If the story William Bowe has linked to this morning at Pineapple Party Time about Labor tracking polls showing swings of up to 10% in seats with margins of up to 8% in and around Brisbane and a collapse in Greens preference flows to the ALP is accurate, Labor is probably toast on Saturday.
More later on today.
Update: I’ll be on the ABC’s The World Today program on radio at 11am this morning (Brisbane Time) talking to Annie Guest about the leaked polling discussed in this post.
Update: My story from today’s Crikey email is posted beneath the fold.
From today’s Crikey email:
As my distinguished colleague William Bowe noted this morning at Pineapple Party Time, Peter Van Onselen has reported in The Australian internal Labor tracking polling which shows the party in dire straits. Van Onselen states that swings of between 8 and 10% to the LNP are being picked up in South East Queensland electorates held by Labor on margins of 6 to 8%. He writes that LNP figures are “quietly confident” of an outright win on Saturday when Queensland goes to the polls.
This story, if accurate, confirms the strategic logic I suggested some time ago was evident in the selection of Labor seats for Greens preferences – that seats in the ALP’s Brisbane and Gold Coast redoubts regarded as safe were anything but, and were actively in play. My analysis was met with some scepticism.
But that scepticism is the story of this election writ small. Expectations of a Labor win, despite the real possibility of an LNP victory being reported at Pineapple Party Time almost a fortnight ago, are so entrenched that The Borg has had something of a stealth ride to a position where he may be Premier on Monday.
However, some cautions regarding tracking polling are in order. Such polling is an aggregate of small samples taken across key seats. Its main purpose is determining how various themes are playing, and the allocation of resources. While it can obviously pick up a trend, it’s not state wide polling.
But in the current campaign where any indication of measured public opinion in seats has been largely lacking, it tells a powerful story when set alongside the published polls.
While there is always a lot of chatter about internal polling, its actual distribution list is very tightly circumscribed. It’s a precious commodity, and never leaked without a reason. Often the reason relates to shaping expectations about the overall position of the parties. In this instance, if Van Onselen’s story is accurate, it’s Labor’s way of saying “we’re losing” in order to focus voters’ attention on the real possibility of Lawrence Springborg as Premier.
But those with long memories might recall Labor leaking polling from Cleveland just prior to the last state election showing a big swing to the Coalition. The swing was there – in that seat – but the inference ALP strategists wanted drawn about a general movement was a red herring.
Those points being made, the movements picked up in this poll do accord with what observers of the campaign have noticed. Saturday night is going to be very interesting indeed.
I am very cynical about parties ‘leaking’ their internal polling before elections because they dont do it for no reason. I think QLd Labor is up to the same trick as Carpenter in WA, Trying to claim underdog status.
On another note Ron Boswell said in the Senate yesterday that a Greens candidate in a seat where thay are preferencing Labor, sent back his How to Vote cards in disgust. I cant find anything about it in the news. Can anyone confirm it.
Well, yes, it’s the “we’re losing!” card being played. But that doesn’t mean that the polling is not accurate. When it’s leaked, it’s almost always right – and obviously it’s not leaked without reason.
Jamo;
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/greens-perform-howtovote-dummy-spit/2009/03/18/1237054877563.html
This is the start of the road back to power for the Coalition. So much for being out of step.
Heh. Oh yes, if they can topple a 11 year old state labour govt, with an unelected premier, and the federal ALP in power – surely nothing can stop the coalition now!!
I suspect we might even see the ….. NSW govt ….go blue next time. Its a big call, I know, but such is the magnitude of the comeback, I think even that could be possible.
Sean Parnell reports on an important joker in the pack – a sizeable minority of voters being relatively newly arrived interstate migrants with little or no past experience of Coalition or National Party government in Queensland. Combine this effect with the effluxion of time, and Labor has to deal with an electorate of which an increasing proportion has no memory of either Bjelke-Petersen or the Bjelke-Bourbonism of Rob Borbidge between 1996 and 1998 after having previously convinced many that he was an “urban and urbane” centrist.
mark says:
Since the campaign began I have been predicting that the ALP’s “toastedness” would increase polling day approached. That is, voter anti-pathy towards the ALP would become manifest as decision day approached and “voters make up their minds” to “throw the bums out”.
