The Australian state of New South Wales voted at the weekend, in an election that saw the 16 year old Labor government swept out of power in an avalanche. Such has been Labor's dominance in New South Wales that there's been no end of the use of words like "historic", "seismic", "unprecedented" and other clichés.
The main feature of interest for the UK is that New South Wales is one of two Australian states (Queensland is the other) which use optional preferential voting, i.e. the precise form of the Alternative Vote that we will voting on in May. Whereas in elections for the federal parliament and in most other states a voter is required to number all the candidates on their ballot paper for their vote to count, in New South Wales & Queensland state elections a voter need only indicate a single preference to be valid and does not have to worry about which of two utterly obscure independents they prefer to the other.
At the time of writing the results for the lower house so far:
88.3% counted.
Last updated Thu Mar 31 9:59 PM
Liberal 38.4% 51 seats
Labor 25.7% 20
Nationals 12.7% 18
Greens 10.2% 1
Others 13.0% 3
(ABC News: New South Wales Election 2011)
I stress these are not yet final results. Australia has different rules of voting and counting, the key ones being in relation to postal and "pre-poll" voting, plus a much greater emphasis on precision over speed than the UK, and with results declared at the polling station ("booth") level there's a heck of a lot more to be precise about. Postal votes can arrive in a period of some days after polling day - in a large country with limited rural postal services it's rather unworkable to require all postal votes to be received by polling day.
(A lot in the UK seem to think Australian elections take a long time to finalise counting because they use the Alternative Vote. This isn't true - Canada also takes a similar time for much the same reason, despite using First Past The Post.)
Despite this about 92 of the 93 seat results seem certain. The one uncertain one is Balmain, currently listed as a Green seat. This is a three way fight between the Liberals, Greens and Labor with uncertainty over who will be in the last two - see Antony Green's Election Blog: The Tight Finish in Balmain. The one prediction that seems solid is that whoever wins the seat will not have at least 50% of the total valid votes cast.
Of the wider results it's notable that the Liberals have secured a majority in their own right on just 38.4% of first preferences. Some of this is because they didn't stand in 20 seats, instead giving the Nationals a free run (and indeed they will be governing as a Coalition), but there is no requirement for a party to contest every seat. Critics of First Past The Post like to jump on such results but as this election shows they can happen under AV as well.
92 seats seem to have been won by the party who topped the poll on first preferences - the exception being the aforementioned Balmain. In general the Liberals, Nationals, Labor and Greens declined to recommend preferences to each other on the "How To Vote" cards given out at polling stations. For those hoping to see AV producing radically different results it's not lived up to expectations. However Balmain may see a victory from third place.
Of potential more interest for the UK is the upper house election but that's for another post...
Showing posts with label Australian Labor Party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australian Labor Party. Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
The Alternative Vote in action: New South Wales
In the run-up to the Alternative Vote referendum in May there will be a lot of talk about other countries that use the AV voting system. And there will also be an election using the precise variant of AV that the UK will be voting on.
The Alternative Vote has a number of versions around but the one we will be voting on is the "full optional preference" version, practised in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland for state elections, whereby voters can number as little as a single candidate for their vote to be valid. (Elections for the federal parliament and most of the other states use the "compulsory preference" version where voters have to number all candidates to count.) New South Wales will be going to the polls on March 26th and it will be possible to compare the claims made in our AV referendum.
(For those who want to see & find out more of the election in the wider context the best guide is the ABC 2011 New South Wales Election.)
At least two claims have been made that are already possible to check against existing experience in the state. Quickly running through them:
Claim 1. AV will mean parties can fight elections as a Coalition, offering voters candidates from both parties.
The full number of candidates in the last (2007) election is available at ABC News Election Preview. There were 93 seats and with the Liberals and Nationals fighting as a Coalition it was possible for voters to have a choice.
