When is a win not a win ? Nine news calls the SA election for the Liberals

[chameleon54]

Nine news has called the SA election as a " win"  for the Liberals. With counting still well underway Nines computer modelling shows the Liberals currently holding 24 seats ( a majority win) Labor 17, independants 2 and several seats still in doubt. Nick Xenophon appears to have completely missed out on winning any seats.

After 16 years of Labor government the Liberals are going to have a huge job ahead, trying to restore the budget, provide some functionality to SA's health service and get the states economy moving again. They will also need to try to clean up the mess Labor has created in electricity generation and reduce power prices ( currently some of the most expensive in the world ). The ridiculous cost of electricity has directly resulted in businesses leaving the state or closing down altogether. 

After 16 years of Labor, corruption appears to have crept into state governance, and the public service has become bloated and inept. ( around 30% larger than other states per capita ) It will be an enormous job trying to trim the fat from the PS and restore the publics faith in public office. South Australia's Jobless rate regularly tops the nation as the states economy has slowly been run into the ground and rebuiling business and employer confidence will take time. Reversing the trend of SA's young leaving the state in droves is another challenge.

Regional roads have been sadly neglected for years with many in such poor condition that the government has recently had to reduce the speed limits on many of the states main country highways as they are no longer safe to travel on at normal highway speed. Agriculture is SA's fastest growing industry and has the fastest growth rates in employment, but has been terribly neglected under Labor. Vital research facilities and the highly skilled staff that run them have been disbanded and rail and port systems starved of maintenance funds or closed altogether.

Schooling and education, often considered a Labor strong point is in a serious state of mismanagement with the state regularly featuring in the bottom of national schools testing and our age care facilities are in crisis with regular scandels of neglect and abuse of our most vulnerable under Labors care.

The Liberals may have won the election, but the state is in such a mess they may have preffered to have lost this time

[chameleon54]

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@davidc4430wrote:

absolute rubbish, the % of votes is nothing to do with who governs no matter what you think.

its how many seats are won that decides who governs, our system divides the state up into electorates full of people.

you cannot control completely how many in those electorates vote one way or another.

true in an electorate (or seat) a candidate must win more votes than his competition, but he doesnt need to win 51% only more than his opponent. once all the counting is done and preferences are distributed its the guy with the highest count, even if he had less 1st preferences than the next best cadidate. so i might get 200 first preferences and my next opnent might get 190, but then preferences raise my oponent to 275 and preferences leave me on 270, i lose. but i got more 1st preferences i say! bad luck says the system.

they can create electorates in theory with a 50/50 split, but they CANT make the voters vote 49/51%

one seat might get 12% one way 88% the other, but the guy who won only required 51% so the other votes dont mean anything. once he got that 1% over the rest was just nice to look at.

so the whole oh woe is us we got 53% and they got 47% but they won is a furfy.

if you want true majority rules, get rid of seats, we vote for the team we want, no preferences. the team with most votes gets to govern.

but thats NOT how it works now.

just like i know i can vote labor every time federal and state but my vote never counts as i'm in a very safe liberal seat.

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ABSOLUTE RUBBISH ????

http://edbc.sa.gov.au/about-the-edbc/criteria-for-a-redistribution.html

I suggest you read the information in the above link taken from the SA Electoral Boundries Commission website. It shows that your comments above are misinformed and at odds to the charter of the Electoral Boundries Commission which require that as much as possible the electoral boundries should provide that the party that recieves more than 50% of the two party preffered vote IS elected to government. It further states that this fairness criteria must take account of the political implications of boundry redistributions to provide the party with majority vote the chance to form government.

While you have shown a good understanding of the basic elements of SA's electoral process I,m afraid when it comes to the finer points of electoral boundry redistributions and other similar issues you are basically making it up as you go along.

David, May I respectfully suggest you educate yourself on the finer points of the SA electoral process before deriding those making accurate and informed statements with terms such as " Absolute Rubbish ".

[davidc4430]

i would rather spend my time worrying about important stuff, not something that weather i understand it or not i cant change it.

why is it no one complains there are 'safe' seats?

should not all seats be 'up for grabs' each election?

and why is it no one says its a corrupt system thats been organised so only 2 sides can ever win?

i'magine the AFL if only collingwood or hawthorn could win the GF.

yes you other sides can play but only us big boys get to win the flag.

well thats our election system.

so us labor people are happy when out team wins the flag and you liberals are happy when your team wins the flag.

what about all the people who dont support labor or liberal?

they will never get to cheer their team in victory.

talk about gerry manders, give me a beak.

argue over 'oh they got less votes than us but we lost, boo hoo.'

if your serious about the system you might wanna start complaining its a rigged system no matter which side 'wins'

[chameleon54]

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@davidc4430wrote:

i would rather spend my time worrying about important stuff, not something that weather i understand it or not i cant change it.

