The Tally Room

Malcolm Mackerras has written in Thursday's Crikey, critiquing New Zealand's Mixed Member Proportional electoral system (subscription required): Having studied the referendum results of September 1992 and November 1993, and having studied opinion poll data, it is clear to me that a solid majority of New...

With six days to go before polls close in the US, levels of early voting are at their highest levels in a US election. As of Tuesday, the Washington Post summarised early voting figures as: More than twelve million voters have already cast ballots in...

Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight.com, this fascinating report outlining what went on in the process of calling the state of Florida for Al Gore, then reversing it to George W Bush, before returning the state to be "too close to call".

With the final count resulting in the fourth Green, Caroline le Couteur, elected to the final seat in the ACT Legislative Assembly, the ACT's local parliament now includes 7 Labor MLAs, 6 Liberal MLAs and 4 Greens MLAs. On top of that, the ACT...

Note: I'm going to be away from the internet for much of this week, so expect less regular posts. But I'll be back on Saturday to get ready for Tuesday's US election. Jon Stewart examines the various "anti-American" accusations made by conservative politicians in the...

Since Eisenhower's first election in 1952, Virginia has been a solidly Republican state, only going to the Democrats in the landslide election of 1964. As a former Confederate state, the state was solidly Democratic until the 1950s and 1960s, which saw a switch to...

Gordon Brown has had a bad year with by-elections in the UK. Four by-elections were held in two months in the summer of 2008. Labour lost the seat of Crewe and Nantwich to the Conservatives in May. Following the election of Conservative Boris Johnson...

New Zealand goes to the polls on November 8 to elect its national Parliament. New Zealand uses the Mixed Member Proportional system (which is best explained by Deborah at Larvatus Prodeo) which means that, in addition to 63 general electorates, and 7 Maori electorates,...

It seems that the ACT Electoral Commission is updating results every evening around this time (although I'm running on Wednesday night's results. Each day they enter a certain number of booths worth of ballots into the computer, then they distribute the preferences for those...

As an extra item for people to consider, Charlie Cook lays out how the metrics of the race show that Obama's position is much stronger than what the polls say. The simple facts he lay out demonstrate Obama's dominance and how John McCain will...