The Western Australian Electoral Commission has completed its weekend preference distributions from seats in doubt, providing Labor with a small degree of consolation through wins in Albany (a heroic effort by sitting member Peter Watson, who picked up a 2.6 per cent swing to retain his notionally Liberal seat) and Kwinana (believed last week to have fallen to independent Carol Adams). That puts the final result at Labor 28, Liberal 24, and Nationals four, with three independents: Liz Constable (Churchlands), Janet Woollard (Alfred Cove) and John Bowler (Kalgoorlie). All are committed to support the new government in one way or another, with Constable promised a position in cabinet and Bowler agreeing to act in concert with the Nationals.
Before I launch into FIGJAM mode, it behoves me to own up to my various errors over the past six weeks. As is always the case when I ambitiously attempt to pick the result of every seat, I made quite a few wrong calls: I did not pick the Liberal wins in Jandakot, Southern River, Mount Lawley, Wanneroo and Morley, and I wrongly believed Labor would lose Albany, Collie-Preston and North West. In a nutshell, I underestimated the anti-Labor swing in Perth and overestimated it elsewhere. I was embarrassingly dismissive of what proved to be a spot-on Westpoll survey from Morley a week before the election, describing the ultimately victorious Ian Britza as the “stop-gap Liberal candidate”. The Nationals’ haul of five or even six upper house seats also came out of left field, defying my prediction that Christian parties would hold the balance of power. And of course, I hesitatingly predicted Labor would win the election with a one-seat majority: a pretty good call with regard to seat relativities, but wrong with respect to the direction of the result.
With that out the way, here are some highlights of my observations over the past six weeks.
Eleven seats and 5 per cent is certainly a big hurdle, but I don’t think it’s undoable. Labor should rue the missed opportunity of calling the election last week.
For all that, the Liberals have more going for them than interstate observers might assume. WA has hardly been a happy hunting ground for Labor in recent years: Geoff Gallop’s unspectacular re-election in 2005 was the only time the party’s primary vote has topped 40 per cent since 1989, a period covering seven federal and four state elections. Published polling during the Buswell period was not as bad for the Liberals as might have been expected, mostly putting Labor’s two-party lead at around 53-47. Buswell’s departure has also lanced a number of boils, reconciling vocal dissidents including former front-benchers Rob Johnson and Graham Jacobs. Underdogs they might remain, but discerning punters should find those odds from Centrebet more than a little tempting.
Of course, the polling leak and accompanying talk of internal panic might just be a ruse to boost Labor’s winning margin rather than avert defeat. On the other hand, the shift to the Liberals recorded in last weekend’s polls was entirely consistent with the anti-Troy Buswell effect that was well understood to be at work in the preceding surveys. We have evidence now that is not merely anecdotal that the perception of arrogance is starting to bite. And those generous odds from Centrebet are still there for the taking.
I’ll eat my hat if the Nationals back a Labor government.
Such conclusions required no great insight, based as they were (excluding the last one) on the state’s voting record, the well-understood workings of the political cycle and polling which showed Labor’s mid-year lead was built entirely on the unpopularity of Troy Buswell. These considerations nonetheless failed to penetrate the judgement of the ace political guns at The West Australian, who repeatedly insisted that Labor was home and hosed.
The Labor hierarchy knew better of course, and on two occasions presented the media with accurate internal polling which the paper’s too-clever-by-half commentators disdainfully dismissed out of hand. When the first such announcement was made in the second week of the campaign, The West’s report gave equal prominence to the views of optimistic “Labor insiders”, while Robert Taylor argued in his comment piece that Labor was cynically creating a misleading impression by providing selective data.
