Introduction

Hello, my name is Ben Messenger and I have been an amateur follower of elections and voting systems for some time. The community of Australian election nerds is very well serviced by the current group of psephologists, election analysts, and poll analysts (my favourites linked at the bottom of the page) but there is a niche gap in the market where I think there could be interest. In mainstream Australian election analysis the concept of “Two Party Preferred” is ubiquitous in describing the general lay of the land in terms of swings at elections and defining marginal and safe seats in “classic” Labor vs Coalition contests. However this is quite ill equipped for the growing number of “non-classic” or three-corner-contests.

The Greens (of whom I am a member) have been growing modestly for 20 years and now have 12 members in the quasi-proportional Senate, effectively a ceiling in that house for a minor party. Realistically to increase their representation federally and in most other Australian parliaments they must turn to single member electorate houses, a challenging thing for a 3rd party. A few months ago when I was thinking about starting this blog I had imagined this to be a medium term challenge but the outstanding Green result in QLD has had made it far more immediate.

The question is what is a “marginal” seat that the Greens could win, and how safe is a Green incumbent? Can that “marginal” and “safe” quality be quantified in Green seats? Can we describe this with clarity like is done for a Labor vs Coalition contests with 2PP? This will be the subject of this blog.

My next post will be an explainer of the methodology I will be conducting to try to grapple with the Greens increasing relevance in single member electorates and after that I will be delving into the Victorian state election and beyond.

P.S. The “Three Parties” in the name of this blog refer specifically to the Labor, Coalition, and Greens. I may do analysis of the odd independents or other 3rd parties when I see the chance.