My seat-by-seat guide to the March 20 South Australian election is open for business. If you’re a Crikey subscriber, you can read my general overview of the situation in today’s daily email, which I’ll republish here at a later time. In the meantime, enjoy the following charts showing the electoral progress of South Australia since it entered the modern world with the introduction of one-vote one-value in 1970, the first showing vote share and the second the proportion of seats one by each party (so where the red dips below the line in the middle Labor had a majority; where the blue rises above it, the Liberals had one). Note that I’ve lumped the Liberal Movement, a feature of the 1975 election, together with the Australian Democrats on the vote share chart, rightly or wrongly. I’m afraid I can’t for the life of me work out how to rearrange the seat share chart the way I want it in Excel, hence the lack of a title.
UPDATE (12/1/10)
I’ve calculated results for marginal electorates from the equivalent booths at the last two federal elections, to give some sense of where Labor over- and under-performed in 2006.
| FED 2004 | SA 2006 | FED 2007 | |
| LIGHT (Wakefield) | 44.0% | 52.4% | 51.6% |
| MAWSON (Kingston) | 48.5% | 53.1% | 52.5% |
| NORWOOD (Adelaide/Sturt) | 49.3% | 53.5% | 54.0% |
| NEWLAND (Makin/Sturt) | 42.4% | 55.1% | 48.8% |
| HARTLEY (Sturt) | 47.0% | 54.8% | 52.3% |
| MORIALTA (Sturt) | 44.0% | 57.4% | 49.9% |
| BRIGHT (Boothby/Kingston) | 43.7% | 56.4% | 46.7% |
| ADELAIDE (Adelaide) | 49.5% | 60.5% | 55.3% |
And here’s my piece in yesterday’s Crikey Daily Mail:
With one federal and three state elections in the offing, 2010 looms as the most event-packed year on the electoral front in recent history. As far as timing is concerned, the only wild card in the deck is the federal election. Kevin Rudd could use the emissions trading scheme trigger to call a double dissolution election at any time, although doing so in the first half of the year would commit the government to a highly problematic half-Senate election no later than mid-2012. Less troublesome would be a double dissolution later in the year, which would have to be held no later than October 16. A normal House of Representatives and half-Senate election could be held at any time from August 7, and could legally be delayed until as late as April 2011 next year – although it most assuredly won’t be.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, no such uncertainty surrounds the state elections. Victoria’s fixed term legislation sets the date for the last Saturday in November, which will be the 27th. South Australia likewise has a fixed election date of March 20. Tasmania does not have fixed terms, but Premier David Bartlett has announced the date well in advance – annoyingly also for March 20, setting up a repeat of the two states’ simultaneous elections in March 2006.
Today’s lesson concerns South Australia, for which I have just published my seat-by-seat election guide. Mike Rann’s rise to power after the February 2002 election completed Labor’s clean sweep of state and territory governments, which remained intact until the Carpenter government’s defeat in Western Australia in September 2008. The Rann government’s electoral fortunes since have followed a familiar pattern. It came to power as a minority government when conservative independent Peter Lewis made a shock post-election decision to throw his lot in with Labor, after saying during the campaign that any talk he might do so was “sleazy nonsense”. Faced by a fracturing opposition under the indecisive leadership of Rob Kerin, Rann brought home the bacon at the 2006 election, picking up a 7.7 per cent swing and winning six seats from the Liberals.
The trajectory of first-term minority government to landslide re-election had earlier been followed by Labor in Queensland (elected 1998, re-elected 2001) and Victoria (1999 and 2002), and was partly reflected by NSW Labor’s experience in winning a one-seat majority in 1995 followed by a resounding win in 1999. In each case Labor went on to win only slightly less emphatic third victories. While the polls suggest the Rann government will be re-elected (the most recent Newspoll gave it a 53-47 two-party lead), it seems unlikely it will do so in quite as fine style as Bob Carr in 2003, Peter Beattie in 2004 or Steve Bracks in 2006.
