<div dir="auto">Your message got me wondering — has a party leader ever lost their seat while winning the election?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The answer appears to be yes, at least twice — Mackenzie King was defeated in both 1925 and 1945 while Labour won in Canada. Both times other MPs resigned immediately to allow him to rejoin Parliament via by-election and reclaim the premiership. If anyone has additional examples, please send them — I find this fascinating. <br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container" dir="auto"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, May 3, 2025 at 9:39 AM Etjon Basha via Election-Methods <<a href="mailto:election-methods@lists.electorama.com">election-methods@lists.electorama.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204)"><div dir="auto">A bit of a bother, especially the 12 on the Senate side. Showing my ignorance here, but what issue would there be in allowing voters (who, in this particular case, have to show up on pains of a fine) to rank as many of as few as they like, and show approval by proxy that way? Exhausted votes? So what?</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, 3 May 2025, 11:33 pm Chris Benham via Election-Methods, <<a href="mailto:election-methods@lists.electorama.com" target="_blank">election-methods@lists.electorama.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204)"><u></u>
<div>
<p><br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025</a><br>
<br>
<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/peter-dutton-losing-dickson-coalition-leadership/105247916" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/peter-dutton-losing-dickson-coalition-leadership/105247916</a><br>
</p><blockquote type="cite">
<h2 style="font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5;margin-bottom:0.5rem;font-weight:700;font-family:abcsans,-apple-system,blinkmacsystemfont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",arial,sans-serif;box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:0px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(236,242,251);color:rgb(16,49,106)">In
short:</h2>
<p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0.5rem 0px;font-family:abcsans,-apple-system,blinkmacsystemfont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",arial,sans-serif;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(236,242,251);color:rgb(0,0,0)">Peter
Dutton will become the first federal leader of an opposition
to lose his own seat.</p>
<p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0.5rem 0px;font-family:abcsans,-apple-system,blinkmacsystemfont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",arial,sans-serif;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(236,242,251);color:rgb(0,0,0)">Mr
Dutton has conceded he has lost Dickson.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5;margin-bottom:0.5rem;font-weight:700;font-family:abcsans,-apple-system,blinkmacsystemfont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",arial,sans-serif;box-sizing:border-box;margin-top:1.5rem;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(236,242,251);color:rgb(16,49,106)">What's
next?</h2>
<p style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0.5rem 0px 0px;font-family:abcsans,-apple-system,blinkmacsystemfont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",arial,sans-serif;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;background-color:rgb(236,242,251);color:rgb(0,0,0)">The
Liberal Party will have to search for a new leader.</p>
</blockquote>
<br>
<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/act-election-results-senate-house-of-representatives-2025/105244060" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-03/act-election-results-senate-house-of-representatives-2025/105244060</a><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span style="font-family:abcsans,-apple-system,blinkmacsystemfont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",arial,sans-serif;font-size:18px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;float:none;display:inline!important;color:rgb(0,0,0)">"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.</span></blockquote>
<br>
Chris B.<br>
<p></p>
<div><br>
On 3/05/2025 11:38 am, Rob Lanphier via Election-Methods wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre style="font-family:monospace">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:
* <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" style="font-family:monospace">https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal-election-2025</a>
* <a href="https://results.aec.gov.au/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" style="font-family:monospace">https://results.aec.gov.au/</a>
* <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Australian_federal_election" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank" style="font-family:monospace">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Australian_federal_election</a>
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
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</pre>
</blockquote>
</div>
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