• 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.
The first Labor Government to fall will be WA’s. 1) Labor did poorly there on Saturday. 2) The state government has made an unbelievable mess of education.
The laptop is on reserve battery power, so I will depart. I will return.
I see that Wayne Swan is going to open a Treasury office in Brisbane so he can run the economy and still be able to duck home for dinner.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22828312-5013650,00.html
Let’s just be done with it and move the whole capital to Brissie!
Sportingbet’s back up on the Lib vulture contest:
Malcolm Turnbull
1.18
Dr Brendan Nelson
3.60
Tony Abbott
9.00
Any Other Candidate
21.00
Julie Bishop
21.00
Danna Vale
21.00
So who will get the Liberal Party cadaver to feast upon for their moment in the sun?
The Liberal Party will had to adjust to not being the centre of attention. That will come as a shock to a lot of them.
They’ll soon realise that life in the Opposition isn’t fun and it’s hard work every day to even try and get a bit of attention. I still don’t think it’s completely sunk in yet but when it does that’s when the depression will sink in.
I think Mr Mackay (and all you who agree with him) are putting too much faith in Australians’ interest in politics. While the result was emphatic, I think you’ll find that most Australians’ views on reconciliation, border protection, immigration, drug reform, foreign relations and other non-economic issues remain the same as they were 24 months ago.
Australians will now retreat back into their day-to-day lives, and most will wait for the next interest rise, for which they will blame the previous administration. They won’t pay too much attention to the government saying sorry or other things of that nature, but if the economy goes south they will start to think the ALP is focussing on the wrong things, like they believed Keating was in his last term.
Finally, it is, of course, most insulting to most Australians, to suggest that the only reason they voted for Howard was some sort of induced coma. If Rudd deserved his victory, then Howard deserved his.
Hockey says that Rudd has the right to tear up Workchoices:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/27/2102325.htm
1) Why is Danna Vale even included as a possibility
2) Who’d be silly enough to bet on her?
Check this out:
From this address
http://www.liberal.org.au/info/multimedia/
Look at the dates on the top 3 videos:
“Goals for the Future”
Monday, 26 November 2007
“Making Australia Stronger”
Sunday, 25 November 2007
“The Liberals Plan to Grow Australia – Seniors”
Sunday, 25 November 2007
“The Liberals Plan to Grow Australia”
Sunday, 25 November 2007
Notice anything strange about these videos???
Well, there are 2 things:
1. they are POSITIVE messages, which we didn’t see very much on our television sets during the campaign; and
2. according to the Liberal’s websites THEY WERE POSTED A_F_T_E_R THE ELECTION!!!!!!!!
WTF?!?!?!
Who thought up this brilliant piece of campaigning?!?! Seriously, this is insanity!!! Is there some kind of “if you are hearing this, I have been
killed” message in there?!?!
My goodness.
LTEP,
That’s odd – Dana was at $34 yesterday, yet she’s fallen into $21 today. By implication, that means there have been people stupid enough to bet on her…
.
.
For Pete’s sake Meng, the whole teasing Glen about Julie thing has been going on for months and Glen has never complained and joked around as well. Most people know none of it is serious. You would have to be the only person to have said he is offended. Lots of the Posters here tease each other, especially late at night and if we’ve had a few drinks. God, do we always have to be politically correct?
Spiros @ 33 said
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.
I fail to see how you could call the ALP left of centre these days. There is a disturbing trend in Aus and world politics of parties drifting to the right. The fact that my beloved democrats (RIP) who are a centre-line party seem like raging loony-lefties compared to the ALP should give you a clue that the vast-vast-majority of people still are right of centre. A disturbing trend – I hope that Rudd will move his party back toward the left.
Amusing coincidence, from the GG from the week before the election:
November 12, 2007
APPARENTLY today is the start of national recycling week, which seems a little odd, given most Australians have been recycling every week for the past decade.
…yep, and they even recycled their government into the wheelie bins.
Agreed LTEP…wait till they realise they only the Opp leader and the deputy will be of any interest. The only time the others will get attention is when they stuff up.
To go off on a tangent, if the Nats go for McGauran, they will be in big trouble when the horseflu inquiry comes in and finds serious quarantine failures (as I believe it will). He was the minister in charge at the time.
Plus, he’s a terminal idiot.
Hard to know who else they’ve got though. They are terminal the Nats, someone ought to put them down.
