Ben is joined by Shaun Ratcliff from Accent Research to discuss his recent report looking at differences in voting trends across the generations. We discuss how Millenials and Gen Z voters are much more left-wing than Baby Boomers, explore some theories as to why, and look at evidence as to which of those theories may be right. We then discuss what this implies for the next few decades of Australian politics.
Sadly yesterday we heard that federal Labor MP Peta Murphy had died of cancer after a long illness.
This is a website that covers elections, and Murphy’s death means a federal by-election will be coming up in her seat of Dunkley. I would expect this by-election to be held early in 2024.
I have prepared a guide for that by-election, which you can read here.
The final electoral boundaries for the next Western Australian state election were released on Friday morning. The changes mostly replicated the draft boundaries released in July, although there were a few small changes, and some dramatic changes to two seats were mostly reversed.
In this post I’ll run through the major changes, what has changed since the draft map, and I’ve also included a map of the boundaries and tables of the result estimates (both primary votes and 2CP).
Queensland’s local councils will be up for election next March. Numerous Queensland councils, including the urban councils of the south-east, use single-member wards (called “divisions” in Queensland). As such, they are sometimes due for redistribution.
The 2023 conference of the Australian Political Science Association is taking place in Sydney this week, and I will be presenting two papers – one today and one tomorrow.
The federal parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters yesterday released their report into the 2022 federal election.
I won’t try to summarise every point covered – the report covers matters to do with election funding and Indigenous enrolment.
But I wanted to mention a few points that I have touched on during this process, through this website, in my submission and when I attended a hearing of the committee.
Ben is joined by Dr Simon Hix from the European University Institute to discuss a paper he co-wrote with John Carey about finding the Electoral Sweet Spot: how low-magnitude proportional representation systems tend to combine the best of majoritarian and proportional systems.
There are five elections scheduled for 2024 that I’m planning to write guides for, and today I’m ready to unveil the third one of them.
The ACT election will be held on October 18, just one week before Queensland.
6:00 – Polls have just closed in Victorian state by-election for the seat of Mulgrave. I’ll be back a bit later when results start to come in, but for now you can read my profile of the by-election.
Federal redistributions are currently underway in three states. While the main focus is on the boundaries of the electorates, and the electoral implications of those boundaries, it’s worth also drawing some attention to the question of what we name those electorates.