NSW ELECTION March 24, 2007
Posted by wmmbb in Australian Politics.trackback
The Iemma Labor Government was returned with a reduced number of seats and with reduced margins within seats. The result in the lower house, the Legislative Assembly are shown here on the ABC.
In a preferential voting system, people understand that their two party preference determines the outcome. This equally true in an optional preference system. Even so, looking at the first preferences we can see distortions. 24% of people cast their first preferences for Independent and other parties result in 6 seats won by independents. The National Party with 10% of the vote obtains 13 seats. The first preference voters for Independents and small parties is less than 3% behind the primary vote obtained by the Liberals who had wond 21 seats, with this portion of the vote counted.
The importance of the NSW election is the implications is holds for the Federal Election. There is a suggestion that success at State level makes it harder for Labor to win the National Government. I doubt the reality of the notion of checks and balances by having different parties in office at commonwealth and state levels. I would have thought that the balance of power can be more effectively held by the Senate than by State Governments.
Because the elections are close in time, I suspect that way people have voted in the NSW election is a good indication as to how they will vote in October or November for the Federal Parliament. Given there are different issues, Labor should be able to improve its position in NSW.
[...] The NSW Election is the big civic event of the week: Sydney Daily Photo records the inside of the ballot booth. Modia Minataur has a post-mortem post, picking up on the same themes she covered in her pre-mortem post – the trend in the Green vote, the importance of local issues – and finds most of her predictions confirmed. The most interesting part is the detailed analysis of seats with strong independent candidates. wm(’Duckpond’)mbb eschews details, preferring to note some stark statistics: [...]