why is it no one complains there are 'safe' seats?

should not all seats be 'up for grabs' each election?

and why is it no one says its a corrupt system thats been organised so only 2 sides can ever win?

i'magine the AFL if only collingwood or hawthorn could win the GF.

yes you other sides can play but only us big boys get to win the flag.

well thats our election system.

so us labor people are happy when out team wins the flag and you liberals are happy when your team wins the flag.

what about all the people who dont support labor or liberal?

they will never get to cheer their team in victory.

talk about gerry manders, give me a beak.

argue over 'oh they got less votes than us but we lost, boo hoo.'

if your serious about the system you might wanna start complaining its a rigged system no matter which side 'wins'

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That's fine David, but again may I respectfully suggest you refrain from deriding the accurate & informed posts of those WHO HAVE bothered to educate themselves as ABSOLUTE RUBBISH !!!! 

It reflects very poorly on you when you are caught out making stuff up cos you couldn't be bothered finding out the facts while at the same time criticising those who have taken the time to become informed on the subject..

[lionrose.7]

Gee thought i was reading a Yank thread here for a moment hahahah

[lyndal1838]

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@davidc4430wrote:

i wonder how exactly you think the electoral comission should form the boundatys of seats as the cant actually know who votes which way from house to house.

they can only asume if the line is moved from point A to point B then the libs or labors vote will increase "in theory"

i rekon its not a very exact science.

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Actually David, it is a very much more exact science than you realise.

Many years ago I used to work for my local Liberal candidate on election day.  Several times I was able to go to the local electoral office to watch the counting of the votes.

The party officials were always able to tell which booth the votes were coming from and how the voting would end up.

For example, there was an isolated little pocket at the end of the electorate which always voted Liberal....at least 97% from memory.  It was an older established area where there was not a lot of movement in the population, homes were owned rather than rented. 

On the other hand, there was a booth in the middle of the electorate which was surrounded by Housing Commission flats, many occupied by members of the armed services where the population was constantly changing.  By the very nature of the changing population it was always a given that the booth would always return a Labor vote but the percentage was the only variable.

The officials knew every booth in the electorate and how the vote would be likely to go.....and they were usually right.

I was recently speaking to a friend who is still working at the elections and apparently now there is a bit of a change in the makeup of the booths.  Older people are selling up and homes are being knocked down and replaced by units....the people are becoming renters rather than home owners and the voter base is changing.

[tezza2844]

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@chameleon54wrote:

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That's fine David, but again may I respectfully suggest you refrain from deriding the accurate & informed posts of those WHO HAVE bothered to educate themselves as ABSOLUTE RUBBISH !!!! 

It reflects very poorly on you when you are caught out making stuff up cos you couldn't be bothered finding out the facts while at the same time criticising those who have taken the time to become informed on the subject..

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That would have to be one of the most pompous and arrogant statements I’ve seen for quite a while and coming from a person who seems to want a return to SA Playmandering (named after a SA Liberal Premier who’s example certainly  impressed Joh Bjelke-Petersen), where sheep were considered to have more voting rights than human voters.  I would assume now that each electorate would a similar number of human voters, (being uneducated on SA Electoral Commission), I also would have thought that even SA electoral  laws would be similar to the rest of Australia. It's a certainty that from time to time abnormalities will occur that applies to both sides of the political fence (ask Kim Beasley about the 1998 election result where Labor received a high 2 party (51% to 49%0 preferred vote than John Howard and lost the election 80 seats to 67 seats)

[davidc4430]

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@lyndal1838wrote:

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@davidc4430wrote:

i wonder how exactly you think the electoral comission should form the boundatys of seats as the cant actually know who votes which way from house to house.

they can only asume if the line is moved from point A to point B then the libs or labors vote will increase "in theory"

i rekon its not a very exact science.

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Actually David, it is a very much more exact science than you realise.

Many years ago I used to work for my local Liberal candidate on election day.  Several times I was able to go to the local electoral office to watch the counting of the votes.

The party officials were always able to tell which booth the votes were coming from and how the voting would end up.

For example, there was an isolated little pocket at the end of the electorate which always voted Liberal....at least 97% from memory.  It was an older established area where there was not a lot of movement in the population, homes were owned rather than rented. 

On the other hand, there was a booth in the middle of the electorate which was surrounded by Housing Commission flats, many occupied by members of the armed services where the population was constantly changing.  By the very nature of the changing population it was always a given that the booth would always return a Labor vote but the percentage was the only variable.

The officials knew every booth in the electorate and how the vote would be likely to go.....and they were usually right.

I was recently speaking to a friend who is still working at the elections and apparently now there is a bit of a change in the makeup of the booths.  Older people are selling up and homes are being knocked down and replaced by units....the people are becoming renters rather than home owners and the voter base is changing.

