Erin's Erfurt III Experience

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So it's reasonably well-known among nerd circles that Australia held a referendum in 1999 about whether or not to become a republic, and that it was rejected. People probably know a little bit less about the process that led to that referendum. It stretches back several years, originating during the Keating government, and I've been looking at a specific and important chapter: the 1998 Constitutional Convention.

At the time of the 1996 election, the question of the republic was on everyone's lips. Republicanism was Labor policy and a pet project of Prime Minister Paul Keating, who went to the election promising to transition Australia to a republic by the national centenary in 2001. Surveys showed that most supported abolishing the monarchy. The Coalition was divided over the issue, with leader John Howard personally opposed. The party campaigned on a more cautious approach, pledging to convene a Constitutional Convention to discuss possible changes.

The convention took place in February 1998 and was attended by a broad spectrum of figures from Australian society. It comprised 152 members, of whom half were appointed: 40 were drawn from federal, state, and territory parliaments from both sides of politics, and the remaining 36 were various respectedly non-parliamentary figures. The other half were to be elected.

The convention was an interesting exercise in democracy. It was conducted entirely via postal vote, the largest such effort in Australian history to date. The electoral system was closely modeled on Senate elections at the time: single transferable vote using group voting tickets. It was managed by the Australian Electoral Commission, and the government made a somewhat controversial decision in making it non-compulsory. Considering this was an election for a bunch of delegates to an advisory convention which would only sit for less than two weeks, it's perhaps unsurprising that turnout ended up a miserable 47%.

The results and the candidates, however, are quite interesting. The AEC released a report with full lists of candidates, results, and statistics shortly before the convention, and I took the time to transcribe them onto Wikipedia:

Results of the 1997 Australian Constitutional Convention election - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The first thing to know is this was unlike any other election in Australian history. These were delegates to a temporary advisory body, and the candidates were largely non-politicians. The largest political parties of the era - Labor, the Liberals, Nationals, and Democrats - did not run, though some members did stand. Instead, the ballot was dominated by various interest groups and enterprising individuals. By far the two largest were the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) and Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (ACM), the chief standardbearers for republicanism and monarchism respectively. Still, between them they garnered only just over half the votes, with the remainder divided between numerous smaller groups and a large number of ungrouped (independent) candidates.

The 76 seats up for grabs were apportioned between the states in a sort of proportional way, based on their representation in Parliament. New South Wales had the most (20), followed by Victoria (16), Queensland (13), WA (9), and SA (8). Tasmania had 6 and the territories two each. The number of seats in the largest states meant the quota was quite low and numerous groups were elected. The power of group voting tickets was also clear to see, with the very smallest group in New South Wales - ETHOS, 0.11% - claiming a seat. In Victoria, Republic4U (0.62%) won a seat. Meanwhile in the territories, the ARM won both of the ACT's seats with a primary vote of 45% to the ACM's 24%. The NT's results were quite bizarre, with the first- and second-placed ARM and ACM both failing to win a seat - instead third-place A Just Republic took the first, followed by ungrouped Michael Kilgariff. The single most remarkable result, in my opinion, is a clear artifact of below-the-line voting. Hazel Hawke, the ex-wife of Bob Hawke, was 12th on the ARM ticket in New South Wales, a more or less unwinnable position. However, she was elected to the 18th seat because of personal preferences, and in doing so leapfrogged five other ARM candidates.

Perhaps even more interesting than the results are the candidates. As I said, the parties pretty much stayed out of this - members could run, but most of the candidates were not politicians, and those who were paid no heed to party lines. On the ARM's NSW ticket we find Malcolm Turnbull, not yet a politician but the face of the republican movement, alongside former Nationals state minister Wendy Machin, former Labor premier Neville Wran, and then-Young Liberal state president Gladys Berejiklian. We also find ACTU president Jennie George, constitutional scholar Helen Irving, author Thomas Keneally, actor Lex Marinos, and artist Patricia Moran. The ACM ticket in Victoria was headed by Democrats founder Don Chipp, followed by Liberal monarchy advocate Sophie Panopoulos (later Mirabella), as well as Labor-turned-independent Melbourne city councillor Wellington Lee and artist Paul Fitzgerald. Indigenous campaigner and first Aboriginal member of federal parliament Neville Bonner was second on the Queensland ACM ticket.

