Archive for September, 2011

More redistribution news

By
Ben Raue
 – September 30, 2011

Following on from my post earlier in the week after I posted new electoral maps for Victoria and South Australia, there was more news yesterday on redistributions.

The final boundaries for next year’s ACT Legislative Assembly election have been announced. The committee reverted to the first draft, which was a minor change bringing Ginninderra and Molonglo into quota. The second draft had proposed radical changes to the boundaries, reducing Molonglo to a 5-member district and making Ginninderra a 7-member district, but these were rejected after vocal opposition. I have now posted the final version on the maps page.

In other news, the latest report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics on population for each state and territory makes it clear that there will be no changes in the number of seats for each state and territory at the next federal election. In the next month the AEC will make a determination about seat numbers, and this data makes it clear they will remain the same. This will mean that no more federal redistributions will be held in time for the next federal election once the current South Australian redistribution is completed.

An ACT redistribution is due in 2013, but won’t be finished before the election. Antony Green has also blogged about the new update.

So with the NT and ACT territorial boundaries now completed, the only redistribution map I need to work on now is the draft boundaries for next year’s WA state election. Later this year we will be getting final boundaries for the WA state election and for SA federal boundaries. I’ll keep you posted.

Apart from those, I am also looking to update my ward maps for New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, as all three big states have council elections next year. Sorry Western Australia and South Australia, I just haven’t had time to cover those states.

Anyway, Victoria and Queensland’s state electoral commissions are doing a good job of covering the redistributions being held for council wards on their websites, but not in New South Wales, where it seems to be a job for the individual council.

So I’m calling on my readers to help me out by posting here any news about New South Wales council ward boundaries:

  • A decision by a council to get rid of or implement ward boundaries.
  • A clear decision to redistribute the boundaries, preferably with a link to the maps
  • A clear indication that ward boundaries are not changing.

This will make it a lot easier to produce a state ward map well before the September council elections.

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New maps posted

By
Ben Raue
 – September 26, 2011

The blog has been quiet for a while. Partly this has been due to me being very busy with other projects and with my day job, but the main reason has been due to me doing my work on this website behind the scenes.

Over the past two months I’ve produced maps of the election results for all 89 Queensland state electorates for the 2009 state election. This is part of my plan to produce a guide to the upcoming Queensland state election, as I have done for the last state elections in New South Wales and Victoria, and last year’s federal election.

Over the last week I’ve been working on a different project. Maps have now been posted on the blog’s maps page for two jurisdictions. The new boundaries that will be used in Victoria for the next federal election have been posted, along with the draft boundaries for South Australia. The Victorian maps are the result of a redistribution which was concluded at the end of 2010. The South Australian redistribution is expected to be finalised in the next few months.

In the next few months the calculation will be made as to whether any states or territories gain or lose seats at the next election. It doesn’t appear likely that there will be any change in seat numbers, so there isn’t expected to be a redistribution in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania or the Northern Territory, as all of these states held redistributions before the 2010 election. A redistribution is due next year in the Australian Capital Territory, which should be a relatively simple endeavour. I’ll keep you posted.

Update: I have now finished the redistribution for the NT Legislative Assembly, which will face an election on the new boundaries next year. I have also checked the timetable for the ACT redistribution, and it appears it won’t commence until January 2013, leaving an open question of whether it will be finished in time for the federal election. I also realised that I had improperly marked the two previous sets of ACT federal boundaries, so these have been fixed.

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Wollongong and Shellharbour results

By
Ben Raue
 – September 3, 2011

11:50pm – So at the end of the night it seems most likely that the council will consist of an independent Lord Mayor, Gordon Bradbery, alongside four Labor councillors, four Liberal councillors, two Greens councillors, and two independents, Vicki Curran and Greg Petty. There is also a possibility that Petty could lose out to a Labor candidate, Liberal candidate or independent Labor candidate.

11:48pm – While we have 26-27,000 votes counted in each of the two northernmost wards, we only had 17,000 votes counted for Ward 3 at this time. We’re expecting this vote to go up and so these figures are not final. Labor leads with 2.09 quota, followed by Liberal on 1.31, and then independent Vicki Curran on 0.78. They are a long way ahead of other groups, with the next closest being Trevor Mott on 0.29. So despite the vote-count being slower it seems likely that the councillors will be Chris Connor (ALP), Ann Martin (ALP), Bede Crasnich (LIB) and Vicki Curran (IND).

