Australian politics has some similarity to the United States. Seats in their House of Representatives are distributed by the population of the state (with each state guaranteed a certain number of seats). The states have equal representation in their Senate (twelve senators each rather than two) and the election of senators are usually staggered (half from each state elected every three years).
This year, however, is an unusual election (scheduled for July 2). The existence of staggered terms plus the voting system for the Senate creates the possibility that the party that controls the House will not control the Senate. Unlike the U.S. which forces the parties to live with deadlock until the next regularly scheduled election, Australian law contains an out — the “double dissolution” election. Normally, only the House of Representatives dissolves — either through expiration of the term or through the Prime Minister requesting an early election. If the dissolution of the House occurs within the window for a half-Senate election (within the last year of a Senate term), the House and half-Senate election occurs at the same time (but the new Senators do not take office — except for the Senators from the two territories — until the old term expires).
If the House passes a bill and the Senate rejects it, the House has the option of passing the bill a second time. If that happens the possibility of a “double dissolution” is triggered. At that point, the ball is in the court of the opposition Senators. They have to decide whether or not they want early elections — specifically whether the disputed bill is worth the risks associated with an early election. If the Senate goes ahead and rejects the bill, the ball is in the court of the Prime Minister. While he has the right to ask for a “double dissolution” election, he has to decide if the disputed bill is worth the risks. If he asks for a double dissolution, both the House and the entire Senate are dissolved. Rather than a half-Senate election that does not take effect until the following July, all seats in the Senate are up for election with the winners taking office immediately.
In general, the Australian election system balances the merits of a first-past-the post system and allowing voters to express their preference for small parties. For the House, this balance comes from preferential voting. For each division (House district), voters rank their preferences for the candidates. Thus, if environmental policy trumps other concerns, you can rank the Green Party first. From this one ballot paper, the election authorities are effectively able to run a multi-round election. In each round, your vote goes to the remaining candidate that you ranked highest (which may or many not be your first choice). After the votes in each round is counted, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated. (Counting each round only requires looking at the ballots for the candidate eliminated in the last round because the other votes will remain the same.) While this system gives a national count of the “first preferences” for each party, most divisions come down to the two main parties (the Australian Labour Party and the Liberal/National Coaltion.) (The Liberal Party is the center-right urban party. The National Party is the center-right rural party. In some states, they have formally merged. In other states, the two are technically separate, but opt to work together in each election.)
The Senate uses a variation on the Single Transferable Vote. The concept behind the single transferable vote is that you get one vote for one Senator. If your preferred candidate gets more votes than is needed to win a Senate seat (roughly one-thirteenth of the vote — one seventh in the normal half-Senate election — in the states and one-third of the vote in the two territories), the “excess” vote is transferred to the next preference of the voters who supported that candidate. This year, Australia has altered the rules for the Senate election.
In the past, the parties were able to submit full preference lists (a ranking of all the Senate candidates of all of the parties from one to however many candidates were running). This led to deals between parties as to where the candidates of allied parties would be listed in a given party’s preference list. Voters could either vote “above the line” to accept a given party’s preference list (with each party having a box on the top of the ballot) or vote “below the line” to give their own preference listing (with each individual candidate having their own box on the bottom part of the ballot).
In this year’s election, there is still the above-the-line or below-the-line option, but the process is different. Instead of ranking the candidates of all the parties, a political party now only gets to rank its own candidates. And instead of casting one vote to adopt a party’s comprehensive listing, a voter now has to cast a preference vote for at least six parties (i.e. rank the voters top six parties from one to six — or however many more parties to the voter wants to rank after the top six) if the voter wants to vote above the line. For voters wanting to vote below the line, voters no longer need to rank all of the candidates to cast a valid vote — merely the voter’s top twelve candidates.
A full Senate election lowers the number of votes needed for a party to get Senate seats. This will benefit the larger third parties (like the Greens). However, the change in the voting method will hurt some of the medium-sized third parties that used to benefit from their preference deals with small-sized third parties. (The parties are still sending out how to vote guides suggesting how their voters should rank their preferences. Most of the “leftist” parties are listing Labour in their top six. Many of the “right wing” parties do not include the Lib/Nat Coalition in their top six.)
