Would any of you who like to crunch the numbers Antony Green style give us a run down on the possible scenarios of the Senate makeup after the WA senate election. Any chance at all that we might finish up with an anti govt majority in the senate.   Though I'm guessing that's pretty remote

I count this as 3 to 3+1/2 on the right.

If there's a revote (likely), the Coalition would need a primary of about 40% or more to have a good chance of holding three Senators. If they drop 5% to the ALP, the ALP will get two quotas (2.21) and the Coalition would no longer have three between them (2.74). The leftover ALP quota would be likely to elect a Greens candidate and PUP and the Liberals will fight out the last Senate spot with the Liberals having better chances unless PUP gets benefit from the minor party voteball.

The net result at the revote would be for the ALP to gain a seat from the Sports party. My expectation for the WA revote: Liberals 3, ALP 2, Greens 1.

At the 2013 election, in WA the Liberals polled 39.20% of the first preference above the line votes and the WA Nationals polled 5.07%. Between them, the 44.27% they polled exceeded the 42.86% quota and so three Liberals were elected. (All figures obtained from the AEC website.) However, they only exceeded the quota by 1.41% and this surplus became available to elect minor parties. Note: I have only used above the line voting here, but including below the line votes won't change the outcome significantly.

(snip)

I predict that with a 10% swing, two Liberals, two ALP, one Greens and one PUP candidate would be elected.

Western Australia is poised to head back to the polls, but five months is a long time in politics and a new senate result may not bode well for the Abbott government, writes Tom Iggulden.

After weeks of deliberation, the High Court has done what most expected it to do and signalled it will void last year's election result for six Western Australian senate seats.

It's a momentous decision, and not just for the 1.3 million voters in the west who will now very likely be asked head back to the polls. A lot of political water has passed under the bridge over the last five months, most of it likely to be to the electoral detriment of the Abbott government.

Western Australian political veteran Peter Kennedy reports there are suggestions the Liberal vote may have softened by 5 per cent or more of the primary vote.

A combination of factors are working against the party. Premier Colin Barnett's popularity seems to have peaked at around the time he won last year's state election and is now on the slide. A tough budget being signalled from federal Treasurer Joe Hockey would be a turn-off for other voters.

But the hardest obstacle is incumbency.

With Labor now out of office in Canberra, the motivation to punish the ALP is less powerful. The government is expected to campaign on the senate's obstruction of the repeal of the carbon and mining taxes, about which feelings run particularly strong in WA.

But whether that's enough to replicate September's showing is an open question.

The Liberal Party's result in the west last year was one of the most dominant political performances in the state's history. In addition to winning 12 of the 15 lower house seats on offer, the party won three of the six senate seats.

With a softening of the vote, that could well be reduced to just two.

Clive Palmer's PUP would be one party hoping to sop up those drifting away from supporting the government.

He has the resources to compete on the airwaves during a campaign. He told the ABC yesterday that, now he's demonstrated his party can win seats, voters who worried about wasting their vote on the PUP in September would support the party this time around.

Then there's the WA Nationals, who polled a respectable 5 per cent of the primary vote in September, but who were undone by a lack of a preferences strategy.

A more organised approach could lift the Nationals into contention for a seat, though that's not necessarily good news for the Abbott government.

As now retired WA Nationals MP Tony Crook demonstrated in the last parliament, the party has a strong independent streak. A WA Nationals senator could not be relied on to always vote with the government.

Preferences resulted in the election of Wayne Dropulich from the Sports Party, despite a primary vote of just 0.2 per cent. Minor party strategist and "preference whisperer" Glenn Druery, whose deal making led to Mr Dropulich's victory, says minor parties have been encouraged by the result.

As the High Court deliberated, talks among minor parties were already underway about a new round of deals.

Mr Druery says he's confident of pulling off another minor party victory if a new senate race is ordered, as long as preference deals are "kept tight" between members of his Minor Party Alliance.

All of this would complicate the picture for the government's numbers when the new senate is sworn in in July.

Clive Palmer already holds the balance of power when Labor and the Greens vote together, a position he is looking to consolidate with a win in the west.

Another minor party in the senate would have unpredictable demands on the government in exchange for support.

All this because the Australian Electoral Commission lost 1400 votes during a recount last year.

The government could be forgiven for feeling aggrieved if the result of that mistake is a more difficult passage for its key legislation than would otherwise have been the case.

Bam wrote on Feb 19^th, 2014 at 7:47am:


Appreciate the analysis Bam - don't mean to be picky but I thought you said under both 10% and 5% swing, the coalition would lose one of the 3 seats - but you are saying here that they won't under ae 5% swing?