"...except for all those other forms..."

With the honeymoon of the early election announcement over, and a long way to wait until the campaigning starts in full force, we are now well and truly in the limbo of nothing much happening. If there is nothing to write about, I won't belabour (or beliberal) the point by writing space filler, so this blog might go into kryogenic storage for a few weeks. However there are a few more things I plan to discuss first, so that won't be happening for a month or so at the bare minimum. This week, however, we'll be taking a pretty laid back, psephologically light approach after the number crunching of the last fortnight.

Some of you may have noticed that this upload did not magically appear on Friday. The reason for this is that I am now working full-time, so I'll be doing most of my writing on the weekends. I'll be aiming for Saturday evening uploads, so you can peruse my latest posts on lazy Sunday mornings, as you recline in your suave smoking jackets and muse distractedly over your coffee and a crossword or two.



This. This is my new target audience.

Unfortunately, on occasion, delays may mean a Sunday morning update. Or, on certain particular occasions - e.g. next week - I may strive for a Friday upload. But, as women and men of leisure I hope this will not overly inconvenience you. If you want, you can check in after your Sunday post-lunch polo match to ensure there is a new upload. Or you can just ask your valet to keep checking for updates.

This post's title is taken from Winston Churchill's famous speech after being voted out of office: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

I do not automatically agree with the more common paraphrasing of this quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." I am not convinced that democracy is the best possible system of rule, or even that it is necessarily the best system proposed so far. I will, however, agree with the words of Winnie; there has not been a better system of government successfully imposed in recorded history, if we judge it on its ideals, its practicality, its treatment of the people and its shortcomings.

Australian democracy is, I feel, the worst example of democracy, "except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." I do not believe it is perfect, I do not believe it is the best possible form of democracy, and I do not believe it is even the best proposed form of democracy. I have spent the last two weeks criticising compulsory voting and suggesting alternative theoretical electoral systems. But we are very lucky to have such a robust, reliable and something-else-beginning-with-r system, so this week I am going to look at what is so good about Australian elections, and applaud the AEC for the fantastic work it does.

Those Who Cannot Remember the Past are Condemned to Repeat HIST1001:

ATHENS: Everyone should be well aware that democracy started in Ancient Greece. The Athenian system was simple. The Legislative Assembly (which passed the laws) was composed of all eligible citizens. There were also "elected" officials. And by "elected", I mostly mean "selected by lottery".

Old School Responsible Government

It is fun to imagine the election officials of Ancient Greece as elderly women in bingo halls. There were systems in place to attempt to limit incompetence (e.g. most positions were part of larger councils, and positions could not be held more than once (or twice in the case of boule)). Only 10% of officials - mostly those in charge of finance and military - were elected in the sense we recognise today.

The short comings of this form of democracy are obvious - even if you happen to fluke an entirely competent government, you could have corrupt, fanatical or extremist officials enforcing (or not enforcing) the law. Also, every eligible citizen needs to organise, understand and pass the laws of the land. And eligible citizens did not include women, slaves, people under 20 years of age, foreigners or anyone without land.

SPARTA: Less well known is that the mortal enemies of the Athenians were also democratic. Their voting system was a range voting system, the same basic idea that I proposed here. Range voting lets you voice your support qualitatively. You can offer a little support or a lot of support for each candidate (or, in my system, negative support) so that the voices of those who actually care drown out those who don't.

Athenians, including apparently Aristotle, considered this to be vulgar, barbaric and childish. Mostly because instead of using ballots (as I proposed) or pebbles (like the Athenians (the Greek word for pebble - psephos - is the origin of the term psephology)) winners were determined by how loudly the audience shouted for them. The loud-guy-behind-you-on-the-bus must have been an important demographic in Sparta.

ROME: Once the Greek city states had killed each other off, then been killed of by foreigners, then finally conquered by the Roman Empire, democracy really began to spread. The Roman Senate was the start of representative democracy, where people voted for rulers rather than the laws themselves. This freed many people up for other important duties including capturing foreign slaves, masacering foreigners, and watching foreign slaves being massacred for sport. The Romans perfected many of the basics of modern democracy, including corruption, gerrymandering, concentrating power in the hands of the wealthy and overthrowing the system to become supreme ruler.

