Nope. In 2016, it's pretty much pure political theatre. Why? Because - although it's best to whisper this quietly, because it hurts the feelings of a party to hear that you don't care about who they've considered their BFFs over this election - preference deals don't seriously matter any more. They basically do nothing more than determine the order on those how-to-vote cards, which at this point are just a list of a party's favourite current political artists, like a mix tape from a colleague that you politely accept and then quietly record over. Why do they even bother? Glad you asked!

It's a boon for the printing industry, at least The short answer as to why preference deals are still a thing is this: history. You have long had the power over your preferences in the House of Representatives, where you vote for your local MP, under a system that's been pretty much unchanged since the 1940s. Up until now preference deals have been decisive for the Senate, where you vote for the people that represent the state you're in, but the changes from earlier this year mean you decide your own preferences there too. So when anyone talks about deals, what they mean is "the order that parties list the other parties on their how-to-vote cards", which has become almost as vital to the process as the colour of ties the PM chooses to cycle through from week to week (which are just variations of patterned yellow, typically). Historically, though, these cards were genuinely important because ballot papers used to be far more complicated, especially prior to the reforms of 1983 that introduced senate group voting tickets (aka above the line voting) rather than requiring every single candidate to be individually numbered.

These days you only need to number a few boxes in order, which isn't especially complex or arduous, meaning that the main use of how to vote cards is to mop up spilled sauce at the sausage sizzle, and as a staggeringly resource-intensive way for the party to remind you that they exist in the minutes before you step into the booth. This doesn't mean preferences aren't important, though - they absolutely are! They're just no longer under the control of the parties. DIY preference prediction Preferences are going to decide who takes government on July 2, and you can make some educated guesses of how that might play out. First up, you can safely assume that around 145 of the 150 lower house seats will end up going to either the Coalition or Labor. That's where the massive oversimplification of people leaning politically "left" or "right" is a useful one. Voters that believe in the importance of government to help those that need help tend to ultimately vote Labor. Those that believe that government shouldn't interfere with people's lives tend to ultimately vote Liberal.

And all of the minor parties sit somewhere on government-do-more/government-do-less spectrum so it's not hard to predict how the sort of person that votes for them will most likely preference the parties on their ballot. Someone who votes for a left-leaning party like the Greens is more likely to preference their vote to ultimately flow to Labor than the Coalition, just because there's more overlap in the policies. A vote for the Nationals or a right-wing party like Rise Up or One Nation will probably flow to the Liberals for the same reason. See? Easy! Now just factor that in for 150 seats with an average of a just under seven parties per seat, and boom: you're done! Elevating the least-worst The exciting upshot is that someone can technically be the most popular candidate in the electorate and still lose via the magic of preferential voting.

First-past-the-post systems reward the individual that is most popular, even if most of the electorate hate their very guts, while preferential voting is a rousing celebration of the least-worst option that elevates the candidate which the largest amount of people affected can tolerate. Any seat where the candidate can poll more that 50 per cent in their own right is safe; but if the vote drops below that threshold, magical things can happen! For example: electorate polling suggests that, for example, Nick Xenophon Team might be able to topple former Cities Minister Jamie "what's a nice junior staffer like you doing on an official government trip to Hong Kong like this?" Briggs in the SA seat of Mayo. And that's not because of a shadowy deal. It's because Briggs' popularity-vacuum has hoovered his primary vote down from a safe 53.8 per cent to a dangerous 40 per cent, meaning second and third preferences will definitely come into play. If you assume that Mayo voters putting their #1 next to NXT (estimated primary vote: 23.5 per cent), Labor (18.3 per cent) or Greens (10.7 per cent) are more likely to vote the other alternatives ahead of the Liberals, that means that Briggs will struggle to accumulate the necessary 11-ish per cent he needs to squeak over the 50 per cent mark and save the seat.

On those numbers, the Greens would be eliminated first, and each vote for them would be handed to the second preference - which is probably either Labor or NXT ahead of the Liberals. Then Labor are eliminated, and the majority of those votes would flow to NXT ahead of the Liberals. And then Rebekha Sharkie would become the new MP: she she might not have been as many people's #1 choice as Briggs was, but 60-odd per cent of the electorate would prefer her to him. And that, friends, is democracy in action! Toastmasters! NXT are the great unknown in the election, especially in SA, but they're not the only threat to the majors. There's a similar battle going on in the seat of Higgins, where Assistant Treasurer Kelly O'Dwyer's current estimated first preference of about 44 per cent puts her within striking distance of the Greens candidate Jason Ball, assuming that those voting for third-running Labor candidate Karl "brother of Bob" Katter preference the Greens ahead of the Liberals.

(Why O'Dwyer's popularity might have plummeted by 10 per cent since 2013 is an open question. Maybe people are worried about her statements about toasters having apparently jumped in cost to six thousand dollars and they fear a speculative toaster bubble that would destroy the economy in a heartbeat?) And it's those flows of seat-by-seat, candidate-by-candidate preferences one of the reasons why just about every commentator is confidently predicting a Coalition victory, despite the polls inching ever-so-slightly-but-consistently in favour of Labor. Individual preference flows are going to determine every single marginal seat, and there's every chance that Labor could win a small majority of the overall popular vote and still lose the election - which is what happened in 1998 and is why the phrase "Prime Minister Kim Beazley" sounds so unfamiliar. The cocktail hour: pictures are fun! "But V from the S," you cry, "we are busy people. Is there a bureaucratic educational video of this process of the sort that might have been shown to school children in the nineties?"