The second announcement came early in the final week when Labor’s scare campaigns over uranium mining and GM crops were reaching a hysterical pitch, collectively sending a message that was surely impossible to miss. However, Taylor responded with a piece which should sound eerily familiar to those old enough to remember last year’s federal election campaign:
While the nightly tracking poll on Monday recorded an alarming drop to 45 per cent for the ALP from a high of 52 per cent on a two-party preferred basis last Thursday — the same night the last Westpoll gave Labor a 54 per cent vote — other key indicators remained strong for the Government. Foremost among them were the 55 per cent of people who believed the Liberal Party was not ready to govern. It’s hard to see those people walking into the booth on Saturday and voting for a party they don’t believe can be in government. There’s no doubt that Labor heavies are worried by the sudden drop in support. But there’s also no doubt they believe the election is still there to be won and that the raw primary vote figure can recover just as quickly as it dropped. Even on the figures released yesterday, Labor only has to improve between 2 and 3 per cent by polling day and it wins. That’s because after the one vote, one value redistribution, on paper at least, Labor enjoys a 17-seat majority … But the poll produced by Labor yesterday wasn’t too much different from the way things were running in the last week of the 2005 election campaign when Geoff Gallop came from behind just a week out to record a comfortable victory. And it showed that the new train line to Ellenbrook and the blatant scare campaign on uranium were working, though it also confirmed that when the Liberals finally got on message at the weekend and hit the electorate with advertisements about Labor’s failed promises, people started to listen. But again, only 24 per cent of those polled said they could remember something that appealed to them about a Barnett message while 38 per cent said they could remember and liked something the Premier had said.
Note the writer’s determination to overlook the headline figure staring him in the face; his focus on whichever minor indicators happened to fit with his preconceptions; and most of all, his mystical faith in a “narrowing” that would swing the result the way of his prediction. Taylor’s conviction that Labor would enjoy a late 2 to 3 per cent swing was built largely on the fact that that’s what happened in 2005, which apparently had nothing at all to do with Colin Barnett’s last-minute costings debacle.
As notable as the actual content of the article was its placement on page seven. The next day, when Labor predictably declined to assemble the state’s media for a second successive poll leak announcement, the paper splashed a non-story across the front page of its first edition headlined: “Speculation ALP back on track as new polling figures withheld”. It soon became clear that Labor’s polling showed nothing of the kind. Meanwhile, Carpenter continued to signal his party’s very real desperation by repeating the same phrase 14 times in a single doorstop interview.
Such failings wouldn’t be worth remarking upon if all they amounted to was a wrong guess about an election result (there but for the grace of God go I). The problem was that the paper felt the certainty of Labor victory justified it in applying the blow-torch to the government day after day while all but ignoring the Liberals. One example was the feeding frenzy which followed Alan Carpenter’s refusal to confirm Michelle Roberts’ position in cabinet after the election. This prompted an overheated front-page lead headlined “I dare Premier to dump me: Roberts” (as former Liberal leader Matt Birney noted: “She never said any such thing”) plus a follow-up the next day, as well as inspiring the extraordinary lapse of editorial judgement shown to the right. By contrast, Colin Barnett’s refusal a week earlier to confirm Shadow Treasurer Troy Buswell’s tenure didn’t rate a single mention. It fell to other media to pressure Barnett into making what The West would have loudly trumpeted as a “backflip” if the shoe had been on the other foot.
Don’t take my word for it though: Matt Birney offered many pertinent observations about the paper’s story selection while appearing on 6PR’s election night panel, having earlier accused it of “aiding and abetting” his own side of politics throughout the campaign. For my part, I’ve pocketed a tidy sum from a bet laid on the Liberals at the peak of the market. I reckon I deserve it.
UPDATE (16/9/08): Eric Ripper elected new Labor leader following the withdrawal of the popular favourite Alannah MacTiernan. Remarkably, the deputy position has gone to newly elected Kwinana MP Roger Cook, who until a few days ago looked like he had lost the seat to an independent.
Hmm…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/15/2365183.htm
Even though Eric and Alannah are both from the Centre faction, it’s good to see the Right already anointing Ben Wyatt and angling to get a seat-warmer in position.
Anyone would think the new government’s position is far from tenuous. Eric’s a decent man and was actually a very good Treasurer, but hardly Opposition Leader material.
Fingers crossed common sense prevails and Alannah gets up.
