The Sunday after Super Saturday

A good night for Bill Shorten as Labor lands a surprisingly emphatic win in Longman, and does enough to get home in Braddon.

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.

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.

813 comments on “The Sunday after Super Saturday”

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  1. Fulvio Sammut @ #242 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:47 am

    The cut and paste queen and her disciple poke their heads briefly over the parapets and then hastily retreat to the safety of their bunker until their discomfiture dissipates ….

    She did the same thing after the humiliation in Batman. Plus ca change for The Greens. She’ll be back to cutting and pasting whole volumes of anti-Labor screeds very soon.

  2. “Swipes at News Limited are completely justified. There is no value to the ALP in pretending that News Limited is anything but an attack dog that serves conservative interests.

    News Limited are partisan players and they deserve to be treated as such.”

    You are on fire this morning Nicholas!

  3. Why pay for journalism I can write myself? I already know what each political commentator in the CPG is going to write before they write it. Why? Because they like putting every little thing together into a grand story, and there’s only so much theatre you can fit around any set of evidence. Anyone could take a speech by Albo and some talk from troublemakers in the ALP and turn it into a story of ALP strife. Is journalism meant to be a creative writing exercise and a competition between wannabe Nostradamuses?

    The other problem is the CPG all seem to talk to each other to come to some kind of consensus on that grand narrative, and then treat their role as the wise sage letting all us plebs in on it. You expect me to believe there’s only one possible political narrative? You can figure out everything that’s wrong with the show “Insiders” by just looking at the name. The CPG interviewing the CPG? It’s Canberra navel gazing at its worst. Stop patting yourselves on your collective backs.

  4. Pegasus, if you want to defend the Greens’ generally lousy performance last night, you could point out that the colourfully-named Major Moogy Sumner of the Greens received over 50 per cent more votes in Mayo than did the Labor candidate.

    Unlike seemingly anyone else, I continue to find Labor’s very low vote in Mayo, on an otherwise triumphal night for them, to be of some interest. Not to have a go at Labor, but simply because I wonder if it could possibly represent some sort of a record.

  5. Nicholas: “News Limited are partisan players and they deserve to be treated as such.”

    Wasn’t that the perspective that motivated Stephen Conroy’s attempted legislation of a few years back? I’m afraid that didn’t end well.

  6. meher baba @ #253 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:53 am

    Unlike seemingly anyone else, I continue to find Labor’s very low vote in Mayo, on an otherwise triumphal night for them, to be of some interest.

    Well, at least the ALP ran a candidate. Trent Zimmerman’s bleating about why the WA libs didn’t run in seats where they could reasonably expect to get around 40% of the vote – even on a bad day – was excruciatingly embarrassing.

    Even the po-faced ABC talking heads couldn’t resist a raised eyebrow.

  7. then repeated ad nauseam.

    Murphy, bless her cotton socks, was still referring back to her own ridiculously spun piece on that speech as the only supporting evidence for Albo clearly being on the march as late as last night.

    A more classic example of a BB Bootstrap effort you can not find.

    -Write an at best hugely overspun piece putting two and two together to get 45,367. (other less fair minded folk might call it complete bullshit from start to finish)
    -Talk about 45,367 as though everyone knows 2 + 2 equals it
    – Link back to your original piece as the proof for why it’s true (and how it wasn’t your fault when it is proven wrong – ‘the media’ was talking about it so there must have been something there!)

  8. It will be interesting, given the flow of PHON preferences to Labor in Longman, if Labor will seek to further solidify their relationship with PHON in order to gain more in Queensland.
    Well I can see Labor continuing to attack the government on company tax cuts and the ‘flat income tax’ proposals. And push for higher spending on services.

    Given the Longman result, Labor will ignore PHON and let the coalition attempt to deal with them.

  9. Peg: “Yes, I was going to post similar but I didn’t want to be accused of “cherry picking” lol”

    I think you chose well. The results for the Greens in the other seats were fairly lacklustre, although in Longman their vote did increase from “bugger all” to “bugger all plus half a percent”.

  10. If anyone should have a question mark over his leadership it’s the Black Wiggle. Yet another round of poor electoral performances in by-elections by the Greens.