POST-ROME: The fall of Rome ushered in the Dark Ages, which were very politically complex. By the middle ages, much of the world was ruled once more by tyrants, monarchs and the church. There were some exceptions, however. In many cases this was only democratic in the sense of a few high-ranked warlords being beaten into submission and accepting (rather than electing) a ruler. Later - for example in the Italian republics or Papal elections - politics continued under the guise of democracy, although even a cursory glance at the history of these states will reveal corruption on a level that would make Old Rome blush. Think of the Medici, or the Borgia. Less is known of the Slavic Veches, but these were also be dominated by the rich and powerful.

BENGAL: A group of Bengalese rulers did democratically (and by all accounts voluntarily) elect a King in 750 AD, but as a King he was succeeded by his son and the following Pala dynesty. As such, it's not really a democracy.

VIKINGS: When not busy pillaging, the Vikings practiced a form of democracy. Viking councils elected chieftains and passed laws. One of the major draw backs was that there was no separation of powers - the councils created the laws and judged criminals. This law was them memorised and recited as needed by a particular individual, which allowed rampant corruption and gave little hope for impartiality. On the upside, these councils were called "things", which makes the wikipedia page a gem:

It is known from North-Germanic cultures that the balancing institution was the thing...

...the local things were represented at the higher-level thing...

At the thing, disputes were solved and political decisions were made.

The thing met at regular intervals...

the king realized that he was powerless against the thing and gave in. 

JAPAN: There are reports that the city of Sakai in Japan also had glimmers of democratic elections among its ruling merchant class, but was still subject to the feudal lords that ruled Japan. These elections appear to have been conducted by the elite for the elite, and although I have found very little documentation on the subject it seems likely that this was not entirely dissimilar to the type of democracy practised in the Italian Republics.

BRITAIN: Britain had a form of democratic government which arguably dated back to the Magna Carta. This was a long, slow transition from an absolute monarchy to a democratic constitutional monarchy that continues to evolve today. British elections, like many other current elections are First Past the Post (FPTP), unlike Australia's preferential system. Imagine, if you will, a four party race for a single seat, as we showed at the start of the month.

Remember this graphic?

Now, if you will recall, the defining issue of this particular election was in relation to chicken wings. The Chicken Wing party has a controversial stance, only supported by 32% of the voters - less than a third. The rest of the parties agree on their opposition, accounting for the remaining 68%. In FPTP the Chicken Wing party wins. In other words, one unpopular party can win because several other popular parties dilute the opposing vote.

In these kings of systems, it is often said that a vote for a minor party is a wasted vote. This means you are better off voting for the lesser of two (or three) evils among the main contenders, rather than voting for the party you support the most. Another common sentiment is that if you didn't vote for the second-place contestant, you effectively voted for the winner since all you really did was deprive the second-placer of a much needed vote.

USA: Much of the American elections suffer from a similar problem. In the Bush-Gore presidential election (2000) Gore lost several important seats by a small margin, and exit polls suggest that many of those who voted for a third option - Mr Nader - would have tipped the election in Gore's favour in a preferential system. Mr Nader drew off a few Democratic supporters that would otherwise have preferred Gore, which means the presence of a left-wing candidate may have won the election for the right-wing Republicans.

Bush won in 2000 by five electoral college votes. This means that if three of those votes switched hands, Gore would have won. 49 of the states (not counting Montana or Maine but counting Washington D.C. as a defacto state) are won in a block, and the number of electoral college votes for each state are the number of senators for that state plus the number of representatives the house of representatives. Since each state has two senators and at least one house representative, every state is guaranteed three electoral college votes. This means if any state other than Montana and Maine was skewed by Mr Nader syphoning of voters from Gore then Gore could have won in 2000 and Geroge W. Bush may never have been the President of America.

This is the pro-choice, gay-rights supporting environmentalist that gave the world George W. Bush

Beneath our Radiant Southern Cross:

With exhaustive preferential voting and compulsory attendance, I'm pretty happy with the Australian political system really. I'm not to thrilled by the way people are coerced into voting when they don't care (giving the illusion of compulsory voting) but I quite like compulsory attendance. It means everyone definitely had the opportunity to cast a vote. I just think there should be an official, formalised way to declare that they do not wish their vote to be counted, rather than the skullduggery of informal voting. 

