Tuesday 21 March 2023

NSW Legislative Council

The NSW Legislative Council has 21 seats up for election through single electorate proportional representation. That means that there are 21 other seats that are carrying over:

 Liberal
 National
 Labor
 Green
 One Nation
 Shooters, Farmers and Fishers
 Animal Justice.

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There is no direct polling of Legislative Council voting intention, but assuming this mirrors the Legislative Assembly, The primary vote would elect:

7.98 Coalition candidates (38% of 21 seats)

7.98 Labor candidates (38% of 21 seats)

1.68 Greens candidates (8% of 21 seats)

It is very likely this will convert after preferences to at least 8 seats each for the Coalition and Labor:

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With four unknowns, and a long push for Labor or Coalition to gain a 9th seat, it seems likely that minor parties will fill the remainder. SFF have not polled over 2% (0.42 LegCo seats) since the start of 2022, but a recent(ish) Roy Morgan poll puts One Nation at 8.5% (1.79 seats). With a remainder of  0.68 seats, it's in the realm of possibility for the greens to pick up another, as may One Nation:

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The final is anyone's guess, depending of what minor party can scrape enough preferences together to float to the top of the pack, which is entirely speculative even without NSW's option to not number every candidate. For colour-thematic reasons I'll propose Independent, but really this is a total tossup and more likely to be a party like Animal Justice, SFF or Legalise Canabis.

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There's no motivation to form a permanent coalition in the Legislative Council, but assuming the Coalition has minority control of the Legislative Assembly (see previous post), they will need the support of six crossbench councilors to pass controversial legislation. This is unlikely to be the Greens for ideological reasons, requiring support from all ONP and two of the remaining three crossbenchers, adding to the complexity of the next government. Conversely, to block Coalition bills or support their own legislation a Labor-Greens alliance would only require 2 or 3 crossbenchers respectively.

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