Veteran independent politician Ted Mack ran a two-man ticket in NSW which won almost three quotas. More radical republicans challenged the ARM with their own tickets, including Pat O'Shane's Real Republic and Clem Jones's Queensland list. Florence Bjelke-Petersen, former Senator and wife of the infamous Queensland premier, was elected from second place on a Constitutional Monarchists ticket in Queensland. And naturally, Clive Palmer ran a ticket stacked with his friends and family. Linda Burney, at the time an educator advancing Aboriginal education across the country, headed an Indigenous-focused Reconcilation ticket in NSW, but failed to win seats. Multiculturalism campaigner Jason Yat-Sen Li was elected as an ungrouped candidate. Political scientist Paddy O'Brien, known for criticising corruption in WA Labor during the 80s, split the Elect the President ticket with his own slate and managed to get elected. In South Australia, future premier and rising Labor star Jay Weatherill ran unsuccessfully as an ungrouped candidate. Conservative Presbyterian priest David Mitchell, concerned that republicanism threatened the scriptural basis of Westminister government, was elected for the Monarchist League in Tasmania. In fact, the Presbyterian church ran its own group ticket in Victoria.

This great and bizarre mixture of people was reflected in the convention, and indeed many of the elected delegates had more rigid political convictions than the appointed politicians. Ultimately, the convention endorsed a transition to a republic by a 89 votes to 52, with 11 abstentions. But they were deeply divided on the specifics. Four proposals were considered: two direct-election models and two appointment models. The direct-election models had fervent but minority support from radical republicans, while the appointment models were favoured as less of a departure from the existing system. The "McGarvie model", in which the president would be appointed by a constitutional council on advice of the Prime Minister, was eventually rejected in favour of the "bipartisan appointment model", wherein the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader would jointly propose a president to Parliament, who would approve them by two-thirds vote. This model actually only garnered minority support among delegates, ultimately winning 73 in favour, 55 against thanks to 23 abstentions, mostly from republicans who favoured direct election. According to Malcolm Turnbull, these radical republicans believed the bipartisan appointment would be rejected by the public, giving them a chance to put direct election to referendum.

 

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The Palatinate has long been defined by its peculiarities and contradictions. Since the end of the Napoleonic wars it was a province of Bavaria. This religiously mixed, Protestant-majority exclave, influenced by the liberal currents of the Rhine on which it sits, was always a strange match for the Catholic southern state and its rural conservative governments. It's no surprise that they did, in time, secede to form their own federal state. Perhaps it's surprising that it took until the 1990s thanks to Munich's reluctance. Local politics in the Palatinate diverged early in the history of the German republic, defined by a complex politico-religious rift that distinguished it from the rest of Bavaria.

The single largest bloc in Palatine politics was, and remains, the working-class. Mostly Protestant, they give strength to the socialist parties, represented in the 21st century by the Left Alliance. The state as a whole has always had a bourgeois majority, but it was divided - not only between Protestant and Catholic, but within Catholic politics between the liberal, Rhenish Centre and the Bavarian autonomist current originating with the BVP. This latter division allowed the urban Protestant bourgeois to dominate the conservative side of politics in early Palatine politics. However, as the area continued to diverge from Bavaria and the autonomists became more radical, their support dropped off and the Rhenish Centre challenged the Protestants.

It was around this time that the paradigm of modern Palatine politics began to take shape. Recognising the imperative of keeping the left out of power, the Protestant and Catholic bourgeois worked to defuse tensions, entering government together and formulating complex power-sharing agreements. By the late 1970s, the Catholic Centre dramatically voted to "leave the tower", refounding itself as the Open Centre, an officially interdenominational party co-led by the Protestants. This formula worked wonders. The secession in the 1990s erased the last remnants of Bavarian autonomism in the Palatinate and ushered in almost three decades of continuous conservative governance.

