Talk:2012 Australian Capital Territory general election

A first?

Would this be the first election where a female has become government leader and gone on not only to retain government but also increase their party vote? Timeshift (talk) 10:57, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

No, the Australian Capital Territory general election, 1992 probably included that landmark. Nick-D (talk) 11:13, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Ah, touche. Timeshift (talk) 11:35, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I have another query... I came across Australian Capital Territory general election, 1995 and noticed that the ACT Liberal primary vote was 40.5 percent. In most post-election articles i've read, it is mentioned that the 2012 election saw the highest primary vote for the ACT Liberals... I did think it was rather low at only 38 percent. Who's wrong here? Timeshift (talk) 15:26, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Also, I came across the following bit of info but obviously it isn't a reliable source so mentioning it here in the hopes that it may be on a reliable source soon. "By the end of the evening they had fallen behind Labor on the primary vote, and the figures are such that a two-party preferred result under a single-member system would be about 53-47 in Labor’s favour".[1] Timeshift (talk) 18:13, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

That seems a likely result, though it's obviouslyh difficult to translate the Hare-Clark system, limited influence of how to vote instructions and multi-member electorates in the ACT into simple two party preferred terms. According to Anthony Green, the Liberals' primary vote in 1995 was 40.48%, which is obviously lower than the 38.0% he puts them on at the moment. I suspect that whoever said that the 2012 result was better was either talking about the raw number of first preference votes for the Liberals (69,517 in 2012 vs 66,895 in 1995) or was writing when the Libs had a much higher proportion of the total earlier in the night. Nick-D (talk) 22:35, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

It's also worth stressing that ACT elections, and the ACT electorate, are really different to those in the rest of Australia, so making any kinds of comparisons to other systems are difficult. For instance, there's going to be a lot of nonsense written about the performance of The Greens which ignores the fact that they gained a quota-worth of voters from the Liberals in 2008 as a protest against the shambolic state the party was in at the time. Nick-D (talk) 22:47, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the TPP significance would be very limited, but still very informative. I doubt the comparison was raw figures, if that was the case a lot of elections would see record support at each election. If the "record high" % was based on early evening figures, it would have been razor thin and had warnings put all over it. Maybe not when it comes to political parties and media outlets who regularly enjoy amateur hour. Timeshift (talk) 22:58, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that I saw a Liberal candidate arguing at one point about mid-way through the night that the party had the right to form government as it had received the highest number of votes (possibly he included some provisos around this which I didn't take in). The result is certainly a big improvement for the Liberals, but they need an outright majority of seats to form government given their poor relationship with the Greens and Canberrans no longer being very interested in independents. Nick-D (talk) 23:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

That Liberal candidate was misinformed, as were a lot of Liberals commenting last night, it was quite bizarre actually seeing ignorance after ignorance. Votes don't matter, seats matter, and the incumbent government gets to test their support first. Either Zed is the silliest leader ever, or he has no intentions of negotiating with the Greens (ever) and knows he's defeated but wanted to ruffle some feathers. I suspect the latter. Timeshift (talk) 23:31, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

The argument being put forward in the Canberra Times here that the Liberals' greater number of seats provides "a powerful case" for the Greens to support them makes a bit more sense, though I suspect that the people who voted for the Greens would be pretty annoyed if that happened. Nick-D (talk) 01:32, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Considering the Liberals don't get on with the Greens and don't want to, and the ACT Libs have never won a majority, i'm not entirely sure what they are/were realistically hoping for. It must be a very depressing job. Timeshift (talk) 02:49, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Well that didn't take long, though it's a shame Australia has to rely on one man to reliably set the record straight. Timeshift (talk) 02:43, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that's by far the best thing which has been written about the election so far. His classification of Brindabella as being Canberra's 'mortgage belt' seems a bit outdated though: most of the cheap housing developments over the last 10 years have been in Molonglo (where Gungahlin has been developed pretty much from scratch), and the population in Brindabella has been decreasing as kids move out of home (generally to Molonglo or interstate). Nick-D (talk) 08:45, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

"However, as Brindabella is very much Canberra's mortgage belt, and the Liberals campaigned strongly on cost of living issues, the Brindabella result is a pointer to how the next federal campaign may unfold in critical seats on the outskirts of the major cities" - yes, i'll agree this seems old and overcooked. But being a reliable source and the best summary of the outcome by a long shot, i've added it to ref and EL. This article is much better for it. Timeshift (talk) 02:54, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

The Australian's editorial today claimed that the Brindabella electorate is the only part of Canberra which looks like the rest of the country, which suggests that whoever wrote the thing hasn't noticed that almost all of Canberra is middle class suburbia which is essentially indistinguishable from the middle-to-outer suburbs of the big cities. There's no shortage of university educated professionals here in Brindabella! Nick-D (talk) 09:05, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Results table?

Just wondering why the ACT seems to be the only jurisdiction where we haven't actually got results tables? Lead infobox aside, we have nothing. Others suffered a four percent swing, but some minor parties increased their vote. Newcomers 'Bullet Train for Canberra' got 4 percent of the vote, but nobody would know. Should we have a results table (or sub article?) with some more depth than simply 3 parties' primary votes/swing and seats/swing? Timeshift (talk) 23:27, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

A basic results table seems like a good idea - we can include all the parties since there will never be all that many (compared to, say, federal elections). A results page would be great, of course, with in-depth results for each division (although I'm not sure how we'd present it, since the election boxes don't really cater to the intricacies of Hare-Clark). Frickeg (talk) 03:03, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Tasmanian state election, 2010? Timeshift (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

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