While poll respondents have strongly indicated they will not let the Michelle Chantelois allegations influence their vote, the issue is an electoral negative if only because the looming court cases threaten to distract Rann in the early part of the next term. The issue is also feeding into perceptions he will not see out the next term, taking some of the shine off his personal vote-pulling power. With no clear heir apparent in place, it also raises the prospect that ministers’ energies will be diverted into jockeying for the succession. Most importantly, Rann will not enjoy the electoral gift of a long-serving and increasingly unpopular Coalition government in Canberra.
The Liberals by contrast have stumbled almost by accident on a leader whose Newspoll approval rating for October-December was 51 per cent – the best result for a South Australian Opposition Leader in 17 years. As Antony Green demonstrates, voters don’t really get to know Opposition Leaders until an election campaign. If Isobel Redmond really is as saleable as her 33 per cent net positive rating makes her appear, and if she and her party can run a sufficiently tight ship, a lot of the 31 per cent who profess themselves undecided about her will break her way during the campaign – and many will jump on the Liberal bandwagon in doing so.
For all that, the odds remain stacked in Labor’s favour. It would take the loss of five seats to cost them their majority, and most likely six to cost them government given that one of the three cross-benchers is Labor-turned-Greens-turned-independent member Kris Hanna. In the context of South Australia’s compact 47-seat House of Assembly, that represents a considerable hurdle for the Liberals, who will need an overall swing of about 7 per cent.
The two pieces of low-hanging fruit are the seats of Light, based on Gawler just to the north of Adelaide, and Mawson, which consists of outer southern suburbs plus the McLaren Vale wine-growing area. Both are naturally conservative seats that are very likely to return to the fold.
Interestingly, the next four seats up the pendulum are the eastern suburbs neighbours of Norwood, Newland, Hartley and Morialta, which can brace themselves for some heavy duty pork-barrelling in the weeks to come. The 3.7 per cent margin in Norwood looks surmountable, but the seat recorded an unusually small swing to Labor in 2006 due to the popularity of the Liberal candidate, former Adelaide Crows star Nigel Smart. With a considerably lower profile entrant this time around, its natural margin would be at least 6 per cent.
Even more problematic is Newland (5.2 per cent), where the Liberals have scored an own goal by endorsing Trish Draper, the federal member for Makin from 1996 until her retirement in 2007. Draper continues to carry the baggage of an episode in 2004 when she was accompanied at taxpayers’ expense by her then boyfriend Derick Sands on a study trip to Europe. While she just managed to retain Makin at the 2004 election, she did so in the face of the biggest swing to Labor in the state – a woeful result for an electorate so heavily stacked with mortgage payers. Far from being forgotten, this episode made a return to the front pages last year, when Sands lost a defamation case he pursued against Channel Seven and the ABC over reports he had been identified as a suspect in a murder investigation.
In Hartley (5.6 per cent), the Liberals have made the less than inspiring decision to re-nominate Joe Scalzi, the long-term back-bencher who lost the seat to up-and-coming Labor member Grace Portolesi in 2006. Despite the relatively higher margin, the Liberals probably have more reason to be optimistic about Morialta (6.8 per cent), where incumbent Lindsay Simmons faces former Young Liberals president and Christopher Pyne staffer John Gardner. The only other seat with a margin that would normally be considered surmountable is Bright, located on the coast south of Glenelg around Brighton, where Labor member Chloe Fox has achieved an impressive electoral track record.
If the Liberals are to fall short in more than one of the seven aforementioned seats, they will need to make up for it with a freakish double-digit swing in Adelaide (10.5 per cent) or Florey (12.0 per cent). The government has been very mindful of the significance of the former seat in particular, making a number of contentious policy decisions relating to the city centre with a view to protecting its member, Jane Lomax-Smith.
Further up the pendulum are a number of Adelaide seats which normally lean moderately to Labor, where margins were engorged in 2006 by an Adelaide-wide swing of around 9 per cent. Even if the momentum the Liberals have been building in recent polling continues, they appear to be at considerable risk of achieving their biggest swings in these seats, where Labor can afford to take the hit.
One of the interesting things that we will be able to look at after the washup of the SA and Tas elections is how close the polls are in relation to the growing Green vote. Its interesting that we take the piss out of the Coalition in the denial of the other polls yet still feel a bit shy of the Green polling results, .