Given how much time and effort the AEC puts into ensuring people remember how to cast a valid vote each year, I wonder how many people know the system well enough to actually consider casting an invalid vote on purpose.

At this point I would like to repeat my admiration for the excellent work the AEC does. Around the country they will arrange and construct great numbers of booths out of rigid card; print and distribute electoral rolls; manufacture the randomised upper and lower house ballots and send them to the correct seats AND to any polling places where voters will be when away from home; count, and supervise the counting, of votes including postal, early and overseas votes; checking each form to determine if it is invalid and that no one forgot to include the number 37 on the white ballot when voting below the line; distributing and redistributing and reredistributing preferences (remember that some upper house ballots have over 50 names!); collating and announcing the results and packing up again afterwards.

And that is just the federal elections. The AEC will also run elections right down to workplace-level union votes and, if you were willing to pay, would probably even do a school's S.R.C. elections! And it has a top-notch education programme as well. (e.g.)

To compare, the US presidential election last year had voting machines that would not let you vote for certain candidates, people from one state could not vote if they were travelling, voting booths were divided by curtains that could be subtly drawn aside and the counting was chaotic.

THANK YOU AEC!

Next Week:

Next week I will be striving to get a post up by Friday, despite what I said about your regular update time being moved to Saturdays. Why? Tasmanian Legislative Council elections of Saturday, dear friends. Predictions to follow!

More Donkeying Around

The last time I did a two-part post it was to provide details of the maths relating to my Variable-Dependent Transparency Arrays, and in between the news of the papal election broke and I had to wait an extra week to get my more topical post out.

This week I'm out in the field, so I couldn't provide a more topical post if I tried. And again, the need for a two-parter was caused by the desire not to overload you with maths that, I assure you, makes perfect sense in my head. Most of the maths this time is pretty basic, relying mostly on ratios, averages and differences but it is always ten times harder to explain in words than it is to actually do the maths.

The Story So Far:

So, we have been looking for a method to determined the prevalence of Donkey Voting, that statistically irritating practice of voting 1, 2, 3, 4 from top to bottom regardless of candidate order. The problem, of course, has been isolating these votes from those of people who voted 1, 2, 3, 4 from top to bottom as the result of reasoned decision-making.

Purely looking at the portion of votes received by first-place candidates is obviously going to overlook some major factors such as the fact that certain major parties regularly receive more votes than other minor ones.

It turns out that comparing their proportion of the vote in a given division against their parties national average is highly unreliable, giving an average of 3.05 and a standard deviation (σ) of 12.04 among parties that led the ballot, and compared to an average of 4.06 for all candidates and a σ of 11.86. In both cases the σ value is several times greater than the mean, and using the 68-95-99.7 rule we can expect a spread greater than ± 30. Given the mean is only around 5% of the range, we may as well call it 0 ± 30.

Some of the main factors affecting this calculation are that candidates will perform much better given fewer opposiing candidates, and will collect a larger portion of the vote when there is no other party competing for their support base (i.e. they are the only left-wing or right-wing party). It is also important to realise that, with the exception of the ALP and Greens, no party contested every seat and thus had a national primary vote undermined by at least a few seats where they received 0% of the vote.

Early results using only the 2010 federal election data suggest more reliable results can be obtained by looking at each parties overall average swing and comparing the average swing it received in seats where it lead the ballot. Further examination against other elections is needed, but it seems that first-place candidates regularly receive a notably greater swing than second-place or last-place candidates on this scale.

Because the swing compares each candidate's result against their performance (or, if a party has changed candidate, their predecessor's performance) in the previous election, it is not affected by the first two distorting factors mentioned for the previous method, assuming that the seat maintains a similar number of candidates belonging to similar parties. The greater the difference from election to election, the less reliable this method is likely to be. This method is not affected by parties who do not contest certain seats, either.

