Australian Prime Minister John Howard has set November 24 as the date for the next federal election. (Thanks to Electoral Panorama for the tip-off). STV will be used in 3-seat 6-seat districts for Senate elections, and its single-winner variant, IRV or the Alternative Vote, will be used to elect the Commons.

The Man of Steel, as he came to be known in some circles, was an eager participant in the 2003 Iraq venture. If the reactions to the ABC story on the announcement are remotely representative, he’ll probably pay the price in votes.

According to the Daily Telegraph:

Mr Howard, who has been in power for 11 years, trails badly behind the leader of the opposition Labor Party, Kevin Rudd, who has pledged to withdraw Australia’s combat troops from Iraq.

Opinion polls over the last few months have consistently shown that Mr Howard faces electoral annihilation from voters who appear to have grown tired of him, his ministers and his policies.

The most recent, published today, gave Labor an 18-point lead over the coalition government – more than enough to win office.

An earlier poll has Labor’s Rudd in a 12-point lead.

The interesting thing about this election is that Australia is fairly far along in modeling the effect of national swings in terms of legislative seats. The two-party preferred vote is a measure of the underlying electoral cleavage once first preferences for parties other than Labor or the Coalition have been reconciled. Of all possible sources, the Parliament of Australia has an interesting paper on this:

This Research Paper shows the notional two-party preferred swing needed for each electoral division (seat) to change hands at the next House of Representatives election.