11th March 2017, West Australia state Election

[IceAgeComing]

The Nationals aren't in a formal coalition with the Libs here; they were in government with Labor before the last election, so the government majority is actually a fair bit smaller that you'd think looking at the figures.  Also the Upper House election uses the old Senate voting system with Group Voting Tickets; so expect some randomer from a party you've never heard to to win a Legiislative Council seat.

[IceAgeComing]

That's not that surprising; although it probably means that if it went to a hung parliament (unlikely) the Nats probably wouldn't be rushing into any deal with the Liberals...

[IceAgeComing]

If you fancy messing around with potential upper House compositions then you can get a Legislative Council calculator here from the ABC.  Seems to suggest to me that if FLOURIDE FREE WA are probably the favourites to be the random micro party that wins a seat in this election; if they aren't eliminated first then most of the other micros seem to transfer to them first (some transfer to the Australian Christians; although the random Flouride party is next).  Helps to show just how dumb the whole system is really...

One Nation are preferencing all of the micros bar a few solidarity independents above the Libs, Nats, ALP and Greens - this shouldn't be a factor unless they are eliminated last and there's a micro party still in the hunt, if there is then ONP preferences will transfer to them rather than the Libs.  Depends on the share of the minor party vote though; there are a fair few of them standing in most places though (seems to be around 20 groups in each region; probably 50 candidates for those voting below the line so not quite as bad as a few recent ones) so even if they get a small number each that could still add up to a quota collectively which would be good enough if they corralled all of that vote behind one candidate.

[IceAgeComing]

I'm going to need to do a little more fiddling but when I give around 0.3% to each of the micro parties (probably a little too much; I just want to see which one emerges to win in each region - I'm also changing their votes by 0.01% just to get a real order of elimination rather than random stuff) I get the Flouride Party close to winning in the Metropolitan seats and in the Agriculture seat I pretty consistently get 1 Liberal, 1 Nat, 1 One Nation, 1 ALP, a Shooters and Fishers candidate and the Liberal Democrats get a Senator off 0.02 of a quota - I'm assuming a high One Nation vote that drags both the Liberals and the Nationals below a quota here (I have them both at around 1.7 quotas in the first count; they don't gain a significant number of preferences before they are eliminated, the Liberals get the left over One Nation preferences after elected the Shooters candidate but that's it while the Liberal Democrats get every other preference on the board); I don't know whether that's entirely likely or not since these things rely on luck and small numbers of votes and I'm not a huge expert on Western Australia political geography.  Like if you put the Liberal Democrats bottom of the poll then the preferences scatter a lot more early on in the count; the "Flux the System" party get the last seat if that happens though since all of the parties also preference them above the Liberals.  Its a bit of fun really; shows how dumb the system is.

[IceAgeComing]

Well yes, the whole "lets engineer our preferences to get one of us elected" thing isn't random; what can be is the minor party that gets elected since it depends on order of elimination and who is the lucky party that gathers together all of these different preferences and gets over the line - it seems to be the Flouride Free party in East Metro if they manage to get enough first preferences so that everyone else behind them being eliminated pushes them up the order to the point where they never get eliminated; Daylight Savings and Family First in the other metro seats; in Agriculture its the Liberal Democrats (although if the Liberals or the Nationals get a couple of quotas each there then that's unlikely) and I've not looked at the other seats yet.  If those parties get eliminated early then the micro party preferences seem to scatter around a lot but they end up uniting behind a different candidate anyway; hence the randomness.

I think that its the Greens who mostly lose out: being pushed on one end by One Nation and on the other by the micros.  If they manage to stay in the count longer than the last ALP candidate then those preferences might be able to push them over the line; but if not then they probably are going to struggle; most of the micro party preferences seem to end up with One Nation or the Liberals at the end of the count.

[IceAgeComing]

Or they could just change the system to the one that they now use for the Senate; which I'm pretty sure they will by the next election.  I think that WA is the last state to still use Group Voting Tickets; Victoria is the only one that I think might not have changed yet.

[IceAgeComing]

The Group Voting Ticket system may well actually hurt One Nation: without it they'd probably be in a good position to get a seat in every Legislative Council district: with it though they might find that because the Micros are almost all preference swapping within themselves they might end up falling behind a micro party late in the count and get eliminated - if the Greens get a decent share but get eliminated before the micro parties this is likely to happen since they are preference lots of them above Labor for some reason and that would be enough to get them ahead of One Nation.  If that is the case then they need a Quota by themselves to secure election since they'd get basically no preferences: the Shooters are preferencing One Nation second as are the Liberals if they have a small surplus at the end: otherwise they all either to go the Greens (ALP) or flow through most of the micro parties before getting to one of the remaining parties.  Will be interesting to watch!

[IceAgeComing]

Technically the alliance in WA is a lot weaker than in the rest of Australia (well now really only Victoria and NSW; everywhere else either the Nationals have vanished (or never existed, in ACT) or merged with the Liberals): they stand for election as distinct parties and while I think that they'd only ever support a Liberal government formally (the SA Nationals once went into Coalition with the ALP: it, eh, didn't really work out for them) if the ALP got a majority in the lower house I imagine that they'd be willing to come to some sort of arrangement on most things provided they got concessions.

[IceAgeComing]

The Nationals seem to be holding on to their support; the Liberals are going through the floor though.

[IceAgeComing]

They actually only have one; for some reason the ABC are counting two Shooters members as Daylight Savings for some reason.

No One Nation at this point; they are close in at least one region though.

[IceAgeComing]

They actually have two at the moment if you look at the results: one in the South West and one in North Metropolitan.  Although still early in the count though...