I’ve heard Kay Hull may get the Nats leadership.
Nayto @ 162. The chances of PM Rudd moving Labor to the left are exactly zero. As PM Blair said, “We’re all Thatcherites now!”
Paul K,
Got no problem with your comment about Glen.
But about being “politically correct”.
It does no more good to throw that accusation to silence someone you disagree with than it was before “PC” came along to be calling people racist or sexist as a way of shutting them up.
By resorting to that, you undermined the strength of the point you made.
some have blogers have said the aec recount BEFORE doing the postals & pre-polls
Accept what you say but per aec there is only 77.84% counted out of 13,645,073
ie. 3 million and 23 thousand are UNCOUNTED
thats alot of pre polls & postals ??
Surely we should be referring to the Australian newspaper as the OG now -as in Opposition Gazette? They haven’t had time to get stuck into Labor yet, but we know it’s coming, sure as eggs.
Turnbull/Bishop would be the best option for the Libs -but not until after another pair has been sacrificed at the next election. Maybe they should give old Wilson a go. Let’s face it, he’s had more experience than anyone else. Tuckey/Ruddock -they’d be my nomination for a Liberal “Scream-Team” leadership ticket.
Ron, not everyone that’s enrolled votes.
Ron, a rule of thumb for our elections; 80% ordinary votes, 15% Sundry votes & 5 % no-show. And of course of that 95% turnout, 5% of them are informal. Undertsandably, the remoteness of the NT means much lower turnout.
#
171
Lose the election please Says:
November 27th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Ron, not everyone that’s enrolled votes.
the 13,645,073 IS the number enrolled per the aec web site
the aec seeing are showing labor & Liberal 2PP total votes as 10,204,937
I do not get it that there are just over 3 million postal & pre polls & informals
anyone got an idea BECAUSE IF THE ELECTION WAS CLOSE , no one would know as of now who won
Ozy
I agree, though I’d prefer to call the Australian, the Land-Fill (LF) because for me its irrelevant, until they prove otherwise. Andrew Bolt has improved but as long as others can’t admit they were wrong, (and why is Overington even still on their staff?) then I won’t buy it. I don’t mean I want them to be pro-Labor either. I want balance and real research.
Of course Ron, don’t you remember them saying before the election that if it was close we wouldn’t know the result for a week/weeks?
It wasn’t close enough for the postals, pre-polls etc. to have an impact on the overall result (ie. who forms government).
172
stark world Says:
November 27th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Ron, a rule of thumb for our elections; 80% ordinary votes, 15% Sundry votes & 5 % no-show.
are you saying 15% IS pre polls and postals ‘Stark World’?
Socrates: Do we even have such a newspaper in this country?? The Age probably comes closest, but the Murdoch press certainly doesn’t put a premium on journalistic research or integrity. We are not well served in Australia when it comes to our print media.
15% postals/pre-polls seems a little high. It’s more around 5-10% for the combined postals/pre-polls.
Informals tend to be around 8%.
Flynn is an interesting seat. Notionally it was NP but there has been a 9% swing to Labor and what was a Brick house looks like tumbling…
The SEC has posted stats on the number of postals votes issued. It includes a break down of Party Application and AEC applications. This is a factor that should be considered. Unfortunately there is no stats on Absentee and pre-poll votes issued. There should be by now,,,
Sorry SEC should be AEC
like I said “rule of thumb”… actual statistics will vary a little
http://results.aec.gov.au/12246/results/HouseStateFirstPrefsByPartyByVoteType-12246-NAT.htm
Neilbris
Yes, perhaps that is why I spend so much time reading blogs and internet news sites, often BBC. A lot of blogs are written by people with PhDs who are leading figures in their field, whereas too many journos are too lazy/busy to research beyond the supeficial.
We do still buy the SMH (and Age occaisionally). They have some good writers, especially Kohler and Gittens on economics. I have enjoyed Annabel Crabb’s coverage of this campaign too.
I agree that overall, they follow too much a trend in journalism that annoys me: the “fairest” way to cover any story is to get a commentator representing the most extreme positions for and against the issue in question. So the nutbars (left and right) dominate debate. My academic wife has been asked by media to comment on issues in her field but the journalists in question wanted her to push a particular angle. She refused.
Nayto @ 162
God I hope that Mr Rudd doesn’t move us away from our current centre left position.
If he does it will cost him.
