Talk:Results of the 1982 South Australian state election (House of Assembly)

Something weird in the Mitcham results

It looks to me like the Mitcham preferences were not even counted, but notionally split 50/50 between Liberal and Democrats. It would be very unusual for Labor to not preference Democrats ahead of Liberal, and they did indeed heavily preference Democrats at the 1982 Mitcham state by-election six months earlier. Adpete (talk) 01:16, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh wait, the source does not give preference allocations at all, if one candidate scored over 50%. So are the 2PP results mostly WP:OR ? Adpete (talk) 01:42, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

@Kirsdarke01: any idea what's going on here? Morphett looks to have a similar situation going on as well (but not in other seats I looked at), which is confusing me a bit. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:48, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

The earliest reference I can find which gives all 2PP numbers, is this one on the 1993 election.[1] This might be because Antony Green is very thorough, but I suspect the reason is that not all 2PP results were not counted until after the 1991 South Australian electoral boundaries referendum. If that is the case, I think we should either not include 2PP numbers, or clearly mark them as estimates. Adpete (talk) 02:01, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

That makes sense to me. Dean Jaensch's comprehensive record of SA elections doesn't do preference distributions for seats won on primary votes period, and that's my usual go-to, so 1993 seems like a reasonable cut-off. The Drover's Wife (talk) 03:04, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

I used the estimates made by Colin Hughes from a codebook here - https://legacy.ada.edu.au/social-science/00152-v5 (on the "Related Materials" tab. It has 2pp vote estimates for every state election between 1949-1982. However, it's only estimates Kirsdarke01 (talk) 05:59, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I think I'd be inclined to leave it out given the Mitcham example/the lack of a solid explanation of the methodology he used. The Drover's Wife (talk) 06:26, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

There is very brief explanation in Related materials item number 2. I think it is ok to leave them in, because the source would qualify as reliable. But as a minimum there needs be a reference, and a note that some 2PP numbers are estimates. Perhaps a note at the top of the section, saying something like, "Where one candidate received more than 50% of the vote, preferences were not counted, so the 2PP vote is as estimated by Colin Hughes [give cite]". Even better would be to summarise Hughes' explanation. (I still think he's got it wrong for Mitcham though, but that's my WP:OR). Adpete (talk) 23:41, 22 January 2019 (UTC)