A moderately low turnout election drops off the second category of Green voters, lowering the Green %. A very low turnout election takes out a whole lot of mid-motivation voters who usually aren’t Green so the Green % goes back up.

Several things to say:

Andrew, in Victoria (and I think elsewhere) turnout is almost always lower in inner city seats with lots of renters and students, which also tend to be green heartland. Applies at state and federal as well. Not entirely sure why.

Kim, I can’t speak for Anne Boccabella, but those sentiments do crop up in Green candidates here, but we’re talking one in twenty. It’s not a big strand in the party. Perhaps more common in Qld, certainly you would never hear it from a Green running for the Melbourne equivalent of central.

Further, I think Boccabella’s vote in Central was a shocker and suggests the approach was electorally unsuccessful (as well as being politically wrong IMHO). However, her vote in the by-election was very strong compared to that in the by-elections here a few weeks before, so I think we can say it did work when there was no Liberal candidate but flopped when there was. Hardly surprising.

I also think the Qld Greens took the only viable strategy here. They ran everywhere to build a presence for the Senate, but threw what they could at the best wards knowing that winning something will do more for their votes in the outer suburbs in the long run than any campaigning they could do this time. In hindsight triage might have been advisable – maybe they could only afford to run hard in two seats not three if also running moderate campaigns across most of the city.

John, a history of campaigning in an area helps, as does a high profile candidate, but the bulk of the Green vote can be predicted simply by looking at two things – how many people have university degrees and how many were born post 1965.

Just had a peek at the 2004 results and Swan’s preferences were 45% exhausted. Of the 55% remaining, 62% went Green, 24% Lib and 15% ALP.

d

Thanx Daryll and I.S.I.S.I.S. for your answers to my question. It seems how to vote cards are still very powerful.

Murray Swan’s main support base is amongst business people, especialy the local landlord/real estate network. I suspect his voters returned to the Liberals.

Labor voters were way more stingy preferencing green, showing i guess that it is them prone to the psychological block, the strangle reflex, irrational though it is, It’s a sign of actually being threatened I guess.

No, it’s a sign of Labor voters being very obedient and dutifully following the ALP how to vote card. Green voters are a much more free-spirited bunch, as evidence in the fact that at the booth I worked on in Fairfield in 2004 half of them either just voted 1 or preferenced Newman for Lord Mayor even though we were recommending preferences to Labor.

A strong local candidate is always valuable and local factors can certainly over ride underlying demographics. I know very little of the demographics of Qld, but from my memory of Australian Elections Survey Data as an undergraduate as well as the various studies I’ve seen commissioned by the Greens in England the demographics are pretty clear and similar in both countries. Highly educated, more likely to be young, more likely to be female, over here highly likely to read the Guardian

d

Two party preferred figures are available for all booths from the ECQ website. There were 18 wards that were ALP-Lib-Grn contests and in all of those, the majority of Greens “just voted one” (topping out at over 70%). Where Green voters expressed a preference, the ALP-Lib split ranged from about 50-50 to 75-25.

“Last Saturday Drew Hutton in the Gabba got the highest ever vote for a Green in Qld. (please correct me if I am wrong). His increased vote came directly from the ALP.”

Drew’s vote so far is 0.8% higher than what Ben Pennings got in Dutton Park in 2004, and I expect that to go up a smidge when Absentee and pre-polls are counted. That’s across the ward, and it includes a large areas that wasn’t in the 2004 ward. At the booths that were the same (west end – highgate hill) the swing to the Greens was about 2-3%. Did this come “directly from the ALP?” Perhaps it did, we have no way of telling. But any consideration of that question has to consider Murray Swan, who ran as an independant in 2004 and got 5%. This time the Independant (David Norton) got 1.4%, so there’s about 3.6% of the ind/protest vote unaccounted for and I suggest that’s a more likely source of votes going ‘directly’ to the Greens than the ALP.

