Call of the board: part one

Short and sharp reflections on some of the more interesting electorate results, starting with New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory.

What follows is a brief overview of the results in electorates I felt worth commenting on for one reason or another, together with projections of state vote shares based on ordinary votes results (which are not quite fully accounted for in the count, but close enough to it) and the extent to which postals, pre-polls and absent votes shifted the totals in 2010. New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory are covered herein, with the others to follow.

New South Wales

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	47.3	+2.6	47.2
Labor		34.9	-2.8	34.5
Greens		7.7	-2.2	8.1
Palmer United	4.3
Others		5.8

Two-party preferred

Coalition	54.2	+3.2	54.3
Labor		45.8	-3.2	45.7

Banks. The 3.3% swing which ousted Daryl Melham was almost exactly equal to the state total, which followed an 8.9% swing in 2010. An increase in the number of candidates from four to nine restricted the Liberal primary vote gain to 1.7% and contributed to a halving of the Greens vote, down from 9.6% to 4.7%.

Barton. The seat vacated by former Attorney-General Robert McClelland is going down to the wire, the 6.9% margin exactly matched by the swing on ordinary votes. This was the second biggest swing against Labor in Sydney after Macquarie. Barton was another seat that witnessed a dramatic proliferation of candidates, from three to eight, with the five minor party and independent newcomers collectively drawing 11.3%. The Liberals nonetheless increased their primary vote slightly, the balance coming off Labor and the Greens.

Blaxland. Reports on the eve of the election suggested Labor had grave fears for Jason Clare’s hold on Paul Keating’s old seat, despite its 12.2% margin. This proved entirely unfounded, with Labor up 5.4% on the primary vote and holding steady on two-party preferred.

Charlton. For some reason, the seat vacated by Greg Combet gave the Palmer United Party what was comfortably its highest vote in New South Wales at 11.3% (UPDATE: Frickeg in comments reminds me the belated disendorsement of the Liberal candidate probably had something to do with it). The party’s second best showing in the state was 7.8% in neighbouring Hunter. That aside, Combet’s departure did not cause any disturbance to Labor, the two-party swing being slightly below the state average.

Dobell. Craig Thomson managed 4.0%, which was at least better than Peter Slipper and contributed to a double-digit drop in the Labor primary vote, their worst such result in the state. Also contributing was former test cricketer Nathan Bracken, running as an independent with the backing of John Singleton, who managed 8.3%. The Liberal primary vote was up slightly, and its 5.9% swing on two-party preferred adequate to account for the 5.5% margin.

Eden-Monaro. Mike Kelly appeared to be well placed early in the count, but the larger and later reporting booths, including those in Queanbeyan, tended to swing more heavily. Kelly is presently sitting on a swing of 4.8%, enough to account for his 4.4% margin barring late count peculiarities and maintain Eden-Monaro’s cherished bellwether record. This was higher than the state average, part of a pattern in which swings in the state’s regions were actually slightly higher than in Sydney, contrary to all expectations.

Fowler. After all the hype about Labor’s looming collapse in western Sydney, a seat in that very area produced the most anomalous swing of the election in Labor’s favour. The 9.0% swing to Chris Hayes was 12.2% above the statewide par for Labor, and was fuelled by an 11.2% drop in the Liberal primary vote and swings approaching 20% in Cabramatta, the very area the Liberals had hoped to target by picking a Vietnamese candidate in Andrew Nguyen. However, look at the seat’s behaviour over longer range suggests this to have been a correction after an anomalous result in 2010, when Liberal candidate Thomas Dang slashed the Labor margin by 13.8% and picked up swings ranging from 16.5% to 23.1% in the Cambramatta booths.

Gilmore. The south coast seat was one of three in New South Wales to swing to Labor, presumably on account of the retirement of long-serving Liberal member Joanna Gash. Her successor, Ann Sudmalis, has emerged with 2.6% remaining of a 5.3% margin.

Grayndler. The Greens vote fell only modestly, by 1.2% to 22.8%, but it looks enough to have cost them a second place they attained for the first time in 2010. With primary votes generally fairly static, the change in Liberal preferencing policy would presumably have inflicted a hefty two-party swing if they had made the final count.

