Budget eve miscellany (open thread)

Labor maintains a 52-48 lead in the only poll to have emerged in the pre-budget lull.

As noted in the previous post, budget week means a calm before the following week’s storm in federal opinion polling. However, there is the following:

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor leading 52-48 for the fourth week in a row, though the stability is down to variable respondent-allocated preference flows, as the latest result has Labor up two points on the primary vote to 32% with the Coalition steady on 37%, the Greens up half a point to 13.5% and One Nation down half a point to 5.5%. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1654.

• The latest SECNewgate Mood of the Nation issue salience survey records 21% of respondents mentioning crime when asked without prompting about “the main issues facing Australians that are most important to you right now”, compared with 10% in the February survey, with cost of living continuing to dominate with 69% followed by housing affordability on 36%. A forced response question on national direction finds wrong direction favoured over right direction by 63% to 37%, out from 44% to 56% in February. Thirty-one per cent rate the federal government’s performance excellent, very good or good, down from 34% in February, while fair, poor or very poor is up two to 66%.

Preselection news:

• High-profile former state MP Kate Jones is reportedly in contention to take second position on Labor’s Queensland Senate ticket, which represents a vacancy because the party failed to win a second seat in 2019. Jones served in cabinet in the Bligh and Palaszczuk governments and held the seat of Ashgrove and its successor Cooper from 2006 to 2020, outside of an interruption when she lost it to Campbell Newman in 2012 before recovering it in 2015. She stepped aside from a position at a lobbying firm in March amid an ongoing controversy over the state government’s relationship with lobbyists, and is now an Australian Rugby League commissioner and executive director at the Tech Council of Australia. The idea is being promoted by Gary Bullock, Left faction figurehead and state secretary of the United Workers Union, and would disturb an arrangement in which the top position has gone to a candidate of the Left, in this case incumbent Nita Green, and the second to the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association. The Australian reports Jenny Hill, former mayor of Townsville and a member of the Right, will also nominate, and that she may be joined by factional colleague Corinne Mulholland, former candidate for Petrie and now in-house lobbyist for Star casinos.

• InDaily reports there are two contenders in the mix for Liberal preselection in the South Australian seat of Mayo, which Rebekha Sharkie of the Centre Alliance has held since 2018. “Outspoken” Adelaide councillor Henry Davis has confirmed his interest, but a party source is quoted saying both moderate and conservative factions were looking for someone “more competitive”. That might mean Rowan Mumford, conservative-aligned state party president and unsuccessful candidate for Kavel at the March 2022 state election.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reports Labor’s candidate to recover the Brisbane seat of Griffith, which Terri Butler lost to Max Chandler-Mather of the Greens in 2022, is likely to be Renée Coffey, chief executive of Kookaburra Kids, a foundation that helps children whose parents have a mental illness. Coffey is reportedly aligned with the Old Guard faction, which was once counted as a subset of the Right but now lines up with a dominant Left.

Friday miscellany: YouGov on Palestine, redistribution latest and more (open thread)

Don’t know emerges as the big winner in a poll on recognition of a Palestinian state; preliminary observations on a redistribution of the two Northern Territory seats; and some other stuff.

Next week being budget week, we’re likely to see little in the way of polling beyond the usual Roy Morgan, followed by a deluge the week after as the main players to take the field to gauge the public’s response. For now, there’s the following:

• YouGov has published a further result from its April 19-23 survey showing 35% support for Australia recognising Palestine as an independent state with 27% opposed and 44% unsure, with Greens supporters the most enthusiastic and One Nation supporters the least.

• The Australian Electoral Commission, which hitherto offered only the second quarter as the time when the proposed redistributions for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia would be published, is now saying “late May/early June”. I’ve also noticed for the first time that a redistribution process for the Northern Territory began in late February. With 81,170 voters presently enrolled in Lingiari and 72,748 in Solomon, this is likely to involve a transfer of voters in Palmerston from the latter to the former. This will be welcome for Labor, as the loss of this conservative-voting area will boost their 0.9% margin in Lingiari while reducing their 9.4% margin in Solomon.

• The Liberals have announced Brendan Small, managing director of a local cleaning products firm, as candidate for the New South Wales Central Coast seat of Dobell, held for Labor by Emma McBride on a margin of 6.5%.

