What is an electoral pendulum?
An electoral pendulum is a simple listing of all electorates, with electorates grouped by party and ordered by margin. The name derives from the traditional way of setting out seats in a newspaper, like a pendulum in an old-style grandfather clock. The most marginal seats are put at the bottom of a printed electoral pendulum, the safest at the top. For the election website, we invert the pendulum structure so that the most marginal seats appear at the top of the page, the safest at the bottom. All seats are laid out on an electoral pendulum, not just the marginal seats. The Pendulum page has Government seats on the left and Opposition seats on the right. If there are Independent and Minor Party MPs, we usually group them together at the bottom of the page. You can link through to each individual electorate by clicking the electorate name. You can use the back button on each individual electorate page to return to the Pendulum index.
