The Poll Bludger’s federal poll aggregate has recorded little change since the previous result a week ago. Also featured: preselection argybargy, changes to electoral legislation, a new Chief Minister for the Northern Territory, and a by-election result.

The by-election to fill former ALP Chief Minister Paul Henderson’s northern Darwin seat in the Northern Territory parliament is a three-candidate, two-polling booth affair.

Regardless of her motivations, the Prime Minister has done us all a good turn by advising well in advance of her plans to hold the election on September 14.

Time for a new thread. Politics watchers have had pretty big fish to fry recently, but as electoral minutiae are this site’s raison d’etre, here’s a review of looming events which might have escaped your notice. Feel free to discuss what you’d usually discuss in comments. • Voters in the safe Labor WA state seat [...]

7.44pm. Sadadeen booth now in, and CLP candidate Matt Conlan is home and hosed with 53.6 per cent of the primary vote. Paul Herrick now leads the Labor candidate 20.3 per cent to 16.5 per cent, while the Greens got a boost from Sadadeen to finish on 9.6 per cent, still down on 10.7 per [...]

The tea leaves will not be easy to read, but tomorrow’s Northern Territory by-election for the Alice Springs seat of Greatorex might be of broader interest as a test of the federal government’s intervention into Aboriginal communities. Here as elsewhere in Alice Springs, voters who were happy to back Labor at federal level have traditionally [...]

Richard Lim, one of four remaining Country Liberal Party MPs after the party’s debacle at the 2005 Northern Territory election, has announced he will retire as of next week. This means a by-election looms for his Alice Springs seat of Greatorex, possibly within weeks. Alice Springs was the only part of the territory that remained [...]

8.05pm. I suppose I should point out that Labor’s vote has fallen from 71.3 per cent at last year’s election, but that was a two-horse race. The two-party result is 68.7-31.3 (with Japanangka in second place), a remarkably modest swing of 2.6 per cent. 7.45pm. Wow, results – all at once. As expected, Karl Hampton [...]

• The only seat still in doubt in Queensland is Bundaberg, which looks likely to be won by Nationals candidate Jack Dempsey. Dempsey led 9,778 to 9,568 at the close of count on Saturday, but the ABC computer was pointing to a 0.3 per cent Labor win. This was based on comparison with results from [...]

The Northern Territory Health and Justice Minister, Peter Toyne, has announced he is retiring from parliament due to ill health. This means a by-election will be held in his electorate of Stuart, assuming more than one candidate nominates. This is not a foregone conclusion – Stuart is a remote electorate in the west of the [...]