Hunter. Joel Fitzgibbon was down 10.1% on the primary vote, and while this was partly on account of the Palmer United Party’s second best performance in the state, he also suffered Labor’s biggest two-party swing in the state at 8.9%.

Kingsford Smith. One of a number of pieces of saved furniture for Labor in Sydney, Kingsford Smith turned in a largely status quo result in Peter Garrett’s absence, outgoing Senator Matt Thistlethwaite easily defending a 5.2% margin against a swing of 1.9%.

Lindsay. The swing that unseated David Bradbury was slightly on the high side for Sydney at 3.5%, more than accounting for a margin of 1.1% without meeting the more fevered expectations of a western Sydney disaster.

Macarthur. Liberal sophomore Russell Matheson picked up the second biggest two-party Coalition swing in New South Wales, up 6.8% on the primary vote and 8.4% on two-party preferred.

Page. The expectation that Labor would perform better in regional New South Wales than in Sydney was most strikingly defied in Page, where Janelle Saffin unexpectedly fell victim to a 7.2% swing.

Parramatta. Julie Owens’ seat produced a fairly typical result for Sydney in swinging 3.4% to the Liberals, which hasn’t been enough to account for the 4.4% margin. (UPDATE: I speak too soon. In keeping with a general trend of late counting away from Labor, postal votes are flowing heavily to the Liberals and putting Owens at very serious risk.)

Robertson. As expected, the seat Deborah O’Neill did well to retain in 2010 with a margin of 1.0% was an early election night casualty for Labor, the swing of 4.0% being perfectly typical for non-metropolitan New South Wales.

Throsby. Gary “Angry” Anderson managed 10.5% as candidate of the Nationals, nearly doubling the party’s vote from 2010 despite the number of candidates being up from five to 11. The Greens conversely were well down, by 6.5% to 5.3%.

Werriwa. Frequently written off during the campaign, Laurie Ferguson is set to retain about 2.2% of his 6.8% margin from 2010.

Queensland

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	45.3	-1.9	45.5
Labor		30.1	-3.9	29.7
Greens		6.1	-4.7	6.2
Palmer United	11.3
Others		7.2

Two-party preferred

Coalition	56.0	+1.1	56.3
Labor		44.0	-1.1	43.7

Blair. One Labor MP with good cause to feel glad about Kevin Rudd’s return was Shayne Neumann, who picked up a 1.4% two-party swing and held firm on the primary vote in the face of 12.8% vote for the Palmer United Party. Here as elsewhere in Queensland, the Greens crashed in the absence of the Kevin Rudd protest vote in 2010, dropping 6.9% to 4.2%.

Brisbane. While Labor had much to be relieved about in Queensland, its high hopes for recovering Brisbane were not realised, with Liberal National Party member Teresa Gamabaro up 1.8% on the primary vote, Labor steady. A 6.9% drop in the Greens vote to 14.3%, coming off Andrew Bartlett’s high-profile campaign in 2010, produced a significantly weaker flow of preferences to Labor.

Capricornia. The central Queensland seat vacated by Kirsten Livermore is going down to the wire after a heavy 8.9% drop in the Labor primary vote. This was mostly down to the competition from the Palmer and Katter parties, the former outscoring the latter 7.9% to 5.3%. With the Liberal National Party vote little changed, Labor suffered a 4.4% swing on ordinary votes off a margin of 4.6%.

Fairfax. Clive Palmer seems to be fighting to hold on to a 1411 against a strong trend in late counting towards Liberal National Party candidate Ted O’Brien. However, O’Brien’s current vote count looks to have been inflated by a discrepancy you can read about here. As things stand, the key to Palmer’s potential victory is his clear success in outpolling Labor 27.3% to 18.1% on ordinary votes, with LNP candidate Ted O’Brien’s 41.0% below the safety zone with Labor and Greens preferences flowing strongly against him.

Fisher. With Palmer United Party candidate Bill Schoch apparently primed to overtake Labor on preferences, despite trailing them 21.0% to 18.3% on the primary vote, Mal Brough’s 43.8% share of the vote was an uncomfortably long distance from the 50% mark. Nonetheless, Brough appears to be gaining about a quarter of the overall preferences on offer, enough to get him over the line with a few per cent to spare.

