There is a by-election coming up this Saturday in the Queensland state seat of Stretton, following the death of Labor MP Duncan Pegg in early June.
The seat covers the southern fringe of the City of Brisbane, close to the border with Logan. Pegg held the seat by a 14.8% margin in 2020.
It seems very likely that Labor will retain the seat.
My hiatus over the last few weeks has delayed the production of a seat guide but it is now available. Check it out.
I will firstly acknowledge that I am very late in publishing these figures. I’ve just finished moving house during the first two weeks of lockdown and it has pushed back my timelines.
Anyway, this post contains my estimates of the two-candidate-preferred margins, the primary vote for the main parties, and my estimate of the figures for the Legislative Council regions. In particular the Labor vote has changed significantly in the renamed North-Eastern Metropolitan region.
The Covid-19 outbreak centred on Fairfield in south-western Sydney has shone a new light on a weak point in the NSW local government electoral system. The choice of a private company to run Fairfield’s local council election to save money will mean that the council is left on its own to run the election in current circumstances, and will miss out on the support of the NSW Electoral Commission.
So the NSW local government election is scheduled to be held on September 4, which is less than seven weeks away.
There’s been a lot of comments on various electorate profiles about the federal election that have been a bit more general than about a particular seat, and I’ve had a few requests for an open thread to discuss the federal election.
I’m working on a couple of other blog posts I’m hoping to put up later this week.
I have posted another two seat guides for the federal election as freebies for everyone to read: Boothby and Gilmore. With so many people still stuck under lockdown I thought people might enjoy having something to read.
These two seats are both very marginal, one is held by Labor and the other Liberal.
The draft electoral boundaries for Victoria’s next state election were released on Wednesday. Significant population growth on the outer fringe of Melbourne has seen significant changes over the last eight years. This has resulted in three seats being abolished and three others split in half. Meanwhile one of the eight upper house regions has significantly changes character, and name, as it moves further north of the Yarra.
The Australian Electoral Commission yesterday announced the final boundaries for Victoria for the next federal election.
I don’t have any detailed or complete analysis because they have not published any maps or data, just descriptions of the changes.
They have made changes to 13 seats compared to the draft boundaries, most of which are seats in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, along with some changes in western Victoria.
I have just completed the first stage of the guide to the next federal election, and I’m now making it available as a reward for people who support this website, with the guide to be publicly released down the track.
New York City is currently undergoing their first experience of using ranked-choice voting, otherwise known as preferential voting, in a major election. It is being used for the primaries for the mayor of New York City along with other local offices.
The Democratic mayoral primary will effectively decide the election, with whoever wins almost certainly going on to win the general election.