The problem with counting preferences: the example of one nation party preferences at the 2001 Western Australian legislative assembly election

Abstract

A growing number of lower‐house seats at Australian State and federal elections rely on a distribution of preferences from Independent and small‐party candidates before seats can be awarded. Actors have attempted to gain political capital from this situation by claiming that the preferences of particular small parties have affected election outcomes. This paper uses the events of the Western Australian State election held in 2001 to explore the validity of such claims. More specifically, it investigates the widely propagated contention that the One Nation Party's anti‐sitting‐member preference strategy was a key determinant of the Coalition's electoral defeat. It concludes that the increased number of candidates contesting elections makes it difficult to assess whether the second and subsequent preferences of any particular small party were critical to the outcome.

Notes

Full preferential voting is used for elections of the federal House of Representatives and State lower‐house elections in Western Australia, Victoria, South Australia and the Northern Territory. Queensland and New South Wales use optional preferential voting.)

See also the case of federal House of Representatives elections. There has been an increase in the number of seats won on preferences. In 1963, over 80% of seats were won by candidates who had managed to achieve over 50% of the primary vote (Reilly 2001). At the 2001 federal election, only 42% of all seats were won by candidates who had achieved a majority of first‐preference votes (calculated from AEC 2004).

There has also been a steady decline in the primary vote of the two largest political groupings at federal elections. In the four decades from the 1950s, the ALP and the Coalition averaged over 90% of the primary vote between them. In elections since 1990, they have attained 85% or less of the first‐preference vote. See Bennett (1999).

For more on the phenomenon of uncontested seats, see Sharman (2001).

For information on the actual election campaign, see Black and Phillips (2001) Stone (2001) and Worthington (2001).

It is also significant to note that the 2001 poll elicited the highest rate of preferences changing outcomes since the 1930s. In approximately 10.5% of seats, the candidate with a plurality of the first‐preference vote was defeated. See Appendix Table A1.

Such claims were canvassed by high‐profile members of the Liberal Party such as former Premier Richard Court (West Australian 12 February 2001). Similarly, a number of media commentators fuelled speculation that the ONP's preference strategy was critical to the election outcome. Headlines read ‘Hanson's Deadlier than Before' (Australian 14 February 2001) and ‘One Nation's Knockout Blow' (Sydney Morning Herald 12 February 2001).

It is important to point out that the problem of tracking the flow of a voter's preferences is significantly reduced in the case of State elections in South Australia and most upper‐house elections in Australia. This is because the preferential voting system permits the voter to lodge a list or party vote. Voters who select this option effectively surrender the allocation of all but their first‐preference vote to the candidate or party they have indicated a primary vote for. This makes it much easier to trace the distribution of second and subsequent preferences because of the high number of voters who normally choose to take advantage of this facility. There are two possible ways around this problem in Western Australia. The first would be to access the ballot papers once the Western Australian Electoral Commission has finalised the result, but at present the Western Australian Electoral Commission is not permitted to make ballot the public. Another solution to this problem is to examine party scrutineer reports; however, there are concerns that these may not always be accurate or that parties would agree to make this information publicly available.

The figures are much higher at upper‐house elections. This is due in large measure to the fact that the ballot paper contains an above‐the‐line option which makes it both attractive and easy for voters to follow how‐to‐vote care instructions. For example, at the elections for the Western Australian Legislative Council in 2001, 91.4% of voters used the above‐the‐line facility (WAEC 2001).

Narelle Miragliotta is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Western Australia. She thanks Bruce Stone and this journal's anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts of this note.