NEWS

readaec 0.2.0 (2026-08-02)

By-election support: list_by_elections() plus get_by_election_fp(), get_by_election_tcp(), get_by_election_tpp(), and get_by_election_candidates(). Covers all 24 House by-elections with AEC CSV downloads, from Gippsland 2008 to Farrer 2026.
Referendum support: list_referendums(), get_referendum_by_booth(), and get_referendum_turnout() for the 2023 Voice referendum, including booth-level Yes/No counts.
get_dop() returns the full count-by-count distribution of preferences by division, the dataset needed to analyse seats won from behind on preference flows.
get_tcp_by_booth() returns two-candidate preferred votes by polling place.
get_senators_elected() returns senators elected in order of election.

get_swing() now reports the party that actually won each seat (winner_from, winner_to), joined from the AEC members elected file. Previously winners were inferred from TPP shares, which misidentified seats won by independents and minor parties. The TPP-based columns are retained as tpp_leader_from and tpp_leader_to.
All data functions gain a refresh argument to force a re-download, useful on election night when cached counts go stale.
HTTP failures now produce a readable error with the status code. Previously the status check was unreachable because 'httr2' errors on non-200 responses before the check ran.
Downloads are written to a temporary file and only moved into the cache once complete, so an interrupted download can no longer leave a corrupt file that is served from cache indefinitely.
Requests now identify the package via a user agent and retry up to three times on transient failures.
Column types are now guessed from the whole file rather than the first 1000 rows, fixing parsing warnings on get_polling_places().

Added HTTP status validation to get_fp_by_booth() for consistency with other data functions.

Examples now cache to tempdir() instead of the user's home directory, fixing CRAN policy compliance for \donttest examples.
Cache directory is now configurable via options(readaec.cache_dir = ...).
Replaced rappdirs dependency with tools::R_user_dir() (base R).

Added AEC web service URL to DESCRIPTION per CRAN policy
Added \value documentation to clear_cache()
Changed \dontrun{} to \donttest{} in all examples that require a network connection

Initial CRAN release.
Functions for accessing House of Representatives data: get_fp(), get_tpp(), get_tcp(), get_members_elected().
Booth-level functions: get_fp_by_booth(), get_tpp_by_booth().
Senate data: get_senate().
Candidate and enrolment data: get_candidates(), get_enrolment(), get_turnout(), get_polling_places().
Cross-election swing analysis: get_swing().
Local caching via rappdirs with clear_cache().
Data available for federal elections 2007–2025.