Just the ticket (open thread)

How-to-vote cards: where they won’t matter, where they will, and how much.

With early voting to begin on Tuesday, details of how-to-vote cards are starting to accumulate. So far as the Senate is concerned, the ABC is making life easy by gathering them in one place, while the eternally patient among you can view lower house how-to-vote cards for Labor candidates and Liberal candidates one by one on individual candidate pages. I tend to consider the subject not worth much of the news space devoted to it, because only major party voters follow them in substantial numbers, and in most cases they make the final count and their preferences are thus not distributed — though the number of exceptions is of course much higher than it used to be.

The Victorian Electoral Commission provided a rare insight into the matter when it made available full ballot paper data for seven seats at the 2022 state election, which is normally available only for upper house counts and in New South Wales, where its applicability is limited by optional preferential voting. The rate at which Labor votes exactly followed the how-to-vote card was consistently around 30% (helpfully, there were large numbers of candidates in these seats, so few are likely to arrived upon the requisite order by happenstance). The rate of adherence among Liberal voters varied widely according to the amount of effort the party was putting into a given seat — 57.0% in Brighton, where it was fighting off a teal independent, and 53.9% in Hawthorn, where it was successfully challenging a Labor incumbent, but only 29.4% in Preston, where the fight was between Labor and the Greens.

As for minor parties, whether the Greens actively preference Labor (as they are doing in every seat at this election) or offer no recommendation (which is as far as they ever go in repudiating Labor) makes about five points’ worth of difference to the percentage received by Labor, which is typically upwards of 80%. The impact is likely even less for smaller parties, which lack the volunteer base needed to disseminate how-to-vote cards on a large scale at polling places. As such, it would not pay to put too much weight on the decision by Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots to direct preferences against most sitting members. It was, indeed, news to me that his United Australia Party had done much the same in 2022, a fact related by Kos Samaras of RedBridge Group in a report in the News Corp papers yesterday. Out of 108 seats where the relevant data exists, I calculate that Labor got 41.7% of UAP preferences in seats where they had sitting members in 2022 and 35.5% where the Coalition did – the opposite of what would have been expected if their voters had been following the how-to-vote card in non-trivial numbers.

The same approach was adopted by One Nation during its early heyday at the Western Australian state election in 2001, in this case involving a party with genuine mass support and not simply the artefact of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. This is sometimes said to have been a key factor in Labor’s unexpectedly clear-cut win at the election over the two-term Coalition government of Richard Court. To test this, I have just blown the dust of my print copy of the statistical returns from that elections and identified 24 seats where One Nation candidates were the last excluded in the preference count and their votes distributed between Labor and the Coalition. The distinction in this case was at least in the right direction, but nonetheless very modest — Labor averaged 53.2% of the preference transfers in Coalition-held seats and 49.7% in Labor-held seats. I assumed there would be a relationship between Labor’s vote share in a given seat and the strength of its preference flow — the likeliest explanation for the counter-intuitive finding just noted for the United Australia Party — but there was in fact little evidence of this.

So with all that in mind, the following points worth noting have emerged from news reportage, in lieu of my own lack of motivation to investigate the matter too deeply myself:

• Macnamara is the only seat where Labor is not directing preferences, which it is doing there at the initiative of incumbent Josh Burns in recognition of the local Jewish community’s concerns about the Greens. It is entirely possible that Burns will run third, in which case Labor preferences will come into play in the race between the Liberals and the Greens. Had it played out that way in 2022, the Greens would have won handily on a flood of Labor preferences, just as Burns easily defeated the Liberals after receiving fully 90.25% of the preferences from the third-placed Greens. Macnamara partly corresponds with the state seat of Brighton, where the behaviour of Labor preferences in 2022 was noted above. The 10,126 Labor votes in the seat included 3231 who followed the card, 5468 who favoured the Greens over the Liberals independently, and 1427 who had the Liberals ahead of the Greens. If those who followed the how-to-vote card had split in the same proportion as those who did, the flow of Labor preferences to the Greens would have fallen from 85.9% to 79.3%. Making a reasonable assumption that the Labor primary vote in the seat will be about 30%, this suggests Labor’s open ticket could contribute about 2% to a swing of upwards of 10% that the Liberals would need if it came down to them and the Greens.

