[Belatedly...] from today’s Crikey email:
Thereâ??s been a fair bit of commentary around lately about the difference between the â??national swingâ?? and the â??seat swingsâ??. In a way thatâ??s no surprise. Itâ??s not news to say that the uniform swing is a thing of the past.
However, this narrative has been seized upon by conservative commentators such as Christopher Pearson and David Flint to argue that Howard could hang on in the face of a national swing through a good marginal seat campaign. Thatâ??s of course possible, but thereâ??d have to be a big shift in momentum for it to occur, and the 2PP vote would have to be a lot closer than the polls suggest. The invaluable Possum has all the graphs and pseph wonkery you need over at his blog to explain why itâ??s most unlikely to pan out that way.
There is one aspect to this argument thatâ??s spot on, though. A lot of the reporting in the national media misses whatâ??s happening on the ground.
I argued on Crikey last week that we needed to look at where the parties were putting their resources, and what was happening with preference negotiations. I was the happy recipient of a couple of leaks then, but sometimes you donâ??t need leaks to know which way the wind is blowing.
Just a map.
Yesterday saw an announcement from John Howard about aid to autistic kids. It was quickly matched by Kevin Rudd. Ho hum, you might say. There are probably few votes in these announcements, and theyâ??re mostly made just to position the leaders as caring and in touch with votersâ?? real lives. The usual spin was about one party nicking the otherâ??s policy.
As far as I can tell, only Fairfax ran a story which noted where the announcements were made. On the TV grabs you just see the backdrop to the soundbite, visuals which reinforce the message. But where the leaders actually are is also very important.
Both announcements were made in regional Queensland seats with no sitting member contesting the election. Rudd was in Gladstone, the heart of the new electorate of Flynn, notionally National but eminently winnable for Labor. No great surprise.
But Howard was in Forde in the Gold Coast/Brisbane hinterland. Forde is held by the Libs with a margin of 13% but sitting member Kay Elson is retiring. As well as making the autism announcement for the national media, Howard also campaigned with the Liberal candidate, Wendy Creighton.
Itâ??s not rocket science to infer that the Libs might have some polling similar to the research in the South Australian seat of Grey, which showed a tight race under similar circumstances, and which prompted an attempt to get the incumbent MP to re-contest. I know the Libs are worried about the open seats in Queensland. And Labor are running hard in places like Beaudesert, increasingly urban sprawl mortgage belt territory rather than rural towns. So John Howardâ??s movements on the ground are literally well worth watching.
One place the Howard Liberals have made no effort to increase resources is in the area of Public Hospitals as a report out today shows.
All these stump speeches before the actual election period!
I can see the appeal to the Libs in spending electoral resources on these marginal seats if they think there’s an outside chance of squeaking past the post, I just want them to be wrong on how likely it is to work.
Latest attempt by Abbott to spin a report that is not favourable to the Government in its feeble efforts in Public Hospital funding.
I’m sure that the disability sector has similarly seen large state government increases in funding while the Feds have been dragging the chain.
Road funding has been a similar no show by the Howard Liberals over the past decade.
Queensland had to go alone on its water recycling pipeline before the Feds managed to cough up any cash at all. Yesterday Costello manageged a visit to Brisbane a rare event and hopefully remembered to bring his cheque book with him this time around. All I heard of his visit is what a fun guy he is now that the election looks lost to the Tories.
This is designed to encourage conservatives that their position is not hopeless, and that they can dig themselves out of this hole. It happened in 1998, as Peter Phelps points out, but it won’t happen this time because voters just won’t give Howard the benefit of the doubt and Liberal resources are stretched too thinly. In 1998, resources could be channelled away from seats like Bennelong and Grey toward the marginals. In 2007, there is no big Ron Walker reservoir of cash nor are there any safe seats willing – or even able – to engage in redistribution on the scale necessary (“harrumph! Electoral socialism I call it!”) for Coalition victory.
There has been a fair bit of publicity about autism in recent years, and it would probably be possible to find out which seats had a lot of autistic kids. I would imagine that there would be a lot of such families in suburban marginals. If one leader had come out with this announcement it might have made a difference, but they’re both equal.
A few years ago, budget analysis was confined to headlines like “BEER, CIGS UP”. Now it’s detailed and nuanced, with a focus on policy areas affected by handouts and cuts. So it is increasingly with polling: never mind national 2PP, how’s Maxine McKew tracking amongst university-educated Asian men aged 25-49 in North Ryde?
Dennis Atikins’ piece in yesterday’s Courier-Mail made the same point about the significance of the Prime Minister campaigning in Forde.
