Given that the Labor and National parties have launched their campaigns for the NSW state election, it’s a good time to officially kick off LP’s coverage of the NSW Election even though blogging on the elections began well in advance of the March 24 polls.
As per previous coverage of state elections, we have a few guest bloggers on board for the campaign. Please welcome Modia Minotaur, Guy from Polemica and arleeshar from stoush.net.
Guy has already started but there will be a lot more to come. The election is interesting in that it is not so much about which party can win but whether the Liberals can gain some ground on the Labor party that may give them a hope in the 2011 election.
Over three hours since this was posted and no comments yet. Just about sums up the state of (dis)interest most NSW citizens have in the election – or perhaps I should say there is a state of cynical despair.
And/or it’s Sunday night!
Ah, and it’s Brisbane time on the blog, which means it’s only two hours since it was posted.
Welcome to Indifference 2007 suz.
I have a question about preferences in the NSW election. How do I find out who’s giving preferences to whom? And does that vary seat by seat? I’m particularly interested in what the Greens will do with their preferences.
Some of us were out “doing” campaigning for the candidates that best reflect our principles rather than talking about it and then went exhausted to bed with a clear conscience that we have fought the good fight.
KatieLou
On election day the polling booth must display a copy of the upper house (above line) preferencing of parties. Parties can also proportion the upper house votes – ie I think they are allowed 3 different preferencing patterns (I need to check this)
NSW is optional preferential and so not all boxes need to be numbered – expect Just Vote 1 tickets from the party with the higher primary bote but fears to loose on preferences.
All voting material to be handed out on election day must be registered with the electoral office about 2 weeks before pole. (I have normally registered every preference combination to allow deals right up and even during election day – switched How to Votes half way through the day)
The preferencing deal varies seat by seat because while the Greens will not want a Coalition govt in they are not going to give the ALP a break.
A lot of work suggests the Greens have not educated their voters to follow their ticket. A fair proportion of Green voters (70%) will vote ALP No 2 regardless of what is on the Green ticket. See work by phD student S.Denton at Wollongong Uni. But still that 30% can be dangerous.
While the polls indicate that the coalition probably wouldn’t win if an election was held right now, it’s wrong for people outside NSW to assume that labor will certainly be returned. There’s a lot of antipathy towards the current state govt, going back even (apparently) to soon after it was elected when it made a number of unpopular decisions that helped Howard win in 1996 (eg breaking election promises on tolls and making the Governor’s job part-time). The inflated wins in 1999 and 2003 are at least partially due to the relative incompetence of the opposition and there are now a number of apparently “safe” seats which have only been recently “safe” (eg strathfield).
Note how the “ALP” motif is very small in this election – you might as well be voting for or against “the Morris Iemma govt” rather than for or against the labor govt.
GongGuru – the voting system for the Upper house changed before the 2003 election (see here) and that parties do not determine how preference flows for voters who vote for that party.
I think it’s great that Greens voters preference however they want without needing to be “educated” – good on them. It does mean, though, that the Greens have less ability to influence things if the ALP can easily rely on 70% of their votes.
I recall looking at the last City of Brisbane election results, and it looked (from memory) as if about half the Greens votes exhausted with 2/3 of the non-exhausted votes going to Labor and the rest going to the Libs.
There’s plenty of antipathy, but mathematically it would be pretty difficult for the Government to lose. The poll held last week, that suggested more people wanted a change than were willing to vote for Peter Debnam, says it all.