• Next door in Goldstein, Liberal candidate Tim Wilson has teal incumbent Zoe Wilson second last ahead of the Greens, leaving her behind One Nation as well as Labor. The Age notes that Wilson said in 2019 that he had “a longstanding view that we should put One Nation and their despicable acolytes last”. While this may be of interest on an optical level, Wilson’s preferences are of little electoral consequence as he seems assured of making the final count.

• Conversely, the Liberals in Western Australia have put teal independent Kate Hulett ahead of Labor in third place in Fremantle (though here too they favour One Nation, who are second), a fairly remarkable turnaround on the March state election when they had her last but for the Greens.

• Labor are favouring Liberal over the Nationals in the three-cornered contest in the new Western Australian seat of Bullwinkel. However, an apparent improvement in Labor’s fortunes suggests the issue here is likely to be whether Nationals candidate Mia Davies or Liberal candidate Matt Moran makes it to the final count against Labor’s Trish Cook.

• The Liberals may have scotched the chances of independent Peter George by putting him behind Labor in Franklin. George is a former ABC journalist running with support from Climate 200 and in opposition to salmon farming, none of which would have endeared him to the Liberals. With 19-year-old Greens candidate Owen Fitzgerald having conceded he would be unable to sit in parliament due to a dual citizenship, Matthew Denholm of The Australian reported the party was expected to throw its support behind George, who had already been endorsed by former party leader Bob Brown.

• Liberal-turned-independent Russell Broadbent has interestingly opted to place teal independent Deb Leonard all-but-last in Monash. Leonard was presumably counting on getting ahead of him and benefiting from the strong preference flows that typically apply between independents.

• Paul Karp of the Financial Review reports Ziad Basyouny and Ahmed Ouf, who are respectively challenging Tony Burke in Watson and Jason Clare in Blaxland with support from The Muslim Vote, are directing preferences to Labor ahead of Liberal “after failing to strike a preference deal with the opposition”. The Liberal how-to-vote cards have them both dead last, which does not surprise, but will nonetheless make life difficult for them. A review article in the Sun-Herald today says Labor believes it could face swings in the seats of “more than 6%”, with Watson of greater concern.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

478 thoughts on “Just the ticket (open thread)”

  3. C@tmomma says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 4:04 pm
    Rick Wilson has been on fire lately:
    ____________________________________________

    Looking at the ridiculously anti-science actions of Trump over the last few months I have been thinking of Lysenko for some time. The fact that scientists actually survived through the Stalinist era gives us hope.

  4. Sceptic says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 3:27 pm
    TPOF says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 3:13 pm

    Think about it from their point of view…

    ________________________________________________

    Their point of view is plain irrational and self-destructive. Face-spiting nose-cutting. They do what they do – as did millions of other Trump voters and stay-at-home democrats, but I have no sympathy with their suffering. Any US citizen who could vote, but who did not vote for the Democrats deserves everything they suffer under Trump – whether in their own country or as a result of Trump’s foreign “policy”.

  5. OC although Indonesia had claimed Independence by the time Menzies came to power his government still funded right wing soldiers to fight against the Indonesian government and funded anti Indonesian propaganda until the USA made it clear that they supported Indonesian independence.
    Australia foreign policy should be aimed ,as Paul Keating states, to be secure with Asian nations not from Asian nations.

  6. The thing about demanding falling house prices is not only do you turn off the still sizeable majority of Australians who own a home, but also the cohort of aspirational home buyers who think “wait a second, do I want to buy a house and watch the price slide as soon as I’ve bought it?”.

    Slowing the rise in prices makes sense, sending them hurtling backwards (outside the odd hiccup) doesn’t. It’s the same as inflation. We aren’t aiming for 0% and we certainly aren’t aiming at deflation despite what some numpties on social media were going on about, because the effects of doing so are not pretty.

  7. Oakeshott Country at 3.55 pm

    Obviously it is a counter-factual, but if Menzies was in power in 1947 it is very likely he would have supported continued Dutch colonial rule. He certainly would not have supported union bans to help the Indonesians.

