Despite my plans to stop posting on the website, I have now also posted a guide to the upcoming ACT election in October.
This includes profiles of the three electorates, maps and an overall summary of the ACT political situation.
This doesn’t mean I will necessarily be producing similar guides to the upcoming Northern Territory election. I am currently working on the federal election guide, and 25 separate profiles for the NT is a lot more work than three for the ACT.
First election posters spotted on the GDE for one of the candidates in the upcoming ACT election. From the location I’m guessing a candidate for the seat of Gininderra.
For those hanging out for news of developments in the ACT election:
Community Alliance Party is running again despite the defection of its best known candidate from the last election, Val Jeffery, to the Liberal ticket.
Well known immigration activist Marion Le has put together her own party, the Marion Le Social Justice Party, which has been registered, and will run a full ticket in the Gininderra electorate.
The Pirate Party failed to get enough members in time to get itself registered in time for the election.
The Motorists Party is running again and has attracted Chic Henry formerly promoter of Summernats to run in Gininderra and has announced that he would support the Liberals in a glance of power situation.
Why the attraction of the Gininderra electorate for the newcomers I can’t quite imagine.
Here are the quotas for the parties in 2008:
ALP 2.4
Liberals 1.7
Green 0.8
Motorists Party 0.4
Community Alliance: 0.2
Go figure.
Further explanation on Gininderra: There are 5 seats. Current 2 ALP, 2 Liberal and 1 Green. The ALP vote dropped substantially in 2008 and I would not expect it to drop much more.
Right leaning voting block will retain 2 seats – probably 2 Liberal unless Henry gets stronger support than last time – but this is likely to be at the expense of the second Liberal candidate – so won’t be a net gain.
The Greens are the most vulnerable – the only thing that can be said here is the Meredith Hunter has the advantage of visibility as an elected member and that the Federal vote in 2010 for the Greens across the electorate was about 4 percentage points higher than her 2008 vote at the Legislative Assembly election.
Doug, the retirement of Jon Stanhope since the 2008 election might be expected to lose the ALP some votes in Ginninderra – he was the only candidate to receive a quota in his own right. Perhaps this is why it is attractive to minor parties this time around?
The ALP had a swing of 10% against it in Ginninderra in 2008 (Stanhope’s electorate) – even though he still attracted a high personal votes so that isn’t a major or at least not the only factor.
I think the feeling given that the ALP lost all those votes last time is that there is a bundle of voters on the loose to be scraped up. It is not that simple – the Liberal Party also took a 4.7% hit in the electorate in 2008 and those votes were also shaken loose.
The Motorists Party will be hoping that they can improve on their 6.1% showing in Ginninderra last time and that they can scoop up some of the votes from the Independent who scored 6.3% but who is apparently not running this time. The Liberal Party will be competing to recover the votes that the Independent and the Motorist’s Party took last time.