I’d never heard of her, so I looked at our mutual friends – without disclosing any personal details I think it would be ok if I revealed the political affiliations of the 31 mutual facebook friends I share with her:

Of those 31 people, 28 are either current or former members of the Greens (not sure if all them are necessarily currently paid up financial members), 2 are FoE campaigners (not sure if either of them happen to be or if they have ever been Greens members) & the other was at least an ALP member once but not sure if they’re a current paid up member.

Bizarre.

Firstly, the last EMRS poll for Denison had the Lib/Lab/Green/Wilkie split as 43/27/27/3, which in a strictly proportional system would probably wash out as 2/2/1 after the campaign dirt is slung.

It will be more intersting though because of the Hare-Clark system. Simply, the Libs don’t have any big vote pullers and I expect we will see a lot of Lib candidates floating around the half quota mark, which would splinter their vote and up the chance of exhaustion and thus a surprise candidate getting up. Labor, conversely, have three sitting members battling for votes. One would imagine that Bartlett will gain the lions share and poll over a quota in his own right, though it is worth noting that the Housing Commission areas of Glenorchy are very loyal to Sturges, which may see him hold on against Singh for the second Labor seat. I can’t see Labor holding 3 seats. One would also expect most of the Green vote to go to the sitting MP, with Burnet to probably pull about 4% and the rest to pull little between them.

With only 2 MPs likely to get a quota in their own right (O’Connor and Bartlett), I can’t rule out Wilkie, who could potentially gain preferences from early excluded Greens and I also think from early excluded Libs (Wilkie is from Sandy Bay), which if pushed him ahead of Burnet would give him a real chance.

However, my tip remains, in order of election, Bartlett, O’Connor, Archer, Singh & Groom with Wilkie to come 6th or 7th.