Still, not everyone was happy to share equally with the Catholics when the state overall was majority Protestant. Originally an outgrowth of the progressive liberal tradition, the Bürgerliste (Citizens' List) came to represent those in the middle-class who did not buy into the political project of the Open Centre. The prosperity of the state and its riverine setting also gave rise to a small ecologist movement, one of few represented on the state level nationwide. Nonetheless, stable and harmonius government, as well as co-opting into coalitions, suppressed the popularity of these dissidents.

Until hardly a year before the 2022 election, this paradigm still seemed unbreakable to most. But in truth the Open Centre's greatest skill had always been papering over the cracks. Behind closed doors, the party was beset by constant internal tensions, policy conflict, and struggles over the most minor divisions of responsibility. When the old Minister-President announced his retirement, the stage was set for a harsh confrontation over his successor. So high were emotions that they simply could not be hidden any longer - open sectarian attacks were made at the conference and duly reported by the press to a bewildered public. The Catholic factions put forward Matthias Lammert, an unremarkable and uncontroversial candidate, but his narrow victory along sectarian lines proved the straw that broke the camel's back.

A number of Protestants announced their departure from the government. Within months, a new project, a specifically Protestant political platform, had been launched to fight the next election. They sought to avoid the image of a conservative Protestant movement seeking vengeance on Catholics from the right, and drafted popular writer and theologian Michael Landgraf as their lead candidate. His moderate progressive political leanings set the tone: the Protestant List positioned itself in the centre and campaigned on a fresh start for Palatine politics, overturning a paradigm long past its use-by date.

On election day, the Open Centre took a sharp dive to a historic low. The difference mainly went to the Protestant List, but also to the Left, who won a plurality for the first time in decades. The arithmetic was inconclusive, with balance of power shared between the Protestants and Citizens. Either could form government with the Left, or team up to prop up the Open Centre. But there was an air of inevitability about the final outcome: the rift on the right was too deep, too fresh, to be reconciled so soon. Landgraf steered the Protestants into negotiations with the Left Alliance, forming the first centre-left government in the Palatinate's independent history.

 

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I got into the new 2021 Germany mod for New Campaign Trail with a vengeance, and got such an interesting outcome from pursuing a Bahamas coalition (CDU-FDP-AfD) with Söder that I made a little oneshot out of it.

There is a small inaccuracy in the scenario, in that there is no mechanism for an "interim Chancellor" to be installed by the Bundestag - the Basic Law specifies that an early election can only be called if the Bundestag fails to elect anyone within two weeks (and if the President declines to appoint the most popular candidate after a final round of voting). Günther being elected would prevent snap elections. So in reality Merkel would have continued in office until like May 2022 or something. But that's kinda beside the point. Cool scenario.

There is a surge for the Free Voters, and a new centrist party is indeed formed by CDU/CSU and FDP defectors called the Democratic Centre, but they fail to pick up much momentum in the face of the more established parties and only get 2.8% and no seats. After the 2022 election, the Greens and SPD are agonisingly one seat short of a majority between them. Having sworn off cooperation with the Union due to their aborted collaboration with the AfD, and with the FDP coming up a hair short of the national threshold, the Greens and SPD forced to pick between a coalition with the Left or the Free Voters. After spending the last six months hammering the Union endlessly for working with extremists, they decide that forming government with the Left would - although objectively a far less dangerous move than Söder's - be a bad look. The right-of-centre Free Voters are far from an ideal partner, but they can make it work. Besides, what's the alternative?

 

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manifesting

 

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So the Federal Constitutional Court just partially annulled the results of the 2021 federal election in Berlin, owing to the same irregularities which caused a full do-over of the state election in February. This was not unforeseen, as the irregularities had been subject to a long series of challenges and reviews in the Bundestag. Last November, a Bundestag committee - controlled by the traffic light coalition - declared that the election should be repeated in 431 of Berlin's 2,245 polling stations. This was subject to a legal challenge from the CDU/CSU, who wanted results annulled in about 1,500 stations. The Constitutional Court sided mostly with the Bundestag committee, declaring a total of 455 invalid. The elections in those stations must now be repeated within 60 days.