    Even after 9 election victories the Liberal Party had not accepted the declining legitimacy of colonialism when they finally lost to Whitlam.

  9. Dai Le(Independent in Fowler) firming in the betting markets according to sportsbet. Any idea if any polls for this seat? At least 25 in 25.

  10. HBG
    Must admit I enjoyed Bandt comparing the Greens policy platform with Whitlam this morning, accurate and visionary

    ____________________________________________

    There’s a lot of mythology about Whitlam (from all sides of the political spectrum). And like mythology, little accords with the facts and is most adhered to by those who weren’t there. Like Bandt, who was three years old when Kerr did the dirty.

    In any case the Greens policy platform compares much more accurately to an entitled child’s Santa list. It’s the parents in the place who actually have to provide and pay for stuff on the list.

  11. JIMBOB says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 4:23 pm
    Dai Le(Independent in Fowler) firming in the betting markets according to sportsbet. Any idea if any polls for this seat? At least 25 in 25.

    _________________________________________

    You should check with the Greg Greggson institute.

  12. The Greens current economic policies bear little resemblance to Whitlam, and are the antithesis to the reforms of Hawke and Keating.

    Its a shame that David Speers has little economic literacy ask any actual probing questions of Bandt outside the usual 4D chess nonsense that is most Insiders episodes.

  13. OC although Indonesia had claimed Independence by the time Menzies came to power his government still funded right wing soldiers to fight against the Indonesian government and funded anti Indonesian propaganda until the USA made it clear that they supported Indonesian independence.

    Evidence please, I can’t believe even Menzies was that unaware but I agree with Dr D that Menzies would have strongly supported continuing colonialism if he had won in 1946.

  14. Also Franklin in Tassie, George the independent firming, could Collins be gone??? Salmon farming an issue that ALP ignore regarding it’s constituency. Vote independent to get democracy back, just like gambling advertising. Vote independent to get democracy back. At least 25 in 25.

  15. ‘Oakeshott Country says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 3:39 pm

    BW
    I think it safe to say that the Dutch role in the independence of Indonesia followed by what could laughingly be call their role in West New Guinea was not glorious.
    ….’
    ——————
    With respect to Indonesia, Dutch behaviour was atrocious. Belatedly, there has been some minor restitution for some of the war crimes committed by the Dutch.
    However, the role of Indonesia in West Irian has been far, far worse than that of the Dutch in West Irian. Arguably, Indonesia is to West Irian as Britain and its Pup are to Indigenous Australians.

  17. What I don’t get is that Indonesia is a thousand times more important to the future of Australia than Israel… yet look how many times has Dutton mentioned Israel..it is constant.

  19. It’s wrong to compare Trump to Lysenko. Lysenko, although wildly misguided, correctly identified errors in Mendelian genetics of his time, which Western scientists were not prepared to acknowledge because of their own biases. If Western scientists had listened to him instead of dismissing his work as Soviet propaganda, we may have discovered epigenetics almost a century earlier. Some aspects of Lysenkoism such as graft hybridisation are only now being reappraised.

  20. ‘Strumpet of Parrots says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 3:57 pm

    Boewar
    Although the USA gave limited intelligence support to Australia during Australias Timor invasion I am sure they also reassured Indonesia that they would not put any troops on the ground and left Australia suffering the diplomatic damage with Indonesia….’
    ==================
    The US moved a carrier task force closer to Indonesia just to let the Indonesians know that a fight in East Timor was not on.

  21. @Dr Doolittlesays: Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 2:30 pm

    “Westie, are you trying to lampoon Dutton in an obscure way by taking so long to adjust to the polling trend?”
    Nah I’m just being a bit cautious with my predictions. I don’t want to go from ALP having 68 seats in a toss up result to them suddenly having 75 seats just bc polling has been going well for them in 3 weeks of campaigning. There’s still time for things to go south for Labor and I wouldn’t exactly want these predictions to age too poorly when the next news cycle hits.

