Nominations closed earlier today, with a record number of candidates nominating for the Legislative Council, and the largest number of candidates running for the Legislative Assembly since 2003.
Four parties nominated in all ninety-three lower house seats: Labor, the Greens, the Christian Democratic Party and the newly-registered No Land Tax party. In addition, the Liberal Party and the Nationals are running in all 93 seats – 74 Liberals and 19 Nationals. These six parties nominated 465 out of 540 candidates.
Fifty-nine candidates are running as independents, and another sixteen have been nominated by five small parties: five for the Animal Justice Party, six for the Australian Cyclists Party, two for the Outdoor Recreation Party, two for Socialist Alliance and one for Unity.
Because there are effectively five parties (including the Coalition collectively) who are running in every seat, every seat has at least five candidates, and no seat has more than eight candidates. 46 seats have five candidates, 25 have six, 16 have seven, and six have eight.
Antony Green posted his nomination summary blog post earlier this evening, which included information on numbers of candidates who have nominated at previous elections. In the Legislative Assembly, there are 42 more candidates than in 2011, but only three more than 2007, and less than the number of candidates at the 2003 and 1999 elections. At the 1999 election, 732 candidates were nominated, and in one seat there were thirteen candidates.
Twenty-four groups have nominated for the Legislative Council, including sixteen party groups and eight independent groups. The ‘No Land Tax’ party drew the first column on the ballot.
No Land Tax is a new party that has registered in the last term, and has surprised everyone by nominating candidates in every seat. It’s been nearly impossible to find out any information about any of these candidates, who were not announced before they nominated in the last few days. The No Land Tax party has four testimonials on its website from people, but the NSW Tenants Union discovered that the photographs used for these people are actually stock images.
After eighty groups nominated for the 1999 election and New South Wales laws were changed to make it harder to register parties and nominate for the upper house, as well as abolishing the ticket voting system. This is the most groups to nominate since that election.
NSW law now requires groups to nominate 15 candidates to get a box above the line, which has results in a significant increase in the number of candidates, despite a smaller number of groups nominating. The previous record number of candidates was 333 in 2007 – this year 394 candidates have nominated.
I’ve also completed an analysis of the number of men and women running for each party, but due to the length of this post I will publish that tomorrow morning.
