Tasmania’s lower house will be expanding in size from 25 to 35 at the upcoming election.
Usually when we analyse election results, a key tool is to compare the results to the last election. Swings, or changes in seat count. But with a big increase in seat numbers, it’s harder to do a like-with-like comparison when there’s a 20% increase in the total numbers. While 13 seats would’ve been a majority under the old system, it would be a bad defeat under the new system.
So for this post I thought I would run through each of the five electorates, looking at the likely outcomes in 2021 under 35 seats.
I have partly used Kevin Bonham’s calculations that are at the end of this blog post. In summary, this is my estimates of the seat results at the last election.
| Electorate | Liberal | Labor | Greens | Independent |
| Bass | 4 | 2 | 1 | |
| Braddon | 4 | 2 | 1 | |
| Clark | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Franklin | 3 | 3 | 1 | |
| Lyons | 4 | 3 |
That adds up to a total of 17 Liberals, 12 Labor, 3 Greens and 3 independents. Although there is lineball calls in Braddon (where the independent seat could have been a fifth Liberal) and Lyons (where the third Labor seat could’ve gone to the Greens).
I’ll run through each electorate one by one below the fold.
Bass
The actual outcome in Bass was 3 Liberals and 2 Labor.
The increase in seat count increases Labor’s quota from 1.56 to 2.08 and locks in their two seats.
The Liberal Party’s quotas goes from 3.60 quotas to 4.80. But it’s worth bearing in mind that most of the vote went to Peter Gutwein, the premier at the time. Gutwein polled 48.2% – almost 3 quotas on the old system, and almost 4 on the latter. In the real election, quite a few of his preferences leaked out of the Liberal ticket to the point where the fourth candidate wasn’t competitive.
With the Greens quota increasing from 0.55 quotas to 0.73 quotas, I expect they would win that final seat.
That would produce a result of 4 Liberals, 2 Labor and 1 Greens.
Braddon
The actual outcome in Braddon was three Liberals and two Labor.
The Liberal quotas increased from 3.43 to 4.58. The first four Liberals are all quite competitve, on more than half of the new lower quota.
Labor’s vote is bumped up from 1.59 to 2.12. Enough to lock in their second seat, but not enough to be competitive for a third.
Even with the new quotas, the Greens are on less than half a quota.
Independent candidate Craig Garland’s vote is bumped up from 0.36 quotas to 0.48.
The question here is whether enough of the Liberal vote would have concentrated behind a fifth candidate in the expanded system, or would have scattered and lost to Garland. In Kevin’s scenario he went with Garland’s win, but the Liberal would have been close. If that fifth Liberal had won, it would have been enough for a slim Liberal majority.
So that’s a final outcome of 4 Liberals, 2 Labor, 1 Garland, or alternatively 5 Liberals and 2 Labor.
Clark
The actual outcome in Clark was two Liberal, one Labor, one Greens and one independent (Kristie Johnston).
The Liberal quotas bump up from 1.91 to 2.55, and Labor’s bumps up from 1.32 to 1.77.
The Greens bump up from 1.20 to 1.60. Kristie Johnston goes from 0.66 to 0.88 and the other independent, Sue Hickey, goes from 0.59 to 0.79.
Hickey was the last knocked out in 2021, so unsurprisingly she wins the sixth seat, and Labor is in a strong position for their second to win the seventh seat. The third Liberal and second Green are not too far away from being competitive but I don’t think either of them could have won.
This produces a final outcome of two Liberals, two Labor, one Greens and two independents.
Franklin
The actual outcome in Franklin was two Liberals, two Labor and one Greens.
This is probably the simplest one to model. The Liberal quota jumps from 2.54 to 3.38. So that would give them a third seat.
Meanwhile Labor’s vote jumps from 1.99 to 2.66, and the Greens jump from 1.14 to 1.52 quotas. While the Greens don’t look too far away from winning a second seat, Labor would have won a third seat in that scenario.
This produces a final outcome of three Liberals, three Labor and one Greens.
Lyons
The actual outcome in Lyons was three Liberals and two Labor.