Early polls routinely underestimate the final LNP tally. Last week I speculated that there is a latent Right-wing tendency in the electorate which becomes manifest as key preferences are revealed. Forgive me for cross-posting a quote from Crikey Posted Thursday, March 12, 2009 at 5:04 pm:
I am not really confident about the causes of the polls recent underestimation of LNP votes.
Its possible that this increased Right-wing shift in voter sentiment could merely be a result of the momentum of the swings in electoral pendulum and business cycle. But the same thing happened in 2004 & 2007 federal elections.
A pattern seems to be emerging here. In both these elections the early polls were very encouraging to the ALP. Yet as the polling date closed Howard widened a narrow winning margin or closed a large losing margin.
Perhaps other psephologists can explain this or produce data.
That’s an eye-opening link there, Oz.
I’ve always taken as optimistic lies my local Greens’ claims that they decided their preference allocations “locally and democratically”, but if they’re going to be honest about doing it centrally, someone should remind Hutton about the many words reserved for people who do deals and then break them.
And, the implications of breaking preference deals for preference deals in the future and in other States.
Liam,
I think you will find the returned HTVs were advocating just vote 1. So it isn’t really “breaking” a deal.
Liam, without being very familiar with the situation in Gympie, there is the vexed question of the local enforceability of deals done centrally. Party discipline can only be enforced if the party can provide a meaningful set of incentives to obey (e.g. you’ll get promoted to a job in Senator X’s office) and disincentives to be recalcitrant (e.g. your garbage won’t get collected). The Labor Party can provide such an incentive structure. The Greens in Queensland haven’t developed to the point of being able to do this.
Err, no, Austin. State Labor dealt with the State Greens, swapping policy and Labor preferences to Ronan Lee for Greens preferences to Labor in lots of seats.
If the Greens then don’t, can’t, or won’t deliver those #2 votes, why should anyone ever enter into preference negotiations with the Greens ever again?
Mark @ 2, “When it’s leaked, it’s almost always right – and obviously it’s not leaked without reason.” I think this statement is wrong. I remember the ALP leaking polling for the 2006 campaign for the state seat of Melbourne claiming that they were on 41% and the Greens were on 40%. This was an obvious lie, unsurprisingly unquestioned by the ‘reporter’ who presented this spin as news. It’s an obvious lie because even in Melbourne, the vote for non-ALP and non-Greens candidates would never be as low as 19%.
Having said that, I reckon the ALP’s toast. After the event, it’ll be two factors, but I think it’s three. The obvious (and biggest) two will be it’s time, and going early. I reckon the dam is the third (insofar as it’s going to have an impact on Green preferences and [lower-case g] green-leaning voters).
As a distant Victorian, I’m not surprised that Labor may lose this one. We Southerners have heard of hospital inadequacies – remaining unfixed – and other ills. The Govt reponse to floods… the oil spill (apparent) shambles just the latest mess-up. Highly spectacular, but. On Vic ABC TV news a couple of days ago we saw the Deputy Premier being asked why that day’s oil cleanup had finished at 4pm, rather than the adverised 5pm.
They had run out of bags. “I don’t know why they ran out of bags, but let me assure you the clean-up teams will be here tomorrow bright and early with plenty of bags!” spake he.
Was he having a bad day, or was it just one more instance of tired, sloppy, semi-competence? From this distance I can’t tell. It was a shoddy look.
Better the devil we know! This phrase I feel is applicable to the Labor Party getting back in. Anna has shown she has insight regarding the Hanson case by not letting feelings out like Springborg. He spoke out before looking at facts and looked a right idiot, IMO.
Exactly my question, Paul. Is it just up to a vague sense of solidarity or is there a written rule?
My point was that there is a very significant disincentive for the Greens to keep preference discipline: the prospect of Labor choosing not to deal again with a Party they see as rats, or worse, playing local Greens branches off against each other.
Liam,
Perhaps you should go more slowly for me.
How does not handing out just vote 1 HTVs in one particular electorate affect the handing out of preferences HTVs and the voters looking at those HTVs in other electorates?
Update: I’ll be on the ABC’s The World Today program on radio at 11am this morning (Brisbane Time) talking to Annie Guest about the leaked polling discussed in this post.
I think the LNP is stuffed now one of their mates has challenged Kevin Rudd’s $900 bonus for taypayers in the High Court. Great timing people as public opinion can change so quickly where money is concerned. It will be an interesting day on Saturday.
