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Proportional
representation analysis 2007
POLLS FOR THE 42ND AUSTRALIAN HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES Estimated
no. of PR-STV (Hare-Clark) seats in
possible multi-member divisions Copyright
© Proportional Representation Society of
Australia Inc. 2025 Tel. +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 newly elected
Australian Labor Party Government, with Mr
Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, gained only
43.4%
of first preference votes, yet gained 54.0%
of the single-member seats. The
Opposition, the Liberal and National
Coalition, gained 41.4%
of the first preference votes, and 44.6%
of the seats. The
table shows that this imbalance would not
apply under a Hare-Clark
proportional representation electoral
system, where the most likely outcome
would be an Australian Labor Party
Government, probably supported by up to
all five Australian Greens MHRs, possibly
even including some of them, with 53.3%
of the seats. The ALP
share of the seats would be 50.0%,
with the Greens
gaining a 3.3%
share, and the Independents
also gaining 1.3%
of the seats (the
same percentage as they gained under the
existing single-member division system). Graph: Click on the graph of the various
parties' percentage of the vote, which
illustrates the statement above. 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 72 of
the 150 single-member districts (48%) an
absolute majority of voters cast their
first preference vote for a candidate
other than the candidate that was elected.
If the crude and unrepresentative first-past-the-post
form of voting had applied, the result
would have been even more skewed, as the ALP's
total number of seats would have been 7
fewer, and the Coalition's
would have been 7 more. Discussion:
Unexpected casual vacancies would not
threaten the party balance of seats the
ALP Government would be relying on for its
support nearly as much as the present
system can. Hare-Clark fills casual
vacancies by countback
of general election ballot-papers, as for
the Tasmanian and ACT Assemblies, and the
predictable party continuity lets
Governments last full term. In contrast,
by-election polls in single-member seats
are notorious for losing those seats for
Governments in power. That can effectively
focus a determination of a change of
government on a single poll, in isolation,
and out of context with a general
election. Countback,
by contrast, continues to determine who
fills the seat on the basis of the vote at
the preceding general election, so all
MHRs are elected by decisions made in the
various electoral divisions of the nation
concurrently, in the same election
campaign. This
election, as the graph shows,
demonstrates that the diversity of views
of the electorate would have been more
faithfully represented in accordance with
the extent of their electoral support, and
less distorted, if a Hare-Clark
multi-member PR electoral system had been
used instead of single-member electoral
districts. Under
Hare-Clark PR in Tasmania, a party has
often won an absolute 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 |
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