• Weeks after I’d forgotten about it, an advisory from the AEC that they are about to archive their Cook by-election media feed prompted me to update my own results page with what are the definitive final results. Liberal candidate Simon Kennedy scored 62.7% of the primary vote, winning at the final count ahead of the Greens with 71.3%.

• The Nationals have preselected Brendan Moylan, a Moree solicitor, as their candidate for the New South Wales state by-election for Northern Tablelands, the date for which the government appears in no hurry to announce. The by-election will choose a successor to Nationals member Adam Marshall, who was re-elected last year with 71.6% of the primary vote and is abandoning state politics at the age of 39, with media reports suggesting he hopes to succeed Barnaby Joyce in New England.

Polls: Essential Research and Roy Morgan (open thread)

Two new federal polls have similar stories to tell on the primary vote, but differ sharply on preference flows.

The fortnightly Essential Research poll has Labor steady on 31%, the Coalition down a point to 34%, the Greens up two to 13% and One Nation down two to 7%, with undecided up three to 7%. The pollster’s 2PP+ measure has the Coalition maintaining a narrow lead of 47% (down two) to 46% (down one), although these respondent-allocated numbers appear to flatter them — excluding the undecided from the primary votes and applying preference flows from 2022, I get 52.5-47.5 to Labor. The poll was conducted Wednesday to Sunday from a sample of 1150.

Further questions relate to expectations for next week’s federal budget, which are not high; concern about crime and safety, including a finding that 59% favour a “focus on enforcement measures” against 41% for the alternative of a “focus on preventative measures”. Strong support was recorded for every one of a range of measures to address family violence and improve safety online, and 70% favoured the eSafety Commissioner’s view that social media platforms needed to remove “dangerous content” over 30% for a view attributed to Elon Musk that doing so was “an attempt to censor the internet and restrict free speech”.

The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor’s lead steady at 52-48, though here it seems to be Labor getting the better end of respondent-allocated preferences: on the primary vote, Labor was down one-and-a-half points to 30%, the Coalition was up half to 37%, the Greens were down one to 13% and One Nation was up half to 6%. Based on 2022 preferences, this comes out to around 51-49 in Labor’s favour. The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1666.

Nine Newspapers reports quarterly state-level and demographic aggregates from the Resolve Strategic polls from February through to April, the interest of which is limited by the fact that the pollster published breakdowns for the three largest states with the monthly polls. However, we do learn that the poll has Labor at 32% of the primary vote in Western Australia, which compares with 34% for the December quarter and 36.9% at the 2022 election. I hope to be able to provide the remainder of this result later today (UPDATE: The Coalition is on 35%, compared with 34.8% at the election, the Greens 13%, compared with 12.5%, and One Nation 6%, compared with 4.0%). The sample here was a modest 352, with a duly wide margin of error.

Finally, the results of Saturday’s Legislative Council elections in Tasmania were resolved yesterday, with the Greens gaining their first ever seat in the chamber following the retirement of an independent incumbent in the seat of Hobart; Labor losing its northern neighbour Elwick to an independent; and the Liberals retaining the seat of Prosser beyond Hobart’s outskirts. Read all about it at the dedicated post.

Friday miscellany: Morgan poll and sundry preselections (open thread)

Labor fills a Victorian Senate vacancy, while the Liberals choose an ACT Senate candidate and confirm Nicolle Flint’s comeback bid in Boothby.

There’s quite a bit going on in Bludgerdom at the moment, so before we proceed, some plugs for the posts below this one:

• First and foremost, the site’s thirty-seventh bi-monthly donation drive is in progress, so if you’ve ever felt this corner of cyberspace was deserving of support, there is no time like the present.

• There is a guest post from Adrian Beaumont covering today’s British local elections and various other items of news from what passes for the democratic world these days.

• I have a post up on tomorrow’s Tasmanian periodic Legislative Council elections (or to be precise, two periodic elections and one by-election), which aren’t always interesting but are this year, as the post seeks to explain.

• Still another new post looks at a New South Wales state poll that as far as I can tell has gone unreported by the paper that commissioned it.

On with the show:

• The weekly Roy Morgan poll has Labor with an unchanged two-party lead of 52-48, from primary votes of Labor 31.5% (up one), Coalition 36.5% (up one), Greens 14% (down two) and One Nation 5.5% (steady). The poll was conducted Monday to Sunday from a sample of 1719.