Griffith. Kevin Rudd suffered Labor’s equal biggest swing in Queensland of 5.2%, with Bill Glasson’s 5.9% lift on the primary vote the second highest achieved by an LNP candidate.

Kennedy. Bob Katter emerged a big loser of election night with a 17.1% slump in his primary vote, reducing him to 29.5%. Liberal National Party candidate Noeline Ikin was the beneficiary of a 14.0% spike that put her well in front on the primary vote count with 40.6%, but preferences are flowing solidly enough to Katter to leave him with a margin slightly below 3%.

Leichhardt. There was strong movement to Labor in Aboriginal communities, doubtless reflecting the background of Labor candidate Billy Gordon. This briefly created the illusion of a potential Labor victory as the first booth-matched results came through on election night, but that was negated by a strong performance by LNP member Warren Entsch in Cairns and the electorate’s rural areas.

Lilley. The 1.6% swing against Wayne Swan was well in line with the statewide norm, and if anything a little above it. Given the pre-election publicity though, Swan’s success in retaining almost all of his 2010 primary vote was among the results that lifted Labor’s spirits on an otherwise grim evening.

Petrie. Kevin Rudd’s election night boast of having defended all of Labor’s Queensland seats to the contrary, it appears that Yvette d’Ath has been unseated by a swing of 3.0% on the ordinary votes, compared with her pre-election margin of 2.5%.

Northern Territory

		%	Swing	Projection
Coalition	41.2	+0.8	41.6
Labor		38.3	-0.2	37.7
Greens		7.7	-5.0	7.9
Palmer United	4.6
Others		8.2

Two-party preferred

Coalition	49.7	+0.9	50.1
Labor		50.3	-0.9	49.9

Lingiari. As usual, swings in the extra-Darwin Northern Territory electorate were all over the shop, the general picture being of a slight swing to Labor in remote communities blunting the swing against Labor to 2.7%, short of Warren Snowdon’s 3.7% margin. This followed a 2010 result which delivered huge swings to the Country Liberal Party in remote communities but partly balanced them out with strong swings to Labor in the major centre, specifically Alice Springs.

Solomon. Natasha Griggs, who unseated Labor’s Damien Hale in 2010, notably failed to enjoy a sophomore surge, Solomon delivering a rare 0.7% swing to Labor to reduce the CLP margin to 0.9%.

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.

1,311 comments on “Call of the board: part one”

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  1. Yesiree Bob@1195

    Kennett couldnt even last two terms. and he had policies.
    Abbott is just as despised and mistrusted.
    more importanly, he has no policies.
    if the alp can get it’s act togther, they can confine Abbott a three year curio.

    AFAIR Kennett lasted 2 terms.

  2. [ The difference being that we knew where Gillard was in the polls and there was no reason to expect any improvement and every reason to expect things to get even worse. ]

    God – this is just too easy …

    So when Rudd was trailing badly in the polls and the party dumped him in favor of Gillard, they were in fact doing the right thing?

    I’m so glad we finally got that one sorted!

  3. [What Rod Cameron is saying is that any “furniture” that was saved at this election was saved by act of removing Gillard. Any replacement of Gillard – by Stephen Smith, for example – would have achieved the same effect. Rudd added no value to Labor’s vote other than by not being Gillard. In fact his ramshackle, self-centered campaign probably achieved a worse result than some other replacement would have achieved. The rise in the polls in July initial relief that Rudd was not Gillard, but voters soon discovered that Rudd was still Rudd, and the polls fell again.]

    Even as a Ruddstorationist, I dont necessarily disagree with the basics of this analysis. Removing Gillard certainly brought the main electoral benefit.

    I’d only tweak it a bit: the turn to a third candidate would have brought new issues and memes “revolving door”etc,and though I agree any 3rd candidate would have improved on the 40 seats JG was heading for, I doubt Smith or anyone would have done better, for this reason, and probably a bit worse.

    Many minds were made up: I see a lot of the initial Rudd sugar hit as relief, 4% came back permanently, but the extra 3-4% slowly drifted back to where they were always going after the initial applause.

    I dont think it was a great campaign, but frankly, for a party that shot itself in the foot , was bitterly divided, and had Murdoch against it, half its own party, and a leader only weeks back in the job, the results were sound and a great relief.

