Electorates in Alphabetical Order
Some key Upper house takeaways, (paraphrased from analysis)
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Upper house quota is 2.63%, lower than NSW at 4.55%. This is due to there now being 37 members, compared to NSWs 21 members.
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Greens vote share will likely be better represented, which will likely result in more seats, as with the Nationals bote share, likely resulting in less.
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The six regions are gone, MLCs are eleceted to represent the entire State.
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By electing the entire chanber as a single electorate, it doesn’t rebalance malaportionment between rural and metro, the divide becomes irrelevant.
~Note: Watch out for table Seats won at WA Legislative Council elections, 1989-2021, that 20 is not the midpoint, number of seats is actually 34 then in 2008 goes up to 36.~
The exciting part, for me, is the Legislative Council changes.
These are huge and long lasting. They could and would only have been done with a large Labor majority, because conservative partys benefited from the comparable advantage higher proportional rural representation gave them, so were bever incentivised to rebalance the system.
This was a once in a lifetime chance Labor got to right an electoral wrong against metro voters. This also happens to align with Labors electoral chances, of course.
The Legislative Council changes seem a mature response to the fairness question that arose, they seem to have resisted the urge to politically favour themselves in an structural way.
It may favour major partys a little more, but the number of MLCs should offset that hurdle well.
Can we please re-elect Wilson Tucker (the guy who accidentally won a seat with 98 votes while living in the US at the time) as an MLC? It’d be hilarious, and he’s actually pretty solid policy too.
