Articles from The Tally Room

Podcast #124: Odds and evens in Spain and Australia

Ben is joined by Ferran Martinez i Coma from Griffith University to discuss his research on how election campaigning differs in Spain in districts electing odd or even numbers of representatives.

We end up discussing more broadly the unsual impacts odd- and even-numbered district magnitudes impact on elections in Australia, and the ways in which the use of different district magnitudes (big and small) change how an electoral system manifests in both countries.

What sort of redistribution objection can actually work?

Objections to the federal redistribution proposals for Western Australia and Victoria were published last week. Objections to the NSW proposal close this Friday.

Podcast #123: A history of two-party-preferred

Ben is joined by Murray Goot to discuss the two-party-preferred vote: the history of the metric, how it is used today, how it influences how we think about our party system, and whether it still works in the more complex party system we have today.

NT election guide unlocked

Today is two months out from the Northern Territory election on August 24, so I thought it was about time to release the election guide for everyone to read.

You can find the guide here. There’s profiles for all 25 electorates, with results tables and maps, candidate lists (a constant work in progress) and a comments section to discuss each seat.

Northern Tablelands by-election live

6:40pm – With ten booths reporting, the Nationals are on 71% of the primary vote, with the Shooters second on just under 15%. Easy win for the Nationals.

Podcast #122: Picking over the proposed federal redistributions

Ben is joined by William Bowe from the Poll Bludger to discuss the federal redistribution proposals for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. We discuss the process, what has been proposed, the political impact of those proposals and how it might affect preselections, and why some of the maps are drawn as they are.

Hornsby by-election incoming after Kean’s resignation

Former NSW treasurer Matt Kean has chosen today, NSW budget day, to announce that he will be retiring from state politics, thus triggering a by-election for his seat of Hornsby.

He has also said that he won’t run for federal politics, dismissing speculation about a challenge to federal Liberal MP Paul Fletcher in Bradfield.

How Hume moved from Albury to Leppington

One of the interesting changes in the NSW redistribution proposal was the decisive shift of Hume towards Sydney.

Looking at the proposed boundaries for the seat, I realised that they look quite similar to the boundaries of a seat that I was familiar with almost 20 years ago, but with a different name.

Further NSW redistribution analysis

Following the publication of the proposals for the Victorian and WA redistributions, I put together two posts analysing different angles at a deeper level than the original analysis.

Rather than fully revisiting the topics, I thought I would just use one post to apply the same analysis to the NSW proposal, and also zoom out to the national level.

NSW federal redistribution drafts released – live

3:06pm – I’ll be wrapping up the live blog here. There’s a few extra bits of analysis I’d like to do, but I’ll leave those for another blog post.

If you want to see me talking about the redistribution I will be doing a webinar for my employer GovConnex at 4pm. You can register for the webinar here.

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