This is not as simple an affair as the state election, which flushed out the whole legislature. My fiancee AutumnQueen (formerly known on AH sites as CosmicAsh) did me a big favour and disentangled the spreadsheets for me so I could collate the affected results. Only 22.5% of Berlin's voters will be going back to the polls and they are distributed sporadically around the city. Stations in all twelve of Berlin's constituencies are affected but the number is inconsistent and not geographically uniform. Only 3% of Lichtenberg's voters will go back to the polls, compared to 85% in Pankow.

Because the whole election is not being redone, what will happen is that the national 2021 election result will be augmented by new votes from these 455 polling stations and the entire election recalculated. Because this is a relatively small number of votes (410,000 valid votes of the 46.4 million cast) only a few seats are likely to shift, although due to the complicated seat allocation process, this may include list seats in other states - especially if the results are substantially different from 2021, which polling suggests will be the case.

Bottom line: the federal government's majority is not at all under threat. Additionally, thanks to the Constitutional Court limiting the scope of the annulment, neither is the presence of The Left and its Wagenknecht-aligned splitters. Since only a few stations in Lichtenberg and Treptow-Köpenick are affected, the party is mathematically guaranteed to retain them.

Above and below are the aggregated results in each constituency, with above being annulled and below upheld.

Mathematically speaking, it is possible for several constituencies to flip, but I believe only two have a serious chance of a changed outcome: Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Pankow. 84,000 voters in Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf will go back to the polls; the CDU must make up an 8,500 vote deficit to win the seat from the SPD, which is well within reach given current polling. I consider it more likely than not that this seat flips.

Pankow is a wildcard. 85% of its voters will go back to the polls (one wonders how an election could be so badly mismanaged). It's currently held by the Greens on a 4% margin over the SPD, followed by The Left with the CDU in a distant fourth. The constituency takes in inner urban areas in the northern East of the city, including much of Prenzlauer Berg, which in recent years has become a stronghold for the Greens. In former times it was contested mostly between The Left and the SPD. Given the decline, albeit relatively modest, in the Greens' support, and the surge in the CDU vote, I consider the CDU an outside chance to win the seat, despite having won only 13% of the constituency vote in 2021. Another factor is that the 15% of votes which will not be contested, mostly located in the peri-urban northern parts of the seat, give the SPD a 2,400 vote headstart over its competitors, with the Greens starting from only fourth place.

 

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Back in August I made an entry for aaa's monthly Wikibox challenge with the theme "Napoleon in Rags". I didn't post it here at the time because I intended to flesh it out a bit more, following federal politics rather than Latham's personal endeavours, but didn't get around to it, so here's the post:

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The Rise and Fall of Mark Latham

The Keating government was shuffled from office with little fanfare less than 18 months after the new Prime Minister took office. Widely held responsible for the downturn in the economy, Keating's unpopularity helped boost the opposition to power despite its ambitious programme. Opposition leader John Hewson's flagship policy, a consumption tax, had come under scrutiny during the campaign. He was set up for trouble from day one, not only for the struggles of passing his policy through Parliament with a one-seat majority and a hung Senate. He was out of step with the party room on a number of touchy issues, including the republic and rights for gays and lesbians. By 1995, the consumption tax had been quietly shelved in the face of Labor and Democrat opposition, and Hewson's grip on the reigns of power was looking shaky.

On the other side of the chamber, Labor was dealing with an unorthodox leadership arrangement. Gareth Evans, former foreign minister, had convincingly defeated outgoing deputy PM Brian Howe to lead the party after Keating's resignation. However, Evans was a Senator, and by convention party leaders were drawn from the lower house. He pledged to move houses as soon as there was a by-election in an appropriate Victorian electorate; as it turns out, nothing opened up, and he remained in the Senate for the full duration of the term. In the meantime he was deputised by the young Simon Crean as Leader of the Opposition in the House. In truth, Evans was seen from the start as a seat warmer for the inevitable leader, Kim Beazley Jr, who had unexpectedly lost his marginal seat of Swan in the 1993 election. The expectation, even among Evans' inner circle, was that Beazley would move to a safer seat in 1996 and lead the party to victory at the election after. Despite the troubles facing Hewson, nobody believed a one-term government would be defeated. It hadn't happened since the Depression.