  11. Player One: “Well, at least the ALP ran a candidate.”

    They did, but I think they might have done better not to have done so. I would imagine that the candidate and the party workers are feeling a bit shattered, and the fact that the Libs didn’t regain the seat would be cold comfort.

  12. Itza

    Have passed that info on.

    The hound is going through the thoughtfully plucking feathers off chooks stage. She’ll grow out of it…

  13. “Unlike seemingly anyone else, I continue to find Labor’s very low vote in Mayo, on an otherwise triumphal night for them, to be of some interest. Not to have a go at Labor, but simply because I wonder if it could possibly represent some sort of a record.”

    Labor seemed to run dead in Mayo, but a vote of only 6% is still surprising.

    In the early 1990s I voted for centrist (but green-tinged) independent Ted Mack in my electorate (North Sydney) because Labor has no chance of winning here. In the Senate I voted Labor. I suppose many people in Mayo thought the same – in effect they voted strategically against the Liberals. One PB’er said she handed out ‘how to vote’ cards for Ms Sharkie, although she seems to be strongly left.

  14. meher baba,
    You really are getting into your chosen tack of the day aren’t you? Labor should be worried about their lowest vote ever in Mayo!?! I don’t think. Labor ran dead in Mayo in order to maximise Rebecca Sharkie’s chances of whomping Trickle Downer. They even said so. And they also said they were putting up a candidate in Mayo in order to give their preferences to Sharkie and for anyone who really wanted to vote for Labor yesterday, as compared to the Liberals, your favoured party, who shirked that responsibility to their voters in Perth and Fremantle. And Labor’s plan
    in Mayo succeeded in spades.

  15. P1:

    Samuel ClarkVerified account@sclark_melbs
    14h14 hours ago
    We’ll cross live now to Pauline Hanson….

    :large

  16. meher baba @ #242 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:45 am

    Here’s poor old Georgina Downer trying to look a bit humble with a line of “I know I’ve only just moved back to the electorate but I care deeply about the place and I’m keen to have another crack at becoming your member.”

    You, sir, have an odd definition of ‘humility’. I parse that as equal parts entitlement and hubris. It’s basically “Yeah, I lost, but you know what, I have just as much a right to run for this seat as anybody else, and I’ll be back next time whether you like it or not”.

    The humble thing to says is “I accept my loss and acknowledge that I’m not what the voters in this electorate want, I won’t be contesting again unless/until the good people here convince me otherwise”.

  17. C@tmomma @ #248 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:48 am

    I think that facebook post was another, ‘The things that batter’ moment for Alexander Downer.

    ‘Nation Builders’!?! Tearing down a few thousand trees on your squattocracy property and planting crops? Yeah right.

    Grazing c@t. They’re graziers doncha know. And they hate horrible haters, horribly.

  18. meher baba @ #260 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:01 am

    Player One: “Well, at least the ALP ran a candidate.”

    They did, but I think they might have done better not to have done so. I would imagine that the candidate and the party workers are feeling a bit shattered, and the fact that the Libs didn’t regain the seat would be cold comfort.

    You’d like to get that meme out there, wouldn’t you? You are obviously trying very hard today to make that sort of impression stick.

  19. meher baba @ #264 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:01 am

    Player One: “Well, at least the ALP ran a candidate.”

    They did, but I think they might have done better not to have done so. I would imagine that the candidate and the party workers are feeling a bit shattered, and the fact that the Libs didn’t regain the seat would be cold comfort.

    Disappointed, perhaps – but not shattered. They would not have expected to win.

  20. I would imagine that the candidate and the party workers are feeling a bit shattered, and the fact that the Libs didn’t regain the seat would be cold comfort.

    Nah. The plan was to run dead to elevate Sharkie’s chances of winning. A plan that succeeded beautifully.

  21. ItzaDream @ #266 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:03 am

    C@tmomma @ #248 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:48 am

    I think that facebook post was another, ‘The things that batter’ moment for Alexander Downer.

    ‘Nation Builders’!?! Tearing down a few thousand trees on your squattocracy property and planting crops? Yeah right.

    Grazing c@t. They’re graziers doncha know. And they hate horrible haters, horribly.

