Two Australian state elections with a side note on the Saskatchewan provincial election

Last month, the Australian Capital Territory (i.e. Canberra) and the state of Queensland held their respective elections, as did the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.

The Australian Capital Territory experienced a Green surge, with the Greens obtaining 6 seats, the most they have ever won in the ACT Assembly, which unlike most state elections in Australia uses STV instead of AV to elect its members. They gained 4 extra seats despite only increasing their vote share by 3.2%, with Labor only losing 0.6% of their vote share and the Liberals losing 2.9% of their vote share; both of those parties lost 2 seats apiece. The Green surge is attributable to increasing awareness of the need to tackle climate change, a particularly salient issue in Australia given the increasing number of bush-fires where climate change is clearly factor. However, transfers from both Labor and Liberal are also increasingly friendly to the Greens, and a new party, the Progressives, also split the Labor vote to deny them 2 straight quotas in any district of Canberra, and their voters were more inclined to preference the Greens given that both support republicanism and communitarianism whereas Labor does not. The Progressives only won 2% of the vote across the ACT, not enough to win any seats, but it is clear they made a decisive impact, particularly in Kurrajong (covering Canberra City itself) which was the only division of the ACT to elect two Greens instead of one. By comparison, the Animal Justice Party, which is often responsible for splitting of the Green vote outside gentrified inner-city divisions in Australia, made no real impact at all despite increasing their vote share by 0.3%, again attributable to increasing awareness of the need to take action on environmental issues. As a direct result of this Green surge, they will be more influential in the ACT government (controlled by Labor) than ever before.

Queensland was also another state where the Greens did well, even though outside the state capital of Brisbane they have limited support, and Queensland is also the most reactionary state in Australia socially. In addition to easily holding Maiwar, the Greens captured South Brisbane from Jackie Trad on an 8.6% two-candidate swing; Ms Trad was the only Labor MLA in Queensland to lose her seat at this election. The Greens also finished a close third in the divisions of Cooper and McConnel, as well as a respectable third in Greenslopes, but in none of these divisions could they make the final round of transfers. In order to win these seats in future, where Labor and the Liberals are close on first preferences, they will need to finish ahead of either Labor or the Liberals in round one, given that their vote transfers almost always favour Labor in Australia. Labor did however win three seats from the Liberal Nationals, namely Caloundra, Hervey Bay and Pumicestone, although in each case the incumbent Liberal National MLA retired at this election (another 3 seats are in doubt at this time of writing on last-round transfers, but a Labor majority in the Queensland Legislative Assembly is not in doubt). The primary reason this happened was due to the collapse of One Nation's vote in marginal Queensland divisions, often dropping to 3% or less, and surprisingly this was more helpful to Labor than the Liberal Nationals even though given the socially conservative position of the Liberal Nationals they would logically find it easier to pick up their vote transfers than Labor, although there is strong evidence of One Nation voters voting Liberal National tactically. Notable examples include Burdekin where a collapse in the One Nation vote (coupled with an intervention from Katter's Australian Party in Burdekin's case), ensured a hold for Dale Last, as well as holds for Michael Crandon in Coomera and Andrew Powell in Glass House. The key exception to this was Mirani, where its sole MLA, Stephen Andrew, held on despite North Queensland First splitting his vote in the first round. NQF was formed by ex-Liberal National MLA Jason Costigan, who was expelled from the Liberal Nationals last year on an allegation of harassment that was later withdrawn by the plaintiff. Despite the plaintiff apologising to Mr Costigan after withdrawing her complaint, the Liberal Nationals wrongly refused to reinstate him, and he stood under the NQF banner, but only managed third in his Whitsunday division with 9.35%, and the Liberal Nationals held the marginal seat against Labor in the end, on the back of One Nation transfers. The KAP held all 3 of their respective divisions but otherwise made little impact outside Burdekin. Incumbency is becoming more and more critical in Australian elections, especially at state and territory level, and surges in support for a third party or independent candidate are more likely to result in incumbents losing than any swing from Liberal to Labor or vice versa, given how minimal this is nowadays in Australia.

Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, Canada, the conservative Saskatchewan Party managed another landslide victory despite losing 3 seats overall to the New Democratic Party, and the swing against them to the NDP overall was just 0.64%, especially low by Canadian standards although Saskatchewan is psephologically a very stable state, and almost never experiences the swings found in Ontario or British Columbia. Once again, the coronavirus pandemic caused turnout to drop noticeably, from 57.8% to 51.9%, although it is clear that the relatively new premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, has handled the pandemic well in this province. The Buffalo Party polled ahead of the Green Party even though the Buffalo Party only fielded 17 candidates across the province to the Greens' 60, with the Buffalo Party polling 2.65% to the Saskatchewan Greens' 2.28%. However, neither of those parties, nor the Progressive Conservatives or the few Saskatchewan Liberals, made any significant impact on the result, and between them the SK Party and SK NDP polled 92.79% of the vote, a stark contrast to the high political competitiveness of British Columbia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec.