Archive for October, 2009

Tasmanian local council elections

By
Ben Raue
 – October 6, 2009

Tasmania goes to the polls in October to elect local councillors across the state. Tasmania is broken up into twenty-nine LGAs. Tasmanian councils are not elected using wards: instead half of each council is elected every two years representing the entire council area, with councillors serving a four year term. Each council’s Mayor and Deputy Mayor are also directly elected by the voters at every council election for a two-year term.

Nominations have now closed for this year’s council elections, where each council will elect a Mayor and half a council. Voting is by postal ballot and will take place for two weeks from 13 October to 27 October.

I don’t have any particular information about this year’s council elections, although there has been coverage at the Tasmanian Politics blog. I have reviewed my Tasmanian LGA map, which was originally a very large file and difficult to use on slower computers. It should now run smoothly for anyone interested in following Tasmania’s council elections. Consider this post an opportunity to comment on any interesting council races.

taslga

Tasmania's local government areas

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New electoral map of Wales

By
Ben Raue
 – October 5, 2009

I’ve just finished a map of Wales’ new parliamentary constituencies. Wales uses the same fourty constituencies to elect their fourty members of the House of Commons as well as electing fourty of their sixty members of the National Assembly of Wales.

The fourty constituencies are divided into five regions for Assembly elections. Each region elects four top-up AMs. Three of these regions cover eight constituencies, with one covering seven seats and the other covering nine.

Since these maps are used for two purposes, I have uploaded the maps as two separate files. One includes the Assembly region boundaries and seats coloured according to the 2007 Assembly election, while the other uses notional colours based on the 2005 Westminster election.

Maps over the fold.

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Ireland votes Yes

By
Ben Raue
 – October 4, 2009

The Republic of Ireland has voted decisively to overturn the result of the June 2008 referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, with a 20% swing to ‘yes’ producing a two-thirds majority for the ‘yes’ side.

The Lisbon treaty, which updates the structures of the European Union, required approval by referendum for Ireland to ratify, and the treaty could not come into force without all member states ratifying. The June 2008 referendum saw a 53% vote against the treaty. Pressure from Europe and the continuing support of Ireland’s major parties saw Lisbon remain on the agenda, and Ireland’s economic collapse in late 2008 saw support for the treaty increase markedly.

Yesterday’s referendum produced a result of 67% in favour of the treaty, a swing of 20.5% on the previous referendum. While only ten of Ireland’s 43 constituencies voted ‘yes’ in 2008, all but two voted ‘yes’ yesterday. The two remaining constituencies, Donegal North East and Donegal South West, saw the smallest swings towards ‘yes’ (only about 13% each), while all other constituencie produced swings from 16% to 22%, indicating a remarkable consistency in the shift in favour of the Lisbon treaty.

In addition, there was an increase in turnout from about 53% to 58%, and a 5% increase in turnout was fairly consistent across the country.

I have created maps showing results and turnout levels for the two referendums, and posted them below the fold. Remember, you can download the Google Earth maps of both current Irish constituencies and proposed constituencies for the next election from the Tally Room maps page.

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