In a spirit of striking while the iron is hot, a special federal election edition of the Poll Bludger’s normally bi-monthly donation drive, to which you can contribute through the “become a supporter” buttons that appear at the top of the site and the bottom of each post. These posts double as an occasion to promote my site’s wares, such as the fact that I’ve made good on my objective of publishing a federal politics post for each day of the campaign, only a few of which were limited to rote dissemination of polling numbers. Obviously there’s no danger of me dropping the ball on that score on the few days that remain.
The biggest looming attraction though is the live results feature on election night, now based on a three-candidate model that hopefully had the bugs ironed out of it when it had a run at the Western Australian election in March. This will prove especially useful in Macnamara, the Greens seats in Brisbane and possibly one or two other places I can’t presently foresee. To this will be added the brand new bell and/or whistle of a a map results display, of which you can get a very clear sense based on this test run from the 2022 election, recording how it saw the situation at around 8:30pm on the night (note that the page architecture is set up for the current election, so the map has Bullwinkel but not North Sydney and the table reflects this election rather than the last).
The map will colour in as results are reported to reflect who the system deems to be ahead or to have won, respectively indicated with a lighter or darker shade. Scroll over an electorate on the map and you’ll a window with a two-party pie chart and other essentials of the result. Click and the results page for the seat will be revealed, featuring progress totals, projections, probability estimates, a table recording votes and swings for each booth and, if you click on the button at the bottom, a booth results display map.
