Australia 2013 - Results thread

[Smid]

I suspect any change to the system will bee after the Joint Electoral Maters Committee tables its Report into the 2013, which will, I'd assume, mention the rise of the micro-parties with representation radically different to their votes, and provide recommendations, at last one of which would likely be a reform of the Senate electoral method. The Government must then table its response to the recommendations, and one would assume it would embrace whatever recommendations emerge from the Report.

[TTS1996]

Anyone got any sort of schedule of where one party won on first preferences and lost the division?

[Platypus]

Indi, Fairfax, and the quite a few seats that the Libs lead in but lost, like my own of Melbourne Ports.

[adma]

And, Rudd's own division, Griffith.

[TTS1996]

Going through the ABC site I think there's twelve where the Coalition are ahead on the primary vote in no particular order

Moreton QLD
Lilley QLD
Parramatta NSW
Griffith QLD
Melbourne Ports VIC
McEwen VIC
Bruce VIC
Richmond NSW
Kingsford Smith NSW
Indi VIC
Fairfax QLD
Kennedy QLD

There could be others.

[Famous Mortimer]

The Sex Party is going to win a seat? Who is it?

Also, why does it take so long to count Senate votes? Can't they have a computer do it?

[ag]

Also, why does it take so long to count Senate votes? Can't they have a computer do it?

Because until every single postal vote comes in no computer may do it correctly with a 100% probability   That´s the electoral system for you: you might move a couple of votes from the Motorist to a Philatelist and wind up electing a Green instead of a Liberal

[Smid]

A computer does do it, but the votes need to be entered into a computer first. There were 97 candidates in Victoria, and even more in NSW, so entering Below-the-Line votes can take some considerable time. Postal votes are able to be received for thirteen days after the election, provided they were posted before the election day (to allow for votes to be received from eligible voters overseas). As ag said, due to the electoral method used in the Senate, even a small number of votes can change the outcome.

[Smid]

Senate results in Tasmania and Northern Territory have been finalised:

Tasmania
2 Liberal
2 Labor
1 Greens
1 Palmer United

Northern Territory
1 Country Liberal
1 Labor

[YL]

Senate results in Tasmania and Northern Territory have been finalised:

Tasmania
2 Liberal
2 Labor
1 Greens
1 Palmer United

So the below the line votes did indeed work against the Sex Party, who the ABC calculator shows as the winner of the last seat if all votes had been above the line.  They ended up 244 votes behind Labor on the critical count, and were eliminated.  Later, the Palmer candidate survived the other critical count Antony Green was talking about, against the Liberal Democrats, relatively easily, by over 1200 votes, and went on to be elected.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So neither the sports joke party nor the sex joke party ended up with Senate seats? That's a shame. The cars joke party will be all alone with the mining magnate personality cult joke party.

(I don't think all minor parties are joke parties but these ones are pretty ridiculous.)

[Smid]

So neither the sports joke party nor the sex joke party ended up with Senate seats? That's a shame. The cars joke party will be all alone with the mining magnate personality cult joke party.

(I don't think all minor parties are joke parties but these ones are pretty ridiculous.)

No, only Tasmania and the Northern Territory have been finalised. The Motoring Enthusiasts Party was looking best in Victoria, and the Sports Party is WA.

[Platypus]

The Sex Party isn't a joke party as much as the others. they're a left liberal party with a joke name but a valid place on the political spectrum.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The Sex Party isn't a joke party as much as the others. they're a left liberal party with a joke name but a valid place on the political spectrum.

I see. That's somewhat comforting.

[Smid]

The Sex Party isn't a joke party as much as the others. they're a left liberal party with a joke name but a valid place on the political spectrum.

They are indeed a fairly libertarian party, however the name is not so much a joke, many of their candidates seem to be sex workers or strippers.

[YL]

Antony Green has a blog on the Tasmanian senate count.

