Articles from The Tally Room

Federal 2019 – the race in South-East Queensland

19There are twenty seats in south-east Queensland, stretching from the Gold Coast in the south to the Sunshine Coast in the north.

South-East Queensland currently contains thirteen Liberal National Party (LNP) seats and seven Labor seats. Brisbane proper is dominated by Labor, with five Labor seats and three LNP seats, but the LNP holds the six seats on the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast. The real contest happens on the fringe of Brisbane, both to the north and south.

Disendorsements again and again

One of the surprising dynamics of the last week has been the large number of candidates who have been disendorsed by their party.

From last Monday to Friday there were six candidates from three parties who were disendorsed by their party.

Labor’s Wayne Kurnoth was disendorsed as the party’s #2 Senate candidate in the Northern Territory on Monday. He was joined by One Nation’s Steve Dickson, the party’s #2 Senate candidate in Queensland, on Tuesday.

Pre-poll stats update

One of the developing stories this week has been the continuing increase in pre-poll voting at this year’s election. The AEC publishes daily updates with the number of votes cast at each pre-poll centre per day, allowing us to track how many people are choosing to vote early. In this post I’ll run through what the stats look like after three days of voting (data up to date as of the end of voting Wednesday).

Can you get elected from below the line?

2016 was a good year for candidates overcoming their party’s Senate ballot order. We saw Tasmanian Labor senator Lisa Singh win re-election as one of five Labor senators despite being ranked sixth on her party list, with the candidate ranked above her, John Short, missing out. We also saw Tasmanian Liberal senator Richard Colbeck perform strongly on below-the-line votes, but he was less successful, although he later returned to the Senate due to a vacancy caused by section 44.

Podcast #24 – Federal election nominations and housing policy

Ben is joined by El Gibbs and Gareth Bryant to discuss the final declaration of candidate nominations for the federal election, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and the role of housing policy in the election.

Thanks to 2SER radio in Sydney for the use of their studio.

Gender balance in winnable seats

I posted earlier this week about the number of candidates running for each party, with a breakdown of candidates by gender. I had a number of questions about how many of these candidates are running in winnable seats.

Nominations close – final candidate numbers breakdown

Nominations were announced yesterday, with a small increase in lower house candidates but a substantial shrinking of the size of Senate ballot papers.

1056 candidates have nominated for the House of Representatives, a slight increase from the 994 who nominated in 2016, but still less than the 1188 who ran in 2013.

There has definitely been a decline in the size of the Senate ballot papers in each state.

Clive Palmer’s case against the 2CP

Clive Palmer, newly returning to federal politics at the head of his United Australia Party, has been pursuing a case in the High Court which could change the way election nights take place in this country. I thought I’d run through the main points of the case and the impact if he was successful.

Nominations update

Nominations for the federal election will close tomorrow, with those nominations being announced on Wednesday, when the ballot draws will be conducted. We should have the final list of candidates in ballot order by the end of Wednesday. I’ll do a blog post on Thursday morning with the final nominations information.

I have been regularly updating a list of federal candidates with the help of Nick Casmirri and a bunch of commenters (thanks to you all).

Podcast #23 – Federal election first week

Ben is joined by Shaun Ratcliff and Paddy Manning to discuss the latest federal polls, seats where independents are challenging the Coalition, and the conclusion of the NSW upper house count.