2012 NSW Council Elections

Introduction

You may have missed it but on Saturday, 8th of October 2012 there were elections across New South Wales for local councils.  I was a candidate for Labor in Parramatta City, Caroline Chisholm ward [PDF].

The ultimate results for this ward are unchanged: 1 Labor and 2 Liberals elected. There were swings against Labor and the vote was complicated by the former incumbent Labor councillor standing as an independent.

As the second candidate for this ward it was very unlikely that I would be elected. Labor has never had a second councillor elected. Although a Labor approved independent, Chris Worthington, was elected at one point.

There was a great deal of positive feedback from the community and the whole experience was very valuable.

How Voting Works

First I might outline how the voting works. You might wonder why there were 3 candidates for each party.

There are three council positions, so each group or party to nominate up to three candidates. The top three candidates after preferences are distributed will be elected. The preferences are specified by the voter, groups do not register preferences with the election commission for council elections.

In more detail - to be elected outright a candidate needs 25% plus 1 vote.
This 25%+1 figure may seem a bit odd at first. When three candidates are elected outright the three candidates require a total of 75%+3 votes, meaning only a maximum of 3 candidates can be elected.

As explained in wikipedia the... election proceeds according to the following steps:

1. Any candidate who has reached or exceeded the quota is declared elected.
2. If a candidate has more votes than the quota, that candidate's surplus votes are transferred to other candidates. Votes that would have gone to the winner instead go to the next preference listed on their ballot.
3. If no one new meets the quota, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and that candidate's votes are transferred.
4. This process repeats until either a winner is found for every seat or there are as many seats as remaining candidates.

When voting above the line the surplus votes in step 2 & 3 are first transferred to the next candidate in the same group / party, then are transferred to the group / party indicated by the preferences.

Why a Party?

One of the excellent things about council elections is that they are relatively cheap. For the price of a car someone can mount a decent campaign for a council ward.

State or federal campaigns are much more expensive.

With so much accessibility to independents why would anyone stand or vote for parties such as Labor or Liberal? Standing t tfor a major party means that you are part of a team.

If the party has had success in the past then a candidate can continue the successful policies. Many of the supporting people who made a previous term successful can be turned to for advice. This can include current or previous councillors in the ward and surrounding wards.

The reputation of a party can persist beyond a single term, as can the issues that a party stands for. For example most people would recognise that Labor generally stands for social justice, environmental preservation, heritage preservation and cultural improvement (whether we achieve it is a different question).

In comparison it is often difficult to ascertain even whether an independent is conservative or progressive. Independents have more to communicate about their platform because there is less familiar territory for voters.

Party councillors are also accountable to party members whom live in the electorate. Thus there is a structure in place for feedback to councillors from the local community. Independents need to create this structure themselves.

I welcome the fresh voices that independents bring to local councils but there are also different benefits to established parties.

Campaign

The campaign was off to a slow start. The former Labor councillor for Caroline Chisholm, Paul Barber, was unhappy about not being preselected. It took him a long time for him to decide that he wanted to withdraw from the number 2 position, then it took a long time for him to formally withdraw. He finally decided to run as an independent.

Shahadat asked me to run as number 3, while Paul Barber still had rights to the number 2 position. I was happy to do so and expressed that if there was someone better suited I would be happy to give it up too. Talking to other people the issue of female representation was raised, so I suggested to Shahadat that a woman should take my place if someone suitable could be found.

As it worked out Paul Barber dropped out, so I ended up in number 2 position and Deborah May was in number 3 position.

Realistically Deborah and I had no chance of winning. Labor has never had a second party candidate in Caroline Chisholm ward. Although Chris Worthington was successful as a Labor-approved independent. Chris is a Labor party member.

I was hopeful that the Greens candidate, Annie Nielsen, may have a chance this time but more about that later.

Shahadat and his wife Jintana were very organised. Shahadat and I focussed on shopping centres rather than door-knocking due to the limited time available. Shahadat carried most of the load - with extra shopping centre visits, train stations. We managed to send out two leaflets using only volunteers. The volunteers were very reliable.

The campaign was a very positive experience and I learned a great deal about the organisation that is required for a campaign.

Technology

The heavy-lifting of the campaign was still traditional electioneering. Mail-outs, posters and shopping centres were the most effective forms of communication.

