[EM] Election day in Australia

[Chris Benham]

The "Leader of the Opposition"  (the leader of the parliamentary Liberal 
Party, Peter Dutton ) has conceded defeat.  So the Labor federal 
government stays in power and the current Prime Minister keeps his job.

I was compelled to vote today, and if I wanted to have my vote counted 
(and possibly affect the result) I had to strictly rank all seven 
candidates for the single-member district  I live in (in the state of 
South Australia) for a seat in the House of Representatives.

I dislike compulsory preferences, but I don't notice anyone else 
complaining about them. I consider them are far lesser evil than any 
limitation on the number of candidates a voter can rank, as happens in 
some parts of the world that use some version of Hare/IRV.

The GIGO  (garbage in, garbage out) effect of compulsory full-ranking is 
much lower with Hare than it would be with a Condorcet method or Borda.  
And the days when most of the voters had an FPP mindset and the way you 
vote for party X is to blindly follow X's "how-to-vote card" handed to 
you by a volunteer as you enter the polling station are  mostly over (or 
at least have receded a lot). So is there is less of the effect of 
transferring some power from voters to small parties whose candidates 
get eliminated.

As well I voted among 39 candidates to fill six vacancies for the 
Senate, using STV-PR (semi-corrupted into a sort of fixed List PR).  The 
candidates were in 16 party groups plus one "Ungrouped" group.  Each 
group had a least two candidates and at most four (but I assume five and 
six are allowed).   I could either ignore the groups and number at least 
12 candidates, or I could ignore the individual candidates and vote  
"above the line" and number at least 6 groups.

Australia has a "Westminster" style parliamentary system and the house 
of parliament on which the government is based is elected using 
single-member districts.  The election campaigns tend to be 
quasi-presidential with a lot of focus on which leader of one of the two 
major parties voters want to be Prime Minister and much less on 
individual local candidates.

One way I think this can be undemocratic is if the leader of the winning 
party fails to keep his seat. Peter Dutton I gather is not completely 
safe in his seat. It could have happened that a majority of voters voted 
Liberal because they wanted Peter Dutton to be Prime Minister but were 
denied just because the voters in his district rejected him. So then the 
PM would be a Liberal MP elected by the Liberal MPs to be the new leader 
of the parliamentary Liberal party, someone the majority of voters may 
dislike or know little or nothing about.

The leader of a major party is obviously far less likely to lose his 
seat in a multi-member district using PR.  And that problem can't exist 
in a system where the head of the government is directly elected.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/peter-dutton-losing-dickson-coalition-leadership/105247916

>
>     In short:
>
> Peter Dutton will become the first federal leader of an opposition to 
> lose his own seat.
>
> Mr Dutton has conceded he has lost Dickson.
>
>
>     What's next?
>
> The Liberal Party will have to search for a new leader.
>

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/act-election-results-senate-house-of-representatives-2025/105244060

> "I think we've seen across the country independents doing well … some 
> who haven't quite won a seat but have made a seat marginal for the 
> first time, and I think that's more and more people wanting a 
> different kind of politics in Australia," Mr Pocock said.

Chris B.


On 3/05/2025 11:38 am, Rob Lanphier via Election-Methods wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Australia is holding an election now.  Rumor has it (or should I say
> "rumour has it") that these are the best places to track the
> Australian election results:
> *https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025
> *https://results.aec.gov.au/
> *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Australian_federal_election
>
> Anyone got other reliable sites to track in real-time?  If (by the
> time you read this), the important elections have all been decided,
> I'm curious to know if you have an opinion on the results (especially
> an informed opinion).  The math on this one should be interesting...
>
> Rob
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - seehttps://electorama.com/em for list info
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