Ben Raue

1 week ago | tallyroom.com.au | Ben Raue

The Australian Electoral Commission has now started publishing three-candidate-preferred counts for some electorates where the final two are not clear. They have published seat-level totals for a series of seats at this page, but these seem to be not quite as advanced as the numbers I’ve seen. A number of election analysts have given the AEC feedback that, in order to make this data useful, we needed to know which polling places had been included in the count.

1 week ago | tallyroom.com.au | Ben Raue

Good morning, I have been writing this blog post after getting home to wrap my own head around the scale of the count. I expect I will have some issues with the website’s accessibility today, so some of this may also be posted over on Tally Room in Exile, my backup blog. Firstly, it appears that there has been a significant increase in the number of contests involving minor parties and independents, but it will be some time before we can say how many seats are now non-classic.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Nick Evershed |Andy Ball |Ben Raue

Australia is known for its duopolies – Coles and Woolworths, Qantas and Virgin, Labor and the Coalition. However, at least one of these may be coming to an end. In the 1980s, Labor and the Coalition shared more than 90% of the primary vote between them, and independent politicians were rare.

2 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Raue

Preferences play a crucial role in deciding Australian elections. In 2022, the winning candidate polled a majority of first preference votes in just 15 out of 151 seats. In 16 seats, the eventual winner did not poll the most first-preference votes. Parties and candidates issue how-to-vote cards to ensure voters cast a formal vote, and to influence how they direct their preferences.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | Ben Raue

The Senate elected in 2022 had a clear progressive majority. That is likely to continue in 2025, but there are a number of close races, with potential for minor parties to pick up more seats. There were two unprecedented results in 2022. The left-leaning independent David Pocock defeated Liberal Zed Seselja for the second seat in the ACT after almost 50 years when the territory consistently elected one Labor and one Liberal senator.