Have the documents of the agreements offered to the Nat’s showed up anywhere yet? I saw them being handed out on the 7:30 report. Would be good to look at the original documents.
Thanks
Talkon,
I would be fairly positive that Colin would like either one as opposition leader – although Alannah would probably be his pick as well.
I felt sorry for Carpenter, he seemed like a decent bloke to me!
I fear the new Labor leader will be a puppet of Burke.
No 154
Colin is even more of a decent bloke. 😀
Preference Distributions appear to be being put up on the WAEC site.
Wonder if there will be any surprises.
A walk through today’s West:
“Ripper favourite to lead Labor in Opposition”, although MacTiernan is apparently favoured by the Left as well as her own Centre faction. Ripper is backed by Joe Bullock and the SDA/Old Right. The Left will demand it provide the deputy if it backs MacTiernan; otherwise MacTiernan might be Ripper’s deputy. Mark McGowan and John Hyde also mentioned as possible deputies. Michelle Roberts not interested (Midland by-election anyone?).
Dan Sullivan of Family First has conceded defeat in South West. The West says the last seat there is a contest between Liberal MP Barry House, Colin Holt from the Nationals and just maybe Greens MP Paul Llewellyn, but I believe they are mistaken: Holt looks to me like he’ll win fifth spot and House the sixth, the Greens being the only conceivable threat to the latter. Outgoing Labor MP Kim Chance says he expects Liberal 15, Labor 11, Greens 5, Family First 1 and Nationals 4, which I’m having trouble making sense of: presumably he expects Anthony Fels to win in Agricultural and Paul Llewellyn to beat Barry House in South West – despite the article saying the latter is “expected to lose his seat”. The Fels call is interesting, because The West’s article that says all this is mostly about the Nats number three Mia Davies, who he would need to beat. It also seems to me that if anyone could beat the third Nat it would be not Fels but the CDP, because the Liberal ticket runs Trenorden-CDP-other Nats-Family First. Maybe I’m missing something.
Barnett hoping John Quigley will accept the Speakership. Others named are Liz Constable, Grant Woodhams and Rob Johnson. Janet Woollard says she will lobby for a cabinet post (good luck with that) or the Speakership.
Cabinet to be announced tomorrow. Nationals likely to get three ministries, including Grylls in regional development. The Liberals’ offer to the Nationals included a plan for a new law requiring a referendum if regional representation in the upper house was to be reduced: I would love to know how this would go down with Constable and Woollard, who can and should knock it on the head in the lower house.
The WAEC will exclude those missing 1100 ballot papers from Geraldton from the count. Defeated Labor member Shane Hill wants Labor to challenge the result: he won’t have any luck if the law makes it a condition that any anomaly be potentially decisive, as the Liberals lead by 1500. Greens Agricultural candidate Dee Margetts has “lodged a complaint after claiming some Upper House ballot papers had turned up in Northam unlabelled and not in sealed bags”.
Question to Anthony Green; Can you elaborate on the issues and problems you had with interpreting the data from the WAEC? Having looked at the WAEC site I can agree that the quality of information and format of result data has very little to desire.Anther reason why there should be one independent electoral authority through out Australia, eliminate duplication and implement standards in reporting and administration. There is no justification for State Electoral Commissions,allof who should contract out the conduct of elections and enrollment to the central authority. State Commissions should only have a review/management oversight, policy development role and not direct service provision.
Disaster boy: WAEC still has not published any preference detailed data for the upper-house. Do we know the timeline for completion of count upper-house votes.
Whilst WA has adopted a more accurate Weighted value of the vote calculation of the surplus transfer value it still maintains the distortion in the way in which ballot papers allocated to candidates that are excluded during the cont are redistributed.Analysis of the Queensland Senate results has shown that this can seriously effect the outcome of the election. If you count the vote in the Queensland 2007 Senate election as though only seven candidates left standing then the Greens should have been elected to the sixth spot. The system seriously distorts the proportionality and results of the election and is in need of review.
William. Here is a link for a better plug-in for Recent Comments. I recommend that you install it. Rob Marsh has produced a number of excellent plug-ins all worthy of consideration of use.
