Breakdown of the wormhole CSM vote

Some background reading.

• Trebor's rerun of the vote
• Interstellar Privateer's csm-8 analysis

In Australia, where preferential elections (or STV) are common place, a preferred method of a 'quick and dirty' analysis is to look at first preferences, then see where they leaked in previous elections.  Now, we did not have previous elections to look at, but just counting first preferences is still useful.

Taking Trebor's quota of 3314, the wormhole candidates had a first preference total of 6207 votes; or 1.9 quotas.  Up front, this is as close to a guarantee of one wormhole candidate, and an exceptional chance of 2 seats.  Conventional Australian voting 'wisdom' would suggest 2 candidates; with little likelyhood of any other result.

Interstellar Privateer has suggested "The wormholers got lucky this time."  I disagree, thinking they got exactly the candidates that the 'first preferences' of the vote suggested.

For the wormhole candidates to get a third seat, there would have to be massive haemorrhaging from other candidates.  For these candidates to get less than 2, they would have to be exceptionally unpopular with 'out of bloc' voters.

My technical recommendation for wormhole candidates for CSM8 is to attract additional known candidates; anyone that can bring 200 votes.  If you recall, there was a mittani post suggesting "You have 3000+ votes worth of power to bring an outsized wormhole candidate list".  The wormhole primary vote was over double this.

For comparision, I took the 6 Null Bloc candidates from Poetic Stanziel nullsec bloc ballot post.  These six got 13106 first preference votes or just shy of 4 quotas.  Again, traditional analysis says they get 4 seats and no other result is likely.

Remember fellow voters; this is no longer 'first past the post' where we need to concentrate the vote in just one or two candidates.  Within reason, anyone that brings votes to a 'ticket' is valuable to that ticket.  Just be a little careful about attracting the 'wrong' votes, eg certain candidates that caused enough trouble to be removed from the candidate list.

There is value in suggesting a voting list order; with your 'strongest' candiates at the top of the list, and your weaker candidates lower down.  The wormhole candidates missed out on this, and could have done with some (informal) primary to suggest a consistent order.  That said, there is nothing wrong with using your own personal appeal, and on any candidate's personal ticket, putting themselves first.

• At a minimum, you should have sufficient candidates so that if everything goes your way you have everyone elected + 1 spare.
• At most, you should have one candidate for every seat.
• Everyone on your ticket should be capable of attracting votes in their own right.
• Apart from your 'own' name on top, agreeing on the order of names is to a bloc's benefit.

I style myself a bit of an amateur psephologist.  I know very little about 'first past the post' elections, but I do follow the local (preferential) elections and commentary fairly closely.

For the next election, we have some better analysis tools (assuming they keep the same voting system).

We know roughly the corp/alliance sizes of various factions, and rough readership of various blogs; and how that turned up in votes this time around.  We know where votes ended up, both in first preference and how those preferences played out.  We can use this to extrapolate likely winners.

There were surprises; for me they were: congratulations to Ali Aras for such a strong showing - better than many thought; and maybe consolations to Nathan Jameson who surprised some by not getting in. 

The has been a large degree of acceptance, with the only grumbling seeming to be either the mechanics of voting or a general cry that those that could organise voters got a few more seats.

This was going to be a quick and short reply to Intertsellar Privateer's post.  Umm... I don't seem to do quick and short very well.