From today’s Crikey email:
Incumbency, it seems, is the talk of the political town at the moment. Morris Iemma’s government in NSW seems set to repeat the Beattie and Bracks wins of last year, and when talk turns to the Howard government’s chances of survival, the strength of the economy and the Coalition’s ability to turn the spending tap on with abandon are perceived as Howard’s trump cards.
But, is this the full story? After all, a plethora of political scientists and pundits produced mathematical modelling in 2000 to prove that Al Gore couldn’t lose the election when the Democrats were presiding over such prosperity.
In fact, research conducted by Graham Young and me for The National Forum might tell a different tale.
In Queensland last year, the dynamic we identified was a protest vote that went missing, because it was turned back on the opposition. Voters wanted, at the very least, to give Beattie a kick in the pants, and many wanted to turf him out. But a last minute Liberal leadership change, a woeful campaign, and the Premier’s political touch combined to deliver a win for Labor only slightly less stunning in its dimensions than the 2004 landslide. Voters were saying, in effect, that they would be more than happy to get their baseball bats out if only they were offered an alternative which met basic thresholds of political competence.
If the polls are right, NSW looks set to reproduce much the same pattern.
Focus group research we conducted last week, interviewing a panel of voters who’d indicated that they were prepared to change their votes, picked up even more disillusionment with the Iemma government than was evident in Queensland. “Hobson’s choice” captured the mood precisely. Independents (and to a lesser degree, Greens) are going to harvest the fruits of some of this despair, but Labor is going to hold on because the Debnam Liberals just can’t get over the acceptability barrier in terms of competence and trust. Participants cited the influence of the “religious right” on the NSW Libs, and the knifing of John Brogden, and these themes seem to have established a baseline perception that the opposition is divided and incompetent.
In an era where ideological divisions between the parties are blurred, politics often becomes a contest between competing teams of managerialists. Incumbency provides an advantage, but the mismanagement of services and an air of political disarray too often goes together with long term governments.
It’s said that in Australian politics, oppositions don’t win elections, but governments lose them. Queensland and NSW suggest that adage has to be modified – governments don’t lose elections, even if voters are fed up with them, unless the opposition is competent.
It’s fascinating to contemplate that Latham may have lost in 2004 when Labor could have otherwise won had he been a more convincing leader and the opposition been more united. The trend of the federal polls since March last year suggests that if the long term Howard government really is on the nose, incumbency won’t save it, provided Rudd can continue to present Labor as a viable alternative
You only need to look at Hewson in ’93 to realise that.
Perhaps the tide is turning on the “blame the fat cat do-nothing public service bottomless money-pit” trope.
The NSW Liberals monotonously trumpeted key plank of promising to cut 20,000 public servants’ jobs is surely a vote loser and passed its use-by-date.
Blind Frederica can see that the run-down and under-resourcing of hospitals, schools, railways and other social services are the result of not corruption, inepitude, laziness or bureaucratic malevolence, but rather deliberate infrastructural dismantling which has crippled the ability of public sector agencies to deliver essential services.
And this inability negatively affects everyone, in one way or another.
Who, and how many, would knowingly vote into office an even more vicious Razor Gang?
Speaking of ineptitude and voters’ perceptions of competency, or lack thereof, and party political trust, could someone – anyone – point to one single thing about the NSW Liberal Party’s platform – on anything – that would inspire either of these much sought after virtues?
Interesting, thanks for the link to the research. Fascinating. Do they ever actually get the numerical sequence right?
I’ve been sceptical of the incumbency/good times effect that’s been posited as fact for a while now.
I’m not aware of any long term research, but it seems to me that the ALP was returned in ’93 just past the peak of the downturn (if that metaphors not too scrambled) and was whipped in ’96 when the indicators were good and getting better all the time. It’s easy to explain the ’93 abberration in terms of a scary opposition, but there was no great enthusiaism for Howard in ’96. The defeat was about anger built up over 13 years despite the good economic indicators at the time.
And am I just making it up, but wasn’t there a suggestion years ago that people were more likely to vote ALP in good times, because they thought that they would use the money to deliver services better than the Libs ever would?
Nope!
That fits the hypothesis. As Kieran observes, Hewson was regarded as an extremist and dangerous. But when things were on the up and up, Keating lost, to Howard, for whom you’re quite correct there wasn’t massive enthusiasm. Remember that when he was running for the leadership, his experience was his selling point. Dolly certainly had neither that nor a perception of competence. Howard also ran heavily on what one might call his managerialist credentials, de-emphasising policy differences with Labor. So he passes the “minimum competency” test.
Both Iemma and Beattie should have lost big time, despite their comfortable margins. When governments lose in Australia, they often lose big. But in the absence of a compelling ideological distinction, voters reluctantly go with the devils they know if the opposition is seen as extreme and/or incompetent.
It’s also interesting to speculate whether the competence threshold won’t be as important if both Iemma and Beattie fail to fix the messes the voters want(ed) to punish them for. Queensland could shift the dynamic if Bligh takes the reins, though unfortunately that’s looking less likely this term. But if Iemma and Beattie don’t make ground on the problems that confront them, it may be that nothing will save them next time. I think there probably is a tipping point for long term governments when almost any opposition can beat them. I strongly suspect if Howard loses this time, the seeds of his defeat in retrospect will be seen to have been sewn last term.
As I’ve said, much as I would like to see it happen, I’ll believe it when I see it.
(And it doesn’t count if it’s 6 months shy of an obvious flaming defeat.)
I should say so! I don’t think anyone wants to revisit the unpleasantness of the Rum Rebellion, and in any case he’s been dead for 190 years. (Although I would concede that this doesn’t seem to have been an impediment to Phillip Ruddock’s career.)
Debnam wheeling out the father of Anna Wood – a 15 year old girl who died in 1995* after a rave at the Phoenician Club on Broadway, which closed down in the mid-late 1990s – really epitomises his political incompetence.
Any political or even collective emotional capital he could possibly extract from this sort of event – presumably in some sort of tangential laura norder gesture – was literally and metaphorically bullozed years ago when the club made way for one of the shiny new apartment complexes that dot the inner city.
*yes that’s 12 years or 3 elections ago
So do NSW folks think Brogden would have defeated Iemma?
The only Lib with an odds-on chance of beating Iemma is deputy Barry O’Farrell and it is interesting to note that O’Farrell launched the campaign’s budget analysis on Thursday. Is this an admission by Debnam of further ineptness or a late attempt to show the depth of his shadow cabinet?
I have never been more confused about how to vote for an election in my life. I also have never done the “protest vote” thing. But this Labor government is so insupportable what to do? Could voting for a group of sub 3 digit IQ knuckle-dragging Xian-nutters really have THAT much impact on trains and buses? Surely, there comes a time when for the good of the whole process a mob HAS to go regardless?