Anyway, all will be revealed.
There seems to be general agreement that the ALP is poison in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide. The doctors’ wives syndrome is in full operation over issues like the proposed new Royal Adelaide Hospital and the River Murray’s demise (not to mention Mike Rann’s personal problems).
Morialta is really a Liberal seat and was a bit of a freak win for Labor’s Lindsay Simmons last time after Joan Hall increasingly took the seat for granted. No-one expects Simmons to hold.
Newland was a good pick-up too. Doomsayers say Tom Kenyon will be another oncer, despite the flawed history of his opponent, former Makin MHR Trish Traper.
Norwood is absolutely lineball and Vinnie Ciccarello will have another sleepless campaign.
The election may well swing on Hartley, where Grace Portolesi is desperately trying to fend off the former Liberal member, Joe Scalzi.
Away from the eastern suburbs, the Liberals will win Mount Gambier and will press National MP Kaylene Maywald to the wire in the Riverland seat of Chaffey. But they may be battling to eject the independent Geoff Brock from Frome.
We need more polling to determine whether Labor can hang on in Mawson, Light and Bright.
With the veteran Liberal Graham Gunn retiring from the vast northern seat of Stuart, Labor’s canny and energetic Sean Holden would normally be given a strong chance of grabbing this elusive prize, but maybe this is not the right year.
The Adelaide media has been in nitpicking mode of late. If the electorate is in a bad mood through things like power blackouts or water shortages, expect a massive electoral backlash.
The government will be hoping to massage voters by delivering on the city tram extension and the Port Stanvas desalination plant, against a background of bread and circuses.
New Liberal leader Isobel Redmond is a cleanskin who has done well at the head of a pitifully weak team. It would be a dreadful result, but one not out of the question, if they were to take over the state.
Any chance Bob Day will contest Makin again ? I miss his simplistic take on getting the most out of those stoned teenagers and doll bludgers. Scary man!
TT – why would you think you have a handle on eastern suburbs without much polling as compared to Light Mawson and Bright? Is it the new home of Toorak Toffs?
PoM – maybe but Makin is national not State.
William – not sure what your second filled in colour graph is supposed to show but it doesn’t seem to add up?
We toffs tend to have a high regard for our opinions but on this occasion I have deferred to what other experienced Labor people have been telling me. The eastern suburbs are usually poison for Labor. Last election was an exception. Expect a return to the norm.
Wakefield, it shows the parties’ percentage share of the seats won at elections going back to 1970. So where the red dips below the line in the middle, Labor had a majority; where the blue rises above it, the Liberals had one. Granted that the 0-100% shown on the Y axis probably isn’t all that helpful.
Thanks William. With the Liberal Movement – half went back to Liberals and half went to the Democrats so it is hard to know where to put them.
TT and Wakefield
I agree with TT that the Libs should never have lost the eastern suburbs. That is their base (the comfortable middle class) but Rann has played very effectively to that group with his fiscal responsibility, law and order bluster and presidential style.
I disagree on the doctor’s wives effect though. I have lost count of the number of times the “doctor’s wives” have failed to bark.
The election may well go to Rann but there are big question marks not only on his relations with blonde women but with all women who aren’t young, blonde and pretty. Rann is constantly misrepresenting Isobel Redmond’s views but she is not responding in kind. As recently as Saturday he blamed the Liberals for blowing up the affair he never had. Of course the Liberals didn’t need to as everyone has an opinion – mostly that they don’t care about the affair but that at the least it is about men behaving badly.
He has been caught out claiming water to save the Lower Lakes resulting from his negotiations as recently as Sunday, but there was no new water. A plethora of minor groups are being established by people who are fed up with spin. Local members will feel the heat as we have hot, hot weather and the threat of bushfires.
Add the real loss of trees and backyards, high mortages and the very close links with the Development Industry and there are real rumbles in the East. That’s why the Premier is out in the eastern suburbs pressing the flesh for all he’s worth.