Liam (and others),
the Brisbane times report is a bit wrong and there’s some incorrect conclusions being drawn from it.
One Greens candidate, the candidate for Gympie, whose seat was not part of the deal and whose HTVs advocate 1 Green with no further preferences, returned his HTVs in protest at preferences being recommended in other seats. None of the seats mentioned in the article and none of the seats looked after by the Sunshine Coast area Green branches recommend a 2 for the ALP.
d
Darryl, and Austin, what was printed on the tickets or whether Gympie was part of the deal isn’t the issue—the question is whether local Greens branches have any freedom to decide about their party’s preferences at all. If they want to continue negotiating centrally, the answer should clearly be “no”.
How would they like it, for example, if they struck a deal with ALP Head Office for Labor #2s, and Labor SECs or FECs refused to abide by it?
Could the swing have more to do with trying to win a fifth term, than most pundits think? Perhaps voters think Bligh’s government has reached its use-by date.
I must admit I don’t know much about Qld politics, but thought that getting a fifth poll win would be pretty difficult, no matter who the incumbent is. However, what I’ve seen of Springborg isn’t very encouraging. Frying pans and fire spring to mind.
Liam,
What evidence do you have that the branch that covers the Gympie electorate actually subscribed to a centrally negotiated preference deal?
Mark @ 17, I think you’ll find that The World Today is on at 12 noon local time in the main centres, ie. here in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne. Of course while some other people are on bodgie summer time we are on Eastern Standard Time. The ABC time-shifts the program for us.
Check your schedule here.
“the question is whether local Greens branches have any freedom to decide about their party’s preferences at all.”
Well, you’re using this Gympie incident as a springboard for the discussion so I think it’s entirely relevant that the local branch in Gympie got the outcome they wanted locally but are complaining that they don’t like what other branches have decided.
“How would they like it, for example, if they struck a deal with ALP Head Office for Labor #2s, and Labor SECs or FECs refused to abide by it?”
I wouldn’t be surprised and I half expect it. I don’t think Qld Labor has ever delivered on any policy promises in previous negotiations, why should preferences be any different? I’ve got no inside info on the preference negotiations, but the ALP hasn’t directed prefs to Ronan Lee on their absentee HTVs. Some sort of ‘production error’ I assume. A totally innocent mistake. I mean, a political party would *never* go back on its word, would it?
d
Good onya for promoting the Murdoch view of the world Mark.
Further to my comment at #6, could it be that a certain kind of insiders/outsiders dynamic is at work to the detriment of Labor’s strategy? By this I mean that Labor politicians and party officials, being political insiders, would be alive to the memory and the folklore of the Bjelke-Petersen era and Borbidg’e Bjelke-Bourbonism, and may have assumed (in running negative adds about “Springborg’s Nationals”) that ordinary citizens would be similarly alive to such memories even though a growing number of them were either not born, were interstate and/or were too young to have any meaningful memory of these episodes and any strong negative feelings towards the Borg as a consequence.
My experience of Labour preference deals is that the paperwork will show what was agreed but the ALP volunteers and staff will instruct people not to give their votes to The Greens. They will jump into conversations, lie, attempt to bribe or threaten voters and break whatever rules they can get away with. And the rules they can’t get away with breaking are few and far between. I’d settle for “no campaigning inside polling booths” as the start of the rules that are enforced but there doesn’t seem to be much support for that.
This is definitely not explicitly endorsed by the ALP hierarchy, and often not even by the local candidate. But somehow the message gets through to ALP people that it’s acceptable behaviour.
IN the event of a hung parliament, it may be prudent not to presume that Stuart Copeland will inevitably support the LNP over Labor.
nasking @ 25 – that’s an offensive and baseless comment. The story could just have easily been published in a Fairfax newspaper, or given to Crikey for that matter. The ALP have leaked it where it will get most attention.
Labor are losing the election. They are leaking this polling to try to turn that around! What would you have me do? Stick my head in the sand? The Murdoch papers exist. There’s no particular political virtue in pretending they don’t. Unless you’re willing to suggest a way in which independent media could access the same resources that news reporting actually takes, your point is meaningless.
Would you like me to be writing crud that suggests all is rosy with the Labor campaign? Even if you’d prefer that I wear rose-coloured glasses, you might pause to reflect that it’s in Labor’s interests that voters realise that an LNP win is likely because nothing else will stop it occurring at this stage.
