Articles from The Tally Room

How did below-the-line voting perform in Victoria?

I spent a lot of energy before the Victorian election talking about below the line voting – encouraging voters to use the method and analysing its impact on previous elections. We now have all the data to assess how things went. While the below-the-line rate reached a new record, it wasn’t that much above last election, and suggests that it will be hard to see the rate reaching much higher under the current system.

The overall rate reached 9.4%, up from 8.8% in 2018.

Voting patterns for left-wing minor parties in Victoria

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Victorian state election was the role of the small left-wing minor parties. The Greens used to have this lane largely to themselves, but a number of other parties have now emerged, with two of these parties winning seats in the upper house. Those parties also changed the direction of the upper house by opting to preference each other (and then Labor and the Greens) rather than deal with other small parties.

Victoria 2022 – which parties did best in areas with high informal rates?

In the weeks after the Victorian election, I saw some analysis looking at the geographic patterns of support for some of the parties. One of the things I was most interested in identifying was the relationship between informal voting trends and support for particular parties.

Victoria 2022 – informal vote drops despite bigger ballots

The informal rate reached a record high at the 2018 Victorian state election. With record-large ballot papers at the 2022 election, I had wondered what might happen to the informal rate last year. While the informal rate was the second-highest on record for the lower house, it did not increase in line with the numbers of candidates running.

Victoria 2022 – the early vote majority

The recent Victorian election was the first such election since the COVID-19 pandemic started, and it was yet another example of the trend towards people voting early being accelerated by the pandemic.

This was the first Victorian state election where a majority of votes were cast before election day, with over 60% of votes cast early as either a postal ballot or at a pre-poll centre. In comparison, only 15% of voters used these methods in 2006.

New Victorian election datasets

Over the summer break I’ve added a bunch of new data to my data repository. Specifically I’ve added results from the 2006, 2010 and 2022 Victorian state elections.

Part of the repository is available for the general public, including the most recent election for each jurisdiction. So anyone can now access the 2022 election data.

The non-classic contests in Victoria

One way of looking at the Victorian election is to examine which seats ended up being ‘non-classic’ contests – seats where the two-candidate-preferred count didn’t end up being a Labor vs Coalition count.

This statistic peaked in 2018, and has gone slightly backwards in 2022, but the number is still much higher than in pre-2018 elections.

Podcast #85: Wrapping up Victoria 2022

For the final episode of 2022, Ben is joined by Narelle Miragliotta and Henry Schlechta to discuss the final results of the Victorian state election.

Who might have won under other Victorian upper house models?

Prior to the election, I published my own estimates of who would have likely won seats in the Victorian Legislative Council if group voting tickets were abolished and replaced by a system similar to those used for the Senate or for other upper houses in NSW, Western Australia and South Australia.

Victorian lower house election the most disproportionate in 50 years

The Victorian lower house results showed a remarkable disconnect between voting trends and seat results. There was a clear swing against Labor – 5.8% on primary votes, and 2.4% on two-party-preferred votes – yet there was a gain of one seat for Labor.

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