The Wire

As Australia waits for the rural Independents and other cross benchers to decide whether they will support a Labor or Liberal government, the attention has turned to the two party preferred vote. A figure that is usually just academic has now moved to the centre of the debate as both sides seek to use it to claim they have a mandate to govern. Nic Christensen examines just what the two party preferred figure really is and what exactly it tells us about who should form government.