To be honest, I get really fed up with this sort of stuff. Particularly when I’ve frankly got much better things to do with my time than pour over the entrails of a campaign I regard as tragically misconceived. If you’ve got something constructive to offer, please do so. But try to think at least a little bit outside your tired narrative now and then. And if you think you could do a fabulous job reporting on and analysing the Queensland election, well, no one has been stopping you.
If you think I’m doing this either for love or for money, you’d be quite wrong. I’m hoping – as a citizen – to make some sort of difference, and at the moment my mood is resignation towards what appears to be a likely return of The Nationals to power, something I view with an enormous amount of foreboding.
Update: I’ve added my piece from the Crikey email to the post (beneath the fold).
I wonder if the Borg and McCardle have signed a secret memo of understanding with the Police Union this time around?
This is to announce that I and the other members of Frente! have declined a request from Anna Bligh’s assistant chief of staff, Stephen Beckett, to do a reunion concert as a fundraiser for Brett McCreadie’s campaign in Beaudesert.
Mark Mar 19th, 2009 at 1:15 pm says:
Mark, stop being so thin-skinned, settle down and get a grip. You can’t “make a difference” when there is not much difference to be made. The differences bw the parties are narrowing every day. Its the Age of the Great Covergence*, remember?
QLD Right-wingers are not likely to be channeling Sir Joh or Russ Hinze in a hurry. They have to deal with a Fed ALP which is quite popular. You cant just “run against Canberra” on parochial grounds when so many QLDers are immigrants from the Southern States.
There is very little to forebode about Springborg LNP when he will be ruling off wafer thin majorities in a swag of marginal seats. He looks like just another cookie-cutter pollie to me.
I havent bothered to look at the policy platforms of either party. But I am betting that Springborg is NOT proposing to privatise major public utilities, shut down schools or cut funding for hospitals. Would I be right on that?
He and his party just want to get back into office where they can get their hands on state govt largesse and spread it around to their friends and colleagues and patrons. Its called “share the wealth”! Probably the only way the LNP party can revive its fortunes is by sticking its nose into the tax-payer trough.
The fact that policy differences bw parties are fairly small is appreciated by the great majority of the populace. That is why it is so hard to “make a difference” to the popular vote by changing leaders or re-branding the party or running an energetic campaign or writing a scorching editorial/blog.
But high media profile people who make their living off political hype – such as journos, admen and machine operators – tend to vastly over-rate such activities. If they had a correct estimation of their own importance then what would they do for a job?
The fact is that in the age of Tweedledee and Tweedledum parties it is mainly time that makes a difference. Time in the saddle and time on the money.
Even a momentous issue change like the Greenhouse effect appears to make precious little difference to major party policy. Until of course it starts to hit the hip pocket nerve or worse, as when sea levels start flooding valuable ocean fronted property.
* TM Strocchi
Well Jack, if you think there will not be much difference living in Qld under the LNP or Labor then you’re living in a fog where you can’t see north of the border.
What Paul Norton said @ 6, and 26.
Borbidge turned the place inside out in two short years on a wafer thin margin.
Why am I seeing an exact rerun of the WA State Election, but without the Nats doing a deal with either leader ala Brendon Grylls, The Borg did it from the start.
And I see the Borg is promising Mandatory Sentencing for Assaulting Police – I’m not aware of any current assaults in Qld, is the borg borrowing Barnett’s policies cos he has none of his own ?
Your experience doesn’t sound very plausible, moz.
You expect us to believe that ‘they’ in the ALP would work to undermine the Labor ticket after the Party has directed preferences to the Greens in a particular seat?
That allegation has the ring of ACORN about it.
NickWS: Your experience doesn’t sound very plausible, moz.
You expect us to believe that ‘they’ in the ALP would work to undermine the Labor ticket after the Party has directed preferences to the Greens in a particular seat?
Why would someone who doesn’t accept the deal act to promote it?
I’m curious about your experience, and how good the ALP is at educating its members about the intricacies of the voting system here. I’ve seen an overwhelming “just vote 1 ALP” at the grassroots from people who either don’t know or don’t care about STV. Combine that with a strong dislike of The Greens and a religious “true believers aren’t bound by the rules” approach, and it gets ugly way too often for my liking. From the simple “if you want to support the greens put them second” to the incredible “if you vote for the greens will lose his job”.
