How does preferential voting work?
In Australia, all eligible Australian citizens must enrol and vote in elections.
Australian federal elections use the preferential voting system, where voters place the number '1' in the box next to the candidate who is their first choice, and the numbers '2', '3', and so on, against the other candidates in order of their preference.
At the conclusion of voting, all the ‘1’ votes are counted first for each candidate in an electorate. If a candidate gets more than 50% of these first preference votes, an absolute majority, they are immediately elected.
If no candidate has an absolute majority after the ‘1’ votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded from the count going forward. The votes for this candidate are then transferred to the candidate numbered ‘2’ on each of those ballot papers, who is the voters’ ‘second preference’.
This process will continue until one candidate has more than half the total votes.
For a good infographic explaining the preferential voting system, please see this link from the AEC’s website: https://www.aec.gov.au/learn/files/poster-counting-hor-pref-voting.pdf
There is also a good explanation of preferential voting in this video from a series posted by The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/video/2022/apr/22/voting-101-what-is-preferential-voting-and-how-does-it-work-in-australian-elections-video