The Liberal vote jumps from 3.07 quotas to 4.10 with the increased seat count, which should allow them to win a fourth seat.
The other result is a lineball call. The Labor vote increases from 1.95 quotas to 2.60, and the Greens vote increased from 0.53 quotas to 0.71.
While the Greens theoretically is closer to an extra quota than Labor, this lead vanishes if Labor’s second and third candidates can split their votes reasonably evenly (as they did in 2021). Kevin reckons that Labor would have won this seat, and I’ll go the same way.
This produces a final outcome of four Liberals and three Labor.
So that’s where we stand, and you can use this post to compare the seat results in 2024 to how they would have gone last time around.
One thing I’m interested is the proliferation of extra candidates potentially driving the major parties “remainder” quota lower and lower. In an single winner system this wouldn’t matter, the votes the major parties lose to extra independents and minor party candidate on a ballot come back in preferences and usually don’t change a thing, but in STV the major party can have their remaining quota excluded before that has a chance to happen!
Basically I think the last seat in each district could be won by a very very low partial quota.
@ ben… you mean high exhaust rate. The way round that is to encourage people to number past 1 to 7
The expansion of the House of Assembly has motivated a record field of candidates and number of groups/candidates. There’s 167 this time around. This is because of the smaller quota and hence better chance of winning. It could also be because of the trend of the declining LIB/ALP/GRN vote and so there are candidates looking for non-major party options. Voters may feel more comfortable voting for a minor party or independent candidate believing that their votes wouldn’t be wasted.
We can extrapolate, but don’t expect the same thing would’ve happened in 2021 if there were 35 seats. It’s because the dynamics and the field has changed.
The other main reason why there’s been a growth in candidates this election is due to the big three parties fielding an extra 2 candidates per seat (3 times 2 times 5 gives 30).
The big wild card is that beyond the Libs, ALP and Greens there are few if any groups with 7 candidates. Therefore, there could be a lot of wild preference flows – possibly into a third or fourth group.
@ mick no I do not mean exhaustion rate, I mean that with more candidates on the ballot that major party vote might be depressed further than 2021, thereby excluding them earlier in the count perhaps even if they “would have won.”
@ben.. don’t quite understand. Can you give an example pls? Can make it up if you like for purposes of explanation
Thanks
The libs will problem get 16 or 17 seats so we’ll have another liberal govt
The libs I think will get 14 to 17 seats lambie 1 to 3
Greens 3 to 5 alp 10 to 12
Indep 3 to 5. This suggests a likely hood that no 2 parties can obtain 18 seats. The upper range I suggest are least likely
@mick I think the libs will need only 1 partner
@ mick
Sure I’ll give you an example.
Let’s take the seat of Lyons. Ben Raue has taken the 2021 ballots in a 7 vacancy system which produces the following quotas:
LIB 4.1
ALP 2.6
GRN 0.7
Oth 0.6
However in 2021 those “Others” contained only 1 SFF, 1 AJP, and 1 independent candidate. In 2024 “Others” have increased prodigiously. There are 5 SFF, 3 JLN, 1 AJP, ex-LIB John Tucker, and 5 other independents.
The first step of what I’m saying is that the increase in “Other” candidates will naturally grow the % of the vote that goes to “Other” and correspondingly a lower % for the 3 large parties. Let us say that if all those candidates and affiliations were on the ballot in 2021 that we would have end up with quotas more like this:
LIB 3.7
ALP 2.4
GRN 0.6
JLN 0.4
John Tucker 0.3
SFF 0.2
AJP 0.1
Other 0.3
What we are seeing here is the extra candidates precipitating voters to scatter out of the major parties, and because this drives the major party remainder lower they have a more difficult task to win the last seat.
Lyons was the one I picked at random, but the effect would be most noticeable with even lower “remainder” quotas than this. For example imagine a seat with the following starting quotas:
LIB 2.2
ALP 2.2
GRN 1.2
Oth 2.4
Pretty much LIB, ALP, and GRN are unlikely to advance their remainder into an extra seat, they’ll all be excluded behind the leading Other candidates.