Gummo, in his increasingly quixotic quest to not blog the Victorian election, has touched on what is actually the most interesting part of the whole show. Can Labor scrape together a majority in the radically reformed Legislative Council, or what combinations of Greens and/or Family First will hold that crucial role? Or what about a lone National Party representative?
While both of these pieces are old, ABC election analyst Antony Green and my friend Russ Degnan have the best detailed analyses of what’s likely to happen province by province that I’ve found, based on applying the 2002 election results to the new boundaries. The short version: the Nationals are dead men walking (probably retaining just one member), the Greens will be the new third force in Victorian politics, and Labor has a fighting chance of an outright majority.
But this analysis doesn’t include Family First, of course. Could they possibly end up with a couple of seats, enough to pass legislation in combination with Labor and thus leaving Labor the choice of negotiating with either the Greens or FF to pass specific legislation? It seems unlikely to me, given the strength of the Greens primary vote, but stranger things have happened…
Does anyone rate Stephen Mayne’s mob’s chances post Stephen Mayne?
Only if Labor preferences FF ahead of the Greens (haven’t checked). And if they do, they’ve made the rod for their own back.
Thanks for the post, Robert.
Just to let people know, we’ve invited a number of guest contributors to write on the Victorian election so as to give LP readers the best possible coverage.
On the Upper House, my impression is that the ALP knew that they would never get a majority again, and thus designed the reform in part to depress the Nats’ chances. But presumably – based on federal experience – FF holding the balance of power might not be a particularly good outcome.
If FF fail to make an impression, it’ll be very bad news for them nationally – particularly since Fielding is from Victoria. Should be interesting!
No doubt the links provided are the best analyses available, but those of you who just can’t get enough might care to peruse my own effort from June last year.
TPB, thanks for that. I did say that they were the “best I’ve found”…it seems like you come to similar conclusions.
Bill, the group voting tickets won’t be officially released until two days after nominations close, which will puts it on the 13th or 14th November. There’s been very little in the media on this; I’m pretty sure there are readers of this blog who know what’s going on…but can’t tell us.
People Power have gotten no traction whatsoever thus far, as far as I can tell.
Mark, imagine you’re a tactically-focussed hack for a moment. Say Labor figures that they will get 19 seats in the upper house, but not the 21 they need for outright control. If that occurs, they will have to negotiate with minor parties to pass anything that the Tories oppose. Let’s assume that the Greens are the only minor party in the Council. Then Labor has no choice but to cut deals with them. However, if they can get legislation passed by negotiating with FF instead, that gives two parties you can cut deals with, depending on the particular issue. It’s like the situation in the late 1990s federally where the coalition had a choice whether to negotiate with the Democrats, or the other odds and sods in the chamber.
It’s easy to see that the temptation to do preference deals that result in the divided “balance of power” might exist, particularly as preference swaps in a few key lower house seats might save a couple of sitting inner city Labor members.
Longer term, I’d argue that it’s in Labor’s interest to keep FF out of office everywhere and anywhere but the short-term temptation must be real.
Makes sense, Robert.
Rob, thanks for the link. I should add, my analysis predates the drawing of the boundaries and understates the Liberal vote in Eastern Metropolitan vis-a-vis Northern Metropolitan. Antony Green’s and TPB’s analyses will be closer to the truth, although all of us probably understate minor party votes.
On Family First. I highly doubt they can get any seats. Their vote was smaller than the DLP Federally and only won the Senate spot with a series of lucky preference spills. On top of that they need an extra 2.6% from somewhere, where somewhere won’t be both the Labor and Liberal parties.
The latter reason is the key point here. With only 5 seats available in each district, if both major parties just clear a quota then they will likely take all 5. Unless a minor party picked up all the other minor party preferences, the most likely scenario is for the MP preferences to decide who comes third out of Labor, Liberal and the Greens in the few seats where it matters, and for the loser of the three to tip the scales. Intriguingly, this could mean that the Liberal party may get to choose whether the Greens hold the balance of power, or Labor has a clear majority. I am not sure which of those two possibilities is better for the Liberal party in the long-term?
PP is nowhere, and will do nothing.
The Greens seem worried that Labor will preference FF.
As Russ says, FF only won the Senate spot on the back of major party preference – specifically the ALP preferences. Fielding was way behind on the primary vote.
Below the line voting has been made easier in Victoria, so it will be interesting to see if that has any impact on preferencing.
Please refer to my analysis based on the 2004 Senate results and comment recorded on the Poll Bludger. http://www.pollbludger.com/401 and http://www.pollbludger.com/261
I wrote to Antony Green and he qualified the comments that were attributed to him by saying . (And I hope he does not mind me quoting him)
“I am constantly misquoted on having predicted the Greens will win the balance of power. All I did was transfer the votes of the 2002 election to match the new provinces. If all the parties got the same votes in the same seats at the 2006 election, that’s what you would get. But they won’t, so it’s all matter of opinion.
I personally don’t see why the 2004 Federal vote would be any better a guide to the LC result. It was Labor’s worst Federal result in Victoria for a decade. Labor’s primary vote will be better than that at the state election and the Liberal vote will be worse.�
I agree with Antony Greens assessment and was also surprised by the misleading comments attributed to him. I am still unclear as to how he attributed vote to other parties where that party did not stand a candidate.
And yes the 2004 senate vote was the Alp’s worst but it does use the same system and also shows the bottom end of the ALP pendulum and the top end of the Liberal party support. More important it includes recent voting support of the other parties (Including the Greens who in 2002 did not stand candidates in all legislative council seat). This is the first multi-member Victorian state election all comparisons are valid in the absence of more reliable data.
Then there is the issue of the inbuilt bias in the system used that favors the major parties.
It would be worthwhile if the editors of this forum could debate further the issues related to the formula and process adopted in counting the vote as this does need review. (see above or my blog site) It is only a matter of time until this issue becomes an issue. (one vote – one value. One transaction per candidate based on the value of the vote not the number of ballot papers in each distribution). Too technical? I am happy to explain it in more detail.
Hopefully these VEC will respect the need to maintain an open and transparent electoral system and they will be persuaded, without having to take them to court again, to published the detailed preference data files.
Previously I had to take the City of Melbourne and the AEC to court to obtain copies of the City of Melbourne preference data. The City of Melbourne spent over $60,000 (acting on poor advice provide by Alison Lyons, Melbourne City Council legal officer at the time) to try and prevent the detailed results being made public. The case before Mr Mcnamara Deputy president of VCAT was determined in my favor without need to reserve his decision for further consideration. Ref: http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:MqjzWd7F1NEJ:www.saveoursuburbs.org.au/files/SOS_LetterVEC_20060220_v2a.pdf anthony van der craats&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=20
Anthony van der Craats
http://melbournecitycouncil.blogspot.com/search/label/Voting Analysis
and
http://melbournecitycouncil.blogspot.com/search/label/Victorian Legislative Council