Yes, some ALP people are very pleasant and honest, but there always seems to be one or two on the booth that are not, and they’re not opposed by the people that are.
I have complained to polling clerks about this on more than one occasion, and seen ALP people pushed out of the polling booth, but I’ve never seen someone arrested for repeatedly needed to be removed. There doesn’t appear to be a penalty for breaking the rules.
That allegation has the ring of ACORN about it.
What’s ACORN? I assume you’re not talking about the Australian College of Operating Room Nurses.
moz, all I can say is that I’ve been voting here for 40 years and I’ve never seen the kind of behaviour you describe @ 27. Not once.
This is what Springborg said on March 17 when asked how he was going to fund his promises:
The man talks gibberish, but he does it smoothly, with confidence and enthusiasm.
He’s been making announcements of new spending throughout the campaign, which makes him look like the man with a plan. The meeja have largely accepted his magic pudding approach to funding, without subjecting it to informed independent comment. Bligh’s steady as we go, we’ve got a huge infrastructure program in place, has left her looking flat-footed.
All a bit sad, and scary.
* From a full-page ad in today’s Courier Mail.
Further to Brian’s point, I have been handing out HTVs at polling stations in Federal, State and Local government elections for (at different times) the ALP, the Greens, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society, and I have also not witnessed such behaviour.
Having said that, I have had the misfortune to come across individual ALP members who possess the requisite combination of lack of scruple and lack of intellect to be capable of the behaviour that moz describes, and who have certainly behaved that way in student union elections, and if I have not witnessed it myself in grown-up elections, this may be due to the fact that the ALP candidates I have supported, or who have been running in seats in which I have campaigned for the Greens and the greenies, are not the kind of candidates who would be supported by that kind of ALP member.
Paul, you and Brian are right–Labor activists at the sub-branch level would never screw with the party ticket as they’re handing out HtVs (which is moz’s claim).
That way leads to anarchy. Why would the hierarchy decide to preference the Greens and then allow volunteers to subvert that decision? Parties don’t function that way in this country. Although no doubt you’re right about the harshness of individuals within the party, the rules of catch-and-kill-our-own Labor holds so dear means the bastardry is confined to inhouse ballots and such. The party ticket is inviolate, and that it would be tampered with on election day is a baseless electoral conspiracy theory (hence my reference to ACORN).
Clive Bean backs Bligh to sneak home
I think it’s quite wrong to describe Brian as either “right wing Labor” or a “Labor activist” and Paul, I believe, is a member of The Greens, Nickws, as he pointed out in the comment that appears immediately before yours.
Labor in this election have registered two tickets for many electorates with the ECQ. One is the red “Anna Bligh and Labor” htv and the other is green and has wording like “Voting Green?” and pushes a first pref vote for The Greens and a second pref to Labor.
This is perfectly legal. It’s also a matter of public record. The ECQ don’t post them on the net, but you can visit the ECQ office and ask to inspect the registered htv cards, and I know people who have over the last week.
The mix of which and how many of each are handed out at each polling booth is a decision taken by the campaign centrally.
This has been going on in Queensland on and off since the early 1990s.
In Indooroopilly, I very much doubt many red htvs will be actually handed out. The Greens, I believe, were trying to get some stipulation about this but there are a stack of ways to get around it.
Note that I’m not saying this is a good or an ethical thing to do. But it occurs, and it’s wrong to say that it doesn’t.
I’ll just note this for the record – back in the days when I was a member of the Labor party, I refused to hand out the “Green” how to votes on a polling booth and as an ALP member, only handed out Labor htvs. That didn’t make everyone happy, but I’ll refrain from any further comment or drawing any morals from the story.
Mark, in regards to their dismissal of what was what writen @ 37, I think Brian and Paul are correct. I trust they’re not Right.
I think you’re confused because of my love of dashes; what I meant to say was, “Paul, you and Brian are right: Labor activists blah blah blah”; I guess I should’ve used a colon.:-)
The claims by Moz strike me as bogus, even though I’m a Victorian and not savvy with the Queensland practice of OPV or multiple how-to-vote cards (we don’t have the first and I don’t think the second is legal, I’ve never seen any conflicting party HtVs in a decade of attending polling stations). I think someone has an interest in fooling people into believing that the rough stuff that occurs in union elections and candidate pre-selections will be happening tomorrow across Queensland. Whatever. I suppose if Labor/Green stoushing is inevitable on a site like this at election time then the BS will fly…
Were you flouting the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ parties have whereby one will hand out the other’s HtVs if there are no volunteers present? I don’t think anyone should be scandalised by that. It’s when people start repeating stuff about ALP members behaving like something out of Power Without Glory that a reality check is needed.