• As intimated by earlier reports, Labor has chosen Lisa Darmanin, public sector branch secretary of the Australian Services Union, to fill the Victorian Senate vacancy created by the death in February of Linda White, who shared Darmanian’s background in the union.

• The Canberra Times reports a Liberal preselection to choose its Australian Capital Territory Senate candidate was won by Jacob Vadakkedathu, director of a management consultancy. Vadakkedathu prevailed in the final round over Kasey Lam-Evans by 163 votes to 121, after former ministerial adviser Jerry Nockles and former territory parliamentarian Giulia Jones dropped out in earlier rounds.

• The Liberals have confirmed former Liberal member Nicolle Flint’s comeback bid in the Adelaide seat of Boothby, which she held from 2016 until she stood aside at the 2022 election, at which it was won for Labor by Louise Miller-Frost. Also confirmed as Liberal candidates are Amy Grantham in Adelaide, who also ran in 2022, and Tea Tree Gully councillor Irena Zagladov in Makin.

• In her weekly column for Nine Newspapers, Niki Savva reports a uComms poll conducted for Climate 200 in mid-March credited independent Nicolette Boele with a 53-47 lead over Liberal member Paul Fletcher in the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield. Boele came within 4.2% of winning the seat in 2022. However, the situation in this seat is likely to be substantially complicated by a looming redistribution that will cost New South Wales a seat, which will very likely result in the abolition if not of Bradfield then of one of its near neighbours.

Tasmanian upper house elections: Hobart, Prosser, Elwick

A minor sequel for Tasmania’s recent state election tomorrow, as former Greens and Labor leaders seek berths in the upper house.

Live commentary

Tuesday

4.30pm. The TEC has now declared all three results, with the others confirmed as expected. Cassy O’Connor did it very easily in Hobart, winning over independent John Kelly in the final round with a provisional 11,194 (59.67%) to 7,567 (40.33%). The result in Prosser was perhaps a little closer than I would have anticipated, Kerry Vincent winning for the Liberals with 11,186 (52.93%) to 9,949 (47.07%) for Labor’s Bryan Green.

Noon. The Tasmanian Electoral Commission is today conducting provisional preference distributions to establish what the final results are likely to be, the first of which has made it clear that independent Bec Thomas will win Elwick with a provisional lead at the final count over Labor candidate Tessa McLaughlin of 9758 (53.34%) to 8537 (46.66%). Barring a surprise result in Prosser, this means Labor will be reduced from four seats in the chamber to three. If the general assumption holds that Cassy O’Connor will win Hobart and Kerry Vincent will win Prosser, the overall make-up of the chamber will go from Liberal four, Labor four and independents seven to Liberal four, Labor three, Greens one and independents seven (with Elwick an independent gain and Hobart going from independent to Greens).

End of Saturday night

The counts as they presently stand are unlikely to be disturbed much by late counting, which will presumably amount to no more than 1000 postals per electorate plus very small numbers of provisionals and absents. That means the decisive unknown quantity in each case is preference flows:

Elwick. With independent Bec Thomas on 34.0% and Labor’s Tessa McLaughlin on 28.9%, this almost certainly comes down to whether Labor gets the 57-43 preference split they will need from independent Fabiano Cangelosi on 19.0% and Janet Shelley of the Greens on 18.2%, whose preferences are exceedingly unlikely to favour each other to the extent needed to put them in contention. This is very much an unknown quantity: Labor usually gets the lion’s share of Greens preferences even against independents, but independents typically favour each other.

Hobart. Cassy O’Connor of the Greens has 37.2% with independent John Kelly second on 22.1% and Labor’s John Kamara third on 18.2%. All other candidates being independents, there seems no chance of Kamara moving into second. With full preferences, Kelly would need a split of about 68.5-31.5 to close the gap, but the hurdle is in fact slightly higher because a certain number of votes will exhaust, since voters are required to number no more than three boxes. With Labor preferences in fact likely to favour O’Connor, her victory seems assured.

Prosser. Liberal candidate Kerry Vincent is on 38.7% to Labor candidate Bryan Green’s 28.5%, which would leave Green needing a 66-34 even without allowing for exhaustion (although in a five-horse race this is unlikely to amount to much), and no particularly reason to think he will manage even more than half.

