William Bowe, aka The Poll Bludger, has an interesting take on the pro-Greens trend apparently evident in recent elections, about which there’s been a bit of talk around the traps. It’s been most evident in the ACT election on the weekend, where The Greens secured a 6.6% swing in their favour. I wonder to what degree this might be an artefact of the ACT’s election system, where there’s a much more transparent representation of voters’ preferences, and thus, conceivably, a greater incentive to vote for a non-major party.
Of course, the ACT isn’t exactly a population representative of Australia. Nevertheless, there may be, as Bowe suggests, some tea leaves to read for inner city Labor held seats federally and in states where Labor is really on the nose. (I’ve qualified the statement about the trend with “apparently”, largely because I think that far too much can be made of comparable results in distinct jurisdictions and similarly, I don’t accept that all the remaining Labor state administrations are in as much trouble as the NSW government. I suspect there’s a significant degree of error - something like the ecological fallacy - committed by NSW-centric media and political commentators extrapolating far too readily from what’s around them locally to other parts of the country.)
The two explanations for The Greens’ increased success in vote gathering tend to be posited - that they hoover up “disaffected left-wing votes” and that there are largely positive reasons based around issues and the party’s own profile and image which are attracting more voters. The two, of course, aren’t necessarily incompatible, though political journalists tend to present them as if they are. I strongly suspect there are some soft Liberal and swinging votes going to The Greens, and for a range of reasons. Here, it would be very useful to have some good focus group research rather than endless voting intention polls. So while I know we’ve got our share of both Labor and Green partisans around here, I’d be very interested in hearing from people who feel less identified with either the ALP or The Greens about what might sway their voting choices, and also from those who are more directly involved in party politics in anything they’re picking up from campaigning (without the partisan hats on!)…
Update: A post on this topic from Andrew Bartlett.
Lots of voting happening around the shop today - The Poll Bludger has previews of both the four NSW by-elections - caused in effect by the implosion of the Iemma regime - and the regularly scheduled ACT general election. Points of interest to watch for in the counting are how many seats NSW Labor loses - Ryde appears gone - and how well the Greens do in the ACT. The Poll Bludger observes, commenting on the NT and WA elections this year:
The other story to emerge from the two elections was the strong performance by the Greens, who demonstrated an ominous capacity to siphon votes from ageing Labor governments. The Greens vote in Western Australia was up from 7.6 per cent in 2005 to 11.9 per cent, and its average vote in the six seats it contested in the Northern Territory was over 16 per cent. The one public opinion poll to emerge during the ACT campaign makes it very clear that both trends are going to be replicated tomorrow. The Patterson survey published in the Canberra Times a fortnight ago suggested that a 12 per cent drop in the Labor vote has been harvested almost entirely by the Greens.
In other jurisdictions, Labor could console itself with the thought that most of those votes would return to them as preferences – but the ACT’s Hare-Clark system of proportional representation means the shift in votes will translate into seats lost to the Greens.
Elsewhere: Lots of election goodness from Antony Green.
Oh dear. Anyone who’s still getting their ‘news’ from SMH needs their head examined:
Subsidy for bulbs wasted:
THE flawed scheme to cut greenhouse gas abatements by giving away lightbulbs has squandered an estimated $60 million of NSW taxpayers’ money, the State Opposition says….
An assessment of the scheme by the Opposition has found that NSW Greenhouse Abatement Credits issued by the Government have been largely wasted. It was claimed initially that as many as 80 per cent of the lightbulbs given away were installed. But later surveys found most households never installed them, and that only four out of 10 of the lightbulbs were ever used.
‘Later’ being the operative word there, rather than ‘recently’. The changes to the installation rate occured after an audit in 2006, sending all the businesses operating under the Demand Side Abatement Rule to the wall. Despite insistent pleas for transitional arrangements until a national scheme could be brokered, none was given and around 1000 people lost their jobs in companies like Neco and Easy Being Green. Some forms of structural adjustment are more equal than others…
The real story here is the upcoming ‘Super Saturday’ of by-elections. (Guy Beres has an excellent analysis). Continue reading ‘SMH Death Spiral - Emissions Trading Edition’
Interesting stuff happening in the two federal by-elections tonight. It’s all over red rover for the Nats candidate in Mark Vaile’s old seat of Lyne, Rob Drew, who’s on about 22% of the primary vote - a swing against the Nationals of over 30%. With two thirds of the vote counted, Independent Rob Oakeshott has romped in with nearly 64% of the primary vote counted so far.