(Though there was a case of an independent candidate at the 2006 Victorian election who claimed he was being harassed in the lead up to polling day. I don’t recall any allegations of illegal behaviour taking place anywhere near a ballot box.)
That is, multiple HtVs are not legal here in Victoria, I think.
Obviously they are legal & will be handed out in Queensland. And I think some Quincelanders wouldn’t mind seeing some conflict over them, even if they are a bit wistful about the prospect…
Nickws, I may have also misread you – I’m really tired tonight – this election and sleep aren’t best friends! Apologies.
No, there was no such agreement.
I have had Nats hand out htvs for me when I’ve been the lone Labor worker on rural booths and wanted a break, I might say…
In this instance, it was a regional booth, with two of us there. The “Voting Green?” style htv would have been hard to distinguish from an actual Green htv, and we were told not to wear any Labor badges, wear red, etc. Anyway, I didn’t want to do that. I was there to promote the ALP.
I don’t have any solid information about this, and I wouldn’t jump to conclusions about complex plots or whatever, but given that Ronan Lee defected from Labor, I really don’t think it would be too surprising if ALP branch members in his seat were less than enthusiastic about handing out how to votes preferencing him.
In any case, as I said on another thread, I think it’s not unlikely that he’ll come third not second.
I might also add that I’m a lot less excited by what happens in Indooro than some. I’m much more interested in hoping and praying we don’t get a Nationals government again!
Mark:
Thanks for all the work you’ve put in.
And for the tip about the “Voting Green? style htv .. hard to distinguish from an actual Green htv”.
Alas, that democracy has come to such tawdry stunts … or is it that the
“many electorates labor have registered two tickets with… one green and has wording like “Voting Green?” and pushes a first pref vote for The Greens and a second pref to Labor.”
are actually only those electorates that the Greens secretariat did a preference deal on, and as such it’s just labor taking care of business details in case those slack green arses didn’t and the promised Greens1/Labor 2 got caught in some slipup, in which case it’s perfectly reasonable, prescient and generous even on labor’s part.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in some of those infamous electorates the actual greens candidate isn’t all that enthusiastic about what hq is telling them to do, prefing labor, and has auxiliary flyers that might kinda look like ‘just vote 1′ htv’s. Fortunately, my neck of the woods isn’t one of them, it’s very simple, the green just wants to beat the nat. Can’t blame him for that, and good luck to him I say.
Again, taa for your trouble: vote early and vote often. Have a great party.
And what a weird electoral eve editorial from the Curious snail about Democracy and NOT mentioning any political leader or their parties.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25217672-13360,00.html
claims by Moz strike me as bogus
I’m sorry you feel that way. I suggest at the next federal election handing out at polling booths in electorates where The Greens might win. I’ve handed out how to votes for The Greens in both Marrickville and Leichhardt, and in both electorates the ALP is concerned that The Greens might collect enough Liberal preferences to roll them. It’s the sort of thing that brings out the worst in people.
I’ve also handed out for TWS in northern Sydney somewhere and had amusing dealings with a Family First candidate (she was young, unmarried and at university… not at all what I expected), but even there the idea of not following voters into the polling area was a challenge for many volunteers.
I’ve once experienced screaming abuse at a polling booth.
Not outwardly revealing my voting intention, I always politely take a card from each party’s stand.
Was voting absentee, a long way from home. There was a bit of rumamging to find stuff on my electorate (as opposed to taking a card from each without breaking stride).
The first stand was the National Party, while he rummaged, the ALP volunteer began loudly sneering at me, escalating into gibbering abuse. The facical expression of the volunteers from the several other political parties said this had been happening all day.
Eventually I went into the booth with information from every party except ALP, and a very large flea in my ear.
53 Steve at the Pub Mar 21st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
Same thing happened to me at Elwood. I was taking cards from all party HTV helpers.
I took one from Family First, initially to see which way they were directing their preferences. This drew sneers “Fascist” from bearded academic wearing sweater with logo of sandstone alumni prominently displayed.
