The federal election is today!
If you're not one of the millions of Australians who have cast their vote already, we've got the answers to all of your election day questions.
What roles are we actually voting for?
You’re actually voting for a couple things at the federal election. You’re voting for who you want to represent your local area in the House of Representatives, and who you want to represent your state or territory in the Senate.
Let’s start with the House of Representatives, because that is the house that determines which party will be in government. Here, voters are electing someone from their area – known as an electorate – to speak on their behalf in Parliament.
There are 150 electorates in Australia. This means there are 150 seats up for grabs in the House of Representatives. Those electorates are based on population size, with about 120,000 voters in each electorate.
Each electorate will have several different candidates — usually one from each major party, some from minor parties and others will be independents (meaning they don’t belong to any party). This is why you won’t see either Labor Leader Anthony Albanese or Liberal Party Leader Peter Dutton on your ballot paper, unless you are in their actual electorate.
How does a party form government?
To form government, a party needs to have at least 76 of their party members winning their electorate. (76 is the magic number because it is a majority of the 150 seats up for grabs.)
The Labor Party and the Coalition (made up of the Liberal and National parties) are usually the two groups who are able to form that majority.
That is, unless there is a minority government.
What's a minority government?
A minority government – also known as a hung parliament – is when no party has formed an absolute majority (so no one has reached 76 seats). That means they need to negotiate with minor parties or independents to form government.
This does not mean they formally join forces, or that the minor parties and independents become part of the government.
Rather, they agree to guarantee ‘confidence and supply’.
This means they agree to keep the government in power, and to vote to pass the budget so that money can be allocated to keep the country running.
In exchange for this support, minor parties and independents may impose some conditions, like support for particular policies that are important to them.
Essentially, if it’s a minority government, that’s when minor parties and independents become really important.
What is preferential voting?
Voting at an Australian election is not as simple as saying ‘I pick the Pink Party.’ (For those playing along at home, that party doesn’t actually exist.)
That’s because in Australia we use a system called ‘preferential voting’ to elect our Parliament.
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Let’s start with the House of Representatives again. For this one, you’ll be given a green ballot that lists every candidate running in your electorate. To vote, you need to rank all of the candidates in your local electorate from favourite to least favourite.
You need to put the number one next to your top pick, number two next to your next top pick and so on. This is why it’s not just your number one choice that matters — the order matters too. And remember, you need to fill out every single box!
So how does the counting work?
When all the votes get counted, the first step is counting up everyone’s #1 vote, or their first ‘preference’. If someone reaches a majority from the first preference votes, then that person wins their seat. But if no-one reaches a majority, the preferences become important.
If no-one reaches a majority after the first round, then whichever candidate received the fewest first preference votes is eliminated, and a second round of counting begins.
This means anybody who voted #1 for that candidate, has their vote transferred to the person they put in the #2 spot.
That process is repeated until all candidates except the winner and the runner up have been excluded.
For your vote, this means that if the majority of your neighbours agree with you that your favourite candidate is also their favourite, then your vote won’t go beyond your number 1.
However, if your neighbours disagree with you, then your vote still gets to have a say, even if that is just choosing between your least favourite and second least favourite candidate.
What if the leader of the winning party doesn't win their seat?
In theory, that could happen, because the leaders of the parties don’t just need to win the election, they also need to win the race in their electorate. It’s rare, but it can happen.
If the leader of the party that won enough seats to form government lost their own seat, then that party would simply need to decide who the new leader of their party would be.
The most recent example of something slightly similar happening is in 2007 when John Howard – who was the incumbent Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Party – lost his electorate. He didn’t just lose his seat, his party also lost the election.
What about the Senate?
There are 76 Senators in total. Some well-known Senators that you might know include current Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash and One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson.
If you’re wondering why we have two houses, the general idea is to avoid a system of concentrated power. In practice it means that if the government passes legislation in the House of Representatives, it still needs to get the support of the Senate, where it often doesn’t have the same majority.
When it comes to voting, this is the very large piece of paper you get! Basically, for the Senate, you need to vote above the line or below the line.
Voting above the line means you’re voting for parties or groups. If you do this, your preferences are distributed within each party or group you select according to the order of the candidates on the ballot paper, determined by them.
Voting below the line means you’re voting for individuals in your preferred order across parties or groups. For this federal election, each state is electing six Senators and each territory is electing two.
These senators are chosen based on proportional representation. It’s a system of quotas. Essentially, you need to reach a certain percentage of votes in order to guarantee a spot in the Senate, and that’s all based on a fancy formula.
The counting process for the Senate often takes a bit longer than the House of Representatives. That’s because the AEC will be counting over 200 million preferences!