11:44pm – A final update just came through for Ward 1, excepting special votes, Wollongong Town Hall and Tarrawanna. The Liberal Party leads with 1.46 quota, followed by ALP on 1.27, the Greens on 0.71, and independent Greg Petty on 0.51. Petty is under threat for his seat from a number of possible challengers – the second Liberal candidate is only trailing by 0.05 quota. Also, if you combine the second Labor candidate’s vote with the vote for Labor independent Sara Howson (who was permitted to run by the party and swapped preferences with the ALP), it adds up to 0.59 quota. So it seems clear that Leigh Colacino (LIB), Janice Kershaw (ALP) and Jill Merrin (GRN) will win, with the final seat a race between Greg Petty (IND), David McKenna (LIB), Ian Hunt (ALP) and Sara Hawson (ALP-IND).

11:4opm – Nearly all primary votes have been counted in Ward 2, except for Wollongong Town Hall and the special votes. The Liberal Party leads with 1.83 quota, followed by Labor on 1.16, the Greens on 0.74 and former councillor Andrew Anthony on 0.53. That’s a substantial gap between the final seat and the last candidate to be excluded, so barring anything dramatic the seats should go to John Dorahy (LIB), Michelle Blicavs (LIB), David Brown (ALP) and George Takacs (GRN).

11:39pm – I’m going to go to bed now, so here are my final summaries for each ward of Wollongong Council.

11:29pm – The final figures for the night are in for Shellharbour. After the first five seats go to Labor, Liberal and David Boyle, Moran is leading with 0.53 quota for the sixth spot followed by Cook on 0.48 for the final seat. Following them is Stewart on 0.41, Quinlin on 0.35 and four other groups with between 0.25 and 0.34 quota. So while Moran and Cook are the favourites to take the final seats it will depend on how preferences flow.

10:50pm – Let’s take a look at Shellharbour. About half of the booths have reported. At the moment the ALP leads with 2.15 quotas, followed by the Liberal Party on 1.97 and David Boyle’s ticket on 0.91. The final two seats are very unclear at the moment, with Shane Cook on 0.52 and Peter Moran on 0.48, followed by a number of other candidates with a chance of gaining a seat on preferences.

10:44pm – The council race in Ward 3 is well under way, with 17,000 votes counted. Labor leads with 2.09 quotas, followed by the Liberal Party on 1.31 quotas, and then former Wollongong Council staff member Vicki Curran on 0.78 quota.

10:41pm – We have all of the votes for the night now in for the Mayoral race, and nothing much has changed. Bradbery is on 33.9%, Dorahy is on 23.4%, and Connor is on 19.7%. It is expected that Bradbery will extend his 10.5% lead over Dorahy on preferences and will win the race.

10:20pm – We’re beginning to get more council booths coming in for Wollongong. At the moment we have 8600 votes counted in Ward 1, 2800 in Ward 2 and 5300 in Ward 3. By comparison over 30,000 votes have been counted in Wards 1 and 2 for the Mayoral race. At the moment the Liberal Party is leading in Wards 1 and 2, while the ALP leads in Ward 3. If the current figures were final and preferences don’t change the order, Labor and Liberal would each win four seats, the Greens would win two, and the remaining seats would go to independents Greg Petty and Alice Curran.

8:25pm – We also have the council vote in from a single booth: Coalcliff in the far north of Wollongong. The Liberals polled 43 votes, the Greens 40, Petty 18 votes, and Labor 10 votes. I hope it doesn’t need to be said that this is far too early to make any predictions.

8:17pm - We now have over 27% of the vote counted in the Mayoral race and Bradbery is solidly in the lead, with 31.3% against 22.9% for Dorahy and 20.2% for Connor. It’s far too early to call it for him but it’s worth noting that, in a head-to-head race against Dorahy, he is getting preferences from Merrin, Organ, and Connor, and I believe he is getting preferences from most of the others. Those three polled over 30% between them. It will be very hard for the Liberals to recover an 8% deficit on preferences with Bradbery receiving such friendly preferencing.

7:44pm – The results diverge widely when broken down by ward. In Ward 1 (North), Dorahy is leading, while Labor’s Connor is being outpolled by independent Greg Petty, who is on 16%. Petty is almost outpolling Bradbery. The Greens’ Merrin is also on 12% in the ward. It’s a good sign for Petty and Merrin’s bids for seats on the council. In contrast, Petty is polling less than 1% in both the other wards. Bradbery’s vote varies from 36.5% to 17.2% between Ward 1 and Ward 2. Connor is leading in Ward 3.

7:41pm - We’ve got the first figures from the Wollongong lord mayoral race. With 11.9% counted, independent Gordon Bradbery is leading with 27.5% over Liberal candidate John Dorahy on 24.1% and Labor candidate Chris Connor on 20.3%. Overall the results are coming from all three wards, with slightly less votes coming from Ward 3 (South).

7:20pm – Polls closed in the Wollongong and Shellharbour council elections at 6pm tonight. So far no results are in but I look to be covering them tonight. We are looking at the election of the Lord Mayor of Wollongong, 12 Wollongong councillors across three wards, and 7 Shellharbour councillors elected across the entire council area.

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