Page Text: March 27, 2022
March 30, 2022
Update on when the count will finish – While the lower house count is complete, the time-consuming scanning of Legislative Council ballot papers takes time. The button push for the distribution of preferences is expected around the Anzac Day weekend.
Update: With every vote now counted, there are some slight changes to the partial quota values. One Nation is 0.51, Labor 0.42, LDP 0.39, Family First 0.37. I still stick to my view in the post that Labor’s position will improve with scrutiny of BTL votes, with preference flows from the Greens, Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis, and with the general leakage of preferences to the larger parties. But there is a chance the gap could close if there are any significant preference flows between the LDP and Family First. And there is still a chance that order could alter.
Original Post Follows
With the lower house counts being finalised today, it is time to take a closer look at the upper house election for the Legislative Council (LC).
Almost all Legislative Council first preference votes have been counted. The process of scanning and data entering ballot papers is underway. Once that is completed, the distribution of preferences will be undertaken very quickly by computer.
Nine seats are clear, electing four Labor MLCs, four Liberals and one Green. The final two seats look likely to go a fifth Labor MLC and the state’s first One Nation MLC.
If the election finishes as set out in the previous paragraph, the new Legislative Council will be 9 Labor, 8 Liberal, 2 Greens, 2 SA Best and a One Nation member. Assuming Labor appoints a President, then Labor would need the votes of three of the five cross bench members to pass legislation.
Background
The Legislative Council consists of 22 members elected for staggered terms. Elections are for half the chamber, 11 seats elected at large across the state. The quota for election is 8.33%. A Senate-style ballot paper is used with voters given the option of voting ‘above or below’ (ATL) for parties or ‘below the line’ (BTL) for candidates.
The Legislative Council’s system was reformed in 2017 in line with reforms previously introduced for NSW Legislative Council and Commonwealth Senate elections. Group voting tickets were abolished and a form of optional preferential voting adopted. Voters can vote above-the-line expressing preferences for parties, or below-the-line showing preferences for candidates.
The ballot paper instructions are very similar to the NSW Legislative Council reforms. An ATL vote requires a single first preference with further preferences optional. (South Australia did not adopt the Senate rules for a minimum six ATL preferences). BTL instructions were copied from the Senate changes with 12 BTL preferences are required with a minimum six preferences the savings provision.
As a result of the 1-only ATL requirement, the rate of exhausted preferences is much higher than at Senate elections. I provide some statistics on the types of votes and exhaustion rates later in this post.
The Current Count
As of Sunday morning 27 March, the progressive hand count of first preference votes is just under 88%. You can find the current counts at my Legislative Council Results page on the ABC website.
These totals are a hand tallies of first preference votes whether completed above or below the line. They are NOT just a tally of ATL votes.
Data entry and scanning will begin to knock out some BTL votes that are not formal. This will impact the small parties that have higher rates of BTL voting. The Labor and Liberal Parties have lower rates of BTL voting so will lose proportionally fewer votes to informality.
Who Will Be Elected?
The eleven elected members are likely to be –
Labor (5) – Kyam Maher (Re-elected), Tung Ngo (Re-elected), Reggie Martin (New member), Ian Hunter (Re-elected), Russell Wortley (Likely re-elected)
Liberal (4) – Michelle Lensink (Re-elected), Dennis Hood (Re-elected), Nicola Centofanti (Re-elected), Laura Curran (New member)
Greens (1) – Robert Sims (Re-elected)
One Nation (1) – Sarah Game (Likely new member)
The departing members are Rob Lucas (Liberal – retiring), John Dawkins (Independent, ex-Liberal – retiring) and John Darley (Advance SA, ex-Nick Xenophon Team – Defeated)
Victory for Sarah Game will be on party name alone as One Nation did not even profile her on its website. Whether known or not, she will be elected to an eight year term in the Legislative Council.
I will discuss how I decided on my final two predicted members after some explanation of the high rate of exhausted preferences that will make it hard for trailing parties to win a seat in the Legislative Council.
Rates of ATL and BTL voting at the 2018 Election
The chart below shows the percentage of votes by vote completion method at the 2018 Legislative Council election. Votes are broken into three categories, single ATL votes with no preferences (60.4% overall), ATL votes with preferences (33.3%), and BTL votes (6.3%).
The percentage vote polled by each party is shown on the left, the percentage completion method for each party shown in the chart.
Saying that 60.4% of votes were single ATL vote means that these votes had no preferences available to flow to other parties on the ballot paper. This guarantees a high rate of exhausted preferences, even before the number of ballots with preferences that exhaust in the count is taken into account.
Preference Exhaustion Rates at the 2018 Election
In 2018, three Liberal, three Labor and two SA-Best MLCs were elected on filled quotas with a race on between 12 groups to fill the three final vacancies. The real race was between Liberal 0.86 quotas, Greens 0.71, Labor 0.47 and Family First 0.47 for the final three seats.
The preference flows of eight excluded groups between 12 groups in the race and only four left were as follows.
Quotas and Preference Flows Gained at Final COunts - 2018 SA LC Election
Count Stage