Victorian election minus nine days

Four fun facts:

• Roy Morgan has exposed itself to ridicule by not only publishing a phone poll of the four Labor-versus-Greens seats from a sample of just 276, but also purporting that meaningful conclusions can be drawn from the seat-by-seat breakdowns (“Greens set to win Inner Melbourne seats of Richmond & Northcote; Vote in Brunswick & Melbourne ‘too close to call’”). The best that can be done with the poll is to combine the results and compare them with the 2006 election, which shows the Greens up 17 points on the primary vote, Labor down 16 points and the Liberals up three, with a two-party swing to the Greens of 8 per cent – and even then a margin of error approaching 6 per cent must be taken into account. For what very little it’s worth, a uniform 8 per cent swing would deliver the Greens Melbourne, Richmond and Brunswick, but not quite Northcote. We aren’t told how preferences were allocated, but clearly it wasn’t on the basis of the last election – the Greens’ preference share has gone from 74 per cent to 41 per cent.

• SportingBet has the Liberals short-priced favourites to take Mount Waverley, Gembrook and Forest Hill, narrower favourites in Mitcham, South Barwon and Mordialloc, and even stevens in Frankston and Prahran. A little surprisingly, Labor are short-priced favourites to retain all seats reckoned to be under threat from the Greens. Taken together, this points to Labor winning a reasonably comfortable victory with between 49 and 51 seats out of 88.

• Antony Green’s upper house calculators are now open for business. Antony’s own experiments with various plausible scenarios have raised at least the possibility of boilovers in Eastern Victoria, where Family First, the Democratic Labor Party or (most likely) the Country Alliance might be a show, and Northern Metropolitan, where independent carers’ advocates have drawn first spot on the ballot paper and done well out of preferences.

• The Victorian Electoral Commission has upheld a complaint against Democratic Labor Party material purporting to provide instructions on how to vote “Labor for Northern Victoria”, but in doing so has ruled that the Australian Labor Party too is forbidden from identifying themselves simply as “Labor” on how-to-vote material.

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.

182 comments on “Victorian election minus nine days”

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  1. Rod Hagen
    Posted Friday, November 19, 2010 at 3:13 pm | Permalink

    “My own fundamental view of Public Transport is that Labor will implement some useful improvements, ESPECIALLY IF if there are a couple of GREENS members in the lower house to keep them up to the mark..” !!

    only a Green suporter would make such a smug unexpertise comment of greens 0 skills,
    and made worser by fact Greens Transport polisys is not even costed

  3. Sorry to do this William, if you are sick of the Ron/GG thing just say.
    Now Ron and GG, you correctly pointed out that Bill Shorten is assistant tresurer and I’m not. Ok, Good work. Adolf Hitler became the leader of the third Riech, does not mean he was a success. And you are, let me go back to a comment I made a few weeks ago,. You two are like that idiot Collingwood supporter who puts on the yellow shirt when he thinks they have won. You two sit on the sidelines and bask in the reflected glory of others. Pie on shirt, spittle on chin and generally no positive or insightful insights for as long as I can see.
    Your constant personal attacks are boring, sexist, unintelligent and often in poor taste. Why you stay here is of interest. I can only think that by pissing people off you hope they may devulge some info. If you had the wit to understand that anyone with any info is hardly likely to come on here and tell you two. In fact its interesting that those who continue to blog at this stage can be guaranteed to know nothing, or they will be spreading misinformation.
    Here’s a challenge to you both,
    Say something that is insightful and that we don’t already know!

  6. Barking
    Posted Friday, November 19, 2010 at 4:21 pm | Permalink

    “Now Ron and GG, you correctly pointed out that Bill Shorten is assistant tresurer and I’m not. Ok, Good work. Adolf Hitler became the leader of the third Riech, does not mean he was a success ”

    so you invoke Adolf Hitler as a comparison ,
    to make up fron fact Assistant Treasurer of oz Bill shorten is more econ expert than you

    (BTW , give us a detailed independantly cost breakup & revenue by sector of th Greens Vic Transport Plan , it dont exist So putting up such a polisy to Voters is deceptive

    You Greens then publicly refusd such Green “Transport Plan to be even costed by Treasury ! (a al Abbott and for SAME reason likely a bigar 11 billion black hole deficit

    What you greens lot do not like is your polisys public exposed as being econamicly iliterate , and might add youse is very feline sensitive to every such scrutinys

  10. Ron 156
    What on earth do you mean by “econamicly iliterate’…and what is the meaning of your wierd statement that reads …”and might add youse is very feline sensitive to every such scutinys “??
    It seems that English isn’t your mother tongue.but for heaven’s sake learn about Spellcheck,or get someone literate to check your statements,which are unreadable !!

  11. Just heard Phil Cleary on News Radio complaining about the fact he wasn’t included by name in the Morgan poll conducted yesterday. He didn’t complain about the sample size and the host didn’t point out this obvious flaw.

  13. The press reports today that a meeting of 50 train drivers called by their union has condemned the State Govt. plan to construct a special” bus road” from South Morang to Mernda(when IF EVER ,the proposed new line from Epping to South Morang is finished)..instead of just continuing the line beyond South Morang to Mernda,which once had a daily train service.,along the rail land reservation which is still there

    They called the decision “stupid “and said that the Minister must have some “thick ” advisers.” Yet unlimited funds are always available for freeways in Victoria…

    The old rail reservation is still there.though closed in the 1950ies by Bolte.,and will be used for the Epping to South Morang part of the new service…but the stupid decision to run a bus from South Morang to Mernda is proving to be very very unpopular in Yan Yean electorate,which is a marginal one

    Labor has promised the line to Mernda at every election since the 1990ies…but when oh when will it come ??

