• I’ve variously heard it said that this election was Labor’s biggest ever win, and their biggest ever swing. I presume this is because nobody can be bothered looking past 1949, a benchmark year due to the expansion of parliament, the election of the Menzies government and the fact that the AEC’s historical two-party preferred figures don’t go back any further than this. However, John Curtin’s wartime victory of 1943 had it all over Rudd’s performance. Curtin won 66 per cent of the seats from a primary vote of 49.94 per cent, up 9.78 per cent from 1940. Rudd has won probably 58 per cent of the seats from a two-party swing currently at 6.5 per cent. I personally am not willing to call this a “slide”, be it of the land- or Rudd- variety, given the score on the primary vote is 43.95 per cent to 42.68 per cent (UPDATE: Coalition vote now 41.54 per cent). I was actually expecting the Labor vote to be slightly higher, hence my exaggerated expectations for the Greens in the Senate.
• It is a remarkable fact that there are two seats which the Liberals might gain from Labor, given that there were only four seats in the land which swung to them. The potential gains are the Perth seats of Cowan and Swan, the former of which has definitely been won while the latter is once again going down to the wire. The 2.2 per cent swing in Cowan can be readily explained by the popularity of retiring sitting member Graham Edwards, but rapid suburban expansion in the seat would also have been a factor. The swing in Swan, while only 0.2 per cent at this point of the count, is coming off a disastrous campaign from an accident-prone candidate in 2004. Other seats in Perth swung slightly to Labor. The 3.1 per cent swing that won them Hasluck was at the upper end of the range.
• Interestingly weak swings to Labor in McMillan and Gippsland, which were also areas of weakeness for Labor at last November’s state election.
• A little further to the west, swings were in the exact 5 per cent to 6 per cent range Labor was shooting at. Deakin has been won for only the second time in its history, while McEwen and La Trobe are still in doubt.
• Not hard to spot the odd seat out in South Australia: with swings elsewhere of between 4.3 per cent and 11.0 per cent, Nicole Cornes could manage only 2.0 per cent in Boothby. Makin and Wakefield swung heavily enough that they’re outside the Labor marginal zone, but not so Kingston, which produced the state’s second smallest swing at 4.3 per cent.
• The Liberal vote proved curiously resilient in the Australian Capital Territory: they were down only 3.7 per cent in the Senate, enough that Gary Humphries retains his seat, with swings of below 2 per cent in the two lower house seats.
• This election produced even less support for the “doctors’ wives” thesis than 2004. There was very little movement in inner Sydney and Melbourne, either in safe Labor or safe Liberal seats. The most notable beneficiary was Joe Hockey in North Sydney, where a harmless 4.3 per cent swing was nonetheless a relatively poor result by inner urban standards. Sophomore surges for Julie Owens in Parramatta (7.7 per cent) and Chris Bowen in Prospect (7.3 per cent).
• Outer Sydney swung as heavily this time as it famously did in 1996: Chifley (8.3 per cent), Greenway (8.4 per cent), Lindsay (9.8 per cent), Macarthur (11.0 per cent), Mitchell (9.6 per cent) and Werriwa (7.9 per cent).
• A diverse range of Queensland seats produced double digit swings: Dawson and Leichhardt in the north, Longman in northern Brisbane and the neighbouring Brisbane hinterland seats of Groom, Blair and Forde. Groom was the only survivor. Retiring sitting members were a factor in Forde and especially Leichhardt. Ryan failed to live up to the hype, with a 6.8 per cent swing that was very modest by Brisbane standards. I’d be interested to know why Longman swung so heavily.
• Labor’s two party share of the remote mobile votes from Lingiari was up from 78.7 per cent to 88.4 per cent.
• While enough to bag two seats, swings in Tasmania were relatively mild. Franklin was one of the four seats to swing to the Liberals, a testament to Harry Quick’s personal vote.
• A noteworthy outcome in Melbourne, where Greens candidate Adam Bandt will likely overcome the Liberal candidate to take second place, a first for the party at a general election. Lindsay Tanner made it academic by winning more than 50 per cent of the primary vote, but the seat will be marginal after preferences.
• Links for the “photo finishes” series of posts have been added to the sidebar. The most notable development of the past few days has been very strong performances for the Liberals on postal votes in the neighbouring seats of La Trobe and McEwen.