    Okay, so they had to tear down a few thousand trees so their cattle could graze. Happy? 😛

  22. Unlike seemingly anyone else, I continue to find Labor’s very low vote in Mayo, on an otherwise triumphal night for them, to be of some interest. Not to have a go at Labor, but simply because I wonder if it could possibly represent some sort of a record.

    I’m sure BK can lay it out in more detail for you, but Labor ran purely to help Sharkie. It was the deadest of dead runs. The entire point of the exercise for Labor was to make sure Downer and by extension Trumble copped the biggest hit possible. Unlike some, Labor knows where there real game is.

  23. I know it is still an ‘uncool’ view, and it was uncool in the US, until the Trump / Fox / Russia consortium won the presidential election, but long story short fox and its Australian affiliated are not first and foremost journalistic endeavours, first and foremost they are propaganda outlets.

    Gay Alcorn followed up Mike Carlton’s tweet with a tweet saying essentially that the Australian led and most of the rest of the press pack followed. I will add blindly. If you are a journalist there is nothing worse you can do than follow a propaganda outfit. They were seeking to influence the election in the LNP’s favour. Whether or not this was on the encouragement of a foreign national interfering in / attacking our democracy we will probably never know.

    Gay Alcorn has just retweeted Paula Matthews saying how right David Speers got it last week, from his scientific sample of ‘being in the electorate and sniffing the mood’. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

  24. The CPG need to move beyond viewing their job as one of transmitting information from experts to the ignorant, of identifying the one correct answer to tell the rest of us. They could, for example, see their role as:
    – Connecting various sections of our society.
    – Including all stakeholders in the discussion.
    – Identifying commonalities and differences.
    – Drawing out questions and possible answers.
    – Giving voice to those without it.
    – Facilitating our learning (of how to communicate with each other) together as a community.
    – Facilitating Australians’ learning of how to sort through the overwhelming deluge of information.

    The presentation on the website or dead tree, then, is one of a collaborative document with the journalist in the background as an expert mediator.

  25. Speaking of PHON, did any of the media attempt to interview any of the Hanson cardboard cut-outs?

    I am amazed that more was not made of such a golden opportunity!

    The cardboard cut out would have made more sense. And a Pauline Hanson that makes sense would have zero use for the media.

  26. One of the early comments on this thread quoted a tweet from Mike Carlton pointing out the “eyewateringly’ stupid groupthink of the MSM during in their appalling coverage of Super Saturday. Merdoch/Fauxfax/Chauncyguardian journos have become addicted to lazy superficial narratives based on egregiously cherrypicked facts. Worse still, is their “Footyshowification” (see First Dog on the Moon) of the media leaving only a few such as Ross Gittins and our Grog Jericho scrutinising issues in depth.

  27. Another view:

    Osman Faruqi‏Verified account @oz_f · 9m9 minutes ago

    Only question political journos should be asking themselves today is how they let the entire byelection narrative be written by Anthony Albanese’s office.

  28. C@tmomma @ #275 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:06 am

    ItzaDream @ #266 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:03 am

    C@tmomma @ #248 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:48 am

    I think that facebook post was another, ‘The things that batter’ moment for Alexander Downer.

    ‘Nation Builders’!?! Tearing down a few thousand trees on your squattocracy property and planting crops? Yeah right.

    Grazing c@t. They’re graziers doncha know. And they hate horrible haters, horribly.

    Okay, so they had to tear down a few thousand trees so their cattle could graze. Happy? 😛

    Was a hit and giggle c@t, nothing serious.

  29. lizzie @ #207 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 8:23 am

    This is true and was a bit of mea culpa by Murph.

    @murpharoo: journos spend too much time on “theatre criticism” instead of burrowing down on the issues that matter to people.

    Murphy was the only one who came out strongly against the CH9 takeover of Fairfax.

    Murphy was also the one who had the news story of the year (the Barnaby Joyce Rootgate scandal) right in front of her and chose to ignore it.

    Her attempt at justification for ignoring that story was one of the most pathetic things I’ve ever read. Apparently she didn’t act on it because at that stage it was all rumours and nothing was confirmed. FFS, that is actually her job as a journalist – to dig deep and find out if there is any truth to the rumours, and if confirmed, to report it. A major, major fail on her part.

