Email from Antony Green, 11 August 2008, responding to this post

Peter,

Two points you can consider on the Territory 2pp/Seats won equation.

First, the turnout in the outback seats is always low, between 60% and 75%. That's one of the reasons Labor won with a minority in 2001. You can download my tables in a pdf document of the 2005 results at http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nt/2008/guide/pastelections.htm. In 2005, the turnout in Darwin was 85.1%, 83.5% in Alice Springs/Katherine, but only 70.4% in the outback seats.

Also, with the two uncontested seats, add about 0.8% to Labor's Territory figure to take account of the missing votes.

A figure of 40% for non-voters seems to have taken hold in Canberra. It is nonsense. For a start, someone has obviously included the total voter numbers, which includes the 8% of voters in uncontested seats. It may be we don't reach the 80.1% turnout in 2005, but it certainly will be well above 60%.

Antony