Naturally I voted for FF without further ado. And gave the GREENs ticket the big flick.
I dont think Lefties understand how off-putting their air of aggressive self-righteousness is to people who are accustomed to thinking for themselves.
I’ve seen the behaviour moz talks about on Labor booths. I’ve told off my comrades for it, too. Handing out day isn’t nearly as fun as trips around the streets with ladders, hammers and corflutes—that’s where the real battles have to be averted,
In seats with little or no Green presence in Western Sydney, I’ve shaken hands with the Green organiser in the morning who comes to drop off a box of leaflets and an A-frame, and gladly pointed Greens voters to the box on the way to the booth. Only fair, especially if it reads Greens 1 Labor 2.
…
I would just like to quote, for posterity, Jack Strocchi from upthread:
I’m a bit surprised that SATP and Jack S would value their vote so little that they let an emotional reaction to a bad-mannered poll worker determine it.
Earlier, I said: “the ALP hasn’t directed prefs to Ronan Lee on their absentee HTVs”
I have to correct the record and apologise – the ALP absentee card was 1, 2 in Indooroopilly. I was misinformed by a colleague, who was operating off second-hand info from a comment thread on Pineapple Party Time.
d
Darryl: well done, one of the few to increase your vote, and well done to Larissa too. Fraser owes Mt Cootha greens big time. I believe a politics first was set last night when a seat was conceded via twitter.
It was strange seeing the sheet of labor htv’s for absentee voters with a 2 next to the green in them all: whether that matched the actual final htv’s i don’t know, (an empty gesture in all but Ronan’s case, and maybe there too ). It was damned useful at the booth to be able to use the labor sheet to identify who the green candidate was in distant electorates.
# 55 Liam Mar 22nd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
There is always a danger of leading with ones jaw when one wades into the dicey game of prediction. I cant complain if my nose gets rubbed in my posterior messes.
However one should always be ones own harshest critic. I have already beaten Liam to the punch. This posted at PPT Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 8:51 am
Having made a full confession I will try to salvage something from the wreckage. It may well be that Bligh has called her election in just the nick of time given the severity of the recession in the so-called “smart” state. That is, there is some probability that the ALP’s fall from popular grace will continue for the next six-to-twelve months as more jobs are lost from tourism and real estate. That is the main reason she called an early election, after all.
In short there may be some legs left in the electoral and economic cyclical theory of partisan alignment. Bad things do happen to good theories, sometimes.
More generally though, this election is another solid bit of evidence to support the “ALP hegemony” theory of Boomer-era partisan alignment. It does seem as if the LNP in various manifestations, has a serious branding problem with cringe-makingly hip Boomer-era, metro-aread voters of the kind found flocking to Brisvegas. We arent in Kingaroy anymore.
That is, after all, the main reason that the Coalition merged.
Shorter Strocchi.
“I was wrong but I was right to be wrong in this way.”
Actually to give Jack credit, he’s one of the very very very very very few web-based monomaniacal autodidactal polemicists who’s willing to admit he gets it wrong when he does get blatantly caught getting it wrong.
I couldn’t have the grace or courage to do it like him. Which is why I deftly avoid getting into such easily enfiladed positions in the first place.
“Darryl: well done, one of the few to increase your vote”
Sadly, no. Last time I was 12.63, now I’m 12.4 and falling. Absentees will bring that back up, but I’m expecting a teeny-tiny swing against me, which I blame on the donkey being with the ALP this time.
It was not a good election for the Greens.
d
Shorter Jack Strocchi: Brisbane residents are bigots who won’t vote for somebody who is “rural”. *ugh*
Hey Darryl – I gather the statewide vote increased, admittedly only 0.2%, but atill – better than a decline. Were local expectations higher?
Lefty E, the statewide vote could have been expected to increase given that we were running in all 89 seats for the first time, compared with 75 seats last time. The political circumstances (tired incumbents versus decidedly un-Green opposition) arguably could also have favoured a higher vote. The picture across the state (on a seat by seat and booth by booth basis) is patchy – increases in some areas and decreases in others – but on balance Darryl’s assessment is correct.
And the Green vote in West End was down from 33.90% to 24.67%.
Considering the donkey vote last time means that you have almost certainly increased your vote in ‘real terms’, and in any case essentially holding your good vote from last time is a commendable result.
I understand that you would like to have improved it even further, but I think you should feel pretty pleased with it.
