10 July 2021
Minor parties traditionally win seats in elections involving proportional representation. These elections have two or more seats up for grabs in any given jurisdiction, with seats decided by the strength of the vote across the jurisdiction. This contrasts with elections in which only one seat goes up for grabs in the jurisdiction, because parties need a majority of the vote to win, and minor parties don’t achieve this feat that much.
I cite the Greens as an example. They’ve generally won Senate seats in Federal elections, with decent proportions of the vote in every State. But they don’t usually win enough votes within clustered areas, such as a group of suburbs in a big city or a group of rural townships in a big region, to win single-seat contests. For sure, they managed to win the seat of Melbourne in the House of Representatives in 2010, having obtained a majority of the vote after preferences, and they still hold that seat to this day, but they haven’t won any others like it. Mind you, they might well win more seats in the House of Representatives over time.
Winning a majority of the vote in seats like those in the House of Representatives is quite hard for minor parties, unless they enjoy strong support in concentrated areas. I’ve seen them win such seats at State level over time, but not that frequently.
It’s therefore quite normal for the Greens to hold a few seats in parliamentary chambers with proportional representation, and perhaps one seat in a chamber with majority representation if they’re lucky. The same could also be said of other minor parties.
On the other hand, major parties traditionally have a stranglehold on chambers like the House of Representatives, winning most of the seats with most of the votes – and preferences. Where proportional representation exists, they don’t win as many seats, even with strong votes. They traditionally end up in the reverse situation to minor parties, in terms of representation.
But earlier this year, an election resulted in a major party looking like a minor party, in relation to representation. It ended up with more seats in a chamber with proportional representation than in a chamber with majority representation – rather than the reverse.
I refer to the Liberal Party, after a State election in Western Australia in March. It had a massive defeat at the hands of the Labor Party, winning a mere two out of fifty-nine seats in the Lower House of State Parliament, where governments are formed. On the other hand, it won seven seats out of thirty-six in the Upper House there. As such, it had more Upper House seats than Lower House seats, which you don’t usually see from major parties.
In Parliament in WA, the Lower House has majority representation while the Upper House has proportional representation. The Liberals therefore ended up with what you’d imagine minor parties achieving, if they’re lucky.
As such, I could describe the WA Liberals as upside-down, in the context of the election result and how they’d normally go in elections generally.
Worse still for the Liberals, they finished behind the Nationals in terms of Lower House seats, with the Nationals winning four. If the Nationals ever have really good election results in WA, they might win something like a dozen seats across the State, and while their result in March was poorer than in previous elections, it wasn’t much worse than they might’ve done in a State where they don’t generally win that many seats.
The next State election in WA isn’t due until 2025. Labor won’t lose unless its seat tally almost halves, from fifty-three out of fifty-nine seats now to twenty-nine. While anything can happen between now and 2025, something absolutely astounding would have to take place for Labor to lose that many seats.
Mind you, I remember watching Labor being utterly thrashed at a State election in Queensland in 2012, when it finished up with just seven seats out of eighty-nine, and just three years later it won back enough seats to retake power – albeit with help from the crossbench. It therefore isn’t unprecedented for parties to have a huge result at one election, whether a win or a loss, and a complete reversal at the next election.
While Labor can be expected to lose seats at the next election in WA, it’s fairly safe to assume that the Liberals will gain a majority of whatever seats Labor loses, and will end up with more seats than the Nationals again. The Liberals should also end up with more Lower House seats than Upper House seats.
The kind of upside-down result for the Liberals in WA in March probably won’t be repeated.
electiontragic 