Talk:1903 Australian federal election

Conflicting results
Okay, people we need to work together to fix this article. Right now we have the Timeshift9 results added on the top of the page then directly below that we have another set of results that contradicts the results above. I beileve the problem may been that we used different sources, because I used Adam Carr's website in finding my figures and Timeshift used the University of WA website. We need to work to find a solution to this problem as soon as possible. Aussie King Pin 09:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I would think a university would be more likely to have correct results than Adam Carr, however i'm more than happy to be corrected and any suggestions to fix this are welcome. Timeshift 09:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually on a second look the source for the UWA guide seems to be the ANU which I would regards as a better resource than Adam Carr as well. So I'm going to remove my figures but I still don't think the chart we have looks very good. Aussie King Pin 01:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Back to the labor/labour issues
Another is deciding that pre-1912 should be Labor and won't listen. Per the stream of previous editors that needed multiple people to convince them otherwise, assistance required to knock sense in to said editor. Timeshift 02:32, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

How many seats won by which party?
I hope someone is watching this page... It has errors and my political history skills are not to the task of decoding. This page currently states that Free Trade party got 24 seats. UWA election site says they got 25 http://elections.uwa.edu.au/elecdetail.lasso?summary=true&keyvalue=687&nobanner=false&nominlink=false AEC (the most authorative?) says they got 26: http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Publications/electoral_pocketbook/2011/er-historical.htm (at the very least, can someone more knowledgable than I dig through these and fix it up so that the total seats won sums to 75 (it currently sums to 76, so the error here is not simply a matter of interpretation!) --.../Nemo (talk • Contributions) 12:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * All right, here goes. I get the error in the Labour count - should be 22, not 23. The discrepancy in Free Trade numbers is I suspect due to the fluid nature of the Protectionist/Free Trade divide around this time. Because none of those results show state breakdowns it's hard to guess who the disputed members are. I note that the UWA page has a totally bizarre note about Deakin's ministry being called the "Fusion" ministry at this point ... six years too early! My suspicions are as follows:
 * The Labour error is probably something to do with James Wilkinson in Moreton. He was elected in 1901 as an Independent Labour member but joined the caucus sometime in 1903-04. At the moment our table is counting him both as Labour and as Independent Labour.
 * The Free Trade disputes could really be any of the Bartonite "Protectionists" who were really Free Traders but supported Barton's ministry - Sir Philip Fysh, Sir John Forrest, Sir George Turner, etc. It's hard to be sure.
 * So, for now, I would go with 24 Free Traders, 22 Labour, pending further investigation. Frickeg (talk) 23:06, 4 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I'd noticed the fluidity of members/parties in the early years, so makes sense. I've adjusted the page to reflect 22 seats (and +7 change), but no further action. (should the change be reflecting the difference from the previous election (where Labour is listed with only 14 seats), or the change from immediately prior to election? (List_of_Australian_federal_by-elections doesn't indicate any seat changes due to by-elections, but Labour could easily have had 15 seats by the end of the 1st Parliament due to aforementioned fluidity? Or was the change of '8' in fact correct?
 * Ok to leave it with you from here? --.../Nemo (talk • Contributions) 02:19, 5 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I'll have a look further into Wilkinson/the doubtful Free Traders when I get a chance. The Labour switcher is Alexander Poynton, FWIW. (There's debate about whether it should be from the previous election or the last sitting of parliament. I prefer the previous election.) Frickeg (talk) 02:32, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Conflicting Alexander Poynton party affiliation?
Why is Alexander Poynton marked as Free Trade rather than Labor in 'seats changing hands'? As far as I can see he was never in the Free Trade/Anti-Socialist camp. Timeshift (talk) 16:47, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * No, he was. He was elected in 1901 as a Free Trader. However, the article maybe should still be changed, since according to the ADB it was in 1902 that he switcched back to Labor. Frickeg (talk) 23:49, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Although now, I see that Psephos reckons he switched in 1904. While ADB is obviously a more reliable source, I wonder if we can find something in Hansard to definitively pin down the date. Frickeg (talk) 00:23, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Try again
1902 according to, and Alexander Poynton, but 1904 according to Adam Carr and Division of Grey/Australian federal election, 1903 et al. I'm not particularly fussed over which is correct, i'm simply looking for consistency and of course the truth... but how can we figure that out? Timeshift (talk) 14:33, 18 May 2017 (UTC)

National Liberal Union and other errors
While I was researching the Queensland elections for the 1903 senate results, I found out that the Protectionists and Free Traders did not exist in Queensland. Instead anti-Labor candidates ran under the unified "National Liberal Union" endorsement to not split the vote, which is what Psephos lists the candidates as. Should we consider them as their own entity (as Psephos does), or should we continue considering them as Protectionists (as UWA does)? Also, the House results page says two independents were elected (1 ind, 1 ind labor), is there a reason why only one is listed on the front page? Catiline52 (talk) 01:55, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Very weird that this page doesn't separate Frederick Holder (who is the other independent) - he definitely had no real connection to Free Trade at this point and was very much a British-style independent Speaker. I'm not sure yet about the NLU (although they should for sure have an article), but a good rule of thumb in electoral history is to ignore UWA at every turn. Frickeg (talk) 02:58, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Other than the ALP, federal party affiliations before about 1920 are very murky and you won't get much agreeance between sources. I guess ideally there would be an "official" parliamentary or AEC source that we base our results tables/prose on, and then note discrepancies in other sources. It's difficult to distinguish the political organisations and the parliamentary parties in many cases. In this article we talk about a "Revenue Tariff Party" in Tasmania, but contemporary sources use this term for the Free Traders. I doubt there was ever anything resembling a separate "party". There are a whole raft of affiliations  based on what the candidate chose to self-describe as, which at some point were distilled into two or three categories. It seems very arbitrary to me. In the 1906 article we distinguish the "Western Australian Party" from the Protectionists, but this was an organisation not a parliamentary party - John Forrest was a Protectionist in parliament and held ministerial office at the time, does it make sense to consider him as a member of a different party? The "Commonwealth Liberal Party" was Alfred Deakin's organisation in Victoria, but we apply this name to the whole parliamentary party which was either known as the Fusion or the Liberals, and supported by various other political organisations inside and outside Victoria. I took a stab at trying to delineate this in Commonwealth Liberal Party, but it's difficult and time consuming trying to find good sources that go beyond the modern assumption of a united parliamentary party and organisational wing with the same name. Trying to work out who's an independent (and "independent Labor", etc.) is another challenge. For virtually any given candidate I'm sure you could find a contemporary source prior to the election in which they claim independence of party status, blah blah blah, but of course once they get in to parliament you can categorise most of them one way or another. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 05:38, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Apologies for the late reply, only getting back into sorting through the early Senate results. Should we move the Revenue Tariff Party into a subheading of the Free Traders, and the Western Australia Party to the Protectionists then? Catiline52 (talk) 00:22, 20 September 2020 (UTC)