And then it happened. Labor won a comfortable majority. The stable and quiet leadership of Evans, in truth secured by the expectation that he wasn't a serious contender to begin with, contrasted starkly with the troubled tenure of Hewson, who struggled to maintain discipline over his ministers. A particularly wounding episode took place in early 1995, when talk of a possible backroom rebellion prompted him to call their bluff with a party room spill: he won unopposed, but such a public indication that the Prime Minister wasn't certain he had the confidence of his party was a shock and seemed to confirm all the rumours.

The incoming government was a hodgepodge of experienced Hawke-Keating ministers and new blood. The brightest new star was Carmen Lawrence, the former premier of WA and new health minister. Beazley also returned to parliament and was immediately promoted to deputy PM. Evans had never expected to win the election and was understandably out of his depth. He was trying juggle the enormous job of Prime Minister with the learning the ropes of House procedure as its most scrutinised member. He was under enormous pressure. And in truth, his leadership lacked direction. Labor's policy offering at the election had been an interim plan, half-baked and without clear shape. Much of it got passed; some didn't, and others still faced trouble in the Senate, where the Democrats had performed well and still held balance of power. The shine wore off the new government quickly. The knives were not coming out - Labor was very keen not to repeat the mistakes of the government they'd just turfed out. But if Evans were to fall on his sword, there would be no shortage of ministers taking advantage.

Ultimately, Evans's downfall was sudden, dramatic, and bizarre. It began in 1997, when Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot unexpectedly announced her resignation and defection to the Labor Party. She did not join the party room, instead resigning from the Senate pending preselection for a lower house seat in the next election. A year later, it was reported that Kernot and Evans had been carrying on an affair for some time, including before she left the Democrats. The media circus and questions about ethics and integrity ended Kernot's prospective new career and blew open Evans' prime ministership. His position was untenable, even without the preexisting stresses, and he resigned at the start of November.

The race to succeed him initially looked like a two-horse race between Beazley and Lawrence, who had been recently cleared of wrongdoing in relation to a Royal Commission. Both were ready to take the reigns and give direction to the government. However, the matter was complicated by the new (or old) Leader of the Opposition: John Howard, the old stalwart, who bided his time after Hewson's defeat and took the leadership in early 1998. He took the attack to the government, but unlike his first disastrous stint against Hawke, avoided the risks of race-baiting and culture war. He instead pursued a modernised version of the Menzies formula, appealing to the disaffected middle-class, and reminding of the echoes of the Keating economy. It was effective: the Coalition took the lead in the polls and forecasts suggested that Howard could not only win, but win a landslide. Labor had suffered through six long months with the clock ticking down to the next election by the time Evans resigned, and the leadership question was no longer a coronation for the Westerner of choice. A new challenger emerged, young and energetic, who promised to take the fight to Howard and win over the suburbs with substance. Mark Latham ultimately triumphed on the day, albeit narrowly, and had he faced Beazley instead of Lawrence on the second ballot he would likely have lost.

The change turned out to be perfectly timed. Latham had a strong honeymoon period and the polls reversed immediately. Dynamic and outspoken, he was a clear change from Evans and represented a shift in focus for the party. He countered Howard's rhetoric with a focus on health and childhood education to win over middle-class families, and come the election in March, Labor was returned to a second term with minor losses, but retaining its majority. In an unexpected turn, musician and activist John Schumann delivered the Democrats their first-ever lower house win in Mayo, unseating shadow foreign minister Alexander Downer. This came with a nationwide 2.5% upswing in the Democrats' primary vote, their best result since 1990.

