Liberal Democrats Results
The Liberal Democrats did vastly improved their result in this election. While we did not win a seat our vote went from 0.1% to 1.67% share of the vote (this translates from 3,000 votes to 55,000 votes). This may have something to do with the fact that our name changed from “Liberty and Democracy Party” to the “Liberal Democratic Party.” Or it could be some people a slowly learning about the party and our message on freedom, low taxes and small government. We can’t be certain.
Here are the results across the nation for the LDP:
TAS: N/A
Effect on How To Vote Flyers
Printing How to Vote Flyers is can get expensive. Thus, it is an interesting exercise to see if it is actually worth, spending time and money on handing out these on election day.
I visited four booths on election day: 3 in the seat of Bruce; 1 in the La Trobe. In this analysis, I needed a baseline for comparision, so I decided on using two:
1. State vote (1.67%)
2. Seat vote (Mount View, Silverton, Mulgrave were in Bruce = 1.94%, Berwick South was in La Trobe = 1.24%)
As you can see, our best swing was in Mount View and Silverton. I visited these in the morning during the early rush. In particular, Silverton had long queues and people were more receptive in receiving the flyers. Berwick South was interesting. While we didn’t have a swing compared to the state vote, we did improve compared to the seat vote. Mulgrave was the worst performing, probably because it was at the end of the day, was cold and rainy and voter volume was very low. Overall, I do think that handing out flyers does make a small difference to the overall vote and next time will try to engage in more volunteers to man more booths in the future.
Great Experience
All in all, it was a great experience running for the senate. I learnt a lot, met some great people and was pushed out of my comfort zone (which is a good thing). I am pleased that the LDP have improved their share of the vote and will give us good momentum into the future. Thank you to all that helped with the campaign, especially my family.
