Aussie Election Results

[Aractus]

So how many days left before we know what's really going on? And what's your prediction at this point, Aractus?

Well I thought that the Coalition would be returned with about 85 seats. Obviously that's not going to happen and I had vastly underestimated the ALP's negative campaign (partially because of the ANU research claiming negative ads don't work - clearly their cohort was not representative of the population at large!) There's a difference between what I would like to happen and what will actually happen. I would like to see a minority government, that is how our democracy is designed. The government is supposed to be subordinate to the Parliament (Parliamentary accountability). This is in fact why we have 'question time'. With majority governments this is not the case. The Parliamentary have been abused for political purposes, and the Parliamentary process doesn't' flow as intended when "one party" controls a majority of seats.

I do note that the Nationals actually did much better than the Liberals in their campaign this year and in retaining seats. I'm not an election analyst, so I can only go by what the media reports in terms of "postal votes" and the such. Turnbull is positioning himself to form government, even if it means a minority. I think he's a better person for this than Abbott, only because of Abbott's failed bid to woo a conservative cross-bench in 2010.

I have no idea how the Senate is going to fall. "Other" got something like 13-14% of first preferences (Other being parties other than Libs/Nats/ALP/Grn), which does mean they should get about 10 Senate seats going by those numbers. I think that's a good thing for democracy, and I note the Senators that were not returned - and I think that does vindicate the double-dissolution election, otherwise we would have had 3 more years of those four idiots: Lazarus, Muir, Wang, and Leyonhjelm. Bob Day is probably out on his ass too. So people should be pleased that they've been able to get rid of those 'micro parties' that they didn't want.

How many seats? It's anyone's guess. The numbers are coming back for the Coalition now, thanks to the postal votes, which makes it look like a majority of 76 or 77 is likely. But you never know, and in all likeliness we will have at least one seat with less than 100 votes requiring a recount.