Articles from The Tally Room

Which councils are absorbing Sydney’s population growth?

I have been paying a lot of attention to local councils in New South Wales over the past year, with a particular focus on the more populous councils. As part of my analysis, I decided to draw a line under those councils with a population of over 100,000 people. When I prepared my guides for the 2016 and 2017 council elections, there were 23 councils meeting this criteria. But now there are 25, with Camden and Shoalhaven councils crossing the line since the last round of elections.

Berejiklian’s exit triggers by-election Super Saturday

The resignation of NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian on Friday under a cloud of investigation by the Independent Commission Against Corruption has now led to two of her ministers also announcing their pending resignations, not just from cabinet but from the parliament. This means we will see at least three NSW state by-elections in the coming months.

I have now prepared a guide to all three seats which is free for all to check out:

WA’s upper house shifting to one big electorate

The current voting system for the Western Australian upper house is set to be overhauled after the WA state government accepted the recommendations of its expert panel earlier today. The panel has recommended the abolition of all regions used to elect the upper house, with 37 members1 to be elected by one statewide electorate, thus abolishing the severe malapportionment that has given far more power to rural voters.

Papua New Guinea’s latest attempt at redistribution

Papua New Guinea’s parliament is elected from single-member electorates which are meant to be regularly reviewed and redrawn, as they are in Australia. Yet the current boundaries have not been significantly changed since the 1977 election. The Boundaries Commission is having another go now, but the proposed changes have limited relationship to the actual population imbalances.

South Australian election guide launched

I’ve now completed my guide to the South Australian state election, due on March 19 next year.

The guide features profiles of all 47 House of Assembly electorates, as well as the Legislative Council contest.

Daly by-election guide, and new data

I have now published a guide to the by-election in the Northern Territory seat of Daly, which will be held on the 11th of September. Daly is a very marginal Country Liberal seat and may well be in play. There aren’t really enough election-day booths in rural NT electorates to do my typical booth maps, so I’ve tried a different format which also includes pre-poll booths.

NSW state redistribution finalised

The final electoral boundaries to be used at the 2023 New South Wales state election were released on Thursday, and I have now finished my new electoral map, along with estimates of margins.

You can download the Google Earth map file here.

Federal election guide completed

I have now finished all of the remaining profiles for the guide to the next Australian federal election. I published the 97 seats unaffected by redistribution back in June, but I’ve now also published the 54 seats in Western Australia and Victoria, as well as profiles of the eight Senate races.

Federal redistributions finalised

The Australian Electoral Commission this afternoon published the maps and data for the final redistribution of Western Australia’s federal electoral boundaries. This follows the same publication for the Victorian redistribution last Monday.

More samples from the federal election guide

As the lockdown in Sydney drags on, I’ve decided to release a few more profiles from my guide to the next federal election. This is on top of the other five that I released a few weeks ago.

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