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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  3. [how on earth did the accounting firm that the coalition utilized miss a number of these double costings? these weren’t underlying assumptions or projections! ]

    ENT hogwarts accounting firm:

    Sebastien, this is a liberal party accounting firm. the figures were submitted by liberals, ergo they are already accurate. now have one of the indonesian interns sign off on it and give my hammock another push. by the way, good work trolling those lefty posters.

  8. my say – sleep well tonight – this is a very healthy development. Not because its surprises us but because it is headline news. One might almost think (touch wood) that Julia and the undies anticipated this outcome and have been contemplating it impact…

  9. Come on Wilkie – smell the future. Close the deal on 74 seats with Gillard, and its gold for Denison.

    Wait too long and you’re “the guy we kinda need a bit for an extra margin”.

    Move in Gillard. Tones is dazed and reeling – time for a KO.

  11. Vernula Publicus
    [All tweet with #blackhole – see f we can get a new trending topic]

    I also added #fail and #ausvotes to pick up more, hopefully.

  13. yes but i will take your advice i am sure you can all tweet and carry on to your hearts content you dont need my direction.

    wow this is so good,. but will it be front page news tomorrow???
    the marvels of twitter and to think i thought twitter was stupid now i love all this new technolgy, its out and about for the papers can even type it.

  18. I don’tr want to count my chickens but hopefully we may have prevented the greatest con job by an opposition leader in Australian history from ever happening. I really really hope.

  20. [I don’tr want to count my chickens but hopefully we may have prevented the greatest con job by an opposition leader in Australian history from ever happening. I really really hope.]

    Agree TSOP. And if we have, then I think its been a good thing all round. Gillard minority *could* be the best thing thats happened to Australian politics in years.

  23. Yes. It’s time to shit or get off the pot. Even though counting may still be continuing, it’s obvious where the seats lie now. You’ve seen the costings, heard the appeals. Let’s get on with moving this country forward or supporting real action (sic)

  24. It’s been a moving forward kind of day.

    First a formal agreement with the Greens that will get us some real action on climate change.

    Abbott gets all calmly snarky and abusive about Brown siding with Labor.

    Then Windsor drops his bombshell on Lateline.

  25. the treasury document is a good read – on top of the $11b, they did not have time to cost the re-opening of Nauru, nor the related “border security dividend” from stopping the boats, and therefore being able to close down Christmas Is

  26. [I don’tr want to count my chickens but hopefully we may have prevented the greatest con job by an opposition leader in Australian history from ever happening. I really really hope.]

    mark my words, the media are spinning it as we type. by morning it will be devastating to labor and a sign of an incipient coalition triumph.

  29. Puff

    Not being critical of your superb commentary on Lateline but right at the end the bit about Windsor not caring what others do, that was in reference to Greens/Labor alliance.

  31. [still waiting for a call back from the OO]

    btw What is OO? (Must be an Eastern state’s paper?)
    The spectacles Hockey didn’t wear when they put this doc together?

  33. [Gweneth
    Posted Wednesday, September 1, 2010 at 11:21 pm | Permalink
    my say – sleep well tonight ]

    i will, thank you Gweneth,
    “if we look backwards we can often see the clear path that bought us forward
    ‘ i read this some where recently
    today is the feast of ST Giles the patron saint of the disabled the lame and of course all that need help, seems it s only labor that look after such people and that can be any of us at any time.
    nite all

  34. [It’s been a moving forward kind of day.

    First a formal agreement with the Greens that will get us some real action on climate change.

    Abbott gets all calmly snarky and abusive about Brown siding with Labor.

    Then Windsor drops his bombshell on Lateline.]

    Not to mention a GDP figure going gangbusters and the lowest current account deficit since adam was a boy

  35. [Gillard minority *could* be the best thing thats happened to Australian politics in years.]

    I know it sounds naive, but the red-green alliance is giving me hope too. But I have been led to disappointment after disappointment in the last 6 and a half weeks, so I am going to stay prudent and not get ahead of myself.

  37. Might be my browser, but Betfair appears to have pulled betting on “Which party will provide the next prime minister after the 2010 election?”

  39. Sprock

    NB

    totally unsubstantiated BUT

    I have SEEN docs that actually blow the FIBS “blackhole out to 25+B over the three yr period-36+b over five years

    The assumptive modelling used in the costing has a distinct 90’s feel

    😉

  41. On that positive news, can turn in with a calm mind. As others have said, not counting chickens, but the clucking is getting a little louder than it was this morning.

  45. btw What is OO? (Must be an Eastern state’s paper?)

    The OO is The Australian, dubbed by some as the ‘Opposition Orifice”, a take on it’s nickname ‘The Government Gazette’ when the Howard government was in power.

  49. I don’t understand this.

    The url at 3375 with the actual treasury document suggests that the coalitions policies would improve the budget bottom line by a few $B to start with and then go slightly negative after 3 years.

    A naive reading says things are fine. Where does the $11B come from?

  50. gusface – yes, it is only 4 years out model

    the Defence super generous re-indexing may well be over $50b extra in the out years – no mention of this one,

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