    Also part of this could also be attributed to the shattering of core assumptions for this election. For most of this seasons (2023 onwards) we’ve been seeing how Labor has been declining in polling and seats and will become a minority government then all of a sudden there’s this sudden whiplash where Labor skyrockets in the polls and a majority government is now in sight. It’s a bit jarring in a way.

    It reminds me of the QLD election in a way, where Miles and ALP only gained momentum and popularity ~2 weeks before election day due to abortion, giving people hopes of a potential Labor Minority government. Turns out, bc of early pre-polls, Labor lose the election (but not meet the same fate of WA Liberals) Yes, Federal Election and QLD are definitely different, but the feeling of not changing your predictions significantly/automatically adjusting due to a new trend in polling has stuck with me.

    “The 2nd MRP released at the start of the campaign had Labor projected to 75 seats from 50.2%. Dr Bonham’s model projected Labor to 73 seats then, but his aggregate is now nearly 2 per cent higher for Labor.”
    I am approaching ALP 73 seats territory in my next prediction (probably end of April and Pre-election day final prediction)

    I wouldn’t give much stock to the MRP results though, both had lots of weird results like Labor winning Deakin but losing Robertson, Greens retaining Ryan whilst losing Griffith. Redbridge has Reid too close to call yet Tangney is not anywhere near a close result (not that I’m complaining though, if any MP deserves to be reelected, it’s Sam Lim)

  23. Newspoll in a few hours hopefully will be very telling. Both Labor and Coalition primary falling my guess. Get democracy back and let’s get transparency back. Vote independent/greens/minors. Let’s end gambling advertising/ new coal mines/ logging of old growth forests/tax breaks to companies etc etc. End the uni party. At least 25 in 25 hopefully.

  24. @jimbob
    I have no polling data re Dai Le, but looking at the odds atm, it would speculating at best. Anyone with the skinny on fowler other than betting odds chime in.

    Franklin with Alp @ 1.09 seems seems really unlikely to go ind.

  27. JIMBOBsays:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 4:31 pm
    Also Franklin in Tassie, George the independent firming, could Collins be gone??? Salmon farming an issue that ALP ignore regarding it’s constituency. Vote independent to get democracy back, just like gambling advertising. Vote independent to get democracy back. At least 25 in 25.

    ___________________

    Does this logic only apply to policies you support, or is it universal? Does this mean that in in Teals and Liberals electorates they can eliminate penalty rates for small businesses, or have looser gun laws in Nationals seats?

  29. Dr D
    David Walker has a chapter “Oriental Blandishments” in Stranded Nation – the argument is that Australia gave tacit support to Indonesia’s plans for West New Guinea at the time of Subandrio’s visit in 1959, much to the chagrin of numerous stakeholders and policy makers.

    He quotes an editorial cartoon where Casey and Menzies are waving farewell to Subandrio, wearing underpants, socks and hats with the caption “Well, there goes Dr Subandrio, we certainly won that poker game Casey, old boy”

  30. Sam Lim seems like a nice man, should be able to hold on to Tangney. Interesting CV former dolphin trainer and Police Officer who speaks 10 languages.

  31. JIMBOB:

    I have to tell you that from my perspective, some of your posts bear a striking resemblance to dear Lars’ offerings – no offence intended.

  35. JIMBOBsays:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 4:33 pm
    Greg Greggson institute, LOL. Like the polls released by the forestry industry.

    I’m sorry but is this taking the piss? Greg Gregson was that crazy teacher on Summer Heights High.

  37. Bizzcan, let the constituency have say. Yes if people want guns back, vote for what you constituency wants. Most members of parliament think the seat belongs to them. It doesn’t thus vote independent who should vote accordingly to the wishes of the electorate. Major parties and minors like the Greens are also at fault. Labor voters seem to be the worse at worshipping HQ while ignoring the matters that affect them. If you rent and realisticly have no chance of owning why vote same same. Vote Green, you’ll be $$$$$$$ better off. Oh Labor increased rent assistance. Landlords just jacked price up. At least 25 in 25

  38. Lars is too embarrassed to post under their normal screen name and has to invent a sock puppet to continue commenting?

    LOL.