Still got those mischievous rose coloured glasses on ESJ! As someone who was disillusioned with the ALP for a long time, I look at the team that they have/are assembling with great hope.
RE: Boothby and Cornes. Tom Koutsantonis took a bullet for Kevin Foley on this yesterday (Monday) in accepting full responsibility for the debacle. Foley’s limited mental faculties were out to lunch when when he cooked up this hair brained scheme, I supposed he imagined it would elevate him in the empty head social circles in which he moves.
The concern for Labor in SA is the dearth of talent in the SA Labor, typified by the ascendancy of Foley as the heir apparent to Rann, those with talent and ability are attracted to the bright lights of Canberra.
Labor’s dominance in SA is largely a result of the even shallower gene pool from which the Liberals draw, where Dolly Downer is the self proclaimed intellectual giant.
ESJ,
I think it is clear that the 2010 election will have a lot more marginal seats on both sides – the Libs look like having about 6 seats on 1.5% and less, with Labor having a similar number.
watching pyne on LL lastnight crapping on like he wants to be PM. all i could think of was yr toast net time on yr 1 % margin. damn shame mia missed out though.
Gunns has suspended trading on the ASE and has announced a statement is imminent.
At least the next Liberal PM won’t have been born in 1939 and won’t have been shaped by the ’40s and ’50s.
Further to Socrates link at number 27, I recommend that those who haven’t done so have a read of Phillip Adam’s column in the Australian today.
Australians did the right thing on Saturday. I remember the 1950’s when there were large numbers of immigrants from Southern Europe, and many of these weren’t treated well. The Whitlam years didn’t last long enough to develop a sense of social inclusion but the seed was certainly sown. I think the best years in living memory were during the time of Bob Hawke. I hope Rudd can replicate that.
Looking at the way the pre-polls and postals are flowing in, the Liberals will win almost all the “photo finishes”.
Jackie Kelly – along with her idiot husband – should be rewarded with a plumb diplomatic posting. Seeing as though they are both great fans of Middle Eastern culture, Lebanon or Iraq would suit them well.
ESJ: the “Maccas Guy” is still 300 odd votes ahead in Herbert, and according to another person commenting on another thread, the postals will favour him 58-42.
@Socrates 26
My question was posed tongue-in-cheek; blame me for not being particularly funny though 🙂
@All
As a former (but long disillusioned) AMA member, I have to say that Brendan Nelson back in the day was the standout AMA President of the last generation, drawing attention to important public health issues including indigenous health. His career as a Liberal politician has been less distinguished, but I reckon apart from his obvious flaw (i.e., boring as bats**t), the Liberals could do a lot worse than choose him. And that, even though the last Liberal leader-doctor (Flegg, in Qld) has proven to be an abject failure.
Kroger from Lateline, 2 November
“There may be people smarter than me in the political world that basically say you can’t get to 16 seats, that you can be 53-47 or closer on election day – which people think is going to happen – and that Labor can’t get to 16 because some of the marginals are out of their reach.”
I agree with The Speaker @ 58. It’s not looking great for Labor in all of those seats.
Re: the poor showing in the ACT that was almost certainly due to Rudd and Swan hammering the razor gang line in the last few weeks of the campaign. It got a lot of publicity in Canberra. The ACT economy was devastated in 1996 when Howard came in and did just that. You can’t blame them for being a little reluctant to experience that all over again.
I thought Kerrie Tucker was in with a brilliant chance of picking up Humphries’s seat until that act of utter stupidity on the behalf of the ALP.
You’d think that weighing things up a friendly Senate was worth more than the handful of votes they would receive by bleating about having a razor gang.
I do think the public service is in need of some serious reorganisation at the very least, mind you.
Misty
As a servant of the crown, i don’t think many of us are/were particularly worried about the ‘razor gang’ comment. We know how it works…the new govt comes in, fires the old SES (which bloats under any govt) and installs their new people.
The rest of us just get on with our jobs….
Comments 20, 37. The ‘docters wives’ had moved to Labor well before this election. Maybe the Liberal camapign was about winning back ‘Republican Liberals’, Turnbull excelled in this Howard did not.
