and yet more election

[hnpcc]

For reasons of fun and profit (and because I was waiting for stuff to finish yesterday) I decided to see if we'd have an actual government by now under a first-past-the-post system rather than our preferential system. So I pulled up the close seats (as defined by the AEC) and went through 63 seats that were either close results or that changed hands to have a look.

7 of those 63 seats would have a different result under the FPTP system. 5 of those seats would have gone to the Liberals (O'Connor - from the Nationals; Latrobe, Deakin, Corangamite,Robertson - from the ALP) and two to the ALP (Dennison - from Wilkie and Melbourne - from The Greens).

So that would give us ALP on 73 seats (with a lot less whinging going on), Liberals on 49, Nationals on 6, LNP on 21 (Coalition total of 76) and 3 Independents. So yes, we would now have a government. Of course that's assuming the fairly massive swing to The Greens (up 12% in some seats) would have been the same under a FPTP system (which I doubt given the two party fear-mongering under the current system) so that would probably have changed some of the more marginal seats that went from ALP-Lib on first preferences (i.e. Latrobe, Deakin, Corangamite and Robertson!) Which then would have left us in basically the same place as we currently are, without a government.

In the meantime the Greens and ALP have done a deal; the Coalition turns out to be bad at maths and Katter still hasn't gotten on a white horse and ridden into Parliament while dressed as a banana. Which would totally make my day.

Comments

[17catherines.livejournal.com]

the Coalition turns out to be bad at maths

But... that can't be right. Everyone knows that the Coalition is fiscally responsible...?

(I have to say, that particular revelation just made my day)

It's going to be interesting for the independents. I mean, if they hadn't asked for all this information, they could have gone with the Coalition, and nobody would really have asked questions. But by saying that no, they are going to align themselves with whichever government is the most stable and best... they may find themselves feeling obliged to vote ALP when they know their constituents might prefer them not to.

[epideme.livejournal.com]

Not just looking at the marginals, but at all seats:

Wouldn't the ALP romp home, as Nationals and Liberals steal each other's votes?

[hnpcc]

Not as often as you'd think actually, they seem to make a deal as to who's standing where in some cases - a lot of the time where there's a National, there's a token Liberal as well, but they don't attract the votes. Where there's a Liberal there's very often not a National (not worth the expense). Then you have places like Qld where the parties have officially merged, so no competition there. Whereas where there's an ALP candidate there's usually a Green as well. The Greens are currently filling the role One Nation had for some years with the National/Liberal coalition - taking disaffected voters away from them. Whether this means the ALP will finally start swinging back to the left a bit is anyone's guess.

[kirstenfleur.livejournal.com]

"bad at maths"= understatement of the year. Seven BILLION dollars out?

Glad we don't have FPTP then; my seat would be Liberal now.

[hnpcc]

Seven BILLION dollars out?

Easy enough to do, just misplace a zero here and there...