IsayIsayIsay: “…in my booth, one of the West End ones, I was surprised at how freely lib voters were throwing preferences to Jo Bragg, much more freely than labor voters were… Labor voters were way more stingy preferencing green…”

The Greens were number two on the Liberal HTV in The Gabba, but the ALP went just vote one.

d

Nonetheless it shows that lib voters don’t have a strangeleove/clockwork orange reflex about putting a valid mark against a green candidate. After all, the real estate industry’s demographic descriptor for the green constituency is ” alternate rich”, they have DNA in common.

Ms Bragg actually went within about 20 votes of beating the labor candidate, thus being the benificiary of preferences, rather than the donor. Given how much wrong initial bundling into 50’s turned out to have happened and needed to be redone in the end, and the argy bargy about spoiled/clear intent votes, that 20 or so may have actually been there. But as I say this booth was one of the green ghetto ones.

Labor voters were way more stingy preferencing green, showing i guess that it is them prone to the psychological block, the strangle reflex, irrational though it is, It’s a sign of actually being threatened I guess.
Out out, green spot. Unbrain me now, milk of human greenness and all those other affects of guilty consciences. They really can’t come to terms with being considered to be as bad as the other lot, and thus that greens giving preferences both ways is an expression of that profound ambivalence, rather than some cosmic betrayal of the good guys. By definition, the truly corrupt don’t think they are.

There were a scary number of senior moments during counting. Hard to believe but some electoral commission employees just don’t get how to score preferences. We didn’t get out till nearly ten, and considering they don’t get paid after 8.30, it goes to show how much re-counting piles had to be done.

My favourite voting pattern seen was what we termed “Pinning the Tail on the Donkey”
an almost donkey vote 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9,8, because campbell newman was second last on the form.

You are correct. I say the following to muddy the waters a bit, not to contradict you.

2 or 3 federal electons ago (cant remember which) the booth with the highest (%) Green vote in Queensland was Boulia, a small remote township of about 300 people in N.W. Qld. – a strong National party town in Bob Katter’s electorate of Kennedy.

The Green candidate was from a local family who, through her work as a council employee, was a key person in community and welfare programs. She got a great vote in her home town but nowhere else in the electorate.

I believe it is a question of the chicken or the egg. Why do inner city electorates have the highest Green vote? Could it be because the Greens have been running in the inner city sice they began and very few other places? (not including “paper” candidates). They used to get votes in the city of 2 – 4% as is the case with any unknown independent. But they stuck at it over time and pushed this to 8 -26%.

The Greens were born in West End, Brisbane in the mid 80s (although the Taswegians dispute this). Today the Greens state H.Q. is in West End. It is no surprise that West End today has the highest Green vote in the state. (around 30%, sometimes more in local booths).

I’m no sociologist or psephulupogus but I suspect the inner city is the prime target for the Greens because that’s where the Greens have been active and organised, not necessarily because of the demographics.

Not sure what all this means for the senate which is where they are most likeley to get elected.

My fourth post at Public Polity on the BCC election outlines what I believe the way forward should be. (I’ve added a few edits to the post based on what’s been said here).

In Central, the high exhaustion of votes which may have flowed to Hinchliffe has seen the potential election of unknown Liberal Vicki Howard. The Nationals and Liberals have a deal at the state level that neither will contest each others’ seats. No such deal can be struck between the ALP and the Greens as the Greens don’t necesssarily have the support in the inner city to get elected on their own (as we’ve seen this weekend) and the ALP would essentially be bribing the Greens to stay out of electoral politics but wouldn’t necessarily hold good on any promises on policy.

The left has always been a fractured lot and it’s going to be bloody tough to find an amicable solution. PR probably isn’t happening so there’s no chance of an SPD-Greens style agreement. Greens support isn’t high enough in one area to get a member elected so there’s no quid pro quo possible between them and the ALP in terms of not standing.

Firstly on whether the Greens attempt to appeal to Liberal voters, as Anne Boccabella clearly did in the state by election where no Liberal candidate ran. This strategy failed, no matter how right wing Anne’s rhetoric was, Liberals seemed to prefer the ALP, even a union bureacrat, to the Greens.

