NSW government bill would end council countbacks
There is a bill currently before the NSW Legislative Council which makes a number of changes to how local government elections work in New South Wales. The bill has been referred to an inquiry that is currently open for submissions.
The bill's focus has been...
The ‘others’ primary vote in Tasmania
The trend of a falling major party vote isn't quite the same in Tasmania as it is on the mainland.
While the major parties maintained their dominance for longer in federal politics, and in most states, as far back as 1989 we saw the Greens...
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...