He won’t bother doing it for the Western Suburbs which are likely to show a swing but even if Jay Weatherill, as the most likely person to lose a position, was rolled, the Premier would have got rid of his biggest threat for the leadership. It almost looks like this is what is intended as so many decisions lately have made it difficult for Mr Weatherill. Although, this would thwart Mr Weatherill, there are very strong rumours that Mike Rann born in England, raised in New Zealand is planning his imminent retirement in Italy fuelled by his love of all things Italian. Watch him cosy up to the Italian money men during Carnevale. Last election was based around Rann gets Results – a lot of those results are not appreciated by sizable proportions of the population.
Lysterene,
Any facts, or is it just another bitter diatribe from a wallflower.
With both the Democrats and Xenephon effectively gone from SA State politics it iwll be interesting to see where their votes go. Obviously the Greens will be hoping to pick them up but I don’t think it necessarily follows that most ex Dem voters will switch to Greens.
As someone who lives in the Eastern suburbs and doesn’t vote Liberal I suppose I am one of the people Diogenes referred to. Redmond is better than Hamilton Smith so she has stopped the rott (to me). But the Libs will still have to collectively improve before I would regard them as an alternative government. They should forget the stadium nonsense and focus on bigger issues, like lack of any criminal justice comission, accountability, and huge numbers of unreported consultancies (I understand that most of them are not reported).
I am a consultant myself and sometimes it is hard to even find out who you lose to or what the winning price was. I don’t mean to imply that stuff that is publically tendered is a scandal, but why can’t they just list the contracts? And any “1 of 1” consultancies should be made public. If there is a good reason (specialist expertise) why they are used that is fine. But if it is some mate or ex-politician, then one wonders what the “expertise” might be.
On saying that from my perception I don’t think the current government is incompetent or corrupt. But they are not transparent. Brown and Olsen were worse, but we can still do better.
[Although, this would thwart Mr Weatherill, there are very strong rumours that Mike Rann born in England, raised in New Zealand is planning his imminent retirement in Italy fuelled by his love of all things Italian.]
Is there anyone in Adelaide who hasn’t heard that rumour?
Socrates
I agree about an ICAC. It’s one policy that the voters clearly disagree with Rann on. The Libs really need a corruption case to blow up to drive the point home though.
Rann is about in the same position that Howard was in in 2007. He’d run out of ideas, had rode a boom and delivered almost nothing and plenty are fed up with the endless spin.
The difference is Howard had Rudd to compete with; Rann has only got Redmond and a few no-hopers.
Perhaps the Libs should sign on Peter Vaughan who seems to think he is the Opposition. Why would business interests want to fund Vaughan running around shooting his mouth off about everything. Reminds me of Tim Marcus Clark – and they both seem to hail from Victoria.
Diogenes,
There have been a number of ICAC type organisations established throughout Australia and they have cost millions to administer.
How about you explain their pathetic track records, whether the few people they’ve caught would have been caught through the normal processes of law enforcement and why anyone whould be shovelling money in to such unproductive bilge in the future.
My view is they are a solution in search of a problem.
William, the mathematician in me sees your second picture as a classic example of “undamped resonance” – ie an instability getting greater as time goes on, in physics usually due to the “forcing” frequency being the same or a multiple of the “natural” frequency of the system – like the opera singer shattering the crystal glass, or more spectactularly, the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxTZ446tbzE
Is this the future for SA?
Actually, I now remember that even when they showed us this film they said it wasn’t actually due to resonance, but something to do with eddy currents. I have now looked it up and it was “aeroelastic flutter.” But it does make for good footage!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge_%281940%29
GG
I don’t agree in principle with the idea that aspects of good governance should only be pursued if they are “cost effective”. Look at NSW Labor to see where that leads. The point is precisely that we need such groups to police those that have power over the police. They will never stop all such abuses, but allow such abuses to grow unchecked costs ultimately a lot more – public trust.
ICAC is one of many models and there may be better ones but the point is the principle. There is a need for an independent arbiter, just as there was in Ancient Sparta under the Laws of Lycurgis (the Ephors IIRC). The need hasn’t disappeared in the 2600 years since.
We are a literary lot tonight, Socrates, Diogenes, Lysistrata.
Simmering issues in SA (well, Adelaide) –
* developer donations,
* Government favouring developer power over local residents,
* certain developments such as Glenside, St Clair, Cheltenham, RAH, etc.