The Good, The Bad and The Intricate:

So far there has been one method that just plain does not work, and one that might. Here is a third, more complex method.

If a donkey voter ranks the candidates from top to bottom, and the first candidate is eliminated, their vote will pass to the second candidate. If we can determine the normal flow of preferences from one candidate to the others, we can see how many more votes than normal flow on to candidate two.

For example our great and glorious leader, Antony Green, proposed as rough guide for predicting preference flows in the WA state elections that 70% of Greens votes flow to Labor on a two-party preferred basis, and 75% Nationals votes flow to the Liberals.

If we find the average proportion of, say, Greens votes that flow to Labor and the Liberals then we could predict how the preferences would flow in a three candidate race between them if the Greens candidate dropped out first. Lets use Antony's 70% figure for this example.

In most cases 70% of Greens preferences flow to the ALP. In a case where the Greens candidate lead the ballot and the Liberals were placed second, however, lets say 35% of the vote passed to the Liberals. This is 5% greater than expected, and we could propose that 5% of Greens supporters in that seat donkey voted as an explanation for this deviation from the average. (Note that only Greens voters can be donkey voters in this example, since our definition of a donkey vote requires them to place a 1 next to the top (i.e. Greens) candidate.)

If 20% of voters voted for the greens, and 5% of these are donkey voters, then 1% of voters in that seat are donkey voters.

This method is very rough and that 5% variation could be the result of atypical political ideas in the voting public of that seat or the result of some division-specific factor. However, on a large scale this may yield an average figure for donkey voters as a proportion of the voting community.

Of course, determining the average flow of preferences is the hard part. If I had access to the ballots themselves - or for example if the AEC produced for each division a table listing the number of people who voted 123, the number voting 132 and do forth - then this would be quite simple. Instead we will have to try and calculate this another way.

One simple approach is to focus entirely on districts during the first redistribution of votes, and take an average of the portion of votes directed to each other party. In 2010, across all the seats in which Australia First was eliminated in round 1 and the Liberals also contested the seat, an average 13.94% of Australia First's vote passed to the Liberals.

The Carers Alliance and Communists both lost a single division on the first redistribution, so the figures in red are not really an average but a single result.

Note that these figures rarely add up to 100%, because parties contest different seats. To explain this, imagine Parties A, B and C contest a seat and that Party A is the first to drop out. Party A's votes are then distributed 70% to the like minded B party and 30% to the C party.

This is the only seat that A and B both contested which A lost in the first round, however there is another seat contested by A, C and D which A came lowest in as well. The votes of A are split 50-50 between Parties C and D. Thus A's votes are split with 70% going to B, 50% to D and an average of 40% to C, adding up to 160%. Now, it is easy to correct this so that the rows do sum to 100% simply be dividing by the original total then multiplying by 100 thus:

However, this overlooks a key point:

The proportions of a vote that passes on to another party relies upon which other parties are contesting the seat. Thus 30% of the A votes flow to C if B also contests the election, and 50% if it doesn't. In other words we need to compare apples with apples again, and only compare seats contested by an identical set of parties.

As we saw last week, there are very few cases where divisions are contested by candidates from the exact same set of parties. The most common case is the divisions contested by the ALP, Liberals and Greens only - and even then this amounts to only six divisions. To take an average of vote redistributions from seats where the parties contesting are directly comparable (and thus must also contain no independents) is not going to yield reliable results over a single election given the small sample sizes.

Instead, if I want to look at the preference flows of Party A to parties B, C and D, I take the average flows of all seats lost by A in the first round of which B, C and D are a subset of the contesting candidates. I would therefore look at the flows in seats contested by {A, B, C, D, E}, {A, B, C, D, F} and {A, B, C, D, G, H} as well. This is a less refined approach but will hopefully iron out any outliers far better.

This will all be much clearer once we get down to actual cases. There are 20 seats where the first party eliminated was at the top of the ballot (Aston, Bonner, Bradfield, Dawson, Dobell, Dunkley, Fowler, Gippsland, Gorton, Kingston, Lingiari, Lyons, Mackellar, McPherson, Menzies, Mitchell, Moore, Rankin, Scullin and Werriwa). These are the ones we are interested in, since we want to know how much of their vote passed on to second place, compared to what we would normally expect.

