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.
Apparently she didn’t act on it because at that stage it was all rumours and nothing was confirmed.
The Grauniad snipped my comment on her Albo speech piece that noted the contrast between her inability to find the worst kept secret in Tamworth and her ability to find leadershit in Albo’s speech that specifically praises Shorten and his approach in laying out policy. Bit too close to the bone.
What these results mean is we are going to be stuck with this bunch of absolute nincompoops in office for another 10 months. Dog help us!
I read that Malcolm has appeared somewhere to be interviewed. How was he?
Rumour has it that MT house cat was last night rushed to hospital after freak accident 🙂 🙂
Pritu@11:26am
How can dog help you in the situation we are in ? 🙂
Lizzie,
You’re spot on. I watch MSNBC’s evening lineup of Maddow, O’Donnell, Melber, Hays and even Chris Mathews. They all have incisive minds and strive to draw sound, well supported conclusions. Unfortunately, they’ll have at least one panelist from the MSM’s White House press gallery. These “correspondents” are invariably thirty-somethings who always call Trump “The President” as they gormlessly normalise him and his mendacious, diabolical staff because they are protecting the anonymous sources that they lazily quote ad nauseum.
Another amusing aspect of Super Sunday is seeing the media fall over themselves to avoid admitting the obvious – Georgina Downer is a terrible candidate.
Of course, anyone who had watched any of her panel show stints would have realised this, so I can only conclude that journos like her personally and let the vacuousness of her opinions wash over them.
‘Insiders’ tried the ‘voters don’t like blow-ins’ card valiantly – she won’t be a blow in by next election because her kids are enrolled at local schools — and then listed a plethora of blow ins with no connections whatever to the seats they contested (Andrew Robb in Goldstein, Mar’n Ferguson etc etc) who did very nicely, thank you.
Even the dynastic card doesn’t run, or the IPA card — many a candidate has won with these ‘difficulties’.
Georgina just isn’t a good candidate, full stop. And if she is the Liberals idea of a good woman candidate, they can set themselves all the targets in the world and it won’t get them anywhere.
pritu @ #301 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:26 am
Oh, I don’t know. It’s possible Dutton will go for a quick “Murder Malcolm” scenario, declare himself PM, and call an election while he still has a chance to hold his seat … but lose it anyway.
Well, we can all dream, can’t we???? 🙂
I think the electorate is in a mood for the things Labor has always cared about and always delivered, hopefully Bill finds some courage in the result and goes hard on jobs, wages, schools and hospitals. Ten months is a long time ALP can do a lot lot better than last night in Longman.
I only caught up with last 5 minutes of Insiders and noticed MT’s confidant Nicky Sava on the panel
Did she repeat that” Malcolm is having continuous run of bad luck”?
🙂
Australians neither want nor need another centrist party. That is a key reason why the Greens’ primary vote has stagnated at 10 percent nationally for about eight years now.
The Greens need to go big or go home. Why play it safe and bend over backwards to appear mainstream when voters are disillusioned with the mainstream? The Greens may as well question vigorously the severe defects in mainstream economic theory and propose bold, imaginative policies to achieve full employment and to improve the quality of jobs across the board and widen the concept of what paid work can be, not just in the public sector but in the private and not-for-profit sectors too. They may as well propose best practice policy for social goods, which is that the federal government should provide all of the financing, and users need not pay any user fee. We can and should abolish out-of-pocket costs for health care, education and training, aged care, child care, public transport. We can and should run network goods such as energy, telecommunications, and banking on a public mission of providing those goods to everyone at the lowest possible cost that is consistent with environmental sustainability and and socially useful outcomes. Profit maximization is a useful mechanism for consumer goods but it has no place in the provision of social and network goods.
Instead the Greens basically accept the flawed macro-economic framework that artificially constrains the policy options that are discussed in our political system. The Greens voluntarily accept constraints that prevent them from becoming an attractive alternative to the two other main parties. The Greens don’t campaign for full employment, they accept the myth that the federal government is constrained financially (in truth it is constrained by real resource availability and inflation risk, not finance), they accept the bogus claim that “robots are coming for our jobs” (this isn’t showing up in the labour productivity and job churn statistics and the claim is based on ignorance of the history of automation), they promote a post-work vision of society that isn’t shared by the most disadvantaged people in our community (the unemployed want a wage for doing something useful, not a stipend for being alive), and they aren’t calling for anything particularly bold on network goods and social goods that make a massive difference to the quality of people’s lives.
