA Best in March.
Outgoing Senator Patrick got 2.1% from a standing start, so that is where some votes may have gone.
Palmer got 3% in SA, compared to 4% in Vic; while Hanson got 4% in SA compared to 2.9% in Vic.
The dogmatic anti-vaxxers (“IMOP”) got only 0.2% in both Vic and SA; unsurprising on their budget.
Most of those voting for Senator Patrick did not favour Libs, but slightly more chose Greens than ALP.
58% of Palmer voters in SA went to Hanson next; Libs got more than ALP, but both less than Exhaust.
When Labor’s 3rd candidate was excluded, he was about 18,000 votes behind Senator-elect Liddle.
At that point in the count, the Hanson candidate had 97,755 votes, despite a drop of 0.86% from 2019.
Liddle, SA’s first Indigenous senator, was elected because of where Palmer’s voters’ preferences went, i.e. most (29,060) went to the Hanson candidate and Labor (6,195) got a bit less than Liddle (6,462), but both major parties were less appealing to those voters than Exhaust (8,366).
If the attractions of Exhaust had been minimal at that stage, and also if around 10,000 or so more of those disgruntled Palmer voters had preferred Labor instead of Hanson, then Labor would have made the final count, with Liddle probably elected in that situation due to Hanson preferences.
Thus an irony was missed for Hanson. Ultimately, Senator-elect Liddle won because Labor’s drop in upper house votes in SA from March to May was over 5 times the Hanson vote drop from 2019 to 2022.
William – you have the ALP 2PP at 51.9 at the moment, while Antony Green estimates it at 52.1 (or that that’s where it will end up). Do you expect the two calculations will converge or are there mysterious methodological subtleties that may mean you come up with slightly different numbers?
Is senator Liddle from SA any relation to Celeste Liddle from Victoria?
Dr Doolittle @ #44 Tuesday, June 21st, 2022 – 4:46 pm
I’d agree, given the numbers, it’s unlikely Mr Babet will have the opportunity to be the decisive vote this term and probably the next as well (given the precarious nature of the 2019 qld result).
The Libs losing a senate spot, for 6 years, is an important impact. How many staff are typically be attached to a senator?
Paul Thomas @ 3.23pm
The so-called Wright system was proposed to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters in the course of its inquiry into the 2007 federal election. The Committee unanimously rejected its adoption, on the basis among other things of advice from the AEC which can be found here: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=em/elect07/subs/sub169.3.pdf
Re Expat at 6.36 pm
Kerrynne Liddle’s father is Geoffrey Liddle. Together with another daughter, Leanne Liddle, he made an official complaint two years ago alleging racial discrimination by NT police in Alice Springs. See:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-16/nt-alice-springs-bottle-shop-geoffrey-racial-profiling-complaint/100737230
Leanne Liddle was the first Aboriginal woman employed by the SA Police Service, about whom she complained to the Human Rights Commission because of racial discrimination. She subsequently educated herself as a lawyer. There is some indication of her strong family background in this story:
https://wmoa.com.au/uploads/with-the-help.pdf (newspaper source and date not given)
Leanne Liddle is the current NT Australian of the Year. She has a twin-sister who works as a scientist, and a brother who is an international pilot.
Certainly an unusual family background for a Liberal senator (no links to Gina Rinehart’s money etc; a world away, in terms of life experience and social networks, from the most forgettable Eric Abetz).
Kerrynne’s sister Leanne says her award reflects the strong education that her parents gave to their children. See:
https://www.nit.com.au/leanne-liddle-named-nt-australian-of-the-year/#:~:text=Central%20Arrernte%20Traditional%20Owner%20Leanne,ground%2Dbreaking%20Aboriginal%20Justice%20Agreement.
Celeste Liddle is Geoffrey Liddle’s niece (according to a twitter post by Celeste on her uncle’s racism complaint). The twitter link is at:
https://twitter.com/Utopiana/status/1511657401782792198?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
There is a real issue with Optional preferential. Nearly a half a quota exhausts. A reiterative count would address this issue and ensure that each vote is treated equally. No segmentation or last bundle distribution of votes. Each vote is given a value of one and maintains that value proportionally as surpluses are distributed. All votes are distributed in a single transaction. The Segmented vote distribution was designed to facilitate a manual count as was the Droop Wasted Quota, With computer technology this is not longer required or desirable. One vote once value. The Tasmanian Hare Clark Last bundle being one of the worst systems. All vacant positions should be filled in a single iteration. With only surpluses redistributed.
All ballot from excluded candidates should be redistributed as it the excluded candidate had not stood.
Have looked the the AEC publish preferential data files and there is an issue with the CSV feild names in that some groups names have comas in the Group name. They would have been better off using a tab delimited data set.
There are many votes with Multiple first preferences indicating that the voters do not understand the formality rules. A single vote ‘above the line’ is a valid vote even though the instructions misleadingly say you should number 1 to 6.
I have not found a system that can calculate the Australian Senate on the basis of a weighted transfer system or count the above the line voting system, I have to find time to update my count program to make allowance for the ATL and BTL optional preferential.
It seams to me that is you allow optional preferential you might as well allow full optional preferential and scrap the Above The line voting altogether