Post election analysis

I had a great election day - local knowledge meant I had a spot all to myself, outside the 100m limit, and time to introduce myself to more than 500 people and give them my Gungahlin-specific leaflet. I was pretty sure a good proportion of those people were going to support me, and only a handful of people were deliberately rude. (Why I wonder? What did that prove?)

But the How To Vote section on my leaflets suggested people vote 1 and 2 between Shane and Caroline and 3 and 4 between Adrianna and myself, but with the photos in that order. And that is the order people voted in.

There's still nothing in the way of booth results up, so no way of knowing if that booth (or indeed booths outside Gungahlin) was any different from others. The North Canberra booths are of course very strong Green voting areas. So I take some comfort from knowing that the actual numbers don't show how many people came over to the Greens because of me running. And that was my goal anyway - to try to bring in new votes and help the MLAs get re-elected. (It doesn't mean the numbers are any less personally embarrassing though.)

So, as opposed to the other main parties, the Greens HTVs reflected the team approach - supporting the MLAs first and foremost, with an eye to "leakage". It's how campaigns are run everywhere else in Australia, and avoids the way the other parties work here, where all candidates are competing against each other, as well as against other parties.


The vote distribution shows that about a third of my first preference votes did indeed "leak" to candidates from other parties. But perhaps there is an argument that the hammer-and-tongs way the other parties go about their campaigns leads to overall higher votes, and outweighs the leakage issue and actually works better here with the Robson rotation? It may mean now and then losing an incumbent MLA, but parties are not likely to care about that much if their numbers stay up. (The losing MLA, on the other hand...)

It's a moot point anyway, as the other party candidates have to put in their own money to make up a large part of their personal campaigns, and our obscene mortgage meant I could not have afforded that.

However, the results show undeniably, that the prevalence of signs everywhere, and the "Occupy The Crossing" on Hibberson Street worked. No matter how much people said (here and elsewhere) that they hated being hassled in the town centre, or detested the signs, the numbers matched almost perfectly the candidates with the most of both - irrespective of whether they had done anything in the community earlier than a year ago. Simon's total lack of signage almost cost him his job, and I'll bet Andrew Barr was seriously regretting on Saturday night not bothering to campaign, given the scare he got!

It's been a real learning experience to read comments like the one saying I wasn't visible during the campaign (no I wasn't visible on the roadsides, but I was for six years prior to that, and we did three separate leaflet drops in Gungahlin during the campaign, plus a lot of doorknocking and attending every community election forum out there), and hear the media focus on "strong campaigns" rather than candidates. I'm not bitching about it - just making the observation.

Anyway, I appreciate the comments about standing again. I had hoped that I'd come away from this election with a reasonable foundation from which to have a serious go at getting rid of Gary Humphries, for whom I have no time and little regard for his contribution to Canberra either in Opposition or in Government before that.

But if that idea wasn't stuffed Saturday night, it sure seems to be now with Simon Sheikh putting his hand up. So four years is a long time. I think I might enjoy just being an ordinary citizen, and perhaps feel less constrained about letting rip the next time some idiot tries to run me down when I'm on my bike!

A final observation: the biggest winners out of the ACT election were the corflute printers! And can you imagine what it will be like next time? Unless something serious is done to overhaul the election sign "code of practice" and turn it into a law, with stiff financial penalties and sign confiscations attached, and maybe limits on signage per candidate, etc, it will be mayhem out there next time. As if the behaviour of a whole lot of people wasn't bad enough this time around - people who hold themselves up as fit to govern - to make laws and impose them on others...