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i will bow to you better knowledge on what the commission knows about trends in booths.

but i still think its very difficult to move a line on a map and 'get it right'

information must be 4 years old at any state election so all movement of people will not be known, have a lot of liberal voters moved out of the area and been replaced by labor voters or visa versa.

sure, its prolly not so many to make a difference but it could.

so moving that line might be spot on by last elections figures but it could also be wrong.

but my thing here is seats win govt not who gets the most votes across the whole state.

once a seat is won, by either side, all the votes over and above the number required to win become nul n void.

so a labor member might win his seat by 10 votes, although he only needed to win by 1. 9 votes are nul n void.

they still count in the overall count of how many votes labor got on the day.

in another seat a liberal member may win by 2,000 votes, again once he passed the next candidate all the other votes nul n void.

but again still counted in how many votes the liberals got on the day.

so if labor wins 20 close seats and liberals win  18 one sided seats, liberals end up with stacks more votes but less seats.

or am i getting it wrong?

[lyndal1838]

No votes become null and void David.

All votes are counted and preferences distributed when the primary count is done...starting as soon as the poll closes.

If you watch the results on TV you will often see that the experts can "call" a result very early in the night because they are familiar with the way the votes go in the particular electorate.

At the end of the night you will either have a firm result or counting will continue the next day (sometimes happens in a large electorate).  Occasionally there will not be a result until the postal votes have come in and been distributed.   This is more likely in a swinging seat where voters can be persuaded to change their votes from one election to another.

Even after an election is declared a candidate can still ask for a recount, especially if the result was close.

No votes can "disappear" either....every candidate is entitled to have scrutineers at the counting of the votes.  I have done that too!  If you think a vote has been put in the wrong pile you can ask to see it.   In my experience, the Labor candidates were paranoid and continually slowed the counting down by asking for a recount every few minutes, or so it seemed....even though we all knew they were going to win the seat.

Like you, I can't see how a redistribution can have any great effect on an electorate.   There is only so much movement of boundaries that can be done.  Only the outer fringes can be attached to another electorate....that may change the votes if the seat is a swinging seat but it is never going to make much difference where the heart of the electorate is rabidly Labor or Liberal.....those are the so called blue ribbon seats.

[chameleon54]

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@davidc4430wrote:

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@lyndal1838wrote:

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@davidc4430wrote:

---

Actually David, it is a very much more exact science than you realise.

Many years ago I used to work for my local Liberal candidate on election day.  Several times I was able to go to the local electoral office to watch the counting of the votes.

The party officials were always able to tell which booth the votes were coming from and how the voting would end up.

For example, there was an isolated little pocket at the end of the electorate which always voted Liberal....at least 97% from memory.  It was an older established area where there was not a lot of movement in the population, homes were owned rather than rented. 

On the other hand, there was a booth in the middle of the electorate which was surrounded by Housing Commission flats, many occupied by members of the armed services where the population was constantly changing.  By the very nature of the changing population it was always a given that the booth would always return a Labor vote but the percentage was the only variable.

The officials knew every booth in the electorate and how the vote would be likely to go.....and they were usually right.

I was recently speaking to a friend who is still working at the elections and apparently now there is a bit of a change in the makeup of the booths.  Older people are selling up and homes are being knocked down and replaced by units....the people are becoming renters rather than home owners and the voter base is changing.

---

i will bow to you better knowledge on what the commission knows about trends in booths.

but i still think its very difficult to move a line on a map and 'get it right'

information must be 4 years old at any state election so all movement of people will not be known, have a lot of liberal voters moved out of the area and been replaced by labor voters or visa versa.

sure, its prolly not so many to make a difference but it could.

so moving that line might be spot on by last elections figures but it could also be wrong.

but my thing here is seats win govt not who gets the most votes across the whole state.

once a seat is won, by either side, all the votes over and above the number required to win become nul n void.

so a labor member might win his seat by 10 votes, although he only needed to win by 1. 9 votes are nul n void.

they still count in the overall count of how many votes labor got on the day.

in another seat a liberal member may win by 2,000 votes, again once he passed the next candidate all the other votes nul n void.

but again still counted in how many votes the liberals got on the day.

so if labor wins 20 close seats and liberals win  18 one sided seats, liberals end up with stacks more votes but less seats.

or am i getting it wrong?

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Fair enough David, I do agree with you that it can be difficult to move a line on a map and get it exactly right.

But that does not excuse the SA electoral boundries commission who for many years didnt even try and refused to move a line at all. What is clearly evident is that when they where faced with overwhelming critisism and threats of formal inquests and legal proceedings following the undemocratic 2014 result, they did finally take action which resulted in the election of members in seats being much more representative of peoples vote. As a result, Labor was swept from office with a convincing win for the Liberals.

It is probably worth mentioning that one of the three independants, Dennis Hood has now moved into the Liberal fold giving a final result of Liberals 26 seats to Labors 19 and two independants.