Surely Eric Ripper will be only warming the seat for someone else? I fear it’ll be a very unstable Labor opposition, and Barnett will have an extended honeymoon.
if ripper is elected leader, it will mean the party has learned absolutely nothing from the election loss. Ripper is probably the least popular politician (with the possible exception of mcginty) in the ALP. He is not regarded as particularly bright, inspiring or electable!!! Allanah Mcteirnan is by far and away our most hardworking, intelligent and insightful minister. Unfortunately my collegues appear to be favouring a Ripper, Ellery leadership ticket along factional lines. This has everything to do with the factional overlords cementing their powerbases and nothing to do with what is best for the party, the rank and file and the state. Allanah was the only minister able to break through and stay on message in her portfolio, and even the west had to grudgingly congratulate her. It appears that the ALP has failed to notice that the libs hold on power is one by election or one disgruntled nats mp away from crumbling. The ALP leader needs to be able to take it up to the libs and be able to break through and stay on message in the media. Ripper has never been able to do this and is perceived by the public as being the architect of high taxes with not enough social dividend. One assurance though if the parliamentary caucus installs ripper and ellery this morning, they had better be ready for the repercussions from the rank and file who have just about had enough of decisions that just make no sense!
And another question: how will Ripper handle Burke? That was Carpenter’s fatal mistake.
rippers in
so is Roger Cook by the sounds of it.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=98046
did anyone notice the look of disdain on Grylls face during the press conference with Barnett yesterday? Its obvious that those two are great mates. NOT!
Thats def not a marriage made in heaven……i reckon the divorce papers will be filed within 12 months. I think I might take up reading The Worst again 🙂
Its done.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/16/2366048.htm
Nig Mistake having Eric as Leader, especially if the Economy goes South the Fibs can blame Eric for all it’s woes etc. Re Grylls, notice the West are setting Grylls up as the big bad bogey man if Colin can’t get his way ?
That should be Big 🙂
Frank I’m inclined to agree with you, but shocked at you, how dare you question the nameless faceless powers that be!!!!!! (just kidding)…
Interesting McGowan challenged for the Deputy spot.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/latest/5018824/new-wa-opposition-leader-ripper/
ms adams is calling for a recount
Robin Chapple elected for the Greens in M&P
[ms adams is calling for a recount]
Typical 🙂 But will the recount go her way though ? Sounds like a face saving move on her part for opening her gob before she knew what the final outcome was.
hmmm the alp’s new dynamic duo fatman and the boy blunder. Oh dear oh dear.
[hmmm the alp’s new dynamic duo fatman and the boy blunder. Oh dear oh dear.]
I know 🙁 and doesn’t Roger Cook look a lot like Neale Fong as well ? Mind you Barnett & Hames aren’t the paragons of beauty either 🙂
Big Barney will rip Ripper apart for the next 4 years! Woohoo!
(sorry,posted this on another thread as didnt know this one was updated. my bad)
Ok, if Ripper is ALP leader in W.A. i vote Green. Still, if he’s leader now, he’ll be hopefully be gone by the next election. Argghh, unless there is a by-election post CCC findings???? This is not good. McTeirnan would have been the better choice as at least she gets things done.
Cameras hate her, but at least shes not Ripper.
I do like seeing the liberal banner close to the ironic Honest John tag.
I think this leadership team does two things really really badly.
And lets be honest it has been worked out by the same team that ran the very successful pre-selection and campaign process and just goes to show how accountable they are for their decisions. Fantastic job they are doing for labor NOT!
Ripper was a fantastic treasurer and sniffwell can’t hope to do 15% as well, but he is way to close to Team Carpenter in every sense but most critically in the public perception to be a real break from the past and lets be honest the best outcome for Labor is that the public hated the Premier and those closest to him but don’t hate Labor generally. Ripper for his fantastic talent isn’t far enough away from Alan for us to be sure he leaves that disaster behind.
