In many ways it is easier mathematically to win a 60% “Safe” Seat then a marginal 515% seat. Twentyman needed to peg back the ALP to below 50% and most importantly he needed to secure 26% of the primary vote and make sure he was in a good position to collect all other preferences,

Problem for Twentyman is is not the local hero he thought he was and as long as he sides with the likes of Cleary and others he is unlikely to succeed in winning the seat. A win in a full state election would be impossible unless the government is really on the nose which it isn’t.

Another example of an independent winning a safe seat is the former member for Mildura. Kennett was on the nose and he came up the middle. Now that Labor has regained its position such a win is highly unlikely under the circumstances.

Reality check: if you were a ‘l’iberal who voted Labor in prior polls because you saw the Nationals as unreconstructed agrarian socialists or reactionaries, why would you then forget that ideological position and blindly follow the Liberal how-to-vote card?

Geoff Baxter@14 I totally agree.

Possum dismisses Paul Austins piece because…
“The Age remains determined to misinterpret so it can talk up its theme of trouble for Brumby”.

While there is plenty of room to argue against the conclusions made by Austin on the figures from that by-election result his skills as a journalist, fairly telling the story, are still encouraging.

It was important for the public to be exposed to the dirty tricks campaign, run by Labor, and their manager Newnham and the pathetically hands off comments by Premier Brumby that “I don’t run byelection campaigns”, for instance.

Good to remember the difference in style between the actually elected Bracks and the ‘wild horse at a gate’, Brumby. His abrasive ways may not have become obvious to those outside of Victoria but you would have to give credit to Austin for his little chat about the new “Action Man Premier”.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/sledgehammer-politics-won-kororoit-20080702-30o0.html?page=-1

Jeez, you wouldnt have known that reading the press reports.l fairly important point.

So much for the end of honeymoon thesis!

(mind you, It wont surprise me if Brumby is in trouble next election.)

There are defintely significant elements of the media that appear to be (whether consciously or not) death-riding the government. Yet it’s also a sign of how irrelvant the press pack is becoming that these predictions of Rudd’s demise are not being shown in opinion polling - last time I checked 55% was still landslide territiry, and a swing TO the government since the last election. That suggests to me that your average Joe is happy to let the new government “get on with it”.

Related to this is the press (and Lib) narrative that this is a “do-nothing” government, entirely obsessed with spin. This is a ludicrous suggestion, IMHO - by the end of June, parliament had passed over 50 bills, relating to anything from tax relief to dental benefits (and a lot more in between), and there’s clearly more to come. Then again, this is the same press that had written Wayne Swan off in February.

It seems to me that various over-paid journos (and I don’t mean the real ones, who actually work for a living, but the puffed-up columnists) are desperate to write their retrospectives about the Rudd government, even though, after just 7 months, that seems a ridiculous proposition to anyone outside of their self-important little bubble.

coast-to-coast state Labor governments ranging in age from 6 to 13, each rapidly wearing down its reserves of political capital

Several of the governments have been borrowing that capital from the coalition opposition for years.

In Kororoit, Les Twentyman came within a few hundred primary votes of winning the seat on preferences. He ended up a two-hundred votes behind the Liberals on primaries and this meant the flow of preferences went to Labor.

While this doesnt mean the seat is suddently marginal or at risk, it should be a wake-up call to the ALP.

Labor retains huge Newspoll lead over Coalition
Labor has kept its crushing lead over the Coalition in every state and among every voting group in the past three months, while Kevin Rudd has outpolled Nelson everywhere by at least six to one as preferred prime minister

But yes, the Cowardian pearl-clutching, swooning and smelling-salt antics of Bolt, Akerman, Albrecthson, and quite a few who should know better - for a government this early in the term and facing signficant policy challenges - is a bit disturbing.

The script is written and, as Hunter S Thompson said, “the Fix is in.”

Wasn’t it also the case that a lot of state factors may have been in play in Gippsland, and particularly in the Latrobe Valley? Didn’t state Labor lose two seats there?

Moreover, some people who might have otherwise voted Liberal would have backed Twentyman, and then followed his preference card to Labor.

I’d guess that without the effect of preferences from the two independents the swing to the Libs would have been around 8% - not enough to terrify Brumby given what by-elections usually do, but not a slap for Baillieu either.

BTW, Costar’s piece ends with speculation on how a Labor-versus-Liberal preference allocation in Kororoit might have gone. The VEC has given us the answer: the swing against Labor was 4.1 per cent, compared with Costar’s estimate of 1.6 per cent.