Results:

To begin with Bradfield (NSW), the three candidates were (in order):

1. GEMMELL, Susie (Greens)
2. GALLARD, Sarah (ALP)
3. FLETCHER, Paul (Liberal)

With 14,231 votes, the Greens ranked the lowest of the three and was eliminated. 10,977 of these votes flowed on to the ALP, the remaining 3,254 passing to the Liberals. This is a 77.13% flow to the ALP, while 22.87% of the votes flow to the Liberals.

In all the seats where the Greens are eliminated first and both the ALP and Liberals are present to receive a share of the votes (i.e. Canberra, Barton, Bradfield, Mackellar, Werriwa, Braddon) the average Labor flow is 75.19% and the Average Liberal flow is 22.87% (adjusted to ensure that the two equal 100% of the votes).

The flow in Bradfield is 1.94 pp higher than the average. This could be artificially boosted a little if any of those comparison seats also contained another party leaching some of the Greens flow-on vote. (As it happens they do not.)


This is equivalent to 1.94% of the 14,231 redistributed votes (which must contain all of the donkey votes), or 276 donkey votes.

Below, the same process is applied to all seats where the first-place candidate is eliminated first, except Moore. Since Moore is the only seat where One Nation was the first candidate to be eliminated and had a CDP candidate, the only comparable seat to determine the predicted flow for Moore is Moore itself. This means the actual and theoretical flows are identical, and the 'Lift' = 0 pp for all remaining candidates.

Independents have to be ignored in calculating predicted flow for obvious reasons (namely that there can be no comparable seats since only the division in question is contested by that particular independent). For this reason, Independents are not factored into the Redistribution Percent.

The seat of Lingiari has only one other comparable seat, due to the presence of the Country Liberals, a Northern Territory specific party. If we treat the Country Liberals and Liberal Party as equivalent, the results are as follows:

And yes, technically NT is a territory, not a state. Live with it.

There is only one division out of the 19 reviewed here where the first-place party performed worse than the predicted flow would suggest: Gippsland (VIC) by -1.21 percentage points.

The average 'Lift' for first-place candidates is 11.06 pp (11.98 pp if Lingiari uses broader Liberal Party data), and the average number of calculated donkey votes is 395. The average electoral division has around 82,500 voters. At around 400 donkey votes per seat, that is a donkey vote rate of 0.48%.

Final Thoughts:

When I began working on this week's method of calculating donkey votes, I was tempted to calculate a basic table of preference flows, then move on to second round eliminations. Because we would know how many votes the second eliminated party got from the first, and we would know their probable preference flows, we could determine the preference flows of the second eliminated party, and then the third, and so on to refine our averages.

I decided against this for many reasons. Firstly time. Secondly, I can see errors accumulating, so that a tiny inaccuracy from the average of first round eliminations would add to any inaccuracy in the second round and so on. Thirdly, if you really want a reliable measure of preference flows (and, for that matter, exactly how many people voted 1, 2, 3, 4) you need the original ballots.

We have seen, over the last few weeks, estimates of the donkey vote rate ranging from around 2.34% to less than half of a percent. However, over the population of several thousand voters, donkey voting can potentially make a difference, especially in a preferential voting system like ours where a single vote can determine who gets eliminated after each round, and the flow of preferences that this entails. Even at a rate of 0.48% of a percent, there were almost 60,000 donkey voters last federal election. That is big enough to form a seperate electoral district - Lingiari had less than 46,500 registered voters in 2010.

Compulsory Voting: Don't be a Donkey.

Data Dump

This is a supplement to the post above. This does not count towards my limit of one post per week, and should be read in conjunction with the post to which it refers.

Pretty short Data Dump this week.

