Presented by

  • Antony Green

    Antony Green
    @AntonyGreenElec
    https://antonygreen.com.au/

    Antony Green is best known as Chief Election Analyst with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and is the face of television election coverages in Australia. Antony has worked for the ABC since 1989. In that time he has worked on more than 80 federal, state and territory elections. He has also worked on local government elections, numerous by-elections and covered elections in the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada. Antony designed the ABC's election night computer analysis system. Antony studied at the University of Sydney and was awarded a Bachelor of Science in Pure Mathematics and Computer Science, and a Bachelor of Economics with Honours in politics. He was granted an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Sydney in 2014 and appointed an Adjunct Professor in the University of Sydney's Department of Government and International Relations in 2015. Antony was recognised in the 2017 Queen's birthday honours list when he was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia. The citation was "for distinguished service to the broadcast media as an analyst and commentator for state and federal elections, and to the community as a key interpreter of Australian democracy".

Abstract

Controversy arose in the 2020 US Presidential election over the media ‘calling’ election results. This despite such calls being normal practice in the past, and overlooking that electoral authorities themselves do not finalise election counts on the night. In the absence of official winners, the media and other count observers model and call results based on established past trends. Due to preferential voting, and very liberal rules on postal and absent voting, it takes even longer to finalise election results in Australia. It is one to two weeks before any individual contests are declared by the Electoral Commission, three weeks before the final lower house contests are declared, and up to six weeks before we have official winner in the Senate. Ahead of the 2022 Federal election, respected ABC Election Analyst Antony Green will explain the statistical processes used to call Australian elections. What is the available data, what assumptions are made to predict results, and how is the Australian process more robust than in the United States?