* Oddly there are some gamer geek types who are putting up candidates against Michael Atkinson due to his anti-gamer stance.
* The Free Australia Party / bikies
* Failure to implement an ICAC
Not major issues though. Until the ALP really cock up they will stay in power – perhaps making Kevin Foley Premier will do it.
Funny thing about these ALP “working class” types is they all live in the Eastern Suburbs – I see Foley and Conlon at the Unley supermarket, and Rann lives in Stepney
The Demographics of SA elections were neatly on show as I drove along the Mallee Highway via Ouyen to Adelaide before the 2006 election. In the Far East of the state all the posters on power poles (is this just a SA phenomenon?) were for some Rural Independent candidate, at Murray Bridge they were all for the Liberal candidate, in the Adelaide Hills they were all for the Democrats, then once in Adelaide after a few Liberal portraits it was all Labor candidates to the coast West of the city.
William, in Bright your labeling of the candidate photos would suggest it is a Labor vs Labor tussle.
Adelaide doesn’t care about the sex lives of their pollies 🙂
Remember they had a Gay pink shorts wearing premier for 10 years !
“the best years of my life, I might add” :OP
Thanks Stephen, corrected.
GG
You don’t see all the corruption which is prevented by having an ICAC. Currently, the Govt knows the Auditor-General, Ombudsman and Police will do they are told so they can get away with anything.
At this early stage I expect Rann to hold on and suffer a middle of the road swing against his government. I expect fairly significant swings against Labor in the seats that swung heavily to them in 2006 (Ashfield, Elder, Kaurna, Reynell, Wright, Florey etc), bringing these into the below 10% bracket and marginalising Ashfield, Elder and Wright again. But it is difficult to see how the Liberals can capture more than three or four seats. The trouble is the margins are too high and those with lower margins (Light, Mawson, Norwood) had popular Liberal incumbents/candidate last time around which cushioned the upward swing to Labor. Most importantly, the Liberals have selected hopeless candidates throughout the entire state. This is a result of their power-to-the-membership plebicite preselections which allow a cast of unrepresentative, ageing folks and weird young Liberals pick the candidates. The result: a hotpotch of randoms who are about as much good as chocolate firemen. In Mawson, a must win marginal for the Liberals, they have selected Matthew Donovan who has no connection with the seat (barely any connection with SA) and seemingly no understanding of local issues or political activism. In Newland the selection of Trish Draper would make a normal voter want to cry, and in Hartley, why oh why would they reach back into history and select a known under performer in Joe Scalzi. What a mess!
In the country the Libs stand a very good chance of losing the huge seat of Stuart given the retirement of forever member Graham Gunn. Though the Liberals should pick up Mount Gambier in the form of popular local Mayor Steve Perryman. Another candidate disaster story in Frome, Terry Boylan who lost the by-election should’ve been dumped, he has failed to connect with the electorate at large. The Libs should be able to pick this up, but don’t bet on it. With Geoff Brock having squared away the Port Pirie vote, all he has to do it spend 75% of his time in the Clare and Gilbert valleys and persuade some Lib/Nat voters to come his way and he’ll have secured another upset.
I live in the coastal electorate Bright, a particularly interesting seat. Despite pronouncements that Chloe Fox is the next big thing, she has had a very low profile in the seat throughout the term (though in fairness in the last few months her profile has been low because she has been pregnant). Fox’s re-election fight has not been helped by the preselection of Maria Kourtesis for Bright. A successful businesswoman who has been everywhere in the electorate since preselected at the end of 2008. I’m involved in the local surf club and she’s there all the time, she’s at Rotary and sporting events and has put out a regular newsletter for the past year. She is also ever-present in the local shopping centres. The mood in Bright is that the Labor desalination plant is going to hurt the gulf, so it will be interesting to see if the Libs can harness this discontent, or whether it will flow to the Greens. If the Libs can get some of it, I expect they may be able to grab this seat, otherwise expect Fox to hang on narrowly (1% or less).
At this stage I am only willing to call three seats for the Libs:
Norwood, Mount Gambier and Light
Chaffey, Bright and Morialta would be line ball.
