Moral majority

Yesterday, the Australian Electoral Commission performed an act which in a rational world would have excited no interest. Since last weekend the commission has featured a “national two party preferred result” on the front page of its Virtual Tally Room, which has assumed tremendous psychological interest as Labor’s margin has steadily eroded from 0.6 per cent to 0.4 per cent. However, the tally had a flaw which biased it in Labor’s favour: there were no Labor-versus-Coalition figures available from strongly conservative Kennedy, Lyne, New England or O’Connor, where the notional two-candidate preferred counts conducted on election night involved independents. This was only balanced out by left-wing Melbourne, where Labor and the Greens were correctly identified as the front-running candidates for the notional count. For whatever reason, the AEC decided yesterday to level the playing field by excluding seats where the notional preference count candidates had been changed since election night, which in each case meant left-wing seats where the Liberals had finished third to the Greens (Batman and Grayndler) or Andrew Wilkie (Denison). The result was an instant 0.4 per cent drop in Labor’s score, reducing them to a minuscule lead that was soon rubbed out by further late counting.

In fact, very little actually changed in yesterday’s counting, which saw a continuation of the slow decline in the Labor total that is the usual pattern of late counting. The media, regrettably, has almost entirely dropped the ball on this point. Mark Simkin of the ABC last night reported that Labor’s lead had been eradicated by the “latest counting”, as opposed to an essentially meaningless administrative decision. Lateline too informed us that Labor’s two-party vote had “collapsed”, and Leigh Sales’ opening question to Julie Bishop on Lateline was essentially an invitation to gloat about the fact. Most newspaper accounts eventually get around to acknowledging the entirely artificial nature of the 50,000-vote reversal in Labor’s fortunes, but only after reporting in breathless tones on the removal of votes that will eventually be put back in.

The reality is that nobody knew who had the lead on the two-party vote yesterday morning, and nothing happened in the day to make anybody any the wiser. The Prime Minister equally had no idea on election night when she made her ill-advised claim to the two-party majority mantle. Only when all seats have reported Labor-versus-Coalition counts, which is probably still a few weeks away, will we be able to say for sure. The best we can do at present is to construct a projection based on the votes counted and our best assumptions as to how the gaps in the vote count data will be filled when all the figures are in.

At present we have completed “ordinary” polling day totals for all electorates and advanced counts of postal votes in most cases, but there has been no progress yet on absent or pre-poll votes in roughly half. Where counting of any of these three categories has been conducted, I have projected the party results on to the expected total of such votes (derived from the “declaration vote scrutiny progress” for absent and pre-poll votes, and from the number of applications for postal votes discounted by 16 per cent as per experience from 2007). Where no counting of a particular category has been conducted, I have compared the parties’ 2007 vote share in that category with their ordinary vote share, and applied that difference to the ordinary vote from this election. For example, the 2007 Liberal two-party vote in Canberra was 7.19 per cent higher than their ordinary vote share, so their 40.54 per cent ordinary vote at the current election has been used to project an absent vote share of 47.73 per cent.

For Batman, Grayndler and Denison, I have used the figures from the two-party Labor-versus-Liberal counts that were conducted in these seats from ordinary votes on election night, calculated the swing against the ordinary vote in 2007 and projected it over the expected absent, pre-poll and postal totals. For Melbourne, New England and Kennedy, where no Labor-versus-Coalition figures are available, I have used preference shares derived from the Labor-versus-Coalition counts from the 2007 election to determine the swing on ordinary votes, and projected that swing through the other categories. It’s with Lyne and O’Connor that things get crude, as we have no case study of how Rob Oakeshott’s or Wilson Tuckey’s preferences split between Labor and Nationals candidates. For O’Connor, which has at least been a Labor-Liberal-Nationals contest at successive elections, I have crudely arrived at a 7.9 per cent swing against Labor derived from the primary vote swing plus moderated by a 70 per cent share of the swing in favour of the Greens. The best I could think to do for Lyne was average the two-party swings from the neighbouring electorates, producing a 5.14 per cent swing against Labor.