However the table shows that each seat had only one Coalition candidate. In fact it would have been playing with fire for the Coalition to offer competing candidates in all but a few seats. There would have been a real risk of votes for one Coalition party failing to transfer to the other, not least due to many voters "plumping" or just using a single preference. For parties aiming to win as many seats as possible this is not a desirable situation and so it's unsurprising that the Coalition stands a single candidate. (In Queensland it proved even harder for the Coalition parties to agree such an arrangement and eventually the two parties merged to eliminate the problem.)
Claim 2. AV will put an end to negative campaigning and parties will have to offer positive reasons to vote for them.
This is one of the wilder claims, and frankly feels like a typical case of seizing on any unpopular element in politics and pretending the proposed change will magic it away. In fact the types of campaigning used reflect the political culture, the effectiveness of methods and any laws governing it far far more than the voting system in use. New South Wales is certainly not free of negative campaigning as this Labor party advert from the last election shows:
If you can find one positive reason to vote for Labor in there (beyond their ability to make cartoons and catchy songs) I'll buy you a pint.
(By the way there is one myth about AV that stems from New South Wales that can be cleared up. There's a belief in some quarters that AV will lead to ballot papers that are the size of tablecloths - some of you may remember David Dimbleby producing one such monster on a few election nights. In fact those monster ballot papers are for the state upper house which is elected by Single Transferable Vote with an option to use a Group voting ticket. That's something different from AV and there are plenty of good reasons for voting against it without the need to resort to such scare myths.)
The Alternative Vote has a number of versions around but the one we will be voting on is the "full optional preference" version, practised in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland for state elections, whereby voters can number as little as a single candidate for their vote to be valid. (Elections for the federal parliament and most of the other states use the "compulsory preference" version where voters have to number all candidates to count.) New South Wales will be going to the polls on March 26th and it will be possible to compare the claims made in our AV referendum.
(For those who want to see & find out more of the election in the wider context the best guide is the ABC 2011 New South Wales Election.)
At least two claims have been made that are already possible to check against existing experience in the state. Quickly running through them:
Claim 1. AV will mean parties can fight elections as a Coalition, offering voters candidates from both parties.
The full number of candidates in the last (2007) election is available at ABC News Election Preview. There were 93 seats and with the Liberals and Nationals fighting as a Coalition it was possible for voters to have a choice.
However the table shows that each seat had only one Coalition candidate. In fact it would have been playing with fire for the Coalition to offer competing candidates in all but a few seats. There would have been a real risk of votes for one Coalition party failing to transfer to the other, not least due to many voters "plumping" or just using a single preference. For parties aiming to win as many seats as possible this is not a desirable situation and so it's unsurprising that the Coalition stands a single candidate. (In Queensland it proved even harder for the Coalition parties to agree such an arrangement and eventually the two parties merged to eliminate the problem.)
Claim 2. AV will put an end to negative campaigning and parties will have to offer positive reasons to vote for them.
This is one of the wilder claims, and frankly feels like a typical case of seizing on any unpopular element in politics and pretending the proposed change will magic it away. In fact the types of campaigning used reflect the political culture, the effectiveness of methods and any laws governing it far far more than the voting system in use. New South Wales is certainly not free of negative campaigning as this Labor party advert from the last election shows:
If you can find one positive reason to vote for Labor in there (beyond their ability to make cartoons and catchy songs) I'll buy you a pint.
(By the way there is one myth about AV that stems from New South Wales that can be cleared up. There's a belief in some quarters that AV will lead to ballot papers that are the size of tablecloths - some of you may remember David Dimbleby producing one such monster on a few election nights. In fact those monster ballot papers are for the state upper house which is elected by Single Transferable Vote with an option to use a Group voting ticket. That's something different from AV and there are plenty of good reasons for voting against it without the need to resort to such scare myths.)
Monday, November 12, 2007
Is this the emptiest PPB ever?
I've just seen this clip on YouTube of Wayne Swan, the Australian Shadow Treasurer (that's their equivalent of the Shadow Chancellor) making the following broadcast as part of the Australian election:
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