Not all votes carry the same weight

At this point most people think that Labor will be the party to form Government from the 2010 federal election. With the Greens Adam Bandt and the Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie offering their support for a Gillard lead Government; Labor has taken front position in the race to control the Australian Parliament.

But whatever way the remaining country independent choose to fall with their support will decide the victor, unless they choose to not support any party. That would of course see us going to another election. This will however be the least possible result, yet still the chance is there.

Many people have argued the merits of the voters in those electorates being the ones to have chosen the parliamentarians that may decide who forms a Government. But I say that is the way our system works and personally I think it is great. In fact I think it is a good reminder to the Australian people that although the major parties would like you to think that on Election Day you are voting for Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard in some form of a presidential kind election. You are in fact voting for a local member that may or may not be a member of either of those parties.

We need to value our vote and not take it for granted. When I was growing up in country Victoria my family were not much into politics nor were the families of many of my friends. I was told many things not very complimentary about politics and politicians. One however was that it didn’t really matter much who you vote for because all politicians are (insert any number of suitable noun here) and your vote won’t make any difference anyway.

How wrong they were. Yes we can discuss how the voters of places like the electorates of Lyons, New England or Kennedy have had a big say. But really those members although they are wielding enormous power but they won with big leads in the vote.

No what I mean is the voters of the very close marginal electorates. It now looks as though we know how the numbers will fall in the seat count and without getting into the discussion around if the WA National member will sit in the Coalition or the cross bench. I think we all know that wear it counts he is with the Coalition. So that considered we have the

Coalition on 73

Labor with 72

And the Greens and independents with 5

With any party hoping to form Government needing 76 I am not breaking any news to say it is close.

Knowing the two members mentioned previously supporting Labor that takes them to 74.

But this is where it gets interesting, let’s look at the seat of Corangamite. As I write this post the numbers look like this in the two parties preferred,

Liberal – Sarah Henderson 46,473

Labour – Darren Cheeseman 47,238

A difference of only 765 votes.

What if say 400 of those voters reversed their vote giving the seat to the Liberal party, making the numbers Coalition 74 and Labor 71.

This could make all the difference as for Labor to claim the win they would need the support of all the cross benchers and this would almost make it impossible for them to claim a stable government and Tony Abbott would only need two. Also if he was to get all three country independents he would have a tidy little buffer and may get support from Andrew Wilkie making it nice and safe.

Wow 400 votes may have totally swung the election, kind of destroys the theory that any one vote doesn’t have much power.

I also know that early in the election the Victorian Branch of the Liberal party were just going through the motion as they didn’t really give themselves much hope of doing well in this state. That’s not to say they were not trying at all but they were not pulling out all stops until later in the election when the polls improved.

The moral of this story is if you are a voter or a political party; do not take any single vote for granted.