Tasmanian election 2018

[RooFlyer]

For those waiting with baited breath about the Tas election ..

In the past week they did a re-count and re-check and have added in postal votes, as arrived, so not a lot of progress in deciding the last seat in all electorates except Denison, where all 5 are clear cut.

When all postal votes are in, the surpluses from the top #1 vote winners (those with >1 quota) will be distributed downwards, and this will get some further down the ticket (or perhaps elsewhere if there is leakage) over the line of a quota. However if there are still candidates without a quota after this stage, candidates from the bottom will be culled, and their votes distributed according to preferences, and this will continue until there are 5 candidates in the electorate all with a quota.

Franklin is probably the most interesting:



First stage - redistributing surpluses
Hodgman will pull Petrusma through easily for the Libs (the Premier, he was the highest vote winner in the state by a country mile), and then give a lot to Street. Then their process stops.

For Labor, no candidate has reached a quota in their own right, so nothing will happen there for the time being.

Rest: no-one close to a quota.

Second stage - culling from the bottom
The candidate with the lowest number of #1 votes will be culled first, and their votes redistributed according to preference. Then the second least etc. Four of the five Greens candidates will go early, so their votes are likely to go to Woodfruff, but still cannot give her a quota (total of 0.86 quotas for all the Greens, at the moment). So their votes will go no further.

Duffy and Chandler for the Libs will go, mostly helping Street you would think., but still not enough for him.

Chong and Barnsley for Labor will get O'Byrne and one of the other Labor people in.

Then it gets interesting; the 'moderate' vote earners, with 3,000-4,000 votes will make a meaningful contribution to whoever gets most of their #2 votes. If there is enough spillage of Labor votes to the Greens, then Woodfruff may get over the line for them. But Street for the Libs doesn't need that much leakage from Labor traditionalists, who don't like Greens, and would pick up many of the Shooters, Fishers bloke's votes .. so its a tight race.

Will take a week or more to decide the finals, but in the meantime we have a government.

 

[Quickstatus]

@RooFlyer
What’s the current majority in seats?

 

[serfty]

@RooFlyer
What’s the current majority in seats?

There are 25 seats; 99.9% certain Liberals to get 13, others 11.

Franklin has the only seat that cannot yet be assigned with reasonable certainty as either Liberal/Other.

 

[RooFlyer]

What’s the current majority in seats?

In 2014 Hodgman won 15 seats, which was a landslide after 16 years of Labor, much like Howard's first win Federally. Labor 7, Greens 3. In Braddon, the Libs took an incredible 4 out of the 5 seats (abt 65% of the vote!)..

 

[Quickstatus]

...Probably has the lowest ratio of elected representatives per head of pop

Just following on from this:

Population in TAS = 520k
Number of state pollie both houses = 40
Number of population per pollie = 13000

By comparison
Population of NSW = 7.5
Number of state pollie both houses = 135
Number of population per pollie = 55000

TAS needs to reduce total pollie to 10 to get the same ratios as NSW

 

[RooFlyer]

The current debate is to raise the numbers in the lower house by 5. Not a bad idea. The gene pool in a government of 10-15 members is pretty small ( upper house is mainly independents).

 

[Quickstatus]

The current debate is to raise the numbers in the lower house by 5. Not a bad idea. The gene pool in a government of 10-15 members is pretty small ( upper house is mainly independents).

The gene pool is even smaller in NSW.
Each electorate is a winner takes all. So the incumbent cannot possibly listen to all voices.

If NSW were to have similar system and ratios we would have 575 pollies

 

[RooFlyer]

Well, I learned something new today.

As explained above, when a candidate gets more than a quota (such as Hodgman, in the post above), their 'surplus' gets distributed, according to preference in the individual votes.

But it turns out that its not just their surplus votes (ie those beyond a quota) that get distributed - its ALL of them, but weighted.

That is, if a quota is 10,000 votes (first preferences, initially), and a candidate gets 20,000 first votes, then all 20,000 are redistributed, according to the votes' preference, but weighted - so if candidate X received, 5,000 #2 preferences from Hodgman, they would get allocated 20,000 x 0.5 votes. Still only 10,000 net which was the actual surplus that Hodgman got.

Why? Well, there's no way of saying which of the 20,000 votes for Hodgman were 'first'. You can't keep 10,000 aside and distribute 10,000 others, as the preferences in those may be quite different from the preferences in the first 10,000. Every #2 vote is treated the same.

And remember this happens for everyone who gets more than a quota!

Another reason why Hare-Clark is so hellishly complicated, but in the end, hellishly fair!

Final day for receiving postal votes was yesterday. In this time, all booth-made votes have been recounted, checked, and scanned. So, when they are ready, the Electoral Commission 'pushes the button' and the redistributions happen pretty quick!

 

[drron]

Back in the 80s in the elections for councils I NSW preferences were distributed by taking a sample of the voting papers and distributing those as if it was the whole lot.So if the sample was 100 and 200 preferences were to be distributed you multiplied by 2.
In our council 4 were elected from each ward so surplus votes were also distributed this way.
There was a final quirk-if a recount was demanded by any candidate it was done but there could be no more than 1 recount.Again preferences done by selecting a sample but a new sample.
So if your candidate lost-recount.A few results were overturned on this idiotic system.

