Consider, in a division the government has 59 ‘ayes’ (60 minus the Speaker) and the opposition et al has 29 ‘nays’. The ayes have it by a majority of 30.

But before the three by-elections, the government had 62 votes and the others had 26 – a majority of 36.

d

But electoral mathematics does seem to be an imprecise art!!!

Anyway, I think that’s right, but I’ve confused myself enough that it may be wrong. Where these errors slip into Crikey is the very tight deadlines. And the fact, I guess, that contributors are not full time op/edders who have all day to think about every nuance of their copy.

I’d be more than happy to be corrected on the reasoning above!

On LP it’s all been maths, maths and more maths (I haven’t done so much maths since I was at high-school). Who can forget Joe Cambria’s Feral Abacus Suggeting Muslim’s are Going to Populate All of Europe now there was a high-water mark in voodoo mathematics. It was almost as non-sensical as Dana Vale, almost I say.

“Labor would have been re-elected with its majority of 16 cut only by 5″

Labor currently holds 60 seats in a parliament of 89 which is a tad more than a 16 seat majority. Which I know you know, so I’m a-wondering, did this error creep in via an editor, or was it a little slip on your part? (and if the latter, what is it about writing for Crikey that provokes these sort of silly errors from its contributors?)

I know what you were trying to say, that Labor must lose 16 seats to lose it’s majority, but I’m in a ‘better living through pedantry’ phase at the moment.

d

The blog break is specifically to free up time to cover the election campaign for Crikey. So I’m not doing non election blogging, commenting, or blog moderation/administration. But I am blogging on the election.

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/08/19/blog-semi-hiatus-and-bleg-on-spaces-of-utopia/

Make sense?

There are currently 7 independents. Their chief importance this time round is that with the exception of Gympie and Noosa (ex ONP and Labor MPs respectively) they all hold seats the Nats need to win, and it’s going to be very difficult for the Nats to do so. You wouldn’t rate John B-P’s chances highly in his dad’s former seat, for instance, as Dolly Pratt is well and truly dug in. So it makes it harder for the Nats to pick up seats, and thus puts the onus on the Libs to do the heavy lifting to win Labor seats. That factors both into the tensions in the Coalition about what happens if the Libs come first in seats, and the extreme difficulty of them winning anyway.

I thought you were taking a blog break. It’s a hard thing to do.

My old Political Science blatherer, Paul Reynolds, used to waffle on about the importance of independents in Queensland in recent years. I’d be interested to know whether this is a factor this time around.