Re: Longman
I’ve heard the following reasons/excuses
1. Nuclear reactor on Bribie Island
2. Longman has a lot of single mothers who Brough alienated by work for welfare
3. There are a number of new housing estates from Caboolture through to Mango Hill. The electorate is mortgage belt like Lindsay. Work choices went down badly there.
4. The Kevvie effect
Gunn’s has suspended trading on the ASX, pending an announcement which will be made by Thursday (ABC Online). Any thoughts? Couldn’t be a reaction to a new political landscape, could it?
sunnyboy @ 67,
I read somewhere on an earlier blog that Brough had some family problems. Were they a factor?
17 re Curtin in 43:
I think that was also the election when Eddie Ward brought out the Brisbane Line against the Tories, unless it was the one after.
Yo ho ho @ 65 as someone who lived eight years of their life in the ACT I beg to differ.
You may not have been but plenty of people with weaker political affiliations are affected by things like that.
Tucker needed voters to actively switch their Senate votes from Humphries to her or the ALP. The switch from Coalition to the ALP is perhaps an easier one than a switch from Coalition to Green. In the end she picked up a lot of votes, some from Humphries but mostly from the ALP itself. The ALP failed to pick up some of those swinging more conservative types so Humphries held his seat.
I think Rudd’s threat of a razor gang on the public servants was what cost the greens the ACT senate position
A-C
If you’re talking about at any election… no in 1987, for instance the gap was only 0.15%.
If you’re talking about at any ‘change of government’ election, the gap’s certainly smaller at this election than the ’96 election, but I’m not sure you can really compare much due to the rise of the Greens . Also the drop in the Nationals vote was substantially less than the Liberal Party’s vote.
Interesting to note is that this is the best primary vote result for the ALP since 1993 and the worst for the Liberal Party since 1990.
Can’t help myself, wasn’t going to post anymore! My theory about doctors’ wives is that they swung in 2004, and there weren’t anymore wives to swing in 2007. I noticed too that they (based on a quick look at the swings) voted for the Greens in 2004 and Labor in 2007.
Thank God for the “f—-ing Chinese” (as described by a Lib staffer who blamed them for Howard’s loss in Bennelong). My faith in my own ethnicity has been restored!
Does anyone know why 75% of votes were counted Sat night from 6PM to 11.30PM….and only about 4% since ???
Oh No – the Labor margin is small!
Maybe the RuddStar should concede?
Maybe everyone meant to vote for the tories!
I thin a win is a win and the tories should get over it.
Actually I don’t care if they don’t get over it.
Ron Brown – I dunno. But Antony will NOT be happy.
Piers Akerman, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, 27 November, confirms what most of us knew – he doesn’t know what principle means. Akerman writes pompously: “Costello’s principle, if not only role in this changeover, would be to call a party meeting at which he would declare the leadership vacant.” Poor Piers, if he had used the shorter word main, he would not have changed the meaning or exposed his ignorance.
71 You’re spot on Misty. The Razor Gang that had a devastating effect on Canberra was Malcom Frasers’ when 20,000 lost jobs and supressed the local economy. It’s a very different place now in private/public mix. Many see a cut to the PS as opportunity for private jobs.
Even if the seats are reasonably close, try putting a 53% vote for the LNP into a pendulum, that’s the moral authority the ALP has.
Rudd on 2UE with John Laws at the moment. Gee he sounds good. Here’s hoping he makes a top class PM.
in fact , the aec site still shows Howard’s seat Sat night’s count of 79.09% ?
@ 43, DLP Said…….”November 27th, 2007 at 9:49 am Also, I have a concern that the flow of Green preferences to us for this election. Does this mean that “the piper must be paid” and those far Left lunatics are going to start to make demands of Kevin Rudd?”
Whatever the price turns out to be, it won’t be within cooee of the massive rural seats’ welfare payments which the “Left Lunatics” called the National Party extort from the Liberal Party both in open ongoing “development” handouts and in their incessant covert regional funding slush-fund rorts.
The Nats’ Deputy PM uses these bribes to keep their seats from being hived off by former party members who become “Independents” when they lose pre-selection or don’t feel they were given a big enough slice of the agri-business welfare pie.
Only need to look at how little assistance an Equine Flu devastated area like the Labor seat of Randwick will get for a similar “natural disaster” as a drought, despite E.I. being caused by the Howard Government’s incompetence due to lack of thorough checks on imported horses.