  4. Psephos @ 1191: On scientists as candidates: Edward Cawthron (not Cawthorn, as shown in your archive), had a Ph.D in physics, and openly ran as a Nazi for the ACT by-election in 1970

  5. [Phelps has a PhD in international relations.]

    Oh that Abbott and Bishop both have greater skills than him in this area, and most fish and chip shop operators have more skill in international relationships than Abbott and Bishop is quite funny.

  6. [ the results were sound and a great relief. ]

    All in all, a “glorious victory” for our Dear Leader!

    … cue military parades and gooey national anthems …

  7. Player One@1204

    The difference being that we knew where Gillard was in the polls and there was no reason to expect any improvement and every reason to expect things to get even worse.


    God – this is just too easy …

    So when Rudd was trailing badly in the polls and the party dumped him in favor of Gillard, they were in fact doing the right thing?

    I’m so glad we finally got that one sorted!

    Rudd was not behind in the polls and was improving further when backstabbed. IIRC it was 52 – 48 in favour of Labor.

  8. [Psephos @ 1191: On scientists as candidates: Edward Cawthron (not Cawthorn, as shown in your archive), had a Ph.D in physics, and openly ran as a Nazi for the ACT by-election in 1970]

    The 1971 Parliamentary Handbook gives Cawthorn.

    I wonder what became of him. He was a student of Sir Marcus Oliphant. I remember Oliphant saying he agonised over whether to dismiss Cawthorn, then decided it would be unprincipled to do so, so they agreed never to mention political subjects to each other. I doubt I could have been so high-minded.

  9. Bemused,
    AFAIR Kennett lasted 2 terms.

    and no more. That is my point, there are many parallels between Abbott and Kennett, about the only difference is that Kennett did at least have some policies, no matter how objectionable.
    Kennett was supposed to usher in a golden age of Liberal Administration in Victoria, remember.
    In much the same way that many of the Fiberal accolytes here are claiming that Abbott will usher in a Golden Age of Liberal Administration for Australia.
    As Kennett went, so to will Tony

  10. Re Knnet
    He won two handsome victories but lost by a single seat on his third attempt

    It was his hated policies as well as his attitudes that eventually brought about his defeat
    He became more idosyncratic as his third term got underway and he clashed with many establishment groups who helped to bring him down
    He also neglect rural Victoria seeing it as “always” loyal…and lost many safe seats there at the time of his defeat

  11. [Rudd was not behind in the polls and was improving further when backstabbed. IIRC it was 52 – 48 in favour of Labor]

    I thought it was established long ago here at PB that Rudd wasnt removed for polling reasons?

  12. [Rudd was not behind in the polls and was improving further when backstabbed. IIRC it was 52 – 48 in favour of Labor.]

    Bemused you will know the Rudd haters are well post-fact and confronting them with one of the many facts they so need to ignore will just upset things.

    And if you said something like Rudd was deposed not because his polling was bad but because it was improving well that fact just has them foaming at the mouth and calling for their meds. So don’t do that.

  13. [I thought it was established long ago here at PB that Rudd wasnt removed for polling reasons?]

    It was but those that removed him have never come up with a credible alternative and the Rudd haters occasionally get confused (like with every breath).

  14. [The difference being that we knew where Gillard was in the polls and there was no reason to expect any improvement and every reason to expect things to get even worse.]

    So all the more reason not to select Kev-07 as a replacement.

  15. [ Rudd was not behind in the polls and was improving further when backstabbed. IIRC it was 52 – 48 in favour of Labor. ]

    Rewriting history again? Here’s where I do that Selective Quoting thingy again that you hate so much … this time from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Labor_Party_leadership_spill,_2010):

    [ Senior Labor MPs conceded that the ALP’s primary vote had dropped below 30% in some key marginal seats, a figure which if replicated at a federal election would have seen a Labor defeat. ]

    Or try this one:

    [ This followed a Herald/Nielsen poll which showed the government would lose if an election were held then ]

    As the saying goes, bemused … you are entitled to your own opinions … but not to your own facts.

  16. [I thought it was established long ago here at PB that Rudd wasnt removed for polling reasons?]

