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+
+{%- extends "base.xhtml" -%}
+
+
+
+{%- block title -%}Single Transferable Vote Counter{%- endblock -%}
+
+
+
+{%- block style %}
+    <link href="/css/stvcount.css" rel="stylesheet" />
+{% endblock -%}
+
+
+
+{%- block content %}
+<h4>Single Transferable Vote Counter</h4>
+
+<p>Git repository: <a href="/cgi-bin/cgit.cgi/stv-count">Link</a></p>
+
+<h5>19/2/2017</h5>
+
+<p>To give an incredibly brief summary of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliament_of_Australia"
+class="external">Australia's political system</a>, both the Federal Parliament and most of the State
+Parliaments are bicameral. The lower houses are generally elected by Instant Runoff, while the upper
+houses generally have half elections using Single Transferable Vote. There are exceptions and a
+whole lot of differing details, but that's the overall pattern.</p>
+
+<p>In 2016, however, the Federal Parliament underwent a Double Dissolution, causing the entirety of
+both houses to go to an election. This had the outcome of 20 out of 76 seats going to third parties
+in the upper house, a record number. Even more than the 18 there were prior. As the entire purpose
+of a Double Dissolution is to break deadlocks in parliament, to have the outcome go in the
+<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-03/crabb-election-2016-is-lose-lose-for-malcolm-turnbull/7565840"
+class="external">complete opposite direction</a> probably caused some dismay from Malcolm Turnbull
+and his Liberal/National government.</p>
+
+<p>This raises the question: Would they have been better off had a normal election happened instead?
+</p>
+
+<p>To calculate the likely outcome, the ballot preference data is needed. That's the easy part, as
+the Australian Electoral Commission makes that available
+<a href="http://results.aec.gov.au/20499/Website/SenateDownloadsMenu-20499-Csv.htm" class="external">
+here</a> in the 'Formal preferences' section. Then, a program is needed to execute the STV
+algorithm, which is as follows:</p>
+
+<ol>
+    <li>Set the quota of votes required for a candidate to win.</li>
+    <li>Allocate the ballot papers according to first preference to each of the candidates for
+        initial vote totals.</li>
+    <li>Mark any candidate who has reached or exceeded the quota as elected.</li>
+    <li>If any elected candidate has more votes than the quota, transfer the excess to the other
+        candidates according to the next applicable preference.</li>
+    <li>If no further candidates meet the quota, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated
+        and their votes are transferred to the others according to next applicable preference.</li>
+    <li>Repeat steps 3-5 until all seats are filled.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Seems simple enough, right? Except not really. There is a surprising amount of complexity in
+there, and most of it is to do with how to transfer votes around. So, in addition, there are the
+specifics for the version used for the Australian Senate:</p>
+
+<ul>
+    <li>Voters are given the option of voting either "above the line" or "below the line". The
+        latter is standard STV. The former used to be a group voting ticket, but for 2016 and later
+        it is treated as a shorthand way of voting, as per instructions
+        <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/Voting_Senate.htm" class="external">here</a>.</li>
+    <li>There are <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/candidates/files/ballot-paper-formality guidelines.pdf" class="external">specific guidelines</a> on what constitutes a correctly filled
+        out ballot. This is important for parsing the formal preference data.</li>
+    <li>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droop_quota" class="external">Droop quota</a> is
+        used.</li>
+    <li>All votes are transferred from elected candidates at a fraction of their value, as per the
+        <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_single_transferable_votes#Gregory" class="external">
+        Gregory Method</a>. This can result in fractions with surprisingly large numerators and
+        denominators. This also results in occasional discarding of fractional votes during
+        transfers.</li>
+    <li>Should the next applicable preference of a ballot be a candidate who has already been
+        elected, that preference is ignored and the ballot is transferred to the next preference.
+        </li>
+    <li>If the number of remaining candidates is equal to one more than the number of remaining
+        vacancies, the candidates with the highest vote totals at that point are considered elected.
+        </li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>My implementation also includes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_single_transferable_votes#Bulk_exclusions"
+class="external">bulk exclusions</a> using applied breakpoints in order to increase speed slightly
+and minimise superfluous logging.</p>
+
+<p>At this point I'm fairly sure my program provides an accurate count. However, my numbers still
+differ slightly from the ones provided by the AEC's official distribution of preferences.
+Investigations into the exact cause are ongoing.</p>
+
+<h4>Results</h4>
+
+<p>Calculations were done for each state using the formal preference data with vacancies set to 6
+instead of 12, and the results were added to the Senators elected in 2013 to find the probable
+outcome. The results for ACT and NT were taken as-is, because the few Senators elected from the
+territories are not part of the half election cadence anyway.</p>
+
+<p>Computational resources required varied from approximately 50 seconds using 46MB of memory for
+Tasmania, to nearly 30 minutes using 1452MB memory for NSW. The vast majority of that time was spent
+parsing preference data, and the program is single threaded, so there is still room for improvement.