Flow of Preferences During First Redistribution: 

DIVISION	FIRST ELIMINATED PARTY	RECEIVING PARTIES
		ALP	Liberal	Greens	Nationals	One Nation	CDP	LDP	Family First	Climate Sceptics	Australian Sex Party	Carers Alliance	Democrats	Secular Party of Australia	Building Australia Party	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	Australia First	Equal Parenting	Socialist Alliance	Socialist Equality Party	Communist	Country Liberals	DLP	LNQ
Adelaide	LDP	15.78%	42.60%	19.55%					5.87%				11.87%						4.33%
Aston	Family First	32.15%	46.98%	20.88%
Ballarat	Family First	26.11%	54.12%	19.77%
Banks	One Nation	27.34%	36.55%	36.11%
Barker	Climate Sceptics	25.20%	30.04%	14.64%					30.11%
Barton	Greens	77.24%	22.76%
Bass	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	29.00%	30.55%	40.45%
Batman	Democrats	26.49%	17.98%	38.64%					16.89%
Bendigo	Family First	23.79%	56.91%	19.30%
Bennelong	Building Australia	22.35%	20.00%	12.94%		5.88%	5.29%	4.12%	7.06%	7.65%	7.06%	7.65%
Berowra	Family First	14.52%	25.60%	14.05%			28.45%
Blair	Independent	18.61%		29.78%					30.64%															20.97%
Blaxland	Not Affiliated	20.83%	20.14%	6.29%		1.91%														2.83%
Bonner	Democrats	20.52%		43.61%					9.88%															16.33%
Boothby	Secular Party of Australia	14.84%	9.35%	39.35%				8.71%	2.26%	6.77%			10.97%
Bowman	Democrats	24.74%		21.22%		11.59%			26.56%															15.89%
Braddon	Greens	73.51%	26.49%
Bradfield	Greens	77.13%	22.87%
Brand	CDP	5.87%	21.57%	6.89%					65.67%
Brisbane	Socialist Alliance	17.29%		58.44%					16.88%															7.39%
Bruce	Family First	26.34%	45.19%	28.47%
Calare	Independent	12.11%		11.23%	24.16%		4.18%
Calwell	Socialist Equality Party	18.80%	8.13%	43.01%					30.06%
Canberra	Greens	80.36%	19.64%
Canning	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	12.56%	13.23%	21.30%			34.75%		18.16%
Capricornia	Secular Party of Australia	15.46%		32.61%					14.01%															6.76%
Casey	Family First	21.77%	57.26%	20.96%
Charlton	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	30.53%	23.27%	14.87%			8.40%
Chifley	Australia First	17.39%	9.12%	28.84%		17.50%	8.48%						18.66%
Chisholm	Secular Party of Australia	21.00%	14.77%	45.37%					18.86%
Cook	Family First	17.66%	21.42%	22.39%		9.04%	15.72%
Corangamite	LDP	8.65%	41.15%	11.73%					23.27%
Corio	Socialist Alliance	21.11%	7.62%	50.88%					20.39%
Cowan	Family First	14.14%	27.22%	26.80%			31.83%
Cowper	CDP	8.39%		5.79%	70.97%
Cunningham	Equal Parenting	24.52%	34.03%	22.34%															19.11%
Curtin	CDP	18.71%	63.17%	18.12%
Dawson	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	12.20%		9.95%					35.74%															42.11%
Deakin	Australia First	13.90%	17.63%	12.88%				4.41%	20.34%
Denison	Socialist Alliance	26.75%	11.45%	30.37%
Dickson	LDP	11.71%		20.15%					11.13%															37.04%
Dobell	CDP	12.27%	45.79%	6.18%					35.76%
Dunkley	Family First	33.26%	42.71%	24.03%
Durack	CDP	7.05%	16.77%	7.23%	10.79%				58.16%
Eden-Monaro	Independent	14.31%	13.42%	5.55%			2.50%	8.05%	3.94%
Fadden	One Nation	24.22%		24.98%					29.55%															21.25%
Fairfax	Family First	14.97%		29.56%																				55.46%
Farrer	Democrats	16.25%	18.57%	15.26%			13.43%							4.98%
Fisher	Family First	20.22%		33.48%																				46.30%