He won this election on being a economic “safe pair of hands” but delivering the right balance of social justice.
Labor is now the most centralist party in Australia. The domain of a long forgotten Liberal Party and an extinct Democrats.
We need to maintain a Rudd agenda not a Whitlam agenda.
PK @161
Perhaps you’re right and I have a humour deficit – but doesn’t an old joke get stale? I certainly wasn’t implying that the joke was offensive from a sexist or other angle, just that it doesn’t make me laugh. Anyhow, I won’t dwell on it if you won’t. 🙂
Glen I think there is only one serious contender with any credibility:
Kevin Andrews for Liberal Leader
#
178
Swing Lowe Says:
November 27th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
15% postals/pre-polls seems a little high. It’s more around 5-10% for the combined postals/pre-polls.
Informals tend to be around 8%.
aec says informals are 3.87% – give up ,got me where the 22.14% uncounted is
DLP: Labor is centre left now?? When did that happen?? Centrist maybe, centre right definitely, but there’s not much left of the Left. Hopefully they will resurrect their (and Australia’s) altruism and I certainly hope they show more respect for justice, inclusion and the rule of law. Don’t be too tough of Whitlam. His values were admirable and inspiring, though his administration was lacking. For all that he did help Australia to grow up and get over our regressive isolationism. He will remain a hero.
Socrates, I agree that Fairfax is still worth a read but sadly we only have Murdoch in Qld. You’re correct that the media have no interest in facts – only in controversy, hence the appeal to the nutters on each side of a debate. The blogs may be our saviours – and the MSM’s greatest challenge.
Has anyone other than kyangadac @ 7 noticed O’Connor?
TUCKEY, Wilson Liberal 28,574 45.25 -8.00
GARDINER, Philip Warren Nationals 11,603 18.37 +8.93
ROSE, Dominic Australian Labor Party 12,896 20.42 +1.85
Is there any good reason to think Gardiner can’t pull ahead of Rose on minor preferences and then defeat Tuckey with Labor preferences?
On O’Connor, well there goes my prediction for seat with the smallest swing! Damn 3 cornered contests. Looking at the Nats and Libs, its hard to know who is the more desperate for an extra seat. I’d hardly miss Tuckey though.
In 20 years , what will history say about Howard , Costello & Downer
My view is
Howard: lost his seat , rip of work choices , couldn,t see climate, wasted the boom
Costello: no ticker in office, then did a dummy spit , bought votes with boom gains
Downer: known as Dolly Downer , in black stockings whilst
oversaw $300 million in AWB bribes to our military enemy
If Wilson Tuckey goes, who will be the next leader of the Liberals?:P
William, it depends on whether a significant number of Greens voters go against the HTV and preference the Rose above Gardiner.
Neilbris… I’d say Labor are centre left. It really is a personal way of looking at it. What’s left to you probably appears far left to others. What’s centre to you probably appears centre-left to others.
All these left/right dichotomies however, I think are essentially useless and hold us back.
Ron, history is rarely kind to the conservatives. I think your summation of these three will be about right.
Dear William
The Greens are currently polling 6.68%, with others polling 9.23%. The Green vote will ensure that the ALP doesn’t finish 3rd, and the leakage from the Green+ALP+Others may be enough to see Tuckey over the 50% mark from his current primary of 45.25%. Very unlikely Tuckey loses (sadly).
Kevin Andrews has all the personality of a ironing board.
Ron using the rule of the thumb lets say
Enrollment is 100,000 for an electorate
Count of the ordinary Votes will most likely come to 80,000
(this includes informal because it’s still a counted vote)
Which means that 20,000 (20%) enrollments are still to be counted at this point.
LETP, I don’t think I’ve ever been thought of as far left. Of course, these days with the ALP following the Thatcher road I may well now be far left. I remain hopeful though that, as I said above, Labor will continue to be the party of altruism, combing compassion and justice with its managerialism. I don’t like the “economic conservative” tag (though I understand the realpolitik behind it). Labor should never hide its progressive credentials.
Of course. Yes, agreed, false alarm from O’Connor – unless non-Greens minor party votes lock in extremely tightly behind the Nationals.
re 155,
Lose the election please Says:
Yes, and life in Opposition WILL include passing work chocies legislation in the Senate. If they continue on their obstructionist path indicated today by Senators like Minchin, they are signing their own death warrant with a DD election.