The Greens parliamentary wing has chosen a poor strategy of asking politely for relatively minor tweaks to existing policy in a desperate effort to appear mainstream. As a consequence, the Greens get all of the downside of radicalism (being laughed at and marginalized by most people) but none of the upside (that you are liberated to advocate genuinely radical policies!!). The Greens are perceived by most people as radical but they don’t get any of the advantages of actually being radical. They should be maximizing their appeal to people disaffected with the mainstream; instead they are really just an environmentally cleaner version of the mainstream.
In short, the Greens are neoliberals on bicycles.
zoomster @ #306 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:29 am
Indeed. You should have heard the conga line of senior Libs loudly proclaiming how brilliant and talented she was, and how they absolutely needed her in cabinet.
It was perfectly clear that most of them think she’s a dope who couldn’t win a chook raffle in which she had the only tickets.
Wayne @ #290 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:19 am
Bandwagon jumper! 😀
Wayne @ #294 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 9:19 am
😆
Good to see you have a sense of humour Wayne.
WeWantPaul
It is frustrating that it always takes so long for voters to realise what the LNP is doing to them, so that the nation is in worse shape by the time Labor gets in.
This is turning into a massive stuff up by the Trump Administration. And in the end the US has wound up precisely where it was before Trump decided to forcibly remove children from their families.
…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/deleted-families-what-went-wrong-with-trumps-family-separation-effort/2018/07/28/54bcdcc6-90cb-11e8-8322-b5482bf5e0f5_story.html?utm_term=.2303c2c59648
ratsak @ #302 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 8:24 am
It’s not always that easy!
There was an independent journalist who went to Tamworth with the specific intent to find sources who would confirm the rumours.
People who said they were willing to talk suddenly clammed up when he arrived and he was able to add little new and nothing to advance the rumours above that.
He wrote an article outlining his adventure and included some of the rumours in it but the story was his ultimate failure to confirm them.
zoomster
One can only imagine that journos have never watched/listened to Georgina on the ABC in which she proved time and again that she has nothing worthwhile to contribute.
ratsak @ #280 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:08 am
I reported last night that two of the Hanson Boards had already defected from One Nation and were negotiating to join Bob Katter or Clive Palmer’s groups.
lizzie
Maybe admitting this would make them question why they gave her a platform in the first place!
Both Pyne and the Press Gallery refusing to take any lessons from the by-election results.
Looks like they will be in shock on election night 2019 – shades of 2007 all over again…
True story.
My eldest son, who used to be a member of The Greens, came up to me the other day and asked me to tell him about what were The Greens’ major policy issues this year?
So I said, Universal Basic Income and a People’s Bank.
He promptly fell about laughing, and he replied, “I’ve just been watching videos of waves of plastic washing up on the shores of Portugal! What bloody use is a People’s Bank or a UBI to that!?! They’ve lost their way.” he said. He also said, “I joined them because I wanted them to aggressively fight for the environment but they just seem like it doesn’t matter as much to them any more and they are more interested in boutique bourgeoise stuff like that.”
[Vince O’Grady
@vogrady2132
6m6 minutes ago
More
This morning on #insiders @murpharoo was saying people should buy newspapers. I would if innocuous speeches like by Anthony Albanese weren’t referred to as “Manifestos” and didn’t infer things which were not in the speech.]
I think Murphy sunk to new lows this morning. Her cry for support is being laughed at given her and other press gallery behaviour.
The doll queue is too good for her and her ilk.
No I’m not being hold hostage I have just seen the light at the end of the tunnel and think ALP will be the best party to run our great nation
“I reported last night that two of the Hanson Boards had already defected from One Nation and were negotiating to join Bob Katter or Clive Palmer’s groups.”
Only two? That would be just about a record retention rate for One Nation.
True enough. All he ever did was to accuse Shorten of lying, over and over and over…
zoomster @ #177 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:05 am
Murphy was woeful on Insiders. Absolutely a sad travesty of a journalist. Nikki was bad but I guess she is in hurt mode.
I think I will have to back to not watching in Insiders. It really is a joke.
It’s like peering into some sort of support group for troubled folk, with people at various stages of denial, disillusion or derangement.
And Sava’s last comment? A rant about the ACT Government and the youth in Asia! Deranged and off topic.
I also directly Tweeted to Murpharoo that we weren’t buying her ridiculous assertions about the Anthony Albanese Sydney Institute speech.
The California fires have killed 5 people and from the video footage in the article, look like there’s no end in sight.
…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/28/get-out-with-your-life-californias-deadly-carr-fire-doubles-in-size/?utm_term=.af9bf8ea0ae3
Darren Laver,
Yeah, that Anti Euthanasia comment by Savva was disgusting. Just like the Anti Abortion zealots who equate it with murder, except at the other end of life.