Flinders	Family First	27.39%	49.27%	23.34%
Flynn	Democrats	31.56%		10.63%					19.38%															21.72%
Forde	Family First	23.87%		31.91%																				44.21%
Forrest	CDP	6.22%	25.65%	4.06%	7.43%				56.65%
Fowler	Socialist Equality Party	23.56%	54.74%	21.70%
Franklin	Independent	26.54%	35.78%	37.68%
Fraser	Secular Party of Australia	28.69%	29.61%	41.70%
Fremantle	Democrats	35.37%	16.08%	20.26%			9.97%		7.23%										11.09%
Gellibrand	Socialist Equality Party	17.26%	6.32%	27.37%					7.37%										41.68%
Gilmore	Secular Party of Australia	18.55%	14.55%	27.27%			7.27%	20.73%	11.64%
Gippsland	Family First	15.86%		10.43%	50.49%			23.22%
Goldstein	Family First	27.55%	45.41%	27.04%
Gorton	Family First	47.77%	25.71%	26.52%
Grayndler	Socialist Alliance	10.86%	7.14%	47.06%									3.33%							31.60%
Greenway	Democrats	17.20%	14.93%	16.45%			7.18%	12.48%	3.02%						10.21%		2.84%
Grey	Family First	23.29%	50.09%	26.62%
Griffith	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	16.00%		25.71%				6.86%	17.71%															10.29%
Groom	Independent	16.08%		20.29%					35.20%															28.42%
Hasluck	Climate Sceptics	5.94%	14.47%	26.35%			14.66%		19.11%
Herbert	Family First	20.53%		33.96%																				45.51%
Higgins	Family First	12.23%	45.82%	21.62%
Hindmarsh	Climate Sceptics	19.31%	30.14%	22.20%					14.08%				14.26%
Hinkler	Independent	9.18%		7.36%					13.05%															15.59%
Holt	Secular Party of Australia	16.88%	26.68%	29.51%					26.93%
Hotham	Secular Party of Australia	14.93%	21.76%	43.88%					19.42%
Hughes	LDP	23.73%	42.51%	9.92%		5.27%	8.97%		9.60%
Hume	LDP	14.70%	44.86%	13.20%			5.85%		11.53%				9.86%
Hunter	CDP	17.44%		10.78%	56.19%	15.58%
Indi	Democrats	17.53%	20.17%	24.39%					8.87%
Isaacs	Independent	18.38%	23.76%	33.36%					24.50%
Jagajaga	Secular Party of Australia	21.43%	15.71%	48.21%					14.64%
Kennedy	Family First	14.39%		19.11%																				21.07%
Kingsford Smith	Socialist Equality Party	26.91%	13.37%	29.17%		7.81%							22.74%
Kingston	Democrats	17.96%	19.74%	47.83%					14.47%
Kooyong	Family First	18.40%	59.91%	21.70%
La Trobe	LDP	12.10%	34.07%	27.43%					13.46%		12.95%
Lalor	Independent	13.17%	7.56%	18.05%					3.41%					6.34%
Leichhardt	Independent	19.08%		9.91%					6.77%															14.71%
Lilley	Independent	18.90%		28.28%					32.02%															20.80%
Lindsay	Australia First	16.60%	15.06%	5.74%			9.84%		19.16%
Lingiari	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	8.12%		13.83%																		58.81%
Longman	Democrats	36.68%		14.67%				3.47%	14.09%															7.72%
Lyne	Independent	12.63%		15.53%	24.74%
Lyons	Secular Party of Australia	26.45%	50.60%	22.95%
Macarthur	Building Australia	23.05%	19.73%	10.74%		13.09%	6.84%		18.55%				8.01%
Mackellar	Greens	78.54%	21.46%
Macquarie	Carers Alliance	15.57%	12.18%	22.84%			6.77%	5.58%	10.83%								7.28%
Makin	Climate Sceptics	15.65%	12.47%	18.58%		24.69%		12.22%	11.00%				5.38%
Mallee	Family First	21.81%		19.79%	58.39%
Maranoa	Family First	15.08%		16.77%																				38.01%
Maribyrnong	Democrats	23.07%	20.69%	38.29%					17.95%
Mayo	Climate Sceptics	11.45%	19.39%	10.84%					12.98%				18.78%
McEwen	Secular Party of Australia	21.49%	21.49%	22.22%				10.38%	24.41%
McMahon	CDP	27.70%	53.51%	18.79%