 

[RooFlyer]

OK, the dice is being rolled . 2018 State election results

Progressive for Franklin. Sitting member Nic Street of the Libs in trouble. Even though the Libs (after 2 elected) have 0.82 quotas, the same as the Greens, the Greens candidate Woodruff has about 3,000 more votes than Street. The Lib candidate Chandler will be excluded fairly soon and you'd think most of her 3,300 votes will spill to Street, but Woodruff will probably benefit most from the next Labor candidate excluded. Its a race to keep ahead as the exclusions work their way up the ballot paper!



Compare with first preference totals:

 

[Quickstatus]

Still chance of 2 seat majority?

 

[drron]

Aren't the libs more likely to get the Shooters party preferences before the greens?

 

[RooFlyer]

Yes, but which Lib? If the Shooters' votes are split evenly to Chandler and Street of the Libs, then Chandler will stay in the race longer than 1 and maybe 2 of the next Labor people, whose votes will initially go to their own ticket, but then will start leaking out. If the Labor 'leaks' go strongly to the Green, then Street may get stranded, not having Chandler's prefs distributed in time.

At least that's how I think it works

Note also 'exhausted' in the top table. For a valid vote, you only have to number 1-5 on the ballot paper. BUT in the carve-up, your vote could have to go to its preferences beyond 5. If you stopped at 5, then it can't go any further and is put aside, 'exhausted' (and therefore wasted a bit).

 

[RooFlyer]

From the Mercury (pay-walled): <and I wrote my bit before seeing this >

UPDATE: THE Greens have improved their chances of holding on to a seat in Franklin but fell further behind in Bass as preferences are distributed after last week’s State Election.

Tuesday’s counting was also positive for Denison Labor MP Madeleine Ogilvie, who improved her position slightly after looking like losing her seat to fellow Labor candidate Ella Haddad on election night.

However, despite making up ground, Ms Ogilvie remains behind Ms Haddad and the final result will depend on where preferences from other Labor candidates end up.

After the initial first-preference count on election night, counting stopped for 10 days while the final postal votes trickled in.

The formal Hare Clark counting process has begun and Electoral Commissioner Andrew Hawkey expects all of the successful candidates to be confirmed by the end of the week.

“Final results are expected by Thursday — it could run into Friday,” he said.

Political analyst Kevin Bonham said the final seat in Franklin remained too close to call, with the battle being fought between two sitting MPs — Greens MP Rosalie Woodruff and Liberal MP Nic Street. Both were elected to the last parliament on recounts and Dr Bonham said the two were fairly even on paper.

Political analyst Richard Herr agreed the two were evenly placed, with Dr Woodruff claiming back ground after being slightly behind the Liberals on election night.

Dr Herr said the final result would depend on the flow of preferences from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers candidate Brendon Hext and excluded Labor candidates.

He said the outcome was the key to determining whether the Liberal Government would have a 13-seat or 14-seat majority, which would have implications for the speakership.

 

[RooFlyer]

Today in Franklin:

Labor's Midson will be excluded next, and will elect Standen. Then, whoever gets most of Midson's next preferences, Street of the Libs or Woodruff of the Greens, will get the 5th spot. Normally you'd think Green, but traditional Labor voters here in Tas can be very anti-green (jobs), so not definite by any means. the 5th spot is 'first past the post' - ie the one out of the last two candidates with most votes after all the others have been distributed.

 

[RooFlyer]

Slow going in my own seat of Lyons. In spite of having over 3 quotas between them, because of the even-ness of their votes, none of the Libs (all Ministers) have achieved a quota in their own right, yet. That will change soon. Labor will benefit from Lib preferences, so in spite of being ahead now, the Greens candidate won't get up.

The bad news is that the Jacqui Lambe candidate, Kent, who is the local Mayor will be excluded soon and will go back to the mayoral job.

 

[RooFlyer]

Braddon, where the Libs held 4 out of the 5 seats. They have a sniff of a chance of retaining all 4, but unlikely - although with some name recognition, sitting members Jaensch or Rylah of the Libs might get some material leakage from the last Labour person to be excluded.

 

[Quickstatus]

Very instructive to see how the HC system plays out in reality. I like this system. More politicians though. Current view of less politicians the better is populist but in reality as politicians are most often party based, they can’t possibly represent the diverse views in their electorate - leading to the usual chorus that no one listers.
Yes the 5th spot does not necessarily need a quota and can just fall over the line as a “first past the post”.

Thanks for sharing with us @RooFlyer . I reckon this is the most significant thing I’ve learnt this month

 

[RooFlyer]

Denison (metro Hobart). No relative change; only surprise is that non sitting Labor candidate Haddad is still ahead of sitting Labour candidate Ogilvie. Presumably Cox's preferences will flow more strongly to the sitting member, though. Remember, the candidates' names get order-changed on the ballot papers, so there is no 'donkey vote' and no party 'how-to-vote' tickets either.

Sue Hickey of the Libs is the current Lord Mayor of Hobart.

 

[RooFlyer]

Bass. Pretty straight-forward. Three Libs elected and one Labor elected, and the next 2 to be excluded are the other 2 Libs, who will elect the second Labor person.