It is fair to say that seats with high margins are being seen as ‘in play’, including Forde and McPherson on the Gold Coast. However, this doesn’t mean Labor expects to win them, or that they already assume they’ve won the small margin seats like Bonner and Moreton. It just means there’s more seats where they think there’s a chance they might win (or the Coalition thinks they might lose), and it forces the Libs to spread their campaigning resources (and the targets of their pork-barrelling) more thinly.
Glad you are around Andrew.
I saw in a media report [a Gold Coast newspaper from memory] that the ALP is negotiating with the Democrats and Family First on exchanging preferences.
Possibly just in the one seat maybe [McPherson rings a tiny bell], I’m not sure.
Care to comment?
Hannah’s Dad, check out Andrew’s contributions to this thread.
Andrew E, budget analysis has also changed because when “Beer, Cigs, Petrol Up” was the headline of the day, it was because in the good old days of regulation the Government had far more direct control over the levers of price. I suppose editors aren’t willing to countenance the press gallery filing stories like “Price of Petrol? Fucked If We Know” on Budget Day+1—and yes, handouts have gotten a lot more interesting and targeted in the last two decades.
FYI admin: comment in moderation.
Bit late to be playing catch up in Gladstone one suspects.
Media coverage (esp. in the broadsheet newspapers) in the 1980s involved quite a lot of education, which might explain why Keating was not dragged from his car and torn limb from limb c. 1985. The same thing seems to be happening with psephology: firstly there was some implicit acceptance that ALP operatives like Graham Richardson and John Della Bosca were masters of dark political arts, but thanks to Mumble and Pollbludger and now Possum the papers are playing catchup and starting to delve into why things that might not affect you personally will affect how your neighbours vote.
Does anyone have figures (say over the last 35 years Federal elections), that show any of the following: ?
* range of swings in all House seats (at each election)
* range of swings in State Senate tallies
* swing versus which party previously held seat (House)
* swing versus vote for winning member at previous election
* State totals of House votes for ALP (say) versus Senate totals for ALP.
It’s easy to assert that “the old days of a uniform swing are over”, but I’d like to see the evidence; and I’d prefer that the evidence went back WAY before 1993. Include the 1972 election, because many of us think it was a watershed political event [maybe we're mistaken].
The cliche of a few elections ago, was that voters are voting ‘strategically’ – ALP in one house, Coalition in the other, as a “check and balance”. Is this borne out by data?
If the largest swings occur in SAFE Reps seats (and none of those seats changes hands), how does that affect the assumed close correlation between national vote and the state-of-the-House? Do those large swings carry over into Senate votes?
Speculation is fun, but analysis beats it hands down. Ask the member for Buggeraroo.
Next Wednesday John Howard is turning up in the seat of Page, where the sitting Nationals MP is retiring. Antony Green calls this seat the most rural electorate at risk of falling to Labor.
Rumour has it that Howard will announce additional Pacific Highway upgrade funding while in the Clarence Valley.
Howard slaps voters in face by putting TV viewing above his job.
Ambigulous, if you wanted to do the calculations yourself, you could check the election archive at Psephos:
http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/a/australia/
It would be quite a job, though.
However, swings operate very differently when party allegiance is much more fluid, as it is now compared to the early 70s. So I think for practical purposes, Possum’s analysis is sufficient.
See Prof. Ian McAllister’s latest study:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/04/2051295.htm?site=elections/federal/2007
Well, yes, obviously, since the major parties’ Senate vote is typically much smaller than their HoR primary. Whether or not any research has been done into motivations, I’m not certain.
There is normally a broad correlation between HoR swings and Senate swings, but it’s pretty messy. If that makes sense! It would be interesting to do some more analysis on it.
Thanks for the links and useful comments, Mark.
Hannah’s Dad, the ALP would be discussing preferences with Family First, the Greens and the Democrats (and possibly one or two smaller groups). The Liberals would be discussing preferences with various people or groups too.
In crude terms, the better arrangement a smaller party gets with Senate preferences from the major party, the better chance there is that the smaller party might have a how to vote card which recommends preferences to that major party (which goes hand in hand with the threat, sometimes stated and sometimes just implied, that the minor party won’t recommend preferences, or may recommend preferences to the main opposing party, if the major party doesn’t provide favourable Senate preferences).
The seats the major parties would be interested in in regards to preference recommendations from smaller parties would be the same ones you see the Leaders campaigning in. I think Forde is seen as more vulnerable than McPherson, but as I mentioned, McPherson is seen by some as an outside chance. Even if its only on the very margins, it provides good nuisance value to have to force the Libs to divert some resources
Thanks Andrew.
Good luck in your campaign.
What a surprise to see the GG on Thursday filling most of Page 2 with stories about the government’s “groundbreaking” autism package! It’s almost as if someone had tipped them off. Even written most of it for them. All Rudd got was a complaint about stealing the government’s thunder and a summary dismissal of its rival policy by comparison.