McMillan	Independent	33.73%	19.96%	15.51%					30.80%
McPherson	Family First	28.96%		24.41%																				46.62%
Melbourne	Democrats	18.60%	16.11%	28.74%					9.30%		17.61%			9.63%
Melbourne Ports	Secular Party of Australia	14.64%	8.84%	29.56%					6.08%		40.88%
Menzies	Family First	16.22%	48.24%	35.55%
Mitchell	CDP	24.24%	62.38%	13.38%
Moncrieff	Family First	18.93%		32.24%																				48.83%
Moore	One Nation	13.39%	42.90%	14.28%			12.03%		17.40%
Moreton	Democrats	24.85%		27.41%					24.66%															23.08%
Murray	Secular Party of Australia	13.42%	32.11%	16.32%			3.42%		6.05%							28.68%	1.00%	1.00%	1.00%	1.00%	1.00%	1.00%	1.00%	1.00%
New England	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	8.17%		9.48%	22.88%	16.99%
Newcastle	Socialist Equality Party	14.51%	9.25%	19.46%			8.77%						17.54%						30.46%
North Sydney	Family First	15.41%	40.71%	25.92%									17.96%
O'Connor	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	8.80%	14.67%	22.67%	13.07%		9.87%		19.20%
Oxley	Family First	25.69%		29.09%																				45.22%
Page	Democrats	21.40%		14.55%	19.23%
Parkes	Independent	13.98%		8.39%	33.28%
Parramatta	Socialist Alliance	17.88%	14.24%	24.85%			10.61%													25.76%
Paterson	Not Affiliated	15.57%	38.52%	5.80%		8.44%	1.58%		4.75%
Pearce	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	18.42%	20.18%	14.91%	20.39%		8.99%		17.11%
Perth	Socialist Alliance	14.40%	11.97%	48.22%			5.66%		19.74%
Petrie	Democrats	41.26%		19.02%				10.91%	23.50%															5.31%
Port Adelaide	Family First	28.56%	35.24%	36.20%
Rankin	Family First	19.67%		30.72%																				49.61%
Reid	Socialist Equality Party	21.86%	22.75%	36.85%			18.53%
Richmond	Democrats	16.53%	9.76%	15.14%	13.35%
Riverina	Family First	17.67%	5.92%	10.36%	16.84%	8.97%	6.57%	16.10%
Robertson	Independent	12.68%	6.70%	23.55%		3.80%	1.09%	3.08%	6.52%
Ryan	Family First	11.50%		18.88%																				44.63%
Scullin	Family First	46.02%	31.97%	22.01%
Shortland	Secular Party of Australia	25.67%	16.95%	26.34%		31.04%
Solomon	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	16.32%		24.70%		30.54%																28.44%
Stirling	Family First	12.41%	23.87%	21.72%			24.22%
Sturt	One Nation	13.32%	17.38%	22.57%				7.00%	18.74%				20.99%
Swan	Socialist Equality Party	26.38%	7.29%	33.17%			11.31%		8.29%		13.57%
Sydney	Communist	15.55%	7.32%	40.85%									6.40%	9.91%
Tangney	Family First	14.51%	25.30%	25.88%			35.31%
Throsby	Equal Parenting	22.57%	15.67%	26.83%	34.92%
Wakefield	Democrats	23.29%	18.07%	33.22%					25.42%
Wannon	Independent	8.99%	10.47%	12.48%					4.70%
Warringah	Secular Party of Australia	16.43%	17.67%	29.86%							36.04%
Watson	Independent	36.66%	35.53%	27.81%
Wentworth	Secular Party of Australia	13.82%	20.36%	33.09%								18.18%
Werriwa	Greens	64.37%	35.63%
Wide Bay	One Nation	13.44%		12.00%					45.07%															29.49%
Wills	Citizens Electoral Council of Australia	14.92%	17.48%	10.72%					32.40%				10.02%						14.45%
Wright	Independent	16.70%		23.59%					40.73%															18.98%

Seat by Seat distribution of votes after the elimination of one candidate as used to calculate average preference flows etc. Rows sometimes do not sum to 100% because Independents have been omitted.