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PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
ANALYSIS 2001 POLLS FOR THE 40TH
AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Estimated No. of PR (Hare-Clark)
Seats in possible multi-member divisions Copyright © Proportional Representation
Society of Australia 2001: 18 Anita Street, Beaumaris 3193. Tel. +61395891802, +61429176725 www.prsa.org.au
info@prsa.org.au
Final AEC data, from www.aec.gov.au |
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Summary
Table: Click on this table, which
shows that the returned Liberal Party
and National Party Coalition Government gained
only 43.01% of first
preference votes, yet they gained 54.67%
of the single-member seats. The table shows that this unjust imbalance would
not apply under a Hare-Clark proportional representation electoral system,
where the outcome would be either a Liberal
and National Party Government
with the support of at least four of the Independents, Greens and Australian Democrats; or else an ALP Government with the support of
at least eleven of the Independents,
Greens, and Australian Democrats. Graph: Click on the graph of the
various parties' percentage of the vote, which illustrates the statement
above. With Hare-Clark casual vacancies filled by countback
of general election ballot-papers, as for the Tasmanian and ACT Assemblies,
the predictable party continuity lets Governments last full term. Details of the 26
Multi-member PR Districts: Click on details to see the PR districts, the votes in
each, and the seats that would be won with that arrangement, compared with
the single-member seats actually won. The single-member system reveals that
in 87 of the 150 single-member districts an absolute majority of voters cast
their first preference vote for a candidate other than the candidate that was
elected. This election shows that
the diversity of views of the electorate would have been more faithfully
represented, and less distorted, if a Hare-Clark multi-member PR electoral
system had been used instead of single-member electoral districts. The
analysis shows that the only parties to win an absolute majority of votes in
any of the 26 multi-member PR districts were the Liberal Party in Nos. 2 and 16, and the ALP in No. 9. No party won an absolute majority of votes in the
remaining 23 multi-member PR districts.
Under Hare-Clark PR in
Tasmania a party has often won a majority of votes in one or more of that
State's five multi-member districts, but only once has a Tasmanian MHA (Douglas Lowe in 1979) received an absolute majority of first
preference votes, because the diversity of candidates and their support has
nearly always let voters express their diverse views
with a real chance of their being represented. There is no restrictive
"winner-take-all" scheme operating for the Lower House of either
Tasmania or the Australian Capital Territory, as there is in all the other
Lower Houses in Australia, which still continue to be elected from
single-member electorates. |
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