Select Data: High and Low votes
Given I now have this dataset, I think it would be worth exploring some of the interesting information that is contained within it.
The ability to run SQL commands on the dataset makes finding some answers quite easy. The question I will be addressing in this, the first
in a possible series of articles, has to do with exceptional primary votes. Some MPs (and MLAs/MLCs in Victoria) have been elected off of
quite small primary votes. In terms of raw numbers, the member elected with the least votes comes from the early colonial period of Victoria,
which had the smallest enrolments and a smaller franchise, while the member elected with the most votes comes from a modern federal division,
which is larger in population than Victoria's electoral districts. Obviously, there are many examples of electorates that were uncontested
and hence have victorious candidates recording 0 primary votes, but that is not what we are looking for here.
In 1856, at the first Victorian Legislative Assembly election, James McCulloch, who would go on to serve as Victoria's third longest-serving premier, was elected as the second of two representatives for Wimmera,
recording just 25 primary votes, beating the third candidate by a single vote. There are several more candidates in
that election who recorded primary votes of less than 100 but managed to be elected.
At a federal level, the smallest primary vote I can find for an elected candidate is in the Division of Northern Territory in 1922,
where Harold Nelson managed to get elected from a primary vote of 452, which rose to 608 after preferences in order to defeat independent
Arthur Love by a margin of 9 votes. The next 8 entries all come from the Northern Territory in various years.
At the other end of the scale, the largest primary vote in terms of raw numbers at a federal level was recorded in
2010 by Julia Gillard in her division of Lalor, with a vote of 66298, which rose to 74452 after preferences. This is only the fourth-biggest
vote in terms of two-candidate preferred, however. The largest 2CP vote was recorded by Andrew Leigh in 2016 in his division of Fenner, with a 2CP vote of 79242.
In Victoria, the first result I found was a data entry error. The second, which I believe to be correct, is
Ros Spence in her division of Yuroke at the 2018 election, with a primary vote of 28519. Spence's is also the second-highest 2CP vote.
The highest 2CP vote, which I originally thought was a data entry error as well, actually turned out to be correct. Instead of coming
from a Labor electorate from a recent election, the result was actually recorded in a Liberal electorate 60 years ago. At the 1964 state
election, Raymond Wiltshire recorded a 2CP vote of 34333, compared with Spence's 2018 2CP vote of 33740. Wiltshire's division of Mulgrave had a turnout around 5000
votes higher than any other electorate of that year.
And finally, I'll look briefly at the Victorian Legislative Council and Federal Senate. These results are less meaningful as, in elections with above-the-line voting, the first on a party's ticket usually
gets the majority of the vote share, leading those elected lower down on the ticket to have much smaller primary votes. In Victoria, James Henty was elected as member for Portland Province in 1853 with a primary vote of 38, defeating his opponent by a margin of 12. At a federal level, Malcolm Roberts was elected second on the One Nation ticket in Queensland
in 2016 with 77 primary votes. A datum not present in this set, but still worth noting, is Wilson Tucker in Western Australia, who was elected first on his ticket with a primary vote of 98. Unlike Roberts, who benefited
from a surplus of votes from One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, Tucker built his election on preferences from other candidates, which flowed to him from WA's now-defunct Group Voting Ticket system.
Conversely, in 2007, Mark Arbib led the ALP ticket in New South Wales, garnering a primary vote of 1760222, and in Victoria, Labor's ticket in the Western Metropolitan Region in 2006 was led by Justin Madden, who received 217188 primary votes.