    I’ve been over this question here many times, and I’m not going over it again. Time to let go…

  17. [ It’s boring and completely irrelevant to the present. ]

    Actually, I disagree – the complete failure of some ALP members to understand WHY they lost so badly is likely to significantly reduce their chance of winning next time around.

    However, I agree it is getting dull, so I’ll leave off.

  18. Psephos @ 1213: I guess the Parliamentary Handbook must have got his name wrong. It was definitely Cawthron: a few references to him still come up on Google. I hadn’t recalled an Oliphant connection: it was my recollection that he had worked for Sir Ernest Titterton in the Nuclear Physics Department at ANU.

  19. Not to reignite last night’s trivia-fest, but Jim Saleam has a PhD in political science. While a PhD is clearly something to be respected, it doesn’t have any correlation with that person’s suitability for public office. (Cawthron was actually the Nazi Party’s leader, too, and the leader of its ever-so-slightly-less-disgusting “faction” which later split off and formed its own rival party – a fascinating, convoluted and morbidly hilarious story.)

  20. [I’ve been over this question here many times, and I’m not going over it again. Time to let go…]

    The Rudd haters bought the story Adam you’ve got their hearts and their minds, you should never let go.

  21. [ I guess the Parliamentary Handbook must have got his name wrong. It was definitely Cawthron: a few references to him still come up on Google.]

    It’s possible he nominated as Cawthorn, of course. It would be necessary to check the Parliamentary Papers to know.

  22. [Cawthron was actually the Nazi Party’s leader]

    My recollection is that Cass Young was the leader, but it’s all a long time ago now. I was part of the mob that smashed up his house in 1972. I was on TV 🙂

  23. Frickeg @ 1229: It was, I think, G H Hardy who described the Ph.D as “A German invention, suitable for foreigners and second-rate mathematicians” (or words to that effect).

  24. I think Young came later. The 1972 outfit that Young was leading was the National Socialist Party of Australia, which was the “moderate” breakaway from the Australian National Socialist Party. Arthur Smith led the ANSP until 1968 when he resigned and Eric Weinberg integrated it (the original party) into the NSPA. Cawthron had led the NSPA since its 1967 formation but by 1972 may have been replaced by Young (I’m going off David Harcourt’s 1972 book).

  25. Would anyone here tonight care to hazard a guess at the name of a famous professor at an Australian university who didn’t have even an undergraduate degree when appointed to his chair?

  26. Content of the Department website in relation to the National Broadband Network (NBN) is currently under review. The review will occur in the context of the new Government’s policy.

    Further information about the NBN project is available at http://www.nbnco.com.au.

    The Department has archived the previous website http://www.nbn.gov.au, and this is available at http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/123103.

    Document ID: 183091 | Last modified: 12 September 2013, 3:08pm

  27. When I was doing maths, a friend gave me Hardy’s “A Mathematician’s Apology” – it is sort of a defence of mathematics as a pursuit. And in one part he says that one of the beauties of maths is that in its purest form it can’t be used for war, then uses the example of the maths behind the theory of relativity as the sort of “pure” art that can’t harm mankind. I think he wrote it in 1940, five years before the first Nuclear War.

  28. [Would anyone here tonight care to hazard a guess at the name of a famous professor at an Australian university who didn’t have even an undergraduate degree when appointed to his chair?]

    Oh, the Melbourne University historian… started out as a parliamentary reporter, entirely self-taught, virtually founded Australian history as a discipline – but I can’t remember his name!

  29. #WASenate If RUI out polls SPRT and WikiLeaks out Poll AJP then 2 LIB 2 ALP and 1 LDP are elected. Greens miss out. Fold up at work

    Try excluding SPRT before RUI and then AJP before WIKILEAKS. Count the vote and the results change

    This highlights the flaws in the way the vote is folded up, segmentation and the calculation of the surplus transfer value

  30. CONTROVERSIAL NSW Liberal MP Peter Phelps has defended a brutal overseas military dictatorship in parliament, on the 40th anniversary of a coup that killed more than 3000 people.

    Dr Phelps told NSW parliament that he would “make the case for Augusto Pinochet,” following speeches by Greens and Labor MPs who condemned the September 11, 1973 overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende.

    Dr Phelps is the government whip in the upper house, and is from the conservative hard-right faction that preselected fugitive Greenway candidate Jaymes Diaz.

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