While Labor’s by-election performances were nothing special in historical terms, it was undeniably a good night for the party, thanks largely to an unexpectedly clear win in Longman. Five campaign opinion polls had Labor slightly behind in the seat, before the election eve Newspoll found them edging to a 51-49 lead. Labor actually appears headed for a winning margin of around 4%, bolstering a fragile 0.8% margin with a swing of 3.4%. The big surprise was the near double-digit fall in the Liberal National Party primary vote, which leaves them struggling to crack 30%. This is well below the 34% attributed to them by Newspoll, to say nothing of a series of ReachTEL results that had them approaching 40%.
The LNP slump rendered redundant what everyone imagined would be the decisive factor, namely the flow of One Nation preferences. Despite this, One Nation were the other big winner in Longman, adding around 7% to their 9.4% vote from 2016. This indeed flowed a lot more strongly to the LNP than in 2016, reflecting the party’s how-to-vote card recommendation and the fact that they clearly picked up much of the LNP’s lost support. After receiving 56.5% of One Nation preferences in 2016, Labor looks to have scored only a third this time.
The Braddon result was less good for Labor, notwithstanding that they have clearly won, and that this looked in doubt throughout the campaign. The main change from the 2016 result is that independent Craig Garland scored a creditable 11.0% (although it may come down a little in late counting), chipping a few percent away from each of Labor, Liberal and the Greens. Rebekha Sharkie’s win in Mayo was of about the anticipated scale: her present lead over Georgina Downer after preferences is 8.6%, compared with her 5.0% margin in 2016. Sharkie’s primary vote performance was even more robust, up from 34.9% to around 45%. This bespeaks one poor aspect of the by-elections for Labor – after playing dead at two successive elections, its vote in Mayo has fallen all the way to 6.0%.
In the two WA seats, Josh Wilson did notably better in Fremantle than Patrick Gorman did in Perth, although neither was in the least bit troubled. Wilson gained 11.6% to gain a clear majority on the primary vote, with the Greens treading water at 17% and the Liberal Democrats garnering enough stray Liberals to land in the low teens. Despite the 42.3% Liberal vote from 2016 being up for grabs (compared with 36.9% in Fremantle), Labor only made a negligible gain on the primary vote in Perth, with the Greens also only up slightly. The rest spread among a large field of 15 candidates, with independent Paul Collins the strongest performer among claimants to the Liberal vote. Turnout was notably subdued in Perth and Fremantle, and looks likely to settle at around 70%.
If you click on the image below, you will find an accounting of the swings in Braddon and Longman and, in the former case, an projection of the final result. Since the swing on votes counted in Braddon thus far is exactly zero, it concludes Labor’s existing margin of 2.2% will be maintained. Also featured are regional breakdowns for Braddon and Longman, with the former broken into the larger towns (Burnie, Devonport and Ulverstone) and the remainder, and the latter into Bribie Island area and the remainder. This doesn’t turn up anything particularly interesting: especially in Longman, the swings were remarkably uniform. Craig Garland’s vote was a little lower in the larger towns, but there was otherwise little distinction to speak of in Braddon.
Love the jumper Dolly
Jieh-Yung lo tweets
Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership has just got ‘shortened’. #auspol #insiders
That tweet of Downer Snr’s looks even worse today!
Prof. Higgins @ #147 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 9:36 am
The GA continues to grow. It’s the best publication by a mile. The negativity towards it from Labor partisans is completely illogical.
Hey BK
Have you brought hate to the hills and are you a “new arrival”. Andrew Downer is out to get you!!!!!
🙂 Smiley
I am not listening to Blindsided this morning. The result is so clear, across four states, that Turnbull and his policies were rejected. Any attempt to say otherwise is frankly pathetic.
Given that Turnbull presumably handpicked or endorsed all the candidates, gave them nine agonising weeks to persuade people, with a deluge of sympathetic media coverage, this result is clearer than most. Parliament was not even sitting, so distractions were few. Yesterday proved that people do not like either Turnbull, his policies, or both.
Fair enough for Bushfire to repeat himself given how often I repeat his salient points all the time! 😉
Tingle, like the rest of the CPG is just a limpet on the arse of the powerful. The only difference is skin tone.
Doughty Georgina Downer. Ye gods!
Saturday night in Moora WA visiting wAs an election free zone.
What a great Sunday it is.
dtt
I think I fit the bill.
Rex is a Guardian fan? You could knock me over with a feather. 🙂
dtt,
I know I shouldn’t ask but who is Andrew Downer?
Back to the MSM talking about Labor. Not learnt anything
Niki Savva has really reverted to type today on Insiders.
Niki Savva going full spinning top for the Liberal Party today.
Barney in Go Dau @ #159 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 9:44 am
Does dtt even know what day it is?
I still prefer Savva to Gerard or Stutchbury.
KM calling for subscriptions to the Guardian.
When one compares William Bowe’s cogent, soundly reasoned essay above with the pathetic scattershot bloviating by “The Insliders” panel, this epitomises the reason that MSM news organisations are the agents of their own demise.
Savva given more than ample opportunity this morning to kick Labor, all the way back to 1987 and Paul Keating ffs! and lather up the Liberals.
No mention of the Cons legislative changes that let this takeover happen, and their bragging about it. Over to you Nikki.
On repeated comments… Most of what I post nowadays is from an Android phone running Chrome.
For some reason I need to tap the “POST COMMENT” button twice to make a comment, and sometimes the comment actually does appear twice.
