EMRS: Liberal 42, Labor 31, Greens 19 in Tasmania

The latest EMRS poll finds Tasmania’s Liberal government off nearly ten points since the election, without much of the dividend going to Labor.

EMRS has published its quarterly result of state voting intention in Tasmania, which has both major parties down since the last poll in August: the Liberals by four to 42% (compared with 51.2% at the March 15 election), and Labor by two to 31% (27.3% at the election). The Greens, who tend to score inflated results from EMRS, are up three to 19% (13.8% at the election).

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.

18 comments on “EMRS: Liberal 42, Labor 31, Greens 19 in Tasmania”

  1. Glad to see Labor + Greens add up to 50% of the vote for the first time since early 2011. Tasmania seems to be trending back toward the left.

    Also, although it comes as no surprise to most of us – it is fun to see the ‘Greens are dead’ crowd eat their words yet again.

  3. http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/emrs-liberals-fall-to-four-year-low.html

    EMRS: Liberals fall to four-year low

    I interpret this poll as most likely suggesting a hung parliament (12-9-4) with some chance of the Liberals keeping their majority (13-9-3).

    My current state aggregate of all polling still has a Liberal majority (13-9-3) but they’re not that far off dropping to 12.

    I’ve included the two Morgan SMS samples in my aggregate as well but they got very low weightings.

  4. deblonay@2: You couldn’t be more wrong. It’s the Labor Left which hates the Greens like poison.

    The Greens attack some of the key bastions of the Labor Left: the mining and forestry industries (whose workers belong to the Left-aligned CFMEU) and the State and Federal inner-city electorates which are almost all held by members of the Labor Left. Think of the attitudes to the environment of major Left figures such as Martin Ferguson.

    Almost all of the leading Labor people who have taken a strong interest in the environment have come from the Right: Barry Cohen, Richo, Neville Wran, Bob Carr, even Peter Garrett and Tony Burke. John Faulkner is the one major exception who comes to mind.

  5. Re the EMRS polling results: even though – as Kevin suggests – the Green vote is almost certainly overstated, it’s a pretty good result for them which would suggest that – if an election were held now – they would probably get their seat in Lyons back (which they didn’t lose by much).

    The Hodgman Government would have to expect a result like this: they haven’t achieved much. They have symbolically legislated the Tasmanian Forest Agreement out of existence. They have also brought in some draconian legislation against anti-logging protesters which is also largely symbolic unless and until there is someone in the industry who wants to make a serious attempt at logging in a controversial area: which, given current market conditions, would probably only happen if the Government were prepared to subsidise it even more heavily than they subsidise the rest of the industry.

    The other strong action the Hodgman Government is taking is a chest-thumping, snarling approach towards public service downsizing. It is undoubtedly a big hit with their own rusted-on constituency, but I suspect that the rest of the electorate is finding it a bit concerning: because everyone in Tassie has one or more friends or relatives who are worried about losing their jobs.

    So all those Tasmanians who voted for Hodgman in anticipation of a forestry industry renaissance haven’t got all that much to get excited about. And those who care about the economy as a whole (of which, contrary to what many Tasmanians seem to think, forestry is only a relatively small, and declining part) are worried about the dampening effect of the public sector cuts, and also of the risk that the prospect of another big stoush in the forests could tarnish the Tasmanian brand in other key economic areas such as tourism, high quality food, etc.

    So a decline in the Lib vote is to be expected, as is the fact that not much of that decline has gone to Labor – which is almost embedded in the outmoded forestry/hydro economic paradigm than the Libs: indeed, if we focus simply on the leaders, I reckon Hodgman is a bit more economically forward-looking than Bryan Green.

  7. If you google “Peter Garrett faction” you will find some media articles suggesting he belonged to the Right and others suggesting he was non-aligned. I think he was required notionally to join the Right when he was pre-selected in 2004. After Rudd dumped him from the Environment job, I think he began to lose interest in internal politics and ceased to Caucus with anybody.

    Anyway, he certainly was never associated in any way with the Left.

  13. Sorry Arrnea, I’m honestly not sure if you’re being facetious or if there has been some kind of massive information glitch, but Nick McKim is not the leader of the Greens.

    ABC News report 7th April 2014: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/new-greens-leader3a-kim-booth-replaces-nick-mckim/5372440

    Tasmanian Greens Website: http://tasmps.greens.org.au/kim-booth

    Parliament of Tasmania website: http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/HA/GreensCab.htm

    Kim Booth has only been fronting press conferences, attending public events, addressing parliament, speaking at rallies, announcing policies, and being interviewed as the Leader of the Greens for 8 months now.

    I can understand the public confusion, the Greens have always been disproportionately absent from media coverage and many people couldn’t name the Premier let alone the leaders of the opposition parties. But I expect a professional political reporter from our public broadcaster to keep up with these things, made easier by the fact that they are sent like 10 media releases every business day from the diligent people at the Tasmanian Greens parliamentary office with the words ‘Greens Leader Kim Booth’ plastered across the top.

    I get that the Greens no longer have control of government departments, so maybe they’re not as newsworthy as they were this time last year. I know that the ABC is stretched pretty thing right now anyway, mistakes will be made and politics is a complex and ever changing world. But for the ABC to not realise he exists 8 months into the job, that’s just effing rude.

  14. Fun fact:

    When you type “Greens leader tasmania” into Google, it returns Nick McKim.
    When you type “Tasmanian Greens leader”, it returns Kim Booth.

    That’s what threw me (I did the former and called it a day). Mea culpa.

  15. The whole Greens leadership thing was a farce. There’s only three of them and O’Connor is McKim’s partner. So if Booth ran against McKim, O’Connor couldn’t vote so it would have been 1-1. This meant that if Booth was at all interested, McKim had to quit to avoid that outcome being played out formally (which would have been extremely silly).

  17. KB – Morgan just clearly do not understand Tasmania’s electoral system. As you have shown over and over again, the ratios of Lib/ALP/Grn in each division can “bifurcate” the overall result with small changes in initial values. Surely if they rely only on statewide polling they need to look at the variation from the last election and apply some algorithm to each division to try and get a sensible answer.

    Your modelling is clearly the way to go. By the way, the 4 libs in Braddon was a record for a 5-seat division wasn’t it? What was the record for a 7-seater?

  18. Yes the 4 Libs in Braddon was the first time it’s ever been done in a 5-seat division. Quite amusing because when the possibility of 4s at this election was first raised one local journo said he would swim a river naked in the electorate where it happened if it did. The record for a 7-seater was 5, obtained by Labor in Braddon in 1972 and the Liberals in Braddon in 1992.

    (For completeness, from 1909 to 1956 there were 6 seats per electorate, and it was relatively common for a party to get four in an electorate – including one election where Labor did so in every electorate – but nobody ever got five.)

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