I think the Sports Party candidate still has a decent chance in WA.  The critical count is the one which ABC's Senate Calculator, which treats all votes as if they were above the line, labels count 21.  At this point, two Liberals and one Labor candidate have already been elected, and the fractions of a quota for those parties still in the count are shown by the Calculator as:

Labor 0.8636
Liberal 0.7646
Greens 0.6677
Palmer 0.3701
Nationals 0.3527
Lib Dem 0.3184
HEMP 0.2277
Sports 0.1882
Shooters & Fishers 0.1243
Australian Christians 0.1223

On these figures, the Christians are eliminated, and their preferences flow to the Shooters & Fishers, which puts the Sports Party last, so they get eliminated, and the minor party preference flow ends up with Palmer.  However, if the Christians end up ahead of the Shooters & Fishers on this count, the Shooters & Fishers' preferences go to the Sports Party, and so the Sports Party stay in the count and are able to pick up all those preferences to get elected.

Green shows the Christians ahead on "locked in" votes, in particular excluding below the line votes which the Calculator figures are treating as if they were above the line.  So if the Shooters & Fishers miss out on enough below the line transfers, the Sports Party get in.

[Yeahsayyeah]

This question may have been asked and answered before, but: What does "below/above the line" mean?

[morgieb]

This question may have been asked and answered before, but: What does "below/above the line" mean?

In voting terms, there's a line in between the group tickets, and the individual candidates. Voting above the line means you put a "1" next to your preferred ticket, whereas below means you rank all the candidates running in the Senate of your state from 1-110 (in terms of NSW).

[ag]

This question may have been asked and answered before, but: What does "below/above the line" mean?

In voting terms, there's a line in between the group tickets, and the individual candidates. Voting above the line means you put a "1" next to your preferred ticket, whereas below means you rank all the candidates running in the Senate of your state from 1-110 (in terms of NSW).

To clarify this a bit more. Each party registers an ordering - not merely of their own candidates, but of all the candidates on the ballot. A party can even register multiple orderings, if it so likes. All these orderings are marked "above the line" and a voter can choose to simply mark that he wants to follow the party suggestion. However, if a voter so wants, she may decide to go bellow the line, where all the candidates are listed, and mark her own ranking in any way she likes. Relatively few people choose to do this, as it is, obviously, nightmarishly complicated with 100 candidates, but, given the electoral system, even those few might matter a lot.

[Gary J]

There has been a development in the count for the Queensland division of Fisher. The AEC had previously listed the seat as LNP ahead, on the basis of a two party preferred count against the ALP. However the PUP first preference vote, in third place, was not very far behind the ALP vote. Presumably transfers from the other seven candidates have pushed PUP above ALP, so that a full preference count is needed to decide if LNP or PUP have won the seat.

LNP only had 44.46% of the first preference vote, so a victory from the third first preference place might be possible.

[jimrtex]

This question may have been asked and answered before, but: What does "below/above the line" mean?

In Tasmania, a small state, there were 54 candidates, from 23 parties/groups, plus one independent.  Voters may rank all 54 candidates, 1 to 54.  If they rank the individual candidates, they must rank all of them.

This is hard to do, so voters might simply number down the columns, after perhaps ranking a few favorites.   Parties would distribute "How to Vote" cards which would suggest how partisans should rank the candidates.   This was simplified by letting the parties provide a preference list, with voters marking a single box.  If you mark the ALP box, you are adopting ALP's ranking of the 54 candidates.

The ballot is arranged with the party/group boxes in a horizontal row across the top of the ballot, lettered A to W.   There is a heavy black line below these, and then each party's candidates in a column below their party box.

Thus a voter can rank the 54 individual candidates below the line, or mark one of the party boxes above the line.

In Tasmania, 90% of voters voted above the line.   For example, 126,400 voters had a 1st preference for a Liberal candidate; 118,097 voted above the line for the party, while 5657, 1356, 637, and 653 voted below the line for the individual candidates of the party, Colbeck, Bushby, Chandler, and Courtney respectively.