The bias of the panel today is a prime example of why quality journalism is losing. First look at facts. See Cash Joyce etc. If you are going to talk scandals don’t just parrot government lines about workplace bullying
Re election dates, it’s a crowded calendar. My bet’s on May 18.
Call election now, earliest date is Sept 1.
Mid Sept – Early Oct: Footy finals, School Hols
Nov 24: Victorian election.
Dec 8 – latest practical date in 2018. Maybe Dec 15 at a pinch.
Dec 16-Jan 28: Christmas. Campaigning no-go area.
March 2: earliest 2019 election date if election called Jan 29 (Aust Day Holiday).
March 23: NSW State election
Mid-Late April: School hold (Easter Sunday April 21)
Federal Budget: May 7 or 14
Last date to avoid separate half Senate election: May 18 (call election by April 15, postpone Budget, campaign over Easter / School hold).
Malcolm will call an early election if the planets align, whatever he said in the past, and he has from for “creative” election timing, but early now seems unlikely. Early Dec or March 2 are possibilities.
BB
Its a PB quirk. Sometimes oddly appropriate.
ItzaDream @ #168 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 9:50 am
Would you prefer a Murdoch monopoly ?
I am letting my SMH subscription lapse and have been subscribing to the Guardian and Crikey for a while. I will probably add the Saturday Paper with what I save from SMH. I think it is really important to support journalism now. Who else is going to do serious investigative journalism on the current government? When you consider how secretive they are, how much process is abused, what else have they done that we still don’t know about yet?
Rex Douglas @ #176 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 9:55 am
Non sequitur gong of the morning.
.
I’ll support The Guardian when they ditch their incompetent political editor. As it is I just subscribed to The Saturday Paper, whose political coverage is clearly better.
Of course Murphy has learnt nothing. Even today, after these results she was talking about voter disillusion with both major parties. She simply couldn’t bring herself, even now, to criticise Turnbull or the government directly.
Malcolm Farr can’t even get away with saying something slightly anti-Turnbull, wrt him eating a pie with a knife and fork, without Katherine bleedin’ Murphy piping up and butting in to defend Talcum!!!
“I still prefer Savva to Gerard or Stutchbury”
Good point.
“Fairfax are the toughest, smartest … journos” – Murph.
Really? Seriously, do we really need the 4th estate? At all?
Socrates
We have to support quality journalism where we can. Its just a pity that the Canberra Gallery Press Corp group think dominates.
So much so the gallery ignores facts that are pointed out to it as unfair attacks on the press.
Of course there have been unfair attacks on journalists. Shoot the messenger is as old as the hills. However so is maintaining credibility which is part of what the word quality stands for that seems to elude the gallery.
Murphy: We didn’t make it all up, Albo gave a speech.
Yes, Albo gave a speech. The spin put on the speech was purely the CPG’s.
Had to laugh. Big Trev in his concession speech took credit for extracting all the pork from Turnbull that was poured into the seat during the campaign. It will be interesting to see if it actually materialises after such a drubbing.
Andrew_Earlwood @ #181 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:02 am
Low bar though. Savva is sometimes good for some bitchy gossip, and what not to wear on television.
zoomster
The journalist are in big denial about that spin. Despite Barrie Cassidy giving them the chance to do mea culpa.
The voters did not buy the spin. That is clear.
Agree with everyone about the Saturday Paper.
Just to clarify. The challenge to our traditional MSM is indeed from large Internet news aggregators like FaceBook, but equally it is from a spectrum of websites like Crikey, The Independent, Huff Post etc.
The irony is that Murphy is bellyaching when her job only exists because of the readership habits built up by pioneers like Crikey and Pollbludger which The Guardian has piggybacked into the Australian market when it’s never risked a dead-tree operation here.
C@tmomma @ #31 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 8:10 am
He will always have Rex!
Mundo is very happy he was wrong.
Mundo must learn not to piss his pants every time things look a bit iffy…..
When the going gets tough Mundo must toughen up.
At least Cassidy showed some contrition this morning…
It seems that some people here so insecure with their views that they need them supported by journalists and if a view expressed by a journalist doesn’t conform with theirs they are not worth listening to or reading.
I agree a few journalists have a bit to answer for over this episode. The coverage of Labor in the bi-election campaign implied a leadership spill was about to start the second Labor lost their first seat.
Looking back, most of the interviews with local people in the bi-election seats were far less comfortable for the government. Turnbull being confronted in Longman this week was a good example. There was too much narrative and too little observation.
phoenixRED @ #11 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 7:22 am
No, that’s not an accurate characterization of the Taliban. They did not plan, carry out, or directly support the 9/11 attacks. What they did was refuse to hand over Osama after the attacks.
At which point
Dark Lord of the Sith, Anakin SkywalkerDubya declared “if you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy” and dragged the U.S. into a massively costly and entirely unnecessary war against them that did absolutely nothing to help bring Osama to justice.As much as the Taliban objectively sucks, the war against them should never have been waged in the first place. Ending it is not a bad thing. The terrorists responsible for 9/11 have all been dead for years now.
Antony Green on preference flows (from all candidates)
#longman preferences to Labor 48.0% compared to last election 61.0% on common booths – results at ab.co/2KHZanP
#braddon preferences to Labor 64.4% compared to last election 65.7% on common booths – results at ab.co/2Nl0oqX
Someone on The Insiders (Farr?) said that Downer’s statement was a revival of the 17th Century.
zoomster, is there a travel update. I recently and temporarily parted company with mine in HK airport. Instructions were to contact the carrier who would contact Oz re immigration clearance and therefore boarding.
Good luck
How’s the hund?
Georgina ‘Out of towner’ Downer