Map courtesy of my fiancée AutumnQueen (of Our Fair Country/These Fair Shores fame)

Labor were riding high going into their second term, as was the Prime Minister. The slow advance of the republic process, complicated briefly by infighting among the Coalition government about how to continue, culminated in a constitutional referendum in May 2000 in which a narrow majority voted in favour of a republic. This was followed up by the Sydney Olympics toward the end of the year, showing off a proud new Australian identity to the world.

As the government moved into its fifth year, trouble was on the horizon, though none knew it at the time. The atmosphere of calm modernisation was broken by unprecedented terrorist attacks in the United States months out from the election. Latham was firm and measured in his response, joining action against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The government expectedly received a boost in popularity, and though it began to fade by the time of the campaign, Howard's attacks on Latham's defence policy went too far for a voting public who wanted the security of bipartisan consensus. Though the government's re-election was generally expected, its improved majority was not.

Latham's troubles began with the boats. An uptick in refugee boats entering Australian waters had begun as early as 1999, but despite noise from the Coalition it did not become a major issue until later into 2002. Initially, boats were allowed into Australian ports to disembark, where the occupants were placed into mandatory detention until their claims were processed. This approach had been in place since Keating. In the new era, however, the salience of the issue was increased by concerns about terrorism, since most of those seeking asylum were Muslim and many were from the Middle East. People smuggling also entered the conversation with suggestions that criminals were charging people exorbitant prices to secure passage to Australia in dangerous conditions. Under pressure from a press and opposition calling for a stricter approach, Latham announced a suite of measures to deter boat arrivals, including individual cases of boats being refused entry and forced to turn back.

This proved highly controversial within the government. They kept a united front until December, when Latham announced the government was seeking arrangements to redirect refugee flows to a third country. Carmen Lawrence, now minister for education and women, announced her resignation from cabinet in protest. She was followed by a small group of other ministers who joined voices with left-wing backbenchers in opposing any more punitive measures against boat arrivals, and refugees generally. The confrontation came to a head not long after: legislation enabling the government's new policies was voted down in the Senate by the opposition, who called it weak, and the Democrats and Labor rebels, who called it too harsh. In accordance with Labor's strict rules on party discipline, these backbenchers were immediately suspended from the party room. Lawrence, who as a member of the House had not rebelled, called for a reconsideration of the government's approach. Latham refused to back down and announced they would immediately reintoduce the legislation. After trying in vain to stall it in the party room, Lawrence announced her opposition to the bill, knowing would likely spell the end of her career in the Labor Party. In an emotional speech during the second reading, she declared that her conscience gave her no choice but to vote against.

Though she was suspended from the party room, it was far from the end for the former premier. The bill once again stumbled and failed in the Senate when negotiations with the Democrats, now led by the dynamic young progressive Natasha Stott Despoja, fell through. It was voted down a second time. This handed Latham a trigger for a double dissolution election. The government's political capital was draining rapidly in the face of the deadlock and infighting, and the opposition was establishing a lead. This was his out, and he took it. Less than a year after the last election, both houses of parliament were dissolved - all 76 Senators went up for election, flushing the rebels from the backbench clean, and the Democrats too. It was all or nothing.

The rebels weren't keen to sit back and let either the government nor opposition cruise to victory. Between them they had experience and, for some of the lower house MPs, a local following to capitalise on. They hatched a plan with Stott Despoja. After a ballot of party members, the Democrats agreed to endorse dissident Labor MPs and run jointly under the moniker the Social Democrats. Their goal: to secure balance of power in both chambers and ensure humane, equitable policy in all areas, including a balanced approach to terrorism and refugees. It was always going to be an uphill battle. Their message did not appeal to the majority of the electorate.

On election night, the Coalition clearly returned to power. Peter Costello maneuvred them through a campaign revolving around security: terorrism and refugees. He particularly lambasted the government for refusing to back the United States in toppling the Saddam regime in the invasion which already appeared as good as over. Though the Coalition secured a strong majority of the two-party vote, the swing was uneven and they won only a one-seat majority. On the other side of the aisle, Labor lost twenty seats and six percent of its primary vote. The difference was made up by the Social Democrats who won a surprising eleven seats, including Carmen Lawrence's Fremantle and several other Labor MPs. The Senate, meanwhile, was exactly as they had hoped: together with the Greens they held balance of power. Latham's dice roll had failed spectacularly and Labor was reduced to just 24 seats.