  30. Wasn’t that the perspective that motivated Stephen Conroy’s attempted legislation of a few years back?

    I don’t support Stephen Conroy’s attempted reforms to media ownership. I think the key thing for the federal government to do is make large, real increases to the ABC’s funding (for Australian drama, children’s TV, and journalism) and to fill the ABC’s board and senior executive posts with people who actually support public broadcasting and know something about how to deliver it. Then the ABC would be able to recruit a larger number of talented people and give them the training and mentoring they need to become highly skilled public interest journalists.

    My comment about treating News Limited as a partisan player is really about how non-conservative politicians should respond to News Limited in press conferences and interviews. They should still answer questions from News Limited but they should always use a combination of gentle humour and blunt rejoinders to point out the agenda that animates those questions. News Limited wants the best of both worlds – to enjoy the freedom to be partisan and the legitimacy of a legacy journalism organization. Since they vigorously exercise the former, they must be denied the latter. Non-conservative politicians should de-legitimize News Limited’s pretensions to being a journalistic outfit. The fact that they occasionally do some genuine journalism (about the Haneef case, the Australian Wheat Board scandal etc) does not offset their near constant barracking for conservative causes.

  31. Prof. Higgins

    It seems the cleaning out of journalism in search of higher profits (or survival) has copied the policies of businesses which downsize: turf out the older experienced players and bring in the cheaper young ones. Never works for the good of the country or the business.

  32. Disappointed, perhaps – but not shattered. They would not have expected to win.

    Elated. Had one job to do. Did it. Watched their comrades in the four other seats also do their jobs.

    Drink!

  33. The LNP clearly have not figured out how to deal with ON or any of the multitude of other RW objector voices. RW politics is fragmenting. In the case of ON, Dutton’s dog whistling has only served to give energy to ON themes, licensing Lib voters to support ON at the expense of the the LNP. Meanwhile, Labor campaigned on a core social justice choice between favouring health or banks.

    The LNP have become self-wedging. They drive voters off to ON as well as to Labor.

    It’s no wonder the Right is disintegrating, as we saw in Perth yesterday, where about a dozen micro candidates from the Right were on the ballot and the Liberals were not prepared to run.

    The omens for Labor are very favourable.

  34. Dan Gulberry

    I’m very happy to admit Murphy’s failure over Barnaby.

    The continuing failure of the CPG to being Barnaby to account but to pile in on Husar (wtte “Of course we have to wait for the enquiry, but…”) is being led by Libs such as Amanda Vanstone on The Drum (and Baird allowed it).

  35. Must be about time for a photo shoot with Malcolm beset with difficulties but soldiering on – choppy waves on the harbour, flat tyre on the wheel barrow, forgot one of the cow’s names.

  36. ratsak @ #288 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:14 am

    Elated. Had one job to do. Did it. Watched their comrades in the four other seats also do their jobs. !

    Yes, quite likely. One thing most ALP members know is when to take one for the team.

    I don’t think you can say the same about most LNP members, of whom Georgina Downer would be fairly typical.

  37. Our great ALP will now go on to win the next election by a landslide and bill shorten will be the best PM of this great nation and Turnbull needs to go ASAP

  38. a r @ #195 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 8:12 am

    What they did was refuse to hand over Osama after the attacks.

    They did offer to hand him over. .

    Bush rejects Taliban offer to hand Bin Laden over
    Mon 15 Oct 2001 07.19 AEST

    Afghanistan’s deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.

    “If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved” and the bombing campaign stopped, “we would be ready to hand him over to a third country”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.terrorism5

  39. Wayne @ #294 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:19 am

    Our great ALP will now go on to win the next election by a landslide and bill shorten will be the best PM of this great nation and Turnbull needs to go ASAP

    Pssst! Wayne! If someone is holding you hostage, include the word “embattled” in your next post and we’ll send the police!

  40. Did the second quarter 4.1% increase in GDP in the States get a run on PB? Trump spoke mostly in sentences, mostly, as the immaculately groomed VP antichrist smirked in the background. It’s a hook the Cons will likely try and hang their tax cuts on. Furious trading before the tariffs cut in, more likely.

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