Victorian State Parliamentary Election - 29 November 2014

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I suppose everyone thinks it's a forgone conclusion, what with Abbott in charge. Vic Labor seems to be cruising in with very little effort on their part. (but then again, they are part of the Australian Labor Party, so I'm sure they can find a way to screw things up somehow)

I'm mainly interested to see if Greens can win their target seats in hipster Melbourne (like Melbourne and Brunswick).

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Glad to see that my thread got revived!

It's fascinating to observe the trends in Australia over the past several years: you start out in 2008 with Labor in control of the federal government and every state/territory gov't as well.  That slowly whittles away to what we have now with a Coalition calling the shots federally and only a minority Labor gov't in SA and the ACT.  If Labor is able to win in Victoria could this be the beginning of another sea change?

Well, the scale of the defeats in Queensland and NSW mean it is unlikely for Labor to dislodge them from power (although Queensland is showing some polls with Labour ahead; and both states will regain the left-right equilibrium that was lost before).

West Australia's next election is after the next general election funnily enough. Barnett's administration was underwater for a while, but seems to have (kinda) recovered with the cessation of problematic elements. The Greens are polling strangely well in WA, considering the state.

ACT's next election will probably be a wash for both the ALP and Greens for obvious reasons; while the Northern Territory's Liberals seem to be underdogs for reelection.


Unrelated, I wonder if the "Preferences Whisperer" will make his magic in this election?

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With the exception of Shepparton, this is a very unsurprising election.

even the legislative council?


I don't really understand why voting "above the line" and the preference flow still exists. I mean the only reason it was brought in was because people understandably didn't want to fill in like a million boxes. Now you only need to fill in eight or so, surely this weird Australia-specific absurdity is redundant?

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Not a great day for my side of politics, I expected Labor to win, but by a slightly smaller margin and also surprised that Mulgrave did not swing that strongly to Labor either.

Also, what happened in Shepparton?

Shepparton was one of the seats I was told to watch. The ALP knew they had no chance, but that the pretty visible Independent had been learning a lot from Cathy McGowan's win at the Federal level in Indi. But I still found it odd that she actually won so cleanly.

Overall, what seems to have been unexpected, at least from the perspective of the people I spoke to, was how emphatic some of the wins, especially those around Geelong and Ballarat were (South Barwon and Rippon were always going to be very tough for the ALP).

And as the NSW experiment shows, having the Hunters and Shooters in control of the Upper House is NEVER a good thing.

That sounds pretty reasonable, it goes to show that the Nationals cannot take rural Victoria for granted. Also, as you may have figured, we disagree considerably on the Hunters and Shooters Party (I quite like them myself), and their presence in the Legislative Council (assuming current numbers hold), will be interesting.

This is because Labor will only have 13 seats in the new Council on current figures, and will need to negotiate with the Greens (18 seats between them, still 3 short of a majority), and the 6 councillors from the following: Shooters, Family First, Country Alliance, and the *** Party (I'd rather not type that name out) to get legislation passed.

Um, it's one thing to be conservative; but it's quite another to not be able to say the word "sex"...

Is the National Party ultimately doomed? They seem to have lost their official party status and are "reviewing their relationship" with the Libs...

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and the Preference Whisperer strikes again! Something called "Vote 1 Local Jobs" with 0.2% of the vote is in the Council.

really Andrews has made his own bed by refusing to preference Greens and throwing out preferences to all these reactionary nuts to "prove a point" or sumfink.

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Amusing Council update:

Labor 14
Liberal 13
Green 3
Sex 3 (!!)
Shooters and Fishers 2
Nationals 2
Country Alliance 1
DLP 1
PUP 1

So a GreebLabSex party is enough for 20 votes!

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It looks like the Liberals will retain Prahran, thankfully sparing the Labor caucus from Neil Pharaoh 😃.

googles to see what's so awful about this guy.

"...As a young gay man..."

ah, makes sense. One-track mind, man, one-track mind.

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greens seem to have won the first count of Prahran !!

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VLC finalised:

Liberals 14
ALP 14
Greens 5
Nationals 2
Shooters 2
Sex 1
DLP 1
Vote One Local Jobs 1

looks interesting. Minority governments are always fun, especially the strange Australian system. I think this is the first victory for the Sex Party that I know of. The Shooters, of course, had fantastic luck with the preference flow - they actually had fewer votes than the Lib Dems, Palmer, Family First and the Animal Justice Party, but gained two seats.

Absolutely terrible result all over for the Nationals.