  15. GG lied:
    [It’s probably out of the doc that Pegasus proudly floated a week or so ago when he claimed all the Greens policies were properly costed.]
    I never claimed all Greens Party policies were costed. I provided one policy that I said was costed at: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/10/28/newspoll-52-48-to-labor-in-victoria-2/comment-page-2/#comment-672138

    GG asked:
    Will the Greens have their wishes properly costed?
    Probably not, because that would be showing responsibility.

    Here you go – fully costed:
    Public Transport Plan for Melbourne’s East
    http://vic.greens.org.au/sites/vic.greens.org.au/files/Greens%20East%20PT%20plan.pdf

  16. not by th independant Treasury
    in fact you greens refused to let treasury cost your polisys !

    Abbott tried that Greens shabby trick , and it was 11 billion black hole deficit , ditto Greens So stop deceiving PBers or Voters that youse Greens lot understand either econamics or got proper costed polisys

  17. [Something that is insightful and that you don’t already know: Ted Baillieu’s real estate company actually made money from selling off state schools under the last Liberal government!]

    I’m sure he’ll be able to find additional ways to indirectly fill the coffers if he scrapes in this time, too!

  18. I think our mate Jeff should stay off the booze. The problems not the booze bus and the solution is keeping his mouth closed while pissed, not mints.

  19. [You two are like that idiot Collingwood supporter who puts on the yellow shirt when he thinks they have won.]

    His name is Joffa. And it’s a gold jacket.

  20. [His name is Joffa. And it’s a gold jacket.]
    Said hello to Joffa outside the MCG before the first Grand Final – he was more nervous than me – I think because Collingwood were such red hot favourites.

  23. [New Morgan Poll – Labor 52.5 to 47.5 , Primaries 39, 41.5 Greens 15.5]

    Both ALP & Coalition down 1 percentage point each & Greens up 2.5 percentage points!!

  24. Pegasus,

    I’m afraid you fail the credibility test again.

    I said at the time, that self costings don’t count. However, you Greens always ignore information that doesn’t confirm your prejudices.

    Above at 152 I posted a link to an independent assessment of the transport policies. There seems to be a discrepancy between the Greens’ self serving nonsense and a real economic evaluation. The Greens could of course offer their policies for evaluation by the Treasury. But, Greg “I have an MBA” seems to think he can finnese his way through. To me that shows contempt for the voters and gross irresponsibility.

    I notice the “PB Greens collectives” rhetoric and abuse is ramping up. A sure sign that you haven’t got any real arguments.

    Obviously, the strain of losing those Lib preferences is starting to tell.

  25. [Rod,

    Apparently, Berg’s article is referencing the following.

    This is the Greens plan for the city http://peopleplan.greens.org.au/images/The_People_Plan.pdf which is analysed here http://melbourneurbanist.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/does-the-greens-public-transport-plan-cut-it/%5D

    Ah! that is the “long term” plan I linked to in my earlier post, GG. It has much the same status as the long range aspects of the current Victorian Government’s “Victorian Transport Plan” – some things that they say should happen now, and some that are as far off as the Labor party’s connection of the Western Ring Road to East Link (and with about the same level of imaginary costing!).

    The long term aspects of both The Greens and Labor “vision statements” are well worth considering. It is a real pity that the serious debate about such things all too easily gets highjacked by things like elections! Probably means we’ll end up with the same sort of “half effective / half not” shemozzle we have had to live with here for the last couple of decades, regardless of the government in power.

  26. [New Morgan Poll – Labor 52.5 to 47.5 , Primaries 39, 41.5 Greens 15.5

    http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2010/4603/

    Ghostwhovotes has plugged them into Antony’s calculator – 49-3-1-35 result]

    Goodness knows what a Morgan swing to the Greens means. Does Morgan favour Labor in State elections in the same fashion as it does with the Feds? How does it usually treat The Greens?

    Still looks a fair way short of creating a situation where Baillieu gets to cause any work for the office shifters and shredder operators!

  27. Talking Ring Roads I find it strange that the current proposal to join the Ring Road with Eastlink is via Bulleen. To me this seems bizarre as it means the “ring” traffic would be doubling up with Eastern Freeway traffic from Bulleen to Mitcham, rather than taking a separate route (along a current power line corridor) to the northern end of Eastlink.

  28. Diogenes
    Posted Friday, November 19, 2010 at 6:40 pm | Permalink

    You two are like that idiot Collingwood supporter who puts on the yellow shirt when he THINKS they have won.

    “His name is Joffa. And it’s a gold jacket.”

    so you know as little about footy as you do about politcs , zip
    you dill , they always win when that gold jackey goes on (tho i not a maggi supporter)

    (BTW you nongo , you admit barracking for both Adelaidel teams CONCURRENTLY ,
    and there is only 2 adelaide teams

  29. Rod,

    Without a reference point, the Morgan is nigh on useless.

    All you can say is it confirms that Labor is in front as all the other polls have to date.

  31. Rod Hagen

    “My own fundamental view of Public Transport is that Labor will implement some useful improvements, ESPECIALLY IF if there are a couple of GREENS members in the lower house to keep them up to the mark..” !!

    I challenged that smug nonsense that was total unsubstanted , plus lack of greens skills , ands NO Treasury costing of Greens Transport Plan at all

    Your reply zigs and zags with wordy motherhoods saying nothing specific , but avoids both above points incl lack of an independant Tresury costing of your Greens Party

    w/o it , any sensible person knows Greens plan is not worth any mor than a kid could write

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