Last Saturday Drew Hutton in the Gabba got the highest ever vote for a Green in Qld. (please correct me if I am wrong). His increased vote came directly from the ALP. The Liberal vote increased so it seems there was little if any leakage from Liberal voters. (Does anyone yet know how Green preferences went in the Gabba or any other ward?)

Since the beginning of the Greens they have claimed to be a “third force” in Australian politics but it seems in reality they have become the emerging left wing force to replace a sold out, increasingly right wing ALP. As Anne Boccabella has proven, a swing to the right or any attempt to appear non-radical is simply abandoning the Greens strength.

The Greens would do much better to publically attack conservatism rather than appeal to it

Secondly,

Why did Drew get a vote so much higher that the other Green candidates? I am sure his media profile helped but, it seems to me, that his success is based on his personal profile in the local community (at least the West End side of the ward). He has been campaigning on a heap of local issues over the past 20 years. Locals know him, not just through his media profile, but because they have seen him and got to know him through his work in the community.

Similarly, the only ever elected Green in Qld. was the former Mayor of Palm Island, Erykah Kyle. Erykah has been an activist on Aboriginal issues, but most importantly on Palm Island issues for 30 or 40 years. The electorate knew her well.

It seems to me that it does not matter how the Greens position themselves or manicure their rhetoric, the central point of success is/will be the integrity and profile of the candidate, not the party. Can-do seems to have learnt the same lesson.

It seems the Greens can get a vote of 7 -10% (in Qld) no matter who the candidate is and this has been the case for nearly 10 years. For them to break out of this plateau they must appear in electorates/communities in between elections, not just during the campaign. They must affect the nature of the electorate and its opinions, not just try and appeal to its status-quo.

Green campaigns tend to begin when elections are called. Preselection occurs very late in the process. Again, Drew was different this time as he has been campaigning for over six months (especially in the East Brisbane side of the ward where he previously had a limited profile).

If I was the boss of the Greens, I would start the 2012 council campaign this week. It is already perhaps a bit too late to do a proper job of the next state election, however I suspect the Greens will ignore the state election again until it is called and all the routine buzz begins.

The Greens have become a viable political machine that is capable of going through the bureacratic motions of participating in elections. However the community activism from where the Greens grew out of no longer seems to be a part of the Greens contemporary political formula.

Darryl and Sam, I hope it’s clear that I’m trying to be constructive in my suggestions (and in my criticism). I completely see the point about limited resources, but a suburban strategy also isn’t a zero sum game in that a well run one could produce new activists and assist fundraising as well as new Greens voters.

On the question of Anne Boccabella, I wasn’t at the meeting in question but I’m prepared to take Kim’s word about it and to share her concern that such comments were made.

With respect to the BCC election, I’d like to make a couple of points. First, this was a city-wide campaign. We ran more candidates than ever before, more than double I think, contesting 23 out of 26 wards and with a number of candidates including Jo Bragg campaigning full-time for months. One of the drawback of the BCC is its size and the only way we have to make a city-wide impact is through the media, who just ignored most of what we did and often didn’t even show up to our events. We can discuss with hindsight whether or not our tactical decisions were the best ones, but the point is this was a citywide campaign and claims to the contrary are missing the forest for the trees.

Second, this election presented us with an outside chance of winning a seat on council. We made the decision last year to focus a lot of attention on Gabba, Central and Toowong judging that the public mood in those wards would be moving in our direction and we would have an opportunity to capitalise on discontent with the old parties’ consensus on development at all costs. Again, with hindsight we can see it didn’t quite work out that way, but getting a councillor elected was our number one goal. Electing a Green to the BCC would have totally changed the rules of the game for us and been the best possible foundation for further advancement.

This was a city-wide campaign, with very specific targets of the sort you always have with single member elections. It’s not a zero sum game and the fact we made tactical decisions about where to focus our meager resources doesn’t in any way mean we were neglecting the areas outside that focus.

d

Not a good look to get leftie votes, didn’t get Liberal votes, and generally she was just a poor candidate with a poor grasp of strategy and an attitude a mile high.

All I’m saying is that I hope she doesn’t represent a broader tendency within The Greens. If so, I’d be disturbed.