Senate voting as an analysis of community/party involvement
More ranting on the Victorian Senate election:
I've ranted previously at length about how Labor and Democrat voters didn't bother to inform themselves about how their above-the-line vote gets distributed. I suspect there'll be some remarkably different trends in the 2007 Senate election as a result of these stuff-ups. I wanted to check out how many above-the-line and below-the-line votes were recorded, and see if this told me anything interesting.
Firstly, group ticket votes (what I described as above-the-line votes) currently outnumber formal preferential votes by over 300 to 1. So even if you consider yourself one of the conscientious people who goes to the effort of finding out the issues, informing yourself on the parties and their stances, and making a preference decision as a result - guess what. Over 99.5% of the other people influencing the election result just went with the party line. Bummer. Only in the closest elections (and thus more likely in the smaller states) would preferential voting influence a result.
How do the various parties compare? At one extreme - the Non-affiliated Indigenous candidates headed by Richard Frankland - 199 personal first preference votes for Frankland represents just under one-twelfth of the party ticket vote. At the other extreme, slightly more than one in a thousand Liberal voters voted below-the-line (of 1,094,005 votes, 361,137 of which are as yet unapportioned, barely 700 are below-the-line). Labor aren't much better: one in 500 voted below-the-line. Of the major parties with 40,000 votes or more, the two parties which fared best in terms of informed preference distribution are the Greens (one below-the-line per 82 group tickets) and Democrats (one per 73). This suggests to me that a Democrat voter is slightly more likely to be involved with and responsive to political issues than supporters of the other well-supported parties (Family First, liberals for forests) and likewise the major parties.
Interestingly, with about 65% of the current Senate vote apportioned between above the line and below the line voting, the largest personal vote is for David Risstrom of The Greens, who has 1,296 below-the-line first preferences.
Edit: as the Senate count has continued, fortunately more below-the-line votes have been counted as a proportion of the total. But things still look fairly dire: the sixth seat in Victoria will almost certainly go to Family First.
I've ranted previously at length about how Labor and Democrat voters didn't bother to inform themselves about how their above-the-line vote gets distributed. I suspect there'll be some remarkably different trends in the 2007 Senate election as a result of these stuff-ups. I wanted to check out how many above-the-line and below-the-line votes were recorded, and see if this told me anything interesting.
Firstly, group ticket votes (what I described as above-the-line votes) currently outnumber formal preferential votes by over 300 to 1. So even if you consider yourself one of the conscientious people who goes to the effort of finding out the issues, informing yourself on the parties and their stances, and making a preference decision as a result - guess what. Over 99.5% of the other people influencing the election result just went with the party line. Bummer. Only in the closest elections (and thus more likely in the smaller states) would preferential voting influence a result.
How do the various parties compare? At one extreme - the Non-affiliated Indigenous candidates headed by Richard Frankland - 199 personal first preference votes for Frankland represents just under one-twelfth of the party ticket vote. At the other extreme, slightly more than one in a thousand Liberal voters voted below-the-line (of 1,094,005 votes, 361,137 of which are as yet unapportioned, barely 700 are below-the-line). Labor aren't much better: one in 500 voted below-the-line. Of the major parties with 40,000 votes or more, the two parties which fared best in terms of informed preference distribution are the Greens (one below-the-line per 82 group tickets) and Democrats (one per 73). This suggests to me that a Democrat voter is slightly more likely to be involved with and responsive to political issues than supporters of the other well-supported parties (Family First, liberals for forests) and likewise the major parties.
Interestingly, with about 65% of the current Senate vote apportioned between above the line and below the line voting, the largest personal vote is for David Risstrom of The Greens, who has 1,296 below-the-line first preferences.
Edit: as the Senate count has continued, fortunately more below-the-line votes have been counted as a proportion of the total. But things still look fairly dire: the sixth seat in Victoria will almost certainly go to Family First.