Talk:1906 Australian federal election

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)
 * He was definitely a Free Trader in 1901. The exact time of the shift is a bit unclear, as I said on the 1903 page. Frickeg (talk) 00:27, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Lower house member list article for this period - affiliation?
Is someone able to add Commonwealth Liberal/Labour/Independent affiliations post 1909 merger to Members of the Australian House of Representatives, 1906–1910? It already seems to have been done at the upper house equivalent at Members of the Australian Senate, 1907–1910. Timeshift (talk) 13:13, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

Source for Senate table
Is there a source for the table "Senate 1906–10"? The reason I ask is that I want to see the impact the Joseph Vardon & James O'Loghlin issues had on the Senate composition, however the table does not correlate with the list Members of the Australian Senate, 1907–1910

Thanks Find bruce (talk) 23:43, 20 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Like most of the federal election pages, I suspect that the UWA database is the source. We've encountered problems with oversimplification with them before and they should all really be checked. Your table seems to overcomplicate the Vardon issue (it should just include Vardon per his original election, even if that was later invalidated - we're talking about what happened at this election, not what happened later). The Dobson issue is not surprising - we still do not really explain what was going on with the Tasmanian Revenue Tariffists/Tariff Reformers and I don't fully understand it myself; I've never seen a source that satisfyingly explains the issue, so it'll probably take some primary research. I suspect the Protectionist/Anti-Socialist confusion is over Senators Fraser, Cameron and McColl, who began their careers as Bartonite Protectionists but by this time were Anti-Socialists. The Psephos table would be a good place to start in fixing this up, although it still lumps Dobson in with the Anti-Socialists. Frickeg (talk) 07:19, 21 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you Frickeg, the more I look at the UWA database, the less impressed I am - the state results don't add up to the national & it appears to be way off for Tasmania. The Psephos table however correlates with the member list with the clarification about Dobson. From what I had read Dobson was a free trader & his questions etc in the Senate are certainly consistent with their position, including by the way the only ever meeting of the Senate Committee of Disputed Returns and Qualifications concerning O'Loghlin. Like you I haven't found an accurate source as to when, if at all, he formally joined the anti-socialists. I have deleted my table - it was just there to highlight the differences & I am happy to go with the information from Psephos. By way of background, I am writing a separate article on the Vardon & O'Loghlin cases & I was aware that party allegiances were somewhat fluid & so was checking around to ensure that the information I was working off was accurate. I will update the table ion this page to reflect the Psephos position. As you correctly say this article is about the election, not what happened with O'Loghlin. I will include a couple of notes to clarify who is included. Find bruce (talk) 10:33, 21 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Sorry for the stupid edit by me earlier, it was just that I had been studying the Senate electoral system in early Australia and a major note is *people can vote up to 3 times* in most states, so it was irregular for the Senate results table to have the same total vote count as the House of Representatives table. I suggest that we use the psephos state by state senate results and tally those up for the table so that the extra votes are properly tallied and the vote count is more accurate. I had no idea UWA was such an unreliable source, and I too have had a dig and realised how unimpressive it is. Friendlypoliticaleditor (talk) 22:47, 13 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Welcome to the tiny corner of the internet for people interested in historical Australian elections. There is no need to apologise - you boldly edited, I reverted (& explained on your talk page why), now we're discussing - which is the way the wikipedia process is meant to work. Elections for other years have used total votes & there is no reason for 1906 to be different. I have doubts as to how useful the national summary is when the electorates vary from 737,599 in NSW to 90,209 in Tasmania, but it least it doesn't have the issues of 1901, where Tasmanians only had one vote or 1903 where Victorians had 4 votes. Ideally there should be a page Results of the 1906 Australian federal election (Senate) which sets out the party totals so that it's verifiable - party membership was pretty fluid & part of the problem with the UWA database is that it appears to make some odd allocations, but because it doesn't publish the detailed results, they can't be verified. --Find bruce (talk) 08:18, 14 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I was planning on making all the senate election results pages by the end of the year when I found out so abruptly they all don't have it, a big gap from the 1900's to the 1970's with no sepcific Senate page mans people can't find out the results state by state, so we should probably fix than, using Psephos as the source of course. I am also working on some senate result maps we could potentially use should they be high quality enough. Here is an example of the one of the maps I made, for the 1906 election, most likely the colours will change and I will add numbers to the circles (Seats) so readers know which party won which seat, and also the colours of the state are the colour of the party that won the popular vote there, however, most likely I will change how the saturation is done for the state popular vote, since currently there is barely any difference between the saturations:
 * 1906 senate results map australia.svg
 * More work will be put into the maps before they are used, of course, as stated before I plan to add numbers, fix the colour system, and generally make it nicer. If you would like I can provide the current map template. But mostly we should work on the pages for individual senate results at the moment, in my opinion. Oh, also, I might have confused you with what I said earlier when it comes to tallying up the final vote count, what I meant is, in almost all states, people can vote for up to the amount of seats that are being contested, so it is odd for the HoR and Senate vote count to be almost the exact same, and so adding them up state by state using the pesphos data for the full vote count might be better. Friendlypoliticaleditor (talk) 00:43, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Which party goes where in infobox
Current consensus for infobox box order, per which party goes where in infobox is Government, main Opposition, third party. -- Find bruce (talk) 07:30, 16 November 2017 (UTC)