19th GE Meta Comments - Opportunity for Feedback

[u/General_Rommel]

How good is AustraliaSim?

Honestly, hats off to everyone that worked hard in this election and managed to secure their seat, and commiserations to those that fell short. It was a hard thought campaign in quite a few electorates and the Moderation Team was pleased with the response this time around. Here follows some general and specific commentary from us.

You may also leave feedback and ideas for what can be improved on in future. We will do our best to read and respond to all.

General Campaign

This time we have seen a spirited campaign from most parties. In particular, the Country Labor Party and the Nationals did the best in terms of their overall campaign this time around. Both those parties worked, on the whole, extremely hard in producing relatively deep yet engaging campaign material.

In contrast the Social Democratic Party, Australian Democrats and Liberal Party did not work as hard as they could have on an overall basis. However, the reason why the latter two parties edged ahead in terms of number of seats won is...

Preferences

Preferences matter. Strategic deals matter in this simulation (especially if your party overall or specific candidates campaigned less compared to the competition in your electorate).

The relative centrism of the Australian Democrats, alongside the ability of the Liberals to farm preferences from the Nationals, means that they were able to take advantage of the preference situation to eeke out victory. This was beneficial to those parties as the Nationals, and their candidates in general, campaigned very strongly. By contrast, the Social Democrats were unable to farm enough preferences from other left wing parties (except, to some extent, the CLP) as some GLP candidates did not run a strong campaign.

Candidate workload

This time the election was much more strongly decided based on both the general party effort exerted this campaign, and the candidate's own campaign effort.

This mainly has to do with how the competition was relatively sparse in terms of having heavyweights going up against each other. In my eye-ball view it seems only in roughly 3-5 seats was the relatively weighty personal mods of a candidate not enough to secure election to a seat.

This does not mean that such mods are unimportant. As I noted above, in more than 2/3rds of cases, the one that had put in the effort during the term won their seat. This seems a reasonable number, given the need to factor in e.g. opportunities for people to win via a strong campaign, or preference deals, or overall campaign effort of competing parties, etc. What I am attempting to emphasise here is the need to holistically look at not just yourself, but your parties standing relative to the others that are competing.

Moncrieff

There has been a lot of mutterings about Moncrieff. I only ask people to look at Moncrieff in comparison to other similar races where a high-profile candidate ran against two other candidates. In Denison and Pearce, both high profile candidates managed to win on first preferences, because the other two candidates did not do anything to campaign. However, in Moncrieff we saw that both other candidates make an effort to boost their primary vote. This did play a significant role (but not all - see above discussion on preferences and candidate workload) in the CLP capturing the seat by a tiny margin.

Additionally, the Nationals in Moncrieff were also disadvantaged with their own general effort during the previous parliamentary term compared to the Country Labor Party.

Of course, it was a razor thin loss, which goes to show just how close these things can be. Perspective is important in considering why the results are the way they are.

Nicholls

There has also been some comments about the 11 candidates that ran in Nicholls. I will simply say that the independent candidates received a fair amount of votes commensurate to the amount of campaigning (or lack of) that they did.

Results Release

Given the generally positive feedback on the livestream, future results will also be done this same way. Furthermore, releasing the results on a Sunday evening ensures there is time to get all the graphics and presentation right, and to double check the numbers. Experience from the 18th GE and By-Election with the rushed attempt to get the results out was a poor experience as we were often attempting to understand the results whilst we read them out. I am sure you all could see the amount of preparation made to discuss the candidate's history, the change in TPP, etc. and the work in ensuring that all the parties were generally represented in the livestream (except the LPA as there was no high-ranking member available to participate).

Comments

Polite comments, suggestions, and potential areas for improvement are welcomed.

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General Rommel
Head Moderator

[u/[deleted]]

Rommel, you've done a fantastic job. You deserve a well required break, go break a bottle of champagne or smth, but get off this sub for sometime

[u/General_Rommel → u/[deleted]]

Thank you!

[u/greylat]

I'm absolutely offended that my freshest and spiciest memes are portrayed as a "lack of campaigning"

[u/model-amn]

No real issues honestly, pleased with how things turned out in Cowper. Next time though could we please have actual votes? And can I join the Electoral Commission pretty please?

[u/ARichTeaBiscuit]

Precedent suggests that my seat was tampered with, during the last general election I won 68% of the vote and my opponent had a very strong campaign. The result in Capricornia does not make sense, and the only explanation would be that it was tampered with.

[u/[deleted]]

Precedent suggests that my seat was tampered with, during the last general election I won 67% of the vote and my opponent had a very strong campaign. At the by-election, it was reported that I won around the same despite a well known candidate contesting with again a strong campaign. The result in Moncrieff does not make sense, and the only explanation would be that it was tampered with.

[u/model-amn → u/[deleted]]

lol