I set up a Facebook page for the campaign and Sameer set up a website for the campaign. I used material that had been already approved for other brochures, so authorising the material would be as fast as possible.

I did an experiment with paid advertising on Facebook and Google adwords. The most important feature when using these tools is geographic targetting. Both Facebook and Google offer targetting down to the suburb level.

I found that geographic targeting worked quite well but there was some overflow into completely unrelated geographical areas such as Melbourne. We received 300 likes. A foul-mouthed conservative called Gary made a few comments which related to the local area, so obviously the advertising was effective at targeting the local community. Thanks Gary for validating my advertising!

During the campaign the posters at my home were vandalised with racist graffiti and I received a letter which in context threatened vandalism against my car. In addition other volunteers who had posters in their yard had threatening phone calls.

Fortunately security equipment is now cheap and widely available. I installed security lights in the driveway and two video cameras - one overlooking the car and one overlooking the signs. I bought a cheap video capture card from a local computer shop.

The ubiquity and cheapness of this equipment meant I could exercise my democratic right to ran as a candidate and to support the party that I choose.

Results

The final results are available from Elections NSW. The primary count was available by about 8pm on the night of the election, the final count including quota distribution was not available until the following Thursday.

Labor received 21.07% of the formal first preference vote - which is 4 percentage points less than the required 25%+1 votes. The former Labor candidate turned independent, Paul Barber, received 9.50%. In the previous election Paul achieved 33% as the Labor candidate - the current total of the two, 30.57%, is about 3 percentage points lower.

The Greens achieved 8.80% of the formal first preference vote - which is down from the 11% that Annie Nielsen achieved as an independent.

The informal vote was 1,100 - or about 6% of the total vote. Our scrutineers estimated that about half the informal votes had the intention of voting Labor. The possible 3 percentage points would not have had an impact in this election but in a number of cases it could make the difference.

There was a swing against Labor - in fact there was a swing against Labor in most councils in New South Wales - many people were positive but there were a number of people who expressed dissatisfaction.

Voters can usually separate levels of government, I don't think consistent swings observed across New South Wales would occur unless there was resentment at a state or federal level.

Although Labor and other progressive candidates did not make any progress at this election, at least we retained the council position - which a number of other wards did not.

Greens, Preferences and Informals

UPDATE:  It has been brought to my attention that Labor could have won on its own if there was a run-off between Labor and the conservatives. The conservatives could not have won the third council position in this election.

Labor received 21.07% of the first preference vote. The conservatives received a total of 60.63% of the vote. After the 50% is removed (it should be 2 more votes as well) the conservatives are left with 10.63% of the vote - assuming all the preferences flowed to one candidate with no exhaustion.

The preference swaps were still helpful for comfortably reaching quota.

To make up the difference to reach quota we need about 673 votes. We could not have made up this difference without the solidarity of both the Greens and Paul Barber.

Paul Barber's preferences were helpful and Paul did the right thing in honouring the preference swap in his how-to-votes.

Strangely despite Paul Barber being a former Labor candidate and a preference swap in the how-to-votes, only 507 votes out of the progressive total of 1,717 came through to Labor. 137 votes went to the Liberals and an enormous 900 votes were thrown away (the voter's preferences exhausted). This shows that nothing can be assumed in an election.

Labor received 404 votes directly from the Greens and 94 went to Paul Barber. 852 votes were thrown away by being exhausted. This is somewhat understandable as the Greens and Labor are distinct parties, although there is a certain amount of overlap on some issues.

In some other council areas Labor did not preference the Greens to reduce informal votes or because no preference swap deal could be reached. Actually the preference swap deal only covers the how-to-vote - it is ultimately the voter's numbering that determines preferences in a council election, even when voting above the line.

There are a few good reasons why it makes sense to do a swap in Caroline Chisholm: Annie is a good progressive candidate who would make an excellent contribution if elected to council, the Greens in Caroline Chisholm ward are very friendly and professional, and it stretches the imagination that we would gain more votes through reduced informals than we gained from the swap with the Greens.

Progressive candidates also need to keep solidarity because an exhausted progressive vote is effectively a vote for the conservatives. I am hoping that next election Labor will be in a position to return the help we received from other progressive candidates.

Labor could not have maintained the current council position without the preferences from other progressive candidates - otherwise we would be facing three conservative councillors.

Written by Andrew Punch.