By “west end” Paul do you man the seat of Sth Brisbane, or the actual suburb, booth-by-tooth, as it were?
I noticed (the former) too, an would probably put it down to having the Premier as MP, especially a woman. Its a progressive seat, and a long of women green voters would have been torn this time – but there may also be demographic shfts at play as the number of units increased along Montague road.
I mean the suburb.
In addition to the factors you mention, a lot of women green voters may have wanted to make a point about a certain high-profile candidate selection.
OK Paul … I dont get the reference there tho? Who’s that?
Only 82 more votes at the WESS booth this year, Lefty (I think there’s something funny going on with the turnout this year, but maybe it’s just a big uptick in pre-polls)
St Francis on Dornoch Tce dropped 7%, St Ita’s down 6%, Annerley junction down 8%. There were 9 candidats, as opposed to 5, but still…
(On the plus side , I am immeasurably pleased by the DS4SEQ nutters failure to outpoll Sam Watson and the Socialist Alliance. And though I bear Derek Rosborough no ill will, it’s amusing that his getting of the donkey this year cut his vote by two-thirds to 0.59%)
d
Pity about teh other nutters.
Daylight Savings: less popular than anti-fluoridation.
“Daylight Savings: less popular than anti-fluoridation”
Speaking of which, Merilyn Haines must have spent an absolute mint to get her 337 votes. Masses of glossy HTVs on about a 120gsm stock, heaps of booth workers with campaign shirts, *two* letterbox drops of glossy brochures. Easily $10 or $20 per vote I would think.
d
62 steve at the pub Mar 23rd, 2009 at 11:13 am
I am sorry if my irreverent remarks offends thee. But “Bigot” will do as a descriptor for “cringe-makingly hip Boomer-era, metro-aread voters of the kind found flocking to Brisvegas”…[who congratulate themselves that they aren't]…”in Kingaroy anymore.”
Perhaps my irony alerts were not properly enabled.
SE QLD has drawn in alot of metro-style people from OS and IS over the last decade. Recent electoral data (five ALP victories on the trot) suggests that this push tend to look down on “rural” parties. Hence the National Party’s fall from grace and the never-ending witchhunt on Ms Hanson.
More generally such folk are desperately keen to upgrade QLD’s image as a hick-state built on mineralty and realty. ie “dig it up, chop it down, ship it out” economy underpinning a high-rise beach-combing society.
Hence the relentless boosterism about “smart state” and “knowledge economy”. Not That There Is Anything Wrong With That, apart from the fact that this process has not really gone through the formality of actually occurring. (see next comment.)
Its QLD’s Brisvegan metro try-hard factor that is probably depressing the LNP’s vote below what it should be based on the normal rythyms of a common-or-garden variety state polity. This is a form of bigotry alright, embarassment and shame about one’s own states civic history and viable industry.
Sort of “black armband” meets “convict stain”.
A little while back I put a few BananaBender noses out of joint by suggesting that “QLD’s economy is based on rocks, glitz and bricks”.
This outraged a some of commenters who made a big fuss about QLD being the “smart state”, staffed with a marvellous “creative class” who were driving its “knowledge economy”.
No one would be happier than me if only it were true.
I present without further comment the following summary (dated 14MAR09) of QLD’s economic woes, taken from the SMH. Which I was unaware of when I made the offensive comment. (emphasis and colloquial translations added)
Lefty E #68 – a commenter at John Quiggin’s blog has some strong views to which I draw your attention for the sake of information, without wishing to comment one way or t’other.
Oh, right – him.
Though the Greens getting the ALP to preference a Labor Rat is kinda good for the LULZ value (as they say nowadays) – I thought they struck a pretty crapola deal prefs wise. Id have said mano a mano to the ALP – return the favour in the best fourteen seats for the greens (which is really only 3 or 4. but still).
A little while back I put a few Banana-Bender booster noses out of joint by suggesting that “QLD’s economy is based on rocks, glitz and bricks”.
This elicited howls of outrage from some commenters who made a big fuss about QLD being the “smart state”, staffed with a marvellous “creative class” who were driving its “knowledge economy”.
No one would be happier than me, if only it were true.
I present without further comment the following summary (dated 14MAR09) of QLD’s economic woes, taken from the SMH. Which I was unaware of when I made the offensive comment. (emphasis and colloquial translations added)