Continue reading “Tasmanian upper house elections: Hobart, Prosser, Elwick”

Resolve Strategic: Labor 33, Coalition 36, Greens 12 in NSW

The second New South Wales state poll for the year suggests Labor is still in front, but has gone backwards from the result that failed to win it a majority last March.

The bi-monthly Resolve Strategic poll has not been reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, but the results appear on the Political Monitor poll display feature of the paper’s website. It finds both major parties down since the previous poll, in which the Coalition opened up a primary vote for the first time since the March 2023 election, with Labor down a point to 33% and the Coalition down two to 36%. The Greens are steady on 12%, with the generic independent category up two to 14% and others steady on 5%. This suggests a two-party preferred lead to Labor of around 52-48, compared with an election result of 54.3-45.7. Chris Minns is credited with a 37-16 lead over Mark Speakman as preferred premier, out from 35-16 last time. The result was derived from the national Resolve Strategic polls conducted March 21 to 24 and April 17 to 21, from a sample of 1000.

In other New South Wales state politics news, a by-election looms for a date yet to be determined in the rural seat of Northern Tablelands following the resignation of Nationals MP Adam Marshall, who cited the “demanding and all-consuming role”. However, the Sydney Morning Herald notes suggestions the 39-year-old Marshall may be planning to succeed Barnaby Joyce in the corresponding federal seat of New England.

UK local elections and Blackpool South by-election live

The Conservatives are set to suffer large losses at today’s UK local elections. Also: turmoil in Scotland and Trump narrowly leading Biden nationally.

Live Commentary

11am Monday With all 107 councils in, Labour won 1,158 councillors (up 186), the Lib Dems 522 (up 104), the Tories 515 (down 474), independents 228 (up 93) and the Greens 181 (up 74). Councils controlled are Labour 51 (up eight), Lib Dems 12 (up two), Tories six (down ten), independents one (up one) and no overall control 37 (down one). This is the first time the Tories have finished third since 1996.

7:28am Sunday Labour’s Sadiq Khan has easily been re-elected London mayor, defeating Tory Susan Hall by 43.8-32.7 with 5.8% Lib Dems and 5.8% Greens. There was a 3.8% swing to Khan and a 2.6% swing against the Tories. On the London Assembly, Labour won 11 of the 25 seats (steady since 2021), the Tories eight (down one), the Greens three (steady), the Lib Dems two (steady) and Reform one (up one).

In a further blow for Sunak, Labour has defeated incumbent Tory mayor Andy Street in West Midlands, winning by 37.8-37.5 with 11.7% for an independent, 5.8% for Reform and 5.2% for the Greens. Labour’s vote share was down 1.9% on 2021, but the Tories were down 11.2%. Overall, Labour has won 10 of the 11 mayors contested, with the one Tory win coming in Tees Valley.

7:41pm Here’s the BBC’s live blog for today’s mayoral counts.

2:19pm With William Bowe’s permission, I’ve pinned this post to the top of the blog since Friday afternoon. But at 6pm today, William will start live coverage of the Tasmanian upper house elections, and this post will drop back to fifth. If you want to follow the remaining mayoral results, you’ll need to scroll.

11:25am After 102 of 107 councils, Labour has 1,026 councillors (up 173), the Tories 479 (down 448), the Lib Dems 505 (up 101), independents 224 (up 92) and the Greens 159 (up 65). Councils controlled are Labour 48 (up eight), Tories five (down ten), Lib Dems 12 (up two), independents one (up one) and no overall control 36 (down one). The Tories have reduced their proportional losses to a bit under half. George Galloway’s Workers Party and Reform have both won councillors (four and two respectively).

11:16am Labour won the East Midlands mayoralty last night by 40.3-28.8 over the Tories with 11.3% Greens and 10.9% Reform. That leaves seven of 11 mayors yet to declare, including the London mayoralty.

7:18am Saturday The BBC’s Projected National Share, that applies these council results to the whole country, is 34% Labour, 25% Tories, 17% Lib Dems and 24% for all Others. Compared with 2021, when these seats were last contested, Labour is up five, the Tories down 11 and the Lib Dems steady. Compared with 2023, Labour and the Tories are both down one and the Lib Dems down three. This is the Tories’ equal record low in PNS, and they were last at 25% in 2013 and 1995. The Greens account for “as much as half” of the Others’ total. This result will be a little disappointing for Labour, which would have expected a double-digit PNS margin.

