I wonder…?

Ever drive/walk/run/cycle around during an election campaign and think: ‘Gee, candidate A seems to have a lot more signs than candidate B?’ No? Must be just me then.

Election season

We’ve got an election coming up for the Legislative Council division of Rosevears, and I’ve noticed that there seems to be a lot more signs for Jo Palmer in the parts of Launceston I frequent than for, say, Jess Greene. I’ve also noticed there are quite a few signs for David Fry, even though I’d never heard of him previously. Apparently that’s me showing my ignorance though, because my wife knew who he was when I asked her.

Previous observations

I actually noticed that there seemed to be a lot more signs for the Liberals than Labor or the Greens etc. at the last state election too, but I didn’t try counting them. I did wonder if there was a geographical distribution effect that I wasn’t considering, but I didn’t look into it. This time, I decided I would.

A quick survey

So, is it just my imagination? Well, no. I took a drive around for a while today through parts of suburban Riverside, Trevallyn, West Launceston/Summerhill and into Prospect, i.e. the urban Launceston parts of Rosevears. Here’s what I found:

  • 77 total signs (75 corflutes, two parked trailers with signs on them)
  • 29 (38%) were for Jo Palmer (Liberal)
  • 19 (25%) were for David Fry (Ind)
  • 16 (21%) were for Janie Finlay (Ind)
  • 7 (9%) were for Jess Greene (Labor)
  • 4 (5%) were for Jack Davenport (Greens)
  • 2 (2%) were for Vivienne Gale (Ind)

I did also record the approximate locations of the signs and plotted them on a map, but there was no particular geographical pattern to note. I don’t claim to have seen all the signs in any particular area, but I saw enough to confirm my suspicions; the Liberals have many more signs than Labor, and David Fry has a surprisingly large number of signs too.