Mawson and Newland may move if a bigger swing is on, notwithstanding poor candidates.
All of this is not enough to knock out the Rann Government, which in truth deserves a bloody nose, but until a more credible alternative emerges (Redmond is good, the team at large is weak) I can’t see anything more than a bloody nose.
I will appear with such musings from time to time until the election.
Diogenes – whats your basis for saying Auditor-General, Ombudsman will do as they are told.
Personally I favour an ICAC but with sensible controls. I don’t think it is fair that there is publicity about cases before there is any proper investigation.
Legislation blocking developer donations, and restricting private donations, making them more public etc also seems to be needed. I’m amazed that the sort of donations made by big developers over recent years are allowed.
[Norwood is absolutely lineball and Vinnie Ciccarello will have another sleepless campaign.]
Which will be made worse if seeing her name misspelled irritates her as much as it irritates me.
Wakefield
The Auditor General and Ombudsman will give fair and impartial reports on anything they are ASKED to investigate. But anything listed as Cabinet in Confidence doesn’t get touched by them AFAIK. That being said some of the issues I highlighted (like non-disclosure of major consulting contracts) are issues for public servants as well as politicians, so I think it is clear that the curent ombudsman/auditor general system doesn’t operate as well as it should in SA.
The upper house or Legislative Council is interesting here, Zenophon took 2.4 quotas with him at the last election. What a great place to be, you need a bit less then 9% and the terms are a very sleepy 8 yes thats right 8 years.
Following my obsession the Greens only got about 4.5% in this statewide poll, how many they will get without the Zeno factor will be interesting. How many they get and its relationship to the polls will have further interest.
Do you have a link to back these comments up in the bottom section of the “Giles” profile?
“The scheme has fallen well short of the projected $137 million savings over five years, and was found by the Auditor-General to have cost $11.6 million more to implement than the government had budgeted for.”
I’ve heard that an independant is running for the LC for the Sex Party. (They haven’t been registered). Is this likely to affect anything?
Some quick thoughts on the election:
1. Labor is more likely to lose Mawson than Light – the increased urbanisation of the Gawler area is bringing a stronger labor voting demographic to Light.
2. Hartley, Morialta and Newland look potentially winnable for the liberals, but the selection of has-been candidates like Joe Scalzi and Trish Draper makes liberal advances less likely in Hartley and Newland. So I think Morialta is the most likely of these 3 to fall.
3. Karlene is in with a good shot of winning Chaffey contrary to popular opinion. If Labor were about to lose they’d turf her, but a Rann endorsement for her position as water minister into the 3rd term should be the clincher, if and when the endorsement comes (as I expect it will).
4. Mitchell and Frome are both fascinating. The danger for Hanna is the liberal candidate might knock him down into 3rd place and deliver the seat to labor. As for Frome, I really think it could go either way.
5. Stuart is another interesting one – labor must be rated a strong chance here with Graham Gunn’s retirement – this seems the seat most likely to be gained by labor at this election.
Sykesie (@32) you make a lot of sense. Still don’t think that Mawson will go before Light (Liberal candidate is just too weak), but then again I frequent Mawson a lot and live far from Light.
You are spot on with Mitchell and Frome being fascinating. Further, I think Hanna may be pushed into third place by what appears to be a strong candidacy by Peta McCance from the Liberals. I have a lot of friends in the Mitchell electorate and she’s doorknocking a lot. In saying that, Kris Hanna is a solid local member and could outpoll both Labor and the Libs to win, similar to Bob Such in his second go as an independent in Fisher.
32 – The main trouble for Labor in Light is the opposition to Labor plans for massive population expansion around Gawler (like projected increase in order of 400% over 30 years) and other development issues. Despite the local Labor candidate being very hard working and a not very strong Liberal opponent, the opposition to rampant urban sprawl, loss of good rural land etc is strong and the Government could well be sacrificing their local member.
3-D (27) complains about my spelling of Vini as Vinnie. A fair point and apologies, although it is a diminutive of Ms Ciccarello’s actual Christian name and therefore open to variation.
It is interesting that bloggers offer a range of seats where Labor could be in trouble. This would seem to indicate that the elecion is far from cut and dried.
