So how do we analyse the relative strengths of the micro parties, who got the best deals?

This question might be reframed as which micro party requires the fewest votes to have an even chance of election?

To test this out, I did the following:

• Run repeated simulations of the upper house counts for each of the regions
• Perform logistic regression of the outcomes for individual parties against their own primary votes.
• Plotted that below

The parties who have the best deals (i.e. the deals which will harvest the most preferences) are those whose probability rapidly rises as their primary vote increases.

Here are the results!

The two most outstanding deals are definitely Sustainable Australia in SMR and the Transport Matters Party in EMR.

Now we can go through each region in-depth, and give the percentage required to have a cointoss (50:50) chance of election.

• Eastern Metropolitan Region
  • Transport Matters Party: 0.35%
  • Health Australia Party: 2.18%
• Eastern Victoria Region:
  • Shooters, Fishers and Farmers: >3.00%
• Northern Metropolitan Region
  • Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party: 1.23%
• Northern Victoria Region
  • Liberal Democrats: 1.84%
• South Eastern Metropolitan Region
  • Liberal Democrats: 1.00%
• Southern Metropolitan Region
  • Sustainable Australia: 0.30%
• Western Metropolitan Region
  • Aussie Battler Party: 1.24%
• Western Victoria Region
  • Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party: 2.32%

Ok so who’s going to get elected?

The really strong parties from the previous chart are definitely those who need a fraction of a vote, but also the Liberal Democrats who benefit greatly from name confusion.

In fact, even though the Eastern Victoria Region looks comparatively difficult to get elected (small votes don’t help here), it still looks really good for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers or Liberal Democrats who have great ballot position! All eight regions could come away with a micro party winner, and an absolute mess of a cross bench!

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Thomas Clement