In the current Senate, the balance of power is held by third-party Senators. The Lib/Nat Coalition has thirty-three current Senators, Labour has twenty-five Senators, the Greens have ten Senators, and other parties combine for eight Senators. For the reasons noted above, the balance of power is likely to remain with third party Senators.
For the House, the key is not the first preferences for Labour and the Lib/Nat Coalition, but the two-party preferred (since in most divisions, the two major parties will get enough first preference vote to guarantee that they are the last two standing). While (like a tiny number of states in the U.S.), Australia uses a non-partisan commission to redraw new lines periodically (once every seven years or after a State gains or loses a seat — one year into each three-year Parliament, the number of seats that each state or territory gets is recalculated based on the most recent population figures), Australia still has the geographical issues that the U.S. has. Labour tends to be strongest in urban districts; the Lib/Nats tend to be strongest in rural districts. There are just enough independent seats that the Lib/Nats (both parties potentially losing two seats that they would otherwise win), that both parties probably need a majority of the two-party preferred to win the majority of the 150 seats. For the Lib/Nats, any majority should do (with a slight chance that they could keep a majority with a break or two even if they lose the two-party preferred). For Labour, they need something closer to fifty-one percent to get a majority of the seats. Based on current polling on first preferences (with traditional preference flows to determine the two-party preferred vote), it looks like a close election. However, polling also shows a preference for the Lib/Nat leader over the Labour leader.
Because Australia has lenient rules allowing people to vote at any polling place on election day, the election night count in each division is only a rough estimate. However, because Australia publishes both the first preference count in each division plus the two-party preferred count on election night, the election night count gives a pretty good idea of which party has won which divisions (and the handful of divisions that are too close to call). Similar, the first preferences give a rough estimate of the Senate. It typically takes about two weeks or so to get final numbers from the House. (The deadline to get votes to the right division is July 15.) Because of the need to pro-rate votes, the Senate election is ultimately more complex requiring that each ballot (and its preferences) be entered into a computer database (slowing the process down). Once all votes have been entered into the database, the computer runs the count round-by-round until all of the Senate seats have been filled. The final Senate count will probably not be known until the end of July (the deadline for declaring the winners of all seats is August 8).
Over the past two decades, Australia has seen a rise in third parties. Because preferential voting for the House is still a first-past-the post system, this change has had minimal impact on the House (with only four third-party members elected in 2013). Because single transferable vote is closer to proportional voting (with a high threshold), this rise has had a significant impact on the Senate. After the 1996 election, there were only ten third-party Senators (including the Greens who only had one — the major third party at the time was the Australian Democrats who had seven seats). In 2013, out of the thirty-six seats from the six states, third-parties won eleven seats. Similar results this time would lead to both major parties losing seats.
Over the past ten years, Australia’s government has been unusually unstable as both parties have seen party “coups” against the party leader who won the last election, leading to a new prime minister in the middle of the term in each of the last three Parliaments. Whether one party can emerge from this election with a strong enough majority (not just in the number of seats but also in the popular vote) to withstand party revolts over the next three years is unclear. The fact that the Senate will probably continue to be a bastion of opposition to the agenda of whichever party wins will not help. As the U.S. is looking for strong allies in the Pacific region, the current state of Australian politics is not likely to be of much assistance to the next President.
Update (7-2-16): The Election Night results from Australia shows an election that is too close to call with several seats likely to come down to “declaration” votes — absentee votes cast either before the election or by a voter who voted away from his district on election day. It is almost certain that, for the fourth election in a row, the governing party has lost seats in the House. There is a real chance that, for the fourth election in a row, the governing party will not retain its majority in the House. There is also a chance that, for the second time out of the last three elections, there will be a hung parliament (i.e. no party has a majority in the House and the balance of power rests with the handful of independents and third party candidates). It is also looking likely that third parties will have the balance of power in the Senate. Labour may have picked up a seat or two in the Senate (mostly at the Green’s expense). As noted above, final results in the House may not be known for a week or two as declaration votes are processed. The final Senate results will not be known for at least three weeks.
