Podcast #152: Who will fill the Lambie vacuum?
Ben was joined by Tasmanian political observer Mike Lester to look at the state of the campaign and the announcement of candidates for the Tasmanian state election. We particularly look into the Tasmanian Nationals and the shadow-boxing around who takes the blame for the...
Tasmanian nominations – ballots shrink with fewer prominent independents
Nominations were announced today for the Tasmanian state election. After record-sized ballot papers at the previous election in 2024, they will shrink slightly in 2025. There will be fewer columns on the ballot paper, along with larger fields of ungrouped independents. While ballot papers...
Who makes the 3CP, where?
The three-candidate-preferred (3CP) count has become a topic of more interest in recent elections because of close races where the dynamic of who makes it into the top two can decide who wins. But it's also an interesting statistic which can tell us more...
Who else do independent voters vote for?
There were 21 seats in 2025 where an independent candidate made the two-candidate-preferred count. For today's post, I want to explore what we can tell about those voters from their other voting patterns. For voters who ended up with the independent in the two-candidate-preferred...
How preferences made up the 2PP
The two-party-preferred vote is the simplest statistic we have in Australian elections - just two numbers that always add up to 100%. While it has reduced relevance for calculating the result in some seats, it still has predictive power and also plays a role...
3CP data sheds light on the close races
Late on Monday, the AEC transitioned the election results website to its final archive form. You can now find the results at results.aec.gov.au, and the previous link no longer works.
There is probably enough fresh data to fuel a whole week of blog posts. I...
The make-up of the marginal seat list
Earlier this month I published a blog post which discovered that the average 2CP margin of victory has not actually been getting smaller at recent federal elections. I didn't end up including the chart in the post, but I also identified that the numbers...
How the vote split between the early vote and election day
Last month I posted about the increase in the proportion of votes that were cast early (postal, pre-poll and remote) as opposed to those cast on election day. 55.7% of votes were cast early, with just 43.6% casting their votes on the day.
For today's...
How the swing was distributed, and how the pendulum performed
Now that we have a complete two-party-preferred vote for all of Australia, we can look at the distribution of seat margins and swings across the country.
For this post, I have produced a number of charts which show the distribution of seats by two-party-preferred result,...
Tasmanian candidates rush out
It has barely been two weeks since the no confidence motion passed, and just over a week since the Tasmanian state election has been called, but the candidates are coming out of the woodwork very quickly.
I have now updated my election guide to feature...