The Tally Room

The Liberal Party has retained the seat of North Sydney at Saturday's by-election despite a substantial swing on primary votes. At the time of writing, Liberal candidate Trent Zimmerman is on 47.8% (down 13.3%) with independent Stephen Ruff second on 18.8% and the Greens' Arthur...

8:29pm - The Liberal vote has increased to 47.7% and the Ruff vote has dropped to 18.8%, with about two-thirds of booths reporting. 7:55pm - Just under half the booths have reported, and the Liberal Party's Trent Zimmerman is leading on just under 47% of the...

The Australian Electoral Commission today announced the final boundaries for the ACT at the next federal election. They haven't made any changes to the draft boundaries announced in September. This means that the northern seat of Fraser will be renamed 'Fenner' after virologist Frank Fenner,...

Yet another NSW government deadline looms today for local councils under the threat of amalgamation, and this time it looks likely to result in a number of significant amalgamations in Sydney and other large urban areas. The Baird government has pursued a deliberate strategy to...

7:25pm - The Liberal Party looks set to retain both seats. At the moment they are on 47.7% in Polwarth, which should easily be enough. In South-West Coast they are on 36%, but with ex-Labor candidate Roy Reekie second on 17.7% ahead of the...

The by-election for Joe Hockey's seat of North Sydney has been scheduled for Saturday 5 December. I've now posted the guide to the by-election, which is likely to see Liberal candidate Trent Zimmerman elected to finish Hockey's term. Read more

I've now completed the Google Earth map of the draft federal electoral boundaries for New South Wales. Download the map here. I've also produced a fusion table combining the map with the notional estimates of the two-party-preferred margin and primary votes for Labor, Coalition, Greens and others...

I've missed a story which has been quietly bubbling along for the last few months which could see a bill introduced by the opposition Liberal National Party passed, increasing the electoral bias in favour of large rural seats in the Queensland parliament. There are...

The NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) has today released its report into the "Fit for the Future" process, which has been the program whereby the NSW Government has been pushing for wide-scale council amalgamations across New South Wales. Despite the rhetoric, the...

We're expecting two big bits of news today. The Canadian election results will be flowing in over the next few hours. Polls close at 10am AEDT in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the final ridings in British Columbia will close at 1pm AEDT. We're also expecting the...