The results from the weekend's Legislative Council elections in Launceston, Murchison and Rumney clearly show the benefits of incumbency.
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It was hardly a surprise that Launceston independent MLC Rosemary Armitage was returned on Saturday, given she faced just one challenger in Greens candidate Cecily Rosol.
Vote counting closed in the evening with a whooping 78 per cent of votes for Ms Armitage, allowing her to secure a third six-year term in the upper house.
To the west, popular independent MLC Ruth Forrest secured a fourth term over three opponents, winning 71.8 per cent of votes.
Election analyst Kevin Bonham declared this haul the highest ever Legislative Council vote for three of more candidates, beating the previous record of 66.4 per cent held by Peter McKay in Pembroke in 1976.
For the southern seat of Rumney, Labor incumbent Sarah Lovell was returned with more than 50 per cent of primary votes going her way.
When an upper house seat is vacant, it tends to attract a high number of candidates, as was the case for the last election in the Nelson electorate.
However, there has been a telling trend of a low number of candidates prepared to challenge an incumbent.
It could be said that the high number of votes won by Ms Forrest and Ms Armitage shows the two didn't really face any real competition at all.
Those that seek to topple an incumbent MLC have a massive fight ahead of them.
An incumbent is generally well-embedded in the community and has a history of media coverage and column space on opinion pages if they know how to do their job right.
There are routinely invited to speak at functions and events all year round and can travel across the electorate on the public purse. They can even cut corners on the campaign expenditure limit by recycling old corflutes.
There is a strong argument to lift this limit of $18,500; a notion completely ignored in a government bill for electoral reform, targetting in particular donation disclosure.
In the bill, a percentage of public funding will go to lower house candidates too if votes cross a certain threshold, but not Legislative Council candidates.
If incumbents are going to face any real challenges from candidates without party links, the expenditure cap needs to be significantly lifted.
