The Legislative Council

So then there’s the upper house. The NSW Legislative Council has 42 seats, 21 of which are contested each election. The current make-up of the chamber has the Coalition one seat short of an absolute majority, with the conservative Christian Democrats and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers to rely upon for that final vote. There is also an Animal Justice Party crossbencher, but that party is rather left-leaning, and an Independent, Jeremy Buckingham, but he was elected as a Greens candidate so probably doesn’t find much common ground with the government.

Current party distribution in the NSW Legislative Council

Stripping away the currently contested positions, we see the Coalition’s dominance greatly diminished, with the Liberal-National block and the Labor-Greens block both holding nine seats. This is because 2011, when the current candidates were elected, was a very strong year for the Coalition. It will be hard for them to preserve this position in 2019.

Continuing members of the NSW Legislative Council

The abolition of ticket voting before the 2003 election drastically reduced the prominence of minor parties. Since then, the Coalition has never won less than seven seats (2003) in the upper house, and the ALP has never won less than five (2011). The Greens have always won two, except in 2011 when they won three, and the CDP and SFF have consistently won 1 each. Since this is not predicted to be a landslide one way or another, we would expect these parties to at least meet these minimums again short of a minor party facing some kind of catastrophe.

Projection including historic minimum returns for each party

Factoring these in, we see a closer but still Coalition-favouring spread. It is starting to look like the cross-bench will be both powerful and fragmented.

For the remaining five seats, we turn to the polling. While we have repeatedly seen issues with lower-house polling being applied to the upper house, the lower house numbers are the only ones we have. Both Newspoll and Reachtel have the Greens polling around 10%, which translates to the expected two seats, and a similar figure for ‘Other’ which presumably accounts for the CDP and SSF seats.

Labor is pegged at around 35% primary vote (Newspoll 36%, Reachtel 34.1%) which would amount to seven seats, rivaling the seven already assigned to the Coalition. Given the constant talk of how neck-and-neck this race is, it makes sense that both parties would be looking at picking up a similar number of seats.

The Coalition, polled as a single group, received 35.7% support in the Reachtel poll, worth 7 seats, and 40% in Newspoll, worth over 8 seats. It is therefore hard to tell whether to give the Coalition another seat, but it has to be said they are more likely to gain one than the ALP on these numbers and the Reachtel result is lower than any poll result for the Coalition since the ALP switched leaders in November. I’m therefore going to side with the Newspoll result and give an eighth seat to the Liberal-National Coalition.

One Nation has been polling well enough to show up in the polls as its own category since this time last year, in part due to their selection of high-profile Council candidate and former federal Labor leader Mark Latham. They are polling over 5%, worth 1 seat, and I would be surprised if they did not get this.

That leaves one seat open. I don’t expect any unmentioned minor party to emerge and snatch it, as none have the profile to generate this level of support. The CDP and SFF are already dependent of preference flows for around half of their first seat, so would be hard pressed to take it. One Nation is better placed, but will probably run out of steam shortly after claiming their first seat. And while the Animal Justice Party did monopolise the left-wing minor party options in 2015, with less than 2% of the vote I’m not convinced that wasn’t a fluke. The only other minor candidate with a shot would be the current Independent, Jeremy Buckingham, though he was elected as a Greens candidate and I’m not convinced we has the name recognition to win again without a party behind him. (People may have been seeing a lot of United Australia Party advertising recently, but they are really just focussed on the federal election.)

I think One Nation and the AJP are outside chances, but it’s more likely that the last seat will fall to a major(ish) party: Labor, Liberal, Greens or Nationals. We already gave the Coalition a dubious 8th so I’m doubtful they can make a ninth. Labor’s polling is closer to an 8th seat than the Greens’ is to a third, though I think the Greens have a pretty good shot and a precedent for winning a third seat.

I’m therefore giving the last seat to the ALP, but as always the final place is a wild contest, so in descending order of likelihood I’d suggest the alternatives: Greens, One Nation, Coalition and Animal Justice.

Prediction for the 2019 NSW Legislative Council