The Nats are now down to a historic low of nine seats in the House of Representatives.
In Mayo, there’s a swing against the Liberals of around 11%, with the Greens’ Lynton Vonow polling strongly. So are former Liberal Bob Day and Independent Di Bell. The Libs’ primary is just over 40% and around 20% of the vote has been counted. I don’t know enough about the electorate to say anything about which booths have reported, but you could foresee a scenario where the Libs lose or are run close with a primary like that. It doesn’t appear to have changed much with more booths reporting since I’ve been watching. At the time of writing, the AEC is putting the 2PP at 52/48 Liberals - Greens.
It looks like a smart tactical decision for Labor not to run in either of these safe conservative electorates, and although no doubt local factors are the key to the results, it’ll be fascinating to see how the results are spun tomorrow, particularly since they’re probably going to be roped in with the WA result, whatever that turns out to be. I wonder whether Brendan Nelson spent much time campaigning in Mayo.
You can follow the count at the AEC’s virtual tally room - for Lyne and for Mayo. The Poll Bludger has open threads as well - for Lyne and Mayo respectively.
Update: The Liberals have claimed victory in Mayo. It’s possible but unlikely that postals and other pre-poll and absentee votes might change the picture if Independent Di Bell can get ahead of the Greens’ Lynton Vonow. On votes counted to date the Liberals have 51.74% of the 2PP vote, with the Greens on 48.26%. It’s a big slap in the face for the Libs, whichever way you look at it.
The raw ingredients of the right wing media narrative du jour have been stewing for all to see in a curious potage in the columns of The Australian over the last few days. That narrative? Take a pinch of “Rudd is symbolism and spin” (originally coined by one John Winston Howard), add a dollop of Nelsonian petrol populism, throw in Ute Man, and you’ve got a recipe for self-delusion - that Peter Costello will not ride into the sunset of international finance but rather rise again to lead the conservative forces back to their rightful place in the sun, their brief winter of Ruddian discontent dispell’d by glorious… something.
Former Labor Senator John Black, among whose exercises in psephological tea leaf reading was the prediction that Peter Beattie and Labor would crash and burn in the 2006 Queensland election, has redeemed his own subsequent prediction that Kevin Rudd and Labor would romp it home in Gippsland, by seizing on some leaked National Party polling reported by Glenn Milne. Ute Man has spoken.
So you can forget using the present national opinion polls of voting intention as a means of projecting the next by-election result.
Well, yeah, you can, because Labor isn’t running in Mayo, and probably won’t in Lyne. But, wait, there’s more: Continue reading ‘Peter Costello the saviour’
…Was it clever politics for the Liberal Party to preselect one of the (junior) architects of WorkChoices, Jamie Briggs, for the Mayo by-election?
Elsewhere: Pavlov’s Cat isn’t impressed. Tim Dunlop on the spectre of WorkChoices.
Recent comments
grace pettigrew, wbb, via collins, via collins, Lefty E, GregM [...]
Katz, Ambigulous, Lefty E, Tyro Rex, All Mi T
rosieblue, Lefty E, wankaroo, What me banal?, FDB, Eye'm A Love Man, Ooh Baby, Eye'm A Love Man [...]
Michael Sutcliffe, Mark, Tyro Rex, Adrien, Posey, Nabakov [...]
hannah's dad, Benedictus, Benedictus, Mary Jenkins, hannah's dad, JohnL [...]
Bingo Bango Boingo, Mark, Bingo Bango Boingo, wbb, Youie, CountArach
Lefty E, Nabakov, Lefty E, joe2, Mark, Fine [...]
via collins, MikeM, glen, Deborah, zorronsky, Darlene [...]
RobWindt, Pappinbarra Fox, Ai! Que Dolor!, Patrick B, peter jones, Paul Burns [...]
Dave Bath, Bilko, Nabakov, Adrien, Richard Green, FDB [...]
Mark, Adrien, Adrien, Kim, Adrien, smiley [...]
Adrien, adrian, Audio Nerd, Pavlov's Cat, Katz, Lefty E [...]