Then in the short to middle term, in any early election because Colin and team disaster behind him (we know they are team disaster they showed us so clearly for all but their last 5 weeks in opposition) Labor’s key strength was the depth of the team with cabinet experience.
But how can they put Carpenter’s hand picked newbie boy (yet another failure to find any distance from Carp’s Collapse) admitting no-one in all of caucus had more to offer than a candidate that was 300 votes the right side of losing a safe seat.
Rather than a positive strong opposition who have a chance of upsetting the Government in an forced early election (now don’t get me wrong the political tactics used to get to this point would have to be extremely carefully crafted you wouldn’t want Colin to get a sympathy backlash at a forced early election) it smells a lot like them lining up for two terms in opposition. Very disappointing.
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=77&ContentID=98022
The week is getting better by the minute!
Won’t be long before its bye bye Paul as well!
Articulate that Mr Nurry!
I wouldn’t get too excited about Kerry Stokes. His critique of The West was that it doesn’t look enough like the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph, and it takes too long to get to Broome.
Watch this space William.
Big changes afoot before the year is out I’m tipping …. most other player’s wardrobes have been cleaned out and rearranged recently so why not this one?
He (Stokes) didn’t like the editorial direction either from memory.
Oh Dear, Just saw on Ch 9’s 20 to 1 “Great Aussie Scandals the Member for Vasse and his exploits in nasal gymnastics involving chars and bras voted in at No 4.
Carpenter didn’t want Roger on the “dream team.” It was a concession to the Left. Same goes for Bill Johnston…an SDA trojan horse.
Now my avatar works….
Dinsdale, please don’t pretend that the Premier didn’t do a deal and didn’t present the whole team that was pushed through State Exec almost without complaint as his own new labor team. Are you suggesting Carpenter should have got even a freer hand?
If he was there as a result of a “deal”, he wasn’t “hand picked”.
Ripper is just warming the seat for Ben Wyatt
Unfortunately Allanah wasn’t chosen as leader because she failed to give an undertaking that she would not pursue her party reform agenda. Allanah wanted to move decision making power away from the hands of 4 union secretaries and have a more robust and open decision making process. The situation we find ourselves in ie. losing the unlosable election can be traced back to decisions ranging from pre selection of candidates to who makes up admin commitee. All these factional deals place factional domination above whats best for the party. The decision yesterday reinforces exactly how this works as the right and miscellaneous workers left faction horse traded to achieve what was in their interests. Dave Kelly and Joe Bullock made the decision and the elected parliamentarians towed the line. What we end up with is the worst possible outcome for the party and the state, but the best outcome in reinforcing kelly’s and Bulocks dominant factional power base. This election loss should really be a wake up call to all the labor faithfull that we need to seriously fix up the power imbalance that has occured. At state conference 3 years ago Dave Kelly forced through a motion that gave unions ie. the union secretaries over 60% of the vote on the floor. The message that decision sent was very clear. The WA Labor Party was the plaything of the states trade union movement in a way that was totally disproportionate to the role that unions played in the general community. This imbalance and narrow frame of power is the undoing of state labor.
Yesterdays decision along factional lines proves beyond a doubt just how out of touch this process has made us!!!
Well William and Dinsdale perhaps you can explain exactly who did the deal and exactly what is was and why it excludes the characterisation of ‘hand-picked’ for which I humbly apologise.
Labor did run an appalling campaign, but those of you talking about an “unloseable election” are letting your rhetoric get the better of you. The political cycle, WA’s demographics and the CCC tsunami are all of much greater use in explaining the result than anything that’s coming out of the heavily politicised internal party blame game.
William, a question for you and others:
Why was the swing against WA Labor bigger in Perth than in regional areas?
Carpenter lost the election in the metro area, while in comparison, Labor held its marginals in the regions – indeed won Albany, notionally Liberal.
Does the stench of Brian Burke emanate more in Perth(because I’d argue that hurt Labor a lot, with the CCC Inquiry report to be released in future)?
