ELECTORAL SURPRISES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18766, 20 January 1923, Page 9

ELECTORAL SURPRISES.

A .few days ago we reviewed the results cf the election of members of the Australian Senate on December 16. They revealed several surprises, showing that candidates who appeared to have no possible chance in the first count of primary votes were lifted into prominent, and in some cases winning, positions in the subsequent counts. Where there is a long list of candidates the preferential vote in practice sometimes produces unexpected results. For instance, the return of two Labour senators in New South Wales was unexpected, but this result was brought about by a large proportion of exSenator Gatling’s supporters giving a vote to Mr Grant (Labour) instead of to a fellow-Nationalist in the person of ex-Senator Thomas. Over 4000 Nationalist supporters of ex-Senator Garling gave Mr Grant a vote, and more than 1800 other supporters of his neglected to exhaust their preferences. In the final analysis two Nationalist ex-sena-tors were defeated and two Labour candidates were elected, together with Senator Millen, the third Nationalist candidate. The supreme surprise, however, comes from Queensland. As is well known, Queensland has in State politics a Labour Government, and the primary votes at the election of senators indicated a fairly strong Labour poll. A Nationalist candidate led, certainly, with something moro than 10,000 votes in> excess of those cast for the highest Labour candidate, but the four Labour candidates were all ahead of the remaining throe Nationalists, who were at the bottom of the poll, about 80,000 votes behind the leading I labour candi-

date. In the final counts, however, Queensland elected all four Nationalists. The curious circumstance is that, although the retiring Labour senator secured in the primary count 80,000 votes in round figures as against just over 1000 for the Nationalist who was lowest on the poll, the latter was finally elected and the Labour Party was deprived of any Queensland representation in the Senate. The result is one which illustrates and confirms our previous suggestion that there appears to be large room for improvement in the method adopted for the election of the Senate.