Syksie (32) makes a lot of sense – though he/she could be dead wrong too.
I can’t wait to see the Green result at this election in my home state! Newspoll had the Greens at 4% both immediately before, and after the 2006 election, where they polled 6.5%. Since then, the Greens have gone up bit by bit, and the last four polls have all been 10%+! They’re currently polling 12%! Labor is down to a primary of 37% after a high of 45% at the last election!
Like all the other state elections of late, I expect this to very much be a Labor-Liberal-Green affair with very little support to any other parties.
Come on 20 March 2010!!!
😀
To pre-empt any discussion: Bob1234 has been given a highly qualified second chance. I ask you all not to clutter this nice disciplined thread on SA politics with meta-commentary about the fact.
[Do you have a link to back these comments up in the bottom section of the “Giles” profile?]
I derived the information from a report in The Advertiser, so I grant you that it may well be untrue. I won’t pretend to have read the Auditor-General’s report.
[I won’t pretend to have read the Auditor-General’s report.]
Why not – everyone else in media land down that way pretends to have! 😛
Wakefield
I have knowledge of three AG/Ombudsman cases in Health. All three were whitewashes.
I’m surprised that after William made quite a big deal about the potential of the Greens in Heysen in 2006 (their best vote in the state)
http://www.pollbludger.com/sa2006/heysen.htm
That he fails to even mention the Greens in the 2010 post
http://www.pollbludger.com/sa2010/heysen.htm
Oversight perhaps?
Bob, reading back on the old page, I think I was getting slightly over over-excited at the time. However, the Greens’ strong performance did deserve a mention, and didn’t get one because I tend to rush through my profiles of safe opposition-held seats. I might rectify that in future.
[Bob, reading back on the old page, I think I was getting slightly over over-excited at the time. However, the Greens’ strong performance did deserve a mention, and didn’t get one because I tend to rush through my profiles of safe opposition-held seats. I might rectify that in future.]
But if you were to apply the primary vote swings since the last election, don’t you think it’s a safe bet that the Greens will easily take second place away from Labor in Heysen at this election and therefore threaten the Libs?
You’re right – not gravely threaten, but make the result at least of academic interest. Which I have to admit I didn’t realise. So yes, chalk it down as oversight, and I’ll get around to revising it in due course.
Thanks 🙂
William, the last paragraph of your Frome profile contains a typo:
“After Rohde’s preferences flowed overwhelmingly to Labor…”
It should say Brock, not Labor.
I came across a few errors when I was speed-reading through all the pages… should probably have kept note to pass on to William…
While the Greens vote was high in Heysen, it is likely that Isobel Redmond will return to dominance there, she is after all the opposition leader and by all accounts a fairly dedicated, popular local member who has spent much time in the media talking about her love of the Adelaide Hills. The Hills folk are particularly parochial (not saying that’s a bad thing) and will love the misty-eyed musings of Isobel as she recalls passing through Stirling as a teenager and swearing to make that town her home one day. This is the stuff they’re publishing in the glossy weekend magazines and the Hills folk are lapping it up. One certainly doesn’t hear Mike Rann talk of his Ramsay electorate with such enthusiasm. You’d expect a big lurch upward in Isobel’s primary vote and she’ll win the seat without requiring preferences.
Toorak Toff at 35. There are many seats which Labor could be in trouble in. There are their top seven or eight marginals, plus a couple of seats in the western suburbs where Labor have screwed over the locals, but it would have to be a perfect storm for a change of government. That perfect storm would consist of: a tightly disciplined, focused campaign by the Liberals (unlikely); a very messy campaign by Labor (unlikely … though the Rann problem is large for them) and a reduction or static Greens vote (unlikely). So I’m still chalking up three or four Liberal gains, offset by a Labor gain (Stuart) and the rest will be status quo. But the election remains far off …
[You’d expect a big lurch upward in Isobel’s primary vote and she’ll win the seat without requiring preferences. ]
I don’t.
I’ve added my piece in Crikey yesterday to the post above, plus a few other details; corrected the error in Frome (thanks GWV); added detail about the Greens to Heysen (thanks Bob).