With all due respect William, if carpenter had gone when advised which was 6 weeks earlier the result would not have been in doubt. Older heads in the party were fully aware of the factors impacting against a third labor term and the only option was to go when the libs gave us the gift of Buswell. That we didn,t, and that senior figures who advised we should were ignored was the mistake we made. There was a loud and clear concensus to go while buswell was there. There was advice given to the party that Buswell was going to step down. The perception in admin and in premier and cabinet was that the polling was an endorsement of Labor. Trust me there were plenty of us that were trying to stress that those polls were a rejection of Buswell not an endorsement of us. In all campaigns the simple formula is poll first, develop a media campaign then set an election date. In this election we set an election date, first, then did our polling and then tried to formulate a media campaign. The results were evident. We all know that WA is now the most conservative state in Australia. We all know how hard it is to win three terms. Knowing this we completely disregarded conventional wisdom and did everything arse about. My coments still stand the factional deals in the party have become so rancorous that we have lost diluted or discarded our best and brightest heads. I reiterate had Carpenter gone when the older heads told him to go against Buswell we would not be in this position.
Yes, you can certainly add “he should have gone earlier” to my list of factors. However, that’s independent of much of the rest of what I’m hearing. Evan asks an interesting question for which I don’t have a ready answer. Here’s one theory: the Nationals provided an outlet for disaffected Labor voters who then returned their preferences to Labor, whereas city voters just went straight for the Liberals.
Rumpoleccat has beaten me to much, and the political cycle and demographics were issues that anyone awake was aware of for more than 12 months before the election. The whole feeling that ‘this is as good as it gets and we aren’t happy with how good it is’ of course applies to State Govt’s as well as Federal ones.
I see no evidence for the CCC tsunami theory, and even if that is just because I’m not aware of it still comes straight back to Alan and the people that made Alan premier and put the Burke people into cabinet.
I need to do some work on the swings …
Can anyone advise whether the PRIMARY vote figures for the Legislative Assembly at the WAEC site are FINAL figures or not?
I’m puzzled by something on the WAEC website.
If I look at the distribution of preference in Albany, for example (http://www.waec.wa.gov.au/elections/state_elections/election_results/2008_State_General_Election/District_of_Albany/District_results.php), I see that in each distribution of preferences a small number of votes are “exhausted”, and are not distributed to any of the remaining candidates. On each distribution the number of total valid votes is reduced by the number of exhausted votes.
It was my impression that the voter is required to list full preferences for all candidates, and that a voter who regarded, say, the CEC and the CDP with equal derision, found himself unable to express a preference between them and left those boxes blank would be treated as voting informally, and his vote would be disregarded, even though he had in fact indicated clear first, second, third etc preferences for other candidates.
However the fact that votes can be “exhausted” in this way suggests that I am wrong. In the Albany count, there are clearly people who voted either 1-Moseley, or 1-Pyle 2-Moseley, or 1- Mosely 2-Pyle, but expressed no further preference, and their votes were treated as valid until both Moseley and Pyle had been eliminated. If so, then there could have been any number of people who expressed no preference below Watson, and whose votes were nevertheless effective.
So what’s the story? Do I, or do I not, have to exhaustively express preferences for every candidate in order to register an effective vote?
FreoBloke (I’m another FreoBloke, BTW), I’m not sure of the exact wording of the rule, but a vote can be admitted even if the same number is used on the ballot paper more than once. This is one of a number of rules designed to allow votes made in good faith that would otherwise be informal into the count, but it is also open to “abuse” by those wishing to have their vote exhaust without going to either major party. There was a famous episode at the federal level in the 1990s which made it a criminal offence to openly advocate using the vote in this way, which led to activist Albert Langer being sentenced to prison in 1996 – which you can read about here.
FreoBloke @ 198
My understanding is (at a WA election at least) it is a valid vote if you number all squares, but you don’t need to have an increasing sequence. That is, voting (for 5 candidates) “1, 2, 3, 3, 3” would be valid where as “1, 2, blank, blank, blank” would not be. When distributing preferences, the “1, 2, 3, 3, 3” vote exhausts during the 3rd round.
I understand it’s a side effect of the rules, rather than a set rule per se.