DarkViperAU · @DarkViperAU
3rd Jul 2016 from TwitLonger
@Sylviir Did the conservatives win? (All my tweets)
..kinda..maybe..not really..no...sorta?
Let me explain. There are 150 seats in the house of representatives that signify each of the 150 districts in Australia. You need 76 seats to gain a majority and thus form a government. Voting in this country is mandatory and you can vote from anywhere in Australia but you belong to your home district. If you vote out of district you are an 'absentee voter'. People can also vote early via the post if you meet a few conditions. So after all of Australia votes, all the votes done on the day in each district are counted. This usually shows a winner and the postal votes and absentee are counted later to see which exact seats are won by whom in cases where it is very close. In this election, the votes cast IN the districts have not determined a clear winner. For the conservatives, 65 seats are unlikely to change with postal or absentee votes so they basically have 65 seats. My party has 67 seats in the same way. 3rd parties have a collection of 5 seats. There are 13 seats that COULD shift because they are so close. Conservatives are not likely to get 11 of them and my party is unlikely to get 9. So neither will form majority and one or two of the seats may even go to a 3rd party. Once all the absentee and postal votes are counted, the most likely outcome is that neither major party will have 76. This then means that they will need to bargain with the 3rd parties to get their support to form a 'coalition' to get a majority. Whichever major party is the closest to 76 has the easier task because they need to get fewer of the 3rd party seats.
This process is...messy. There will also be legal challenges about different seats for different reasons and a lot of spitting at each other. No one may 'win' for a month.