Western Australia election, 13th March 2021

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Happening this Saturday. If you're a big fan of hilarious blowout elections this might be one to look out for, with incumbent ALP Premier Mark McGowan boasting Kim Jong Un level ratings (he is a COVID TOUGH GUY and like all popular WA leaders ia taking advantage of a huge rally in commodity prices) and the Liberal leader desperately trying to save the furniture by basically going full green. Also in the mix are the Nationals, who are not the subordinate entity you find elsewhere in Australia, the Greens and One Nation. You also will be pleased to note that WA has not ditched the infamous group ticket voting system for its upper house, which means at least one random crazy will be elected: apparently this year "Health Australia" are the likeliest beneficiaries.

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These results are insane, think about how strong the WA Libs were back in 2013. I've never seen anything like this.

Labour’s rout in Queensland in 2012 left them with only 7 seats, so I think percentage wise they occupied a smaller proportion of the legislature then. Still a catastrophic drubbing for the conservative parties in WA.

Also the 2/25 result for the CLP in the Northern Territory in 2016.

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Legalize Cannabis Party currently has two seats in the upper house - not that minor parties will be particularly empowered with an ALP majority in the upper house. The Greens are also showing a pretty rotten performance with only one seat, drawing with the Shooters and Fishers.

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Mode upper house oddities:

- as previous recent mega Landslides have in unicameral states, it's quite remarkable to see Labor winning multiple mandates in most regions before anybody else. As far as i can see, Liberals only got a single mandate outright.

- daylight saving party came close to an Australian Sports Party result in the Mining and Pastoral region, being the final party to be eliminated despite being second last in raw results.

- Greens basically are in the worst of worlds for this voting system - no minor party solidarity but also not enough members per district to get a firm member. They essentially have to rely on Labor at least being able to be eliminated below them to ensure they can harvest some surplus votes, but that didn't help them.

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"Liberals for Climate" is actually the party once known as "Flux", which is one of those goofy "what if everyone voted online for everything?!" outfits. They did that old trick of trying to get the sort of donkey voter who literally scans two lines of the ballot and sees something that looks like their favoured party, then votes for that. (Quite unfortunate timing to look like an ersatz liberal, given the wipeout).