New WAs of Voting

Western Australia has changed how it elects its Legislative Council, now adopting a single, state-wide electoral district which elects 37 Councillors through proportional representation. For a Councillor to be elected, then, they need a quota of 1/38^th of the votes +1 (disregarding any remainder) or ~2.63% of the vote.

There isn’t, to my knowledge, any polling on people’s voting intentions in the 2025 Legislative Council election. However, historically, voting in the Council and Assembly has been generally comparable.

Notes: This chart only plots parties running in 2025 where they ran in the Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly in the same year.

This is somewhat surprising, as I would have expected the plethora of candidates on upper-house ballots to entice more voters away from the major parties who make up the predominant options in the lower-house.

Given there is little evidence that people vary their voting preference between the Legislative Assembly and Council despite radically different electoral processes, it is fair to assume the relatively minor change in counting method will not significantly divert the average voter.

The equivalence between voting in the two houses only seems to break down significantly when polling below about 1% or 1.5% where parties can perform better in the Council elections with poorer, or virtually absent, Assembly success; this may be a symptom of having candidates in only a handful (or less) Assembly races but access to much larger voter groups in the Council, a phenomena greatly exaggerated under the new system where state-wide exposure is available to Council candidates.

It is also worth noting that polls in the leadup to elections do not tend to overestimate “Other” voters, which one might assume was the case if undecideds weren’t attracted to any major party.

Note: Other here is defined as any party other than Labor, Liberal, National or Greens.

Current polling has Labor at 42%, Liberal at 32%, Greens at 12%, One Nation at 4% and Nationals at 3% of the primary vote.

From this we can safely assume on first preferences, with a little flexibility that’ll all wash out in the preference flows: 16 Labor Councillors, one National, 12 Liberal, four Greens with a fifth well on the way, one One Nation and a good start on a second.

That alone accounts for 34 of the 37 upper house seats, and would require Labor to pick up all three remaining to secure a majority. It’s still a very workable upper-house for Labor without this, though, with the ability to secure a clean majority on left-of-center issues by working with the Greens or on core business-as-usual matters by working with the Liberal party (e.g. supporting employment opportunities and keeping the economy afloat) if the minor parties start becoming too “activist” for the government’s liking.

There are three independents currently in the Legislative Council running in 2025: Kingston, Moermond and (following a recent legal name change) Trump. I don’t see all of these holding onto their seats. A high profile in the South West likely won’t carry any of these, though Mr. Aussie Trump may secure some support from fringe voters enamoured with the state of US politics.

Similar at-the-ballot impressions may favour the Animal Justice Party, Australian Christians, Legalise Cannabis, Stop Pedophiles! and to a lesser extent Libertarian and Sustainable Australia Parties. Shooters, Fishers and Farmers may also get support in key regional areas where they’ve built up a presence.

I’d suspect one of these to cut through on luck of the preference draw (taking a wild guess, based on past successes, Legalise Cannabis), Greens to get their fifth seat with aid of Animal Justice or Sustainable Australia, and One Nation to get their second from preferences of Libertarians and Australian Christians.