At least the ‘Lunatics” to the left of Labor are not like the Liberals’ welfare Lunatics in a formal Coalition where they are simply gifted a proportionate number of the government’s ministers to clearly undeserving Nat’s in comparison with some Lib younger members stuck on the backbenches. In turn, this makes it much harder to facilitate younger talent up through the ranks and avoid running out of ideas.
Re 50,
VoterBoy of Over the Water Says:
Not sure but IF Rudd does this from Parliament (when it happens), he will force the Coalition to accept it by having them sit there while it happens or force them to look like the biggest lot of idiots ever if they walk out.
Ron Brown, they still have not counted postals and provisionals.
Good on Rudd for making the final pilgrimage to the Golden Microphone.
Hey, Lawsie deserves one last forelock-tug from a PM before checking into a former radio-jock’s power-addicted rehab facility.
Howard would have been on there getting all choked-up by his own profound humility while having a natta with Lawsie on Monday morning if he’d won.
So William, why is Howard’s election victory in 1996 considered to be a landslide when it delivered him a swing of 5% and 29 seats (with the Coalition), yet the ALP victory in 2007 can’t be considered a landslide, even though it had a HIGHER swing to them (6%) and delivered just about the same amount of seats (28)? I’m baffled.
Ron Brown @ 75
The AEC people and party scrutineers are recounting the original ballots first before the postals. The Sydney media have mentioned that Howard has no scrutineers on duty for the Bennelong recount, tellingly.
Ron Brown @ 75
I surmise this the big recount is done first because it would take a couple of days to, for instance, transfer votes from people who voted outside their electorates back to the correct counting centre.
Spiros: “The Labor + Green primary vote exceeded 50%. This is, I think, the first time in Australian history that the left of centre primary vote has exceeded half the total. It is a hugely significant event.”
Thats my major take on Election 07 too. And the Megalogenis thesis coming to fruition (the future belongs to new demographics, woman, migrants)
On postals: my ALP staffer mate tells me the Libs were WAY more organised on postals.
ALP needs together that act together next time.
PS Unless Im reading it wrong, the actual primaries are 43.95 v 41.83 (not 42.68)
??
Hmm, can’t find Sportingbet’s book on the Liberal ‘leadership’ stoush. (That word is so oxymoronic in that context, isn’t it?)
I have long known Hendo was a w#nker but honestly, the arrogance of his column today is astounding. Vacillating over how he has ‘suspected’ exactly what was in Howard’s head for the last 11 years, then he decides that since he had the astonishing insight that rudd should step up last year, he can follow it up with the even more amazing call that mal should be shoved into the liberal leadership.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/if-only-id-retire-too/2007/11/26/1196036809908.html
IT was a Ruddslide in my view . Its only the stellar polls earlier in the campaign confusing anybody on that score.
So many people are feeling sorry for Nicole Cornes after her interview with Tony Jones on election night. I believe such feelings derive mainly from a sexist origin. If Cornes wasn’t a woman, especially a young and attractive woman, she wouldn’t be garnering one percent of this sympathy.
Francis – Henderson’s soothsaying also included the fable that after this election no one would be paying attention to opinion polls anymore. He’s an inwards looking blockhead, not an analyst.
Saw it reported somewhere today that the postals that had been counted so far were “permanent” postal voters (who would be mostly elderly or in remote areas) – if this is true you’d expect that batch to strongly favour the Coalition.
Francis – Here’s some advice – Don’t read Henderson or listen to him on the telly – to do so is a waste of time.
Is it just me, or is Senator Erica Betz voice even more annoying now he is in opposition?
Gerard Henderson said that he was smart because he didn’t provide predictions before the event. The only predictions you will ever get out of Gerard are out of hinsight, and that he was ever so smart for doing things this way.
What a tool.
By “landslide” they probably mean the final majority of the government over the opposition, not the total swing and seats won.
Labor had a smaller majority going into 1996, so Howard’s 5% swing netted him a majority of about 46 (97-51 I think?). Rudd needed a bigger swing just to win government, so 5% will only give him a majority of about 24 (let’s say 86-62). Hence 2007 is a comfortable win, but not a landslide on par with 1996.