Australian Territory Elections, 2016

[IceAgeComing]

What's the highest TPP result in an Australian election?  I have a feeling that record might be shattered next month...

I know that the NT election is optional preferences so a TPP figure is less accurate, but its still nice to have and I'm pretty sure that its in the right ballpark usually.  Might OPV actually end up helping Labor in this election?  It certainly won't hurt them quite as much in other areas (the Greens haven't done as well here in the past and those are the preferences that exhaust in other optional preferential areas), and it wouldn't surprise me if there are a fair few normally conservative people who would normally preference the CLP (or even give them their first preferences) who simply don't bother this time and let their vote exhaust rather than flow to the CLP...

[IceAgeComing]

Are there significantly more other candidates standing this time?  I'm pretty sure that last time there were a lot of two or three candidate races, with not a whole lot of independents standing.  It might even be worse than the CLP than those numbers suggest; from what I've seen all of the Independents who seem to be getting traction are running in CLP seats; if they beat the ALP into second on the primary vote than the CLP need to be really close to 50% to have any shot at holding on since I can't see the ALP not trying to direct preferences to any Independent whose not some far-right loon.

One good thing that the CLP have is that its optional preferential; if you had compulsory preferences and voters supporting independents were that against the CLP then it'd be a disaster: while now there might be a few people who let their votes exhaust and that is a big help for the CLP.  I don't know if that's taken into account in that poll or not; if it is then you might have ended up with a situation where two-thirds of voters preferences the ALP above the CLP which would be crazy.

[IceAgeComing]

They've probably won Spillett (although with lots of early and postal votes then you can't be 100% sure; the ABC seem to be factoring in a much bigger ALP swing than the first few preference counts show though), other than that they are only leading in Daly and even then its very close (the ABC are giving the CLP 50.5% and saying the swing is below 5%, the actual raw numbers have the ALP ahead although still on a swing below the average, although still a pretty big one): the ABC's site seems to be confused about Blain but that's probably because the CLP are ahead in the two-candidate count that's being given to them despite being in a very distant third in primary votes: Terry Mills has probably won that assuming that he's got a decent amount of preferences from the CLP.  The swing in Katherine is pretty impressive really; although it still might go back to the CLP as early and postal votes come in.

We're almost at the point where you wonder quite how the CLP will be able to form a credible opposition - while the wipe out sadly looks like it hasn't happened arguably only holding one seat is equally as bad, although it looks like that they've got someone with a bit of experience which is useful.  Perhaps the independents will become the Official Opposition instead...