+All counts were run on a Core 2 Quad Q9500.</p>
+
+<table>
+    <caption>Probable non-DD results by state</caption>
+    <tr>
+        <th colspan="2" style="width:10em;">NSW</th>
+        <th colspan="2" style="width:10em;">VIC</th>
+        <th colspan="2" style="width:10em;">QLD</th>
+        <th colspan="2" style="width:10em;">SA</th>
+        <th colspan="2" style="width:10em;">WA</th>
+        <th colspan="2" style="width:10em;">TAS</th>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#1456F1; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal National</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:green; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>National</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#1456F1; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal National</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#FF6300; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Xenophon</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:green; width:8px">&#160;</td><td>National</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#10C25B; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Green</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F8F16F; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>One Nation</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Labor</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#10C25B; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Green</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#E36137; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Jacqui Lambie</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#10C25B; width:8px">&#160;</td><td>Green</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#002F5D; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Derryn Hinch</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#1456F1; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal National</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#FF6300; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Xenophon</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Liberal</td>
+        <td style="background-color:#10C25B; width:8px;">&#160;</td><td>Green</td>
+    </tr>
+</table>
+
+<table>
+    <caption>Probable non-DD Senate composition</caption>
+    <tr>
+        <th colspan="2" style="width:24em">Party</th>
+        <th style="width:9em">Seats Won</th>
+        <th style="width:9em">Continuing Senators</th>
+        <th style="width:9em">Total Seats</th>
+        <th style="width:9em">Difference From Actual</th>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#080CAB; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Liberal/National Coalition</td>
+        <td>17</td>
+        <td>15</td>
+        <td>32</td>
+        <td>+2</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#F00011; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Australian Labor Party</td>
+        <td>14</td>
+        <td>10</td>
+        <td>24</td>
+        <td>-2</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#10C25B; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Australian Greens</td>
+        <td>4</td>
+        <td>4</td>
+        <td>8</td>
+        <td>-1</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#FF6300; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Xenophon Group</td>
+        <td>2</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>3</td>
+        <td>Nil</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#E36137; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Jacqui Lambie Network*</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>2</td>
+        <td>+1</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#F9E518; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Liberal Democratic Party</td>
+        <td>0</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>Nil</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#00CCFF; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Family First Party</td>
+        <td>0</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>Nil</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#FFED00; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Palmer United Party*</td>
+        <td>0</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>+1</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:gray; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Glenn Lazarus Team*</td>
+        <td>0</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>+1</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#191970; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party</td>
+        <td>0</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>+1</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#F8F16F; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">One Nation</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>0</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>-3</td>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <td style="background-color:#002F5D; width:8px;">&#160;</td>
+        <td class="left">Derryn Hinch's Justice Party</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>0</td>
+        <td>1</td>
+        <td>Nil</td>
+    </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>* These three parties were all part of the Palmer United Party at the 2013/2014 election, but
+split up mid term.</p>
+
+<p>Surprisingly, these projected results <em>still</em> have 20 out of 76 seats held by third party
+candidates, despite the half election putting them at a disadvantage. The number of third party
+groups the Liberal/Nationals have to negotiate with to pass legislation (assuming Labor and Greens
+attempt to block) equally remains unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>The Greens manage to do slightly worse, even though their usual position of winning the 5th or
+6th seat in most states often allows them to obtain more representation than their primary vote
+would otherwise support. This can't even be attributed to a bad 2013 result, as their primary vote
+both then and in 2016 was nearly identical.</p>
+
+<p>One Nation's much reduced number of seats can be attributed to the inherent geographic bias that
+any system involving electing candidates across many independent divisions has. If like-minded
+voters are all in one place, they receive representation, but when the same number of voters are
+spread out, they get nothing. When this effect is intentionally exploited it's called
+gerrymandering, but here it's merely an artifact of electing Senators from each state separately.
+One Nation's support is strongest in Queensland but is relatively diffuse. Any claims of Pauline
+Hanson being <a href="http://junkee.com/malcolm-turnbull-will-probably-need-pauline-hansons-support-to-pass-any-laws/82138" class="external">one of the most powerful politicians in Australia</a> are thus
+overblown.</p>
+
+<p>The Xenophon Group, by contrast, has the vast majority of their support concentrated in South
+Australia. So the result for them remains unchanged.</p>
+
+<p>The most noteworthy outcomes for the question though, are that the Liberal/Nationals would have
+obtained more seats, and Labor would have been in a more difficult position to block the passage of
+legislation. Meaning that yes, the Liberal/National government would definitely have been better off
+with a normal election.</p>
+
+<p>Nice job screwing over your own party, Malcolm.</p>
+{% endblock -%}
+
+