Protectionist Party

In the Senate, a block vote system was introduced, where voters would vote for as many candidates as there were seats to fill, and the top-polling candidates would win.

The Protectionists would have likely benefited if preferential voting had been introduced in 1902.

As the party sitting ideologically between Labor and the Free Traders, they would have likely benefited from preference flows anywhere that they made the top two.

At the 1903 election, there were three seats where the Protectionists came a close second and could have won with preferences.

The 1903 federal election produced something close to a three-way tie, with 26 Protectionists, 24 Free Traders, and 22 Labor members.

If these three seats had flipped, the Protectionists would have been clearly the biggest party.

Instead, the next three years were very unstable, with governments changing a number of times, and the Protectionists fell into third place in 1906.

Prior to that 1906 election, Protectionist leader Alfred Deakin made another attempt to introduce preferential voting, specifically CPV, in a pitch to Labor leader Chris Watson as an attempt to isolate George Reid's Free Traders.