11:49pm Labour wins the York and North Yorkshire mayoralty, which includes Sunak’s seat. Labour won by 35.1-27.3 over the Tories with 16.2% Lib Dems and 8.0% Greens.

11:35pm Labour wins the North East mayoralty, defeating a defector by 41.3-28.2 with 11.7% for the Tories and 9.2% for Reform. In the council results, the Tories are continuing to lose over half their existing seats.

9:40pm The Tories have held the Tees Valley mayoralty, winning by 53.6-41.3 over Labour with 5.0% Lib Dem. But after 42 of 107 councils, the Tories are continuing to lose over half the seats they are defending. Labour has 362 councillors (up 62), the Tories 131 (down 149), the Lib Dems 133 (up 24), independents 78 (up 49) and the Greens 28 (up 15). Councils controlled are Labour 22 (up four), Tories three (down three), Lib Dems five (steady) and no overall control 12 (down one).

4:43pm Curtice says the swings so far at the local elections are 10% from Tories to Labour since 2021 and 1% since 2023. If this holds up, Labour will win the BBC’s Projected National Share by a low double-digit margin. The Tories have so far lost over half the councillors they were defending. If this holds up, it will be their worst proportional loss since 1995.

2:58pm It’s now nearly 6am Friday in the UK. This guide to results in The Guardian indicates things will go quiet until later tonight AEST, then there’ll be more declarations. The London mayoralty will be declared Saturday UK time (probably after midnight Sunday AEST).

2:43pm After 33 of 107 councils, Labour has 298 councillors (up 58), the Tories 110 (down 118), the Lib Dems 100 (up 15), independents 61 (up 33) and the Greens 20 (up 12). Councils controlled are Labour 17 (up four), the Tories three (down three), the Lib Dems four (steady) and no overall control nine (down one).

2:36pm The Tories have lost six other seats at by-elections since July 2023, all on huge swings to Labour or the Lib Dems. They did manage to hold former PM Boris Johnson’s seat of Uxbridge in July 2023.

1:52pm Labour GAINS Blackpool South (the parliamentary by-election), crushing the Tories by over 40 points. The Tories barely stayed ahead of Reform for 2nd place.

12:59pm After 22 of 107 councils, Labour has 195 coucillors (up 44), the Tories 50 (down 81), the Lib Dems 55 (up six), independents 38 (up 22) and the Greens 13 (up nine). Councils controlled are Labour 13 (up three), the Tories one (down two), the Lib Dems two (steady) and no overall control six (down one).

12:48pm Blackpool South turnout 32.5%, compared with 56.8% at 2019 general election. Labour easily winning according to BBC with Tories and Reform in battle for 2nd. Also Curtice says Greens averaging 11% in wards they’ve contested and Reform 14%. In wards contested by Reform, Tories down 19% on 2021.

12:15pm Labour has GAINED Rushmoor council from the Tories. This is a historic gain as Rushmoor has never had a Labour majority, and the Tories had controlled it for the last 24 years.

11:56am After 17 of 107 councils, Labour have 116 councillors (up 24), the Tories 29 (down 53), the Lib Dems 36 (up six), independents 26 (up 17) and the Greens nine (up six). Councils controlled are Labour ten (up two), Tories one (down one), Lib Dems one (steady) and no overall control five (down one).

11:46am BBC’s live blog quotes UK election analyst John Curtice saying it’s a strong performance in early wards from far-right Reform and the Greens. There’s an 8% swing from Con to Lab since 2021, and a more modest 1% swing since 2023. Also, Labour have GAINED Thurrock council from the Tories.

11:18am The BBC’s live blog says Labour has GAINED Hartlepool council (previously no overall control). The Blackpool South by-election is expected to be declared after 12pm AEST.

11:12am Friday On the BBC’s council scoreboard, after 7 of 107 councils declared, Labour has 56 councillors (up four from the last time these wards were contested in 2021), the Tories 20 (down 18), the Lib Dems 17 (up one), independents 14 (up nine) and the Greens seven (up four).

Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here, and his own website is here.

Polls close for UK local government elections and the parliamentary Blackpool South by-election at 7am AEST Friday. Owing to COVID, there were no elections in 2020, so the large majority of the seats up were last contested in 2021. At the 2021 local elections, the Conservatives under Boris Johnson had a big win. With national polls now showing a huge Labour lead of around 20 points, the Conservatives are virtually certain to suffer large losses.

