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A Senate peopled with micro-parties might not be a problem for Prime-Minister-elect Tony Abbott.

William Bowe, popular political commentator The Poll Bludger and UWA PhD scholar, pointed out that most of the micro-parties are right-leaning.

"So it could be a happy outcome for Tony Abbott," William said. "It's a better alternative (for the Coalition Government) than a Senate dominated by Labor and the Greens.

"How cohesive the Senate will be remains to be seen."

William, whose Poll Bludger blog has been published through Crikey since 2008, said that if Senate elections followed the NSW model, the Federal Upper House may not have ended in such disarray.

"I hope that Senate reform will be inevitable following this result," he said. "But it will need some measure of agreement between Labor and Liberal parties, and maybe the Coalition might just think that the status quo works to their advantage."

He said the NSW system, where voters can nominate their preferences above the line on the Senate ballot paper, works well.  "People in NSW can number as many boxes as they like above the line which means we know where our preferences are going. Just getting rid of  the ‘above the line' option and forcing people to tick all boxes below the line could be disastrous, especially when there are so many parties involved."

William said the proliferation of micro-parties coupled with the compulsory preferential system (if you tick boxes below the line) makes voting unwieldy.

"New South Wales changed its system after the infamous so-called tablecloth ballot paper in 1999, which was even bigger than the Senate ballot paper we were presented with 10 days ago."

Before 1984, all Australian electors were required to fill in all the boxes on a Senate ballot paper.  There was no ‘above the line' option.

"But now the combined vote of the micro-parties has got out of control," William said.

"Some good people will lose their seats to some unknown and untried members of micro-parties."

He explained that all the micro-parties put the major parties last in their preferences, so as the smaller vote-pullers drop out of the race, their preferences go to other micro-parties.

Controversial political strategist Glen Druery, known as The Preference Whisperer, corrals their preferences.

"The Australian Sports Party, with Wayne Dropulich as their West Australian candidate, just happened to luck out with the preferences.

"But there is still a chance that the Palmer United Party candidate will win the WA seat ahead of him.

"It's all wildly unpredictable!"