In short order, Latham had overseen a generational failure for his party: turfed out with its worst result in decades, a major tear in its left flank resulting in a viable progressive challenger, discredited as the emerging natural party of government. Nonetheless, he clung on. He pointed to his successes and personal ratings: in truth, his approaches were popular with the public, but they had torn his government apart. Refusing to step away, he called a party room ballot to confirm his leadership but was heavily defeated by outgoing manager of government business Julia Gillard, leader of the soft Left.

He remained on the backbench for just a few months, but his ego got the better of him. He left Labor and launched a new party, National Labor, under his own leadership. He attracted some enthusiastic supporters but nobody from established politics was foolhardy enough to follow. In the federal election held the next year he stood to hold his seat of Werriwa but lost to the Labor candidate, placing second in both primary and two-candidate votes. After this he announced his retirement.

It didn't last long. In 2006 he relaunched as the Latham Justice Party and ran for the Senate the following year. He had more thoughtful critiques of his former party this time, deriding them for allegedly abandoning the aspirational approach that had brought him success. He garnered only 50,000 votes and no seats. In 2008 he tried to shift to state politics instead with the Legislative Council, which had a much lower bar for entry, but fell short there too. The following year he raised eyebrows by standing in a by-election for blue-ribbon Bradfield with the endorsement of the Democratic Labour Party, failing to make a splash. In the following years he apparently abandoned his own party and stood under the banner of the Liberal Democrats for the next federal election, once again without success.

The entry of billionaire magnate Gina Rinehart into politics in 2012 gave Latham his new big chance. He found much agreeable about her appeal to middle Australia, common sense and resource development, and was chosen as head of the NSW branch. Leading the Senate ticket in that year's federal election, he failed to win a seat again. He remained active and stood again in 2015 with a much diminished result. By 2018 he had fallen in with, of all people, former National member Bob Katter and his personal outfit. He stood on Katter's Australian ticket for Queensland - albeit not in first place - unsuccessfully. Most recently he ran in 2021 as an ungrouped candidate in his home state and garnered a paltry 1,000 votes.

 

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The Berlin federal rerun has occurred!

The results you might be seeing in different places probably aren't that useful, because the overall results - nationally or statewide - basically barely shifted and only one net seat is changing (the FDP losing one), although there will be some shift in list seats between Berlin and other states. So here are the specific results in the areas that went to the polls yesterday.

These are the raw votes and percentages. First thing you may notice: turnout was pretty abysmal. That's to be expected given this is a highly irregular event, only affecting a minority of voters in a small state, and the nature of the areas affected means that many people didn't know if they could vote or not. I underestimated how poor turnout would be and the SPD were able to retain Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf by a hair. It's really been a hot mess. The raw results don't say a lot on their own. The swings make things more meaningful:

You immediately see the impact of the decline in turnout - which was enormous, down 25-30% in every constituency. Consequently, almost every party recorded a net loss of votes. Due to how percentages work they could still achieve a swing in their favour even in that case, though. This was particularly true for the CDU which recorded strong swings in every constituency despite only gaining net votes in two (and only by literally a single vote in Lichtenberg).

The main trends are big losses for the SPD and FDP (particularly the latter which lost, proportionally, overal 60% of its vote share.) This was matched by gains for the CDU and AfD, while the Greens and Left remained steady.

To get a sense of what this result means, compare to the map of the repeat state election which was a year ago now.

See those precincts in northern Pankow? They were black a year ago - now they're blue, even deep blue. The AfD has surged dramatically - you can see it in the smattering of booths across Marzahn-Hellersdorf which are ominously dark shades of blue (one booth recorded 50% for the AfD). They also penetrated into Reinickendorf - where they achieved an 8% swing overall - and even parts of outer Prenzlauer Berg, a Green stronghold.

 

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