Plug all that in and here’s what you get:

Labor 6,313,736 (50.02 per cent)
Coalition 6,307,924 (49.98 per cent)

In other news, Andrew Wilkie says the two-party vote total is “not relevant” in determining which party he will back. Good for him.

UPDATE: An Essential Research poll has it at 50-50, which is “unchanged” – I’m not sure if this is in comparison with the election result or a previously unpublished Essential result from a week ago. Basically no change on preferred prime minister. UPDATE 2: The 50-50 from last week was indeed an unpublished Essential result from their rolling two-week average, which they understandably felt was not worth publishing under the circumstances.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

3,640 comments on “Moral majority”

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  1. Diogenes. I am starting to think Wilkie is just trying to squeeze the best deal out of Gillard and is bluffing with the openness to supporting Abbott. Nevertheless, because his platform does seem pretty good and they don’t seem to clash with KOW, I would give into them anyway.

  3. [Mr Katter outed himself in 2004 as having been among a group of university students who threw eggs at the Beatles forty years earlier.]

    And he’s been humming, “I am the walrus/eggman”, ever since.

  5. Bernard Keane BernardKeane

    Opposition has rushed out a press release claiming Treasury and Finance say “95 to 96 per cent of Coalition policy costings were correct.” less than 20 seconds ago via TweetDeck

    haha, this just keeps on getting better and better

  6. Gilllard shoukd indeed up the ante on pokies. Bugger it – Wilkie and Xeno are right about it anyway – even if they are mite wowserish on the topic.

    What a freaking curse on the public pokies are.

  7. [It’s just that treasury doesn’t UNDERSTAND coalition policies you see.]

    Treasury’s view is that the coalition doesn’t understand coalition policies

  9. This could be the ‘excuse’ the independents are looking for to back Labor.

    But I’m not liking the sounds coming from Wilkie. He seems more interested in horse trading for his own pet projects than for forming ‘stable’ government with either party.

  13. 3282

    I suggest the currency coinage and legal tender power be used/tested. It has much potential for Commonwealth power expansion. Does it (along with the banking power) give the Commonwealth the power to regulate all non-barter exchange?

  18. Gus
    [I wasnt sure but I definitely heard TJ use “black hole”]
    In Adelaide, Lateline is just about to start, so I will be listening closely for the ‘blackhole’ word.
    🙂

  21. [What a freaking curse on the public pokies are]

    hear, hear, I hope Mr X and Wilkie extract something major from the eventual winner on this score. And I sincerely hope Jules is the one to give it to them

  23. [Opposition has rushed out a press release claiming Treasury and Finance say “95 to 96 per cent of Coalition policy costings were correct.” less than 20 seconds ago via TweetDeck ]

    Not as good as 97% of BER was okay

  26. The Magical L @3309 I think that when he had dinner with WOK they counselled him to to delay and that is what he is doing. He did say he is on a steep learning curve.

  29. [Gilllard shoukd indeed up the ante on pokies. Bugger it – Wilkie and Xeno are right about it anyway – even if they are mite wowserish on the topic.

    What a freaking curse on the public pokies are]

    That’s right. Any limitations put on them would be good social policy and widely supported (except by state governments of course who soak up billions of dollars out of them).

  34. i notice it says up grades re the abbott and RHH. Well i think julia offered to go half with the state gov, who are building a new hospital on site around the old one
    better than upgrades, that sounds like a bit of work here and there to me, we have seen this all before thats why the place is like a maze.

  37. [What bothers me is how much Windsor was playing it down.]

    He knows he media will play it up. Could have left it to someone else to break the news, after all.

    But he didnt.

  46. [they counted the income from selling Medibank Private but forgot to remove the annual dividend paid by Medicare Private.

    If only my shares worked like that.]

    I am suprised they didn’t add back Telstra and Commonwealth Bank dividends. that ones got sloppy joes finger prints all over it.

  47. Tones could make up the shortfall with, oh, i dunno, say…. A MINING TAX?

    Doesn’t this all go to establish that we clearly need one?

    Tones is imploding – bit later than expected, but nonetheless.

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