The Tally Room

As yesterday’s abortive coup played out, Nick Bryant from the BBC penned a fascinating piece laying out the differences in political cultures between Australia and the United Kingdom when it comes to leadership coups. Australia’s culture of sudden, brutal and frequent internal leadership changes...

A by-election will be held in the safe Labor seat of Lyndhurst on 27 April. The seat should be easily retained by Labor, and is unlikely to be very interesting. I've now written a guide to the by-election, which you can read (and comment on)...

The WA Electoral Commission "pushed the button" today for five of the six Legislative Council regions. The Greens were elected in South Metro and Mining and Pastoral, and the Shooters and Fishers won a seat in Agricultural region. Overall, the Liberals have won 13 seats, Labor...

Last week, the first round of suggestions for the NSW state electoral redistribution were released. From here, there will be a chance to lodge a comment on these suggestions by Wednesday, March 20, and then the Commissioners will produce a draft map of the state....

Since I last posted, the race has been decided in the Kimberley and in Belmont. Liberal candidate Glenys Godfrey leads in Belmont by 308 votes, and should be elected. This is a gain from the Labor Party. In Kimberley, the Greens fell into third place, producing...

On Saturday, while most attention was focused on Western Australia, voters in four regional Queensland areas voted to overturn controversial council amalgamations forced through by the Beattie Labor government in 2007. The amalgamations caused an uproar in large parts of regional Queensland, and the Liberal...

Since 'One Vote One Value' legislation passed shortly after the 2005 election, all lower house electorates have been drawn to have roughly the same number of electors (with the exception of a small number of large seats in the north). Prior to these reforms,...

I plan on updating this blog post as counting proceeds in key seats over the next few days. Belmont - Liberal by 245 votes Reversal of Labor 154-vote margin on Sunday. Collie-Preston - Labor by 6 votes Decrease from 62-vote margin on Sunday. Eyre - Nationals by 17 votes Decrease...

In my last post, I detailed the ongoing contests for the Legislative Council. In short, the Greens are competing for the last seat in four regions, the Shooters and Fishers are competing in two regions, and Family First in one region. The election wasn't a...

There are a number of Legislative Assembly seats that are too close to call and deserve further attention. In addition, the race for the final seat in each Legislative Council region is unlikely to be resolved for a number of days. Belmont - Labor by 154...