Local elections are contested on a four-year cycle, with different wards up every year. Some years are more Conservative-leaning and others Labour-leaning. The BBC’s Projected National Share (PNS) attempts to correct for bias in the particular year. In 2021, the Conservatives won the PNS by 36-29 over Labour with 17% for the Liberal Democrats. In 2023, Labour won by 35-26 with 20% Lib Dems.

The biggest prize at these elections is the London mayoralty. Previously, mayors were elected by preferential voting, but the Conservative government regressed to first-past-the-post. Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan, who is running for a third term, has a double-digit lead over Conservative Susan Hall. These local elections will be the last before the general election, which must be held by January 2025.

There will also be a parliamentary by-election today in Conservative-held Blackpool South.  The Conservatives gained Blackpool South from Labour at the 2019 election, winning by a 49.6-38.3 margin with 6.1% for the Brexit Party.

Results for some councils and the Blackpool South by-election will come in Friday AEST, but we may need to wait until Sunday morning for the results to be complete. I expect the London mayoralty won’t be declared until Saturday AEST. I will be at gym until 11am on Friday morning. Results will be available at the BBC.

There may be an early election in Scotland after the coalition government between the Scottish National Party and Greens broke apart. At the 2021 election, the SNP won 64 of the 129 seats, one short of a majority, but one of their members has since defected to the Alba party. On Monday, Humza Yousaf quit as Scotland first minister, and there will be a leadership contest within the SNP to replace him.

US: Trump narrowly ahead nationally

The US election is on November 5. FiveThirtyEight now has polling averages. Nationally, Donald Trump leads Joe Biden by 41.6-40.8 with 10.3% for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There were six narrow Biden-won states in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Trump currently leads in all six of these states by one-to-six-point margins. Biden’s best chance to win the Electoral College is to win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, states where he trails by 2.6 points or less. If Biden wins these three states, he likely wins the Electoral College by 270-268.

Recent elections

The South Korean legislative election was held on April 10. Of the 300 seats, 254 were elected by FPTP and 46 by proportional representation. The centre-left Democratic Alliance won 176 of the 300 total seats (down four since 2020), the conservative People Power 108 (up two), and the left-wing Rebuilding Korea, which only contested the PR seats, won 12 seats (new). The Democratic Alliance won the FPTP seats by 162-90 on a popular vote margin of 52.3-45.7.

The most powerful office in South Korea is the president. At the 2022 presidential election, People Power candidate Yoon Suk Yeol defeated the Democrat by 48.6-47.8. While the legislative election will be seen as a repudiation of Yoon, his term does not end until 2027.

At the April 6 Slovak presidential runoff election, Peter Pellegrini, an ally of the more pro-Russia PM, won by a 53.1-46.9 margin over Ivan Korčok. Korčok had finished first at the March 23 first round, leading by 42.5-37.0.

Croatia uses PR in multi-member electorates to elect 143 of its 151 MPs, with the remaining eight reserved for minorities. At the April 17 election, the conservative HDZ won 61 seats (down six since 2020), the centre-left Rivers of Justice 42 (up two), two other right-wing alliances a combined 25 seats (up one) and the green-left 10 (up five).

Donation drive

It’s time (past time, actually) for the Poll Bludger’s bi-monthly (in the once every two months sense of that ambiguous term) undignified hustle for donations. After what I must confess was a pretty good month on the donations front in March, thanks to the Dunkley by-election, the month of the Cook by-election proved quite a bit less productive. So if you’re an occasional donor (and with due regard to the fact that I say this quite often), now would be an opportune time to exercise your valued generosity.

These posts are also a good opportunity to call attention to looming electoral events, starting with this Saturday’s periodic Tasmanian Legislative Council elections, which will elect three of that chamber’s 15 members. These are often sedate affairs, but this year’s round is unusually interesting: former Greens leader Cassy O’Connor will seek to win the party’s first ever seat in the chamber for the seat of Hobart, and former Labor leader Bryan Green is on the comeback trail in the seat of Prosser, where he faces competition from the Liberals.

Beyond that, we can start to look at the end of an election drought that was relieved only by the surprise early Tasmanian election on March 24, with the Northern Territory going to the polls on August 24, the Australian Capital Territory doing so on October 19, and then Queensland’s big day a week later on October 26.