  39. teal waffle says Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 4:36 pm

    It’s wrong to compare Trump to Lysenko. Lysenko, although wildly misguided, correctly identified errors in Mendelian genetics of his time, which Western scientists were not prepared to acknowledge because of their own biases. If Western scientists had listened to him instead of dismissing his work as Soviet propaganda, we may have discovered epigenetics almost a century earlier. Some aspects of Lysenkoism such as graft hybridisation are only now being reappraised.

    Are you talking about this Lysenko? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

  40. @Westie “I wouldn’t give much stock to the MRP results though, both had lots of weird results like Labor winning Deakin but losing Robertson, Greens retaining Ryan whilst losing Griffith. Redbridge has Reid too close to call yet Tangney is not anywhere near a close result (not that I’m complaining though, if any MP deserves to be reelected, it’s Sam Lim) ”

    I think it’s great the MRP has resulted in such idiosyncratic seat patterns that don’t just follow the pendulum. After allowing for polling movements between the MRP field dates and polling day, we should be able to see if for example Labor does so better in Deakin than in Robertson…. or not. It’s so falsifiable. Either they will gain a lot of credibility or lose it.

    I don’t think it’s automatically less credible because it throws up unexpected results. In fact, if it didn’t it would be much less interesting and much less likely to be accurate because real life election results do usually have some curveballs. The key is predicting the right curveballs though innit?

  41. The Liberal truck stuck in the tunnel – a metaphor for their campaign
    ————————————
    I’d call it a sillime.

  42. JIMBOB @ #314 Sunday, April 20th, 2025 – 4:31 pm

    Also Franklin in Tassie, George the independent firming, could Collins be gone??? Salmon farming an issue that ALP ignore regarding it’s constituency. Vote independent to get democracy back, just like gambling advertising. Vote independent to get democracy back. At least 25 in 25.

    The independent in Franklin was polling less than 5% until the Greens 19yo candidate had to pull out due to section 44. So the independent has probably picked up the Greens vote. Going to cost the Greens thousands in lost AEC money.

  43. Who is Lars, no offence taken. Get democracy back along with transparency and stop same same party, the uni party. Inǰdependents should look after constituency otherwise vote them out. Labor annd Coalition take the voters for granted. Anyone who votes for them remind me of sheep. Wow, Boomers. At least we have younger generations voting that are not sheep. At least 25 in 25

  44. Capitalists & Monarchists aren’t fond of scientists either. Just ask Archimedes or Giordano Bruno and all the Scientists the Nazis murdered.

  45. King OMalley says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 5:00 pm
    JIMBOBsays:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 4:33 pm
    Greg Greggson institute, LOL. Like the polls released by the forestry industry.

    I’m sorry but is this taking the piss? Greg Gregson was that crazy teacher on Summer Heights High.

    ____________________________________________

    I was paying forward a Leftiebrawler post from earlier today which credited Tu Le with a commanding lead in Fowler courtesy of a poll conducted for the same “institute”.

    leftieBrawler says:
    Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 9:14 am

  46. Re Jimothy Bobbington/Lars Von Trier I feel like we’re watching a chatgpt model being refined in real time except it is somehow becoming less coherent every post instead of more.

  48. Arky @ #346 Sunday, April 20th, 2025 – 5:22 pm

    Re Jimothy Bobbington/Lars Von Trier I feel like we’re watching a chatgpt model being refined in real time except it is somehow becoming less coherent every post instead of more.

    Do you think Lars needs to write down all the different screen names they’ve had over the years?

    Must be tiring. Why not just be honest and stick to the same screen name FFS.

  49. No offence Jimbob if I thought you were Lars.
    I am assuming it’s Lars von trier? I kinda remember him/her .
    I have been absent for years .

  50. The MRP polling is probably fairly useful for broader trends ie. inner, outer metro, regional etc. but for seat level results it seems to spit out some dubious looking results. For example in that last Redbridge report in Brand (outer suburban) it had the Greens on 15% but then they were 12% in Perth which is just completely counterintuitive to the point of being unbelievable so I’m pretty doubtful as to their effectiveness in predicting tight contests.

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