Lizzie, I am not sure I’d put the Guardian on that list! (I know it is not actually your list though…)
Katharine Murphy shows that the Guardian’s political coverage is poor and no better than the partisan trash that passes as political analysis on Sky, News or the ABC.
It will be interesting to see (not that I think PPM stats are important) but I do think it’ll be interesting if this moves Shorten’s stats positively, and Malcolm’s negatively.
People (like Newscorpse) like to side with ‘winners’. C.f. Wayne’s contribution this morning (thougI must admit I have always felt his posts were satire).
But if all the PPM stats for Shorten take an uptick … it will likely reinforce a positive mindset for any of the previous doubters within the party and also transmit to the public who are less impressed, that they might need to take another look????
As much as it pains me to defend the Greens, they have never been strong in Northern Tasmania, where old growth forest logging is a big employer.
Nevertheless, 3% is still bad for them.
This was the second best thing to happen yesterday.
https://tendaily.com.au/news/sport/a180728bkr/watch-richmonds-absolutely-freakish-afl-goal-of-the-year-contender-20180728
Katharine Murphy’s latest:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/29/labor-byelection-wins-put-leadership-speculation-to-bed-says-tanya-plibersek
C@tmomma @ #321 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:42 am
Your son is perfectly correct. I have long pointed out that the Greens are simply blocking the rise of a genuine environmental party. Thank goodness some young people are finally cottoning on to what is yet another political con trick 🙁
Darren Laver
I read The Guardian for social comment and environment mostly. Amy Remeikis is fun, but says she would be different if ALP was the govt. Murphy writes like a tortured soul searching for the truth.
lizzie @ #235 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:44 am
He did say it was a test of the leaderships of him and Bill Shorten!
I won’t defend KM, but I will defend the Guardian.
With the ongoing death of a thousand cuts that Fairfax was undergoing – now finally officially on death row – and the ABC News service operating in a parallel universe, the Guardian is the only mainstream media organisation that is prepared to publish policy and social issues and give a voice to a wide range of opinions, both in its opinions columns and in its comment is free opportunities.
And while it is hardly an ideal news outlet, it seems to me that it is judged here in the same way that the ALP is judged – on a relative scale to what we expect from the organisation, rather than a relative scale in comparison with realistic alternatives.
Even in its worst moments, Labor in the last twenty years has been streets better than the Coalition in its best moments – and the Greens have done far more damage than good in trying to play with the big boys and girls.
Same with the Guardian. People may be unhappy with Murpharoo being given her head, but the incomparable Amy Remeikis, Greg Jericho and FDOTM are also given an opportunity to speak their minds.
And even if the price of feeding Amy also results in Murpharoo being fed, I am still willing to pay it (and do!).
I wonder what she means by that? She’d change her reporting style depending on which party was in govt? Doesn’t sound very professional to me.
c@tmomma: “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.”
I wasn’t suggesting they should be worrying about the vote in Mayo, I was just wondering if it was their lowest-ever vote in a Federal electorate in recent decades (I can’t remember a lower in the last 50 or so years) or even earlier?
In terms of the success or otherwise of the campaign, I’ve had a lot of Labor friends over the years, including some who have worked on campaigns for Labor candidates running against independents, and have never known any who believed they were participating in a strategy of “running dead.”
And I don’t really see how Labor running in Mayo helped Sharkie in any way.
But whatevs.
lizzie @ #325 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 11:44 am
And loudly proclaim that Longman was a personal leadership contest between himself and Shorten.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/12/longman-byelection-a-contest-between-shorten-and-me-says-turnbull
Who won?
JimmyD
Garland ate into the first preference votes of the Greens (-2.78%), Labor (-2.95%) and the Liberals (-2.38%).
The Greens got 3.96%, not 3%.
Yesterday’s results prove, once again, that the personal ratings captured in regular polls mean not much.
The only results that count are the Primary and the TPP.
A touch under 4% I believe, but yes. I reckon the party would be disappointed they couldn’t build on their vote from last election.
Sunday, July 29, 2018 at 10:33 am
zoomster @ #184 Sunday, July 29th, 2018 – 10:05 am
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.
Albo’s agenda was very transparent. If the factions wanted him, he was available. We all know that.
So you borrowed Katharine Murphy’s divining rod.
c@tmomma: “meher baba, There’s a name for what you are doing. Concern Troll.”
I thought that a concern troll was someone who ostensibly supports one political party/football team/etc. but constantly puts out undermining posts/tweets/whatever.
That’s not me. Who do/can I support politically? Sadly, I really don’t know.