Sunday, April 15, 2007

NSW Elections 2007 - New England Results

I have now had a chance to spreadsheet all the votes in the New England lower house seats at the recent NSW elections. The full analysis can be found here, but I thought that a summary might be interesting in the context of my discussion of New England populism.

There are twenty New England seats including Barwon, only part of which falls in New England. Overall New England results follow with a comparison to the NSW average.
  • ALP including Country Labor: 30.02 per cent (NSW 39 per cent), six seats, down two.
  • Nationals: 28.78 per cent (NSW 10.1 per cent), nine seats, up one.
  • Liberals: 8.53 per cent (NSW 26.9 per cent), one seat, up one.
  • Independents: 21.17 per cent (NSW 8.9 per cent), four seats, up one.
  • Greens: 8.3 per cent (NSW 9 per cent), no seats.
  • Christian Democrats: 1.38 per cent (NSW 2.5 per cent), no seats.
  • Australians Against Further Immigration: 0.89 per cent (NSW 1.5 per cent), no seats
  • The Fishing Party 0.53 per cent (NSW 0.0 per cent), no seats.
  • Australian Democrats: 0.38 per cent (0.5 per cent)
  • Unity, Outdoor Recreation, Save our Suburbs and Socialist Alliance did not contest any New England seats.

The results show the pattern I discussed in my last post introducing New England populism.

On the 2003 election results, New England would probably have had a minority Labor Government kept in power with independent support. On these results, there would be a National or Coalition Government again depending on some independent support.

Of course, the political dynamics in a self-governing New England would have been different. Freed of the need to consider Sydney issues as well as from the tarnish of the NSW Labor Government and Party, it is quite possible that a New England Labor Government would have held power.

As I noted in my more detailed post, I was pleased to see that Australians Against Further Immigration failed in their attempt to capitalise on the Tamworth refugee issue, scoring just 435 votes in the Tamworth seat. The Green vote was also lower than I expected.

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