Another year, another Group Voting Ticket dominated election. This particular year is interesting because of the tactics being employed by a certain ultra-micro, nerdy blockchaining, got fewer votes than the greatest politician of the modern era, lord Ricky Muir cough FLUX cough.

Their “Glen Druery might have sort of told us some sweet strategies” approach is hoping Western Australian electors love random party names rather than (realistically) disappointing big party names. This will benefit the parties involved including, the Fluoride Free Party, Family First, LDP, FLUX and the Daylight Savings Party. (Acronyms are just horrible, I can’t use FFP safely any more. Should just call Fluoride Free the $0F- party, but it doesn’t really roll off the tounge. Plus I’m sure using reserved characters like that isn’t a great idea … nah we’re good).

FLUX has taken this one step further and is running a series of random independent tickets, but unfortunately for them, this is totally 100% not going to work for them. (Spoilers: $0F- has the sweetest deal)

Oh yeah, also One Nation is running. And polling super well.

But the saddest part of the election is the fact that there’s no FLUX candidate for the new electorate of Bitcoin … uhh … Bicton

Ok but who’s going to get elected?

So this is a table of the probable outcomes for all of the different regions in the state

Party Total AGR EMR MPR NMR SMR SWR
Liberal Party + WA Nationals 13.27 2.19 1.97 2.48 2.44 2.06 2.13
WA Labor Party 13.90 2.05 2.94 1.69 2.09 2.88 2.25
WA Greens 1.86 0.05 0.13 0.27 0.59 0.34 0.48
Shooters and Fishers 1.26 0.86 0.01 0.31 0.00 0.01 0.07
One Nation 2.66 0.43 0.10 0.86 0.56 0.17 0.54
Liberal Democrats 0.54 0.40 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.01 0.11
Fluoride Free Party 0.77 0.00 0.54 0.04 0.04 0.00 0.15
Family First Party 0.32 0.00 0.00 0.01 0.11 0.14 0.06
Australian Christians 0.68 0.01 0.26 0.01 0.09 0.29 0.02
FLUX The System 0.43 0.00 0.01 0.31 0.01 0.00 0.10
Other 0.29 0.01 0.03 0.01 0.05 0.11 0.08

What does this mean?

Ok, so Western Australia has six different regions, which have massively varying populations, but all elect an equal number of seats (six per region). This means for control of the Legislative Council (the Western Australian Government’s Upper House) you need a total of 19 seats. Currently the LNP has 21 seats in total, but the polling is suggesting a massive swing against the sitting government. This means everything is up in the air. Will the disaffected voters vote for the opposition, for random minor parties or perhaps for a right wing alternative (One Nation)?

The above table (which incorporates the swing against the government) shows two very important features:

  • No majority for eather the LNP or the ALP
  • A swathe of potential minor parties filling up the cross bench

Ok, so what’s important in the above graph?

For each of the six regions, there’s a different micro party with the best preference deals:

Region Code Best Placed Mini/Micro Parties
Agricultural Region AGR One Nation, LDP, Shooters and Fishers
East Metropolitan Region EMR Fluoride Free Party, Australian Christians
Mining and Pastoral Region MPR FLUX, One Nation, Shooters and Fishers
North Metropolitan Region NMR One Nation
South Metropolitan Region SMR Australian Christians
South West Region SWR One Nation

But Tom, tell me more!

In the coming days I will investigate the winners and losers of each of the preference deals across the state. Suffice to say, the micro parties have given themselves a great chance of some (if not many) upsets.

geekLections

Thomas Clement