The Tally Room

At this point, we are largely finished with the NSW state election, although I have a few more blog posts to come later this week. The next election coming up, and the only remaining state election for 2015, is the Legislative Council election in Tasmania. Tasmania's...

Earlier today the NSW Electoral Commission "pushed the button" for the Legislative Council election, and approximately half an hour we had a result in the Legislative Council. As expected, the Coalition won nine seats, Labor won seven, the Greens won two and the Christian Democratic...

One of the stories on election night was the mixed news for the Greens. On the one hand, the party had a tremendous result in the lower house, retaining Balmain and notionally retaining the new seat of Newtown, and surprising most pundits (including myself)...

At the recent NSW state election, the iVote internet voting system was used for the second time. The internet voting system is one of the first in the world, and was used by a much larger number of voters in 2011, but not without...

We're now getting quite close to the end of the Legislative Council count, and the button is expected to be pushed at some point later this week. The 'initial count' of above-the-line votes is almost complete - there are a small number of seats where absent...

Last week, while we were all distracted by the NSW election, the Tasmanian Electoral Commission (TEC) made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry warning that cuts to its funding may affect its ability to administer Tasmanian elections. The TEC has been hit by funding cuts from...

The count in the Legislative Assembly is now largely complete. As of late Thursday evening, the Electoral Commission had "pushed the button" and finished the count in 41 out of 93 seats, including the key seats of Lismore (Nationals beat Greens), East Hills (Liberal...

Goulburn, on paper, was a very safe Liberal seat prior to the recent election, with Liberal MP Pru Goward holding the seat by a 26.8% margin. This masked a lot of change in the area. Goulburn shifted significantly west, taking in Yass and other areas...

Oatley was the closest seat at the last election. Liberal candidate Mark Coure defeated Labor MP Kevin Greene by 440 votes, or 0.5%. Coure's hold on the seat was strengthened by the redistribution, which saw his margin increase to 3.8%. Despite the favourable redistribution, Oatley's...

Last Friday, I published a breakdown of the election result in the key seat of Lismore in the far north of New South Wales. The seat of Ballina shares a lot of similarities with its neighbour. In both cases, the Greens outpolled Labor in 2011,...