Since Colbeck was the first preference for the Liberals he received 123,754 votes (118,097 plus 5657), which was 2.571 quotas, and he was elected.

When Colbeck's surplus was distributed, "his" first preference ballots were transferred based on their 2nd preference.  118,097 of these were Liberal ticket ballots and transferred to the second preference, Bushby.   About 85% of the below-the-line Colbeck votes also transferred to Bushby, another 11% to Chandler or Courtney, and about 3% to candidates of other parties.

Because it is known how most of the ballots will transfer, it is straightforward to determine (or at least forecast with high accuracy) the winners almost immediately.  But not until all the below-the-line ballots are transcribed can the result be official.

[Wake Me Up When The Hard Border Ends]

How'd everyone else go in their predictions? Now the results are virtually settled, here's how I went:

For my full list of predictions, please visit these posts:
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=168631.msg3858362#msg3858362
https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=168631.msg3858366#msg3858366

I got the following seats wrong:
Barton (thought Labor would hold)
Capricornia (thought Labor would hold)
Durack (thought the Nationals would gain)
Fairfax (thought Palmer would lose)
Franklin (thought the Liberals would gain)
Greenway (thought the Liberals would gain)
Indi (thought the Liberals would hold)
Lingiari (thought the CLP would gain)
Lyons (thought Labor would hold)
Melbourne (thought the Greens would lose)
Moreton (thought the LNP would gain)
O'Connor (thought the Nationals would hold)
Petrie (thought Labor would hold)

So 13 out of 150 wrong, or a 91.333% score

[Smid]

I got:
Two wrong in Queensland;
Four wrong in NSW;
Three wrong in Victoria;
One wrong in Tasmania; 
One wrong in the Northern Territory;
One wrong in South Australia; and
Two wrong in Western Australia.

[YL]

There has been a development in the count for the Queensland division of Fisher. The AEC had previously listed the seat as LNP ahead, on the basis of a two party preferred count against the ALP. However the PUP first preference vote, in third place, was not very far behind the ALP vote. Presumably transfers from the other seven candidates have pushed PUP above ALP, so that a full preference count is needed to decide if LNP or PUP have won the seat.

LNP only had 44.46% of the first preference vote, so a victory from the third first preference place might be possible.

Fisher has now been declared for the LNP, and the two candidate preferred is LNP vs Labor.

Fairfax is still undeclared, with Palmer currently shown as 42 votes ahead.

[Vosem]

How'd everyone else go in their predictions?

Pathetically poorly. Wrong seats:

Incorrect intra-Coalition prediction:
Mallee, VIC

Predicted Coalition (got ALP):
Lingiari, NT
Parramatta, NSW
Werriwa, NSW

Predicted Coalition (got Independent):
Denison, TAS

Predicted Labor (got Coalition):
Barton, NSW
Capricornia, QLD
Dawson, QLD
Herbert, QLD
Hindmarsh, SA
Lyons, TAS
Moreton, QLD
Page, NSW

Predicted WANAT (got Coalition):
Durack, WA
O'Connor, WA

So I got 135/150, or 90.0%. Pretty bad considering, since 2008, my worst US House performance has been 416/435, or 95.6% (obviously the overwhelming majority of both are quite safe seats). And that's without getting to the Senate:

Queensland: Predicted FFP and KAP; got LNP and PUP
New South Wales: Predicted GRN; got LDP
Victoria: Predicted LIB and WIKI; got GRN and AMEP
Tasmania: Predicted LIB; got PUP
South Australia: Predicted ALP; got FFP
Western Australia: Got 2 wrong whatever happens; either mispredicted GRN and WANAT (for LIB and PUP), or ALP and WANAT (for LIB and ASP)
NT: Predicted AFNPP; got ALP
ACT: Predicted GRN; got LIB

So, of 40 seats, I got 29/40 = 72.5% right. That's practically a chemistry quiz.