For those wanting a more psephologically focused forum for discussion of the by-elections than the main thread, which is the Newspoll post directly below this one, I offer the following.
As well as that, some scattered notes and observations:
• Hear Ben Raue and I trade thoughts on the results in a podcast at The Tally Room.
• For those of you still following the count, Braddon and Longman (and presumably others) yesterday saw counting of postals and special hospital booth votes, together with rechecking. In Braddon, 3967 postals and 1224 followed the overall pattern in not swinging at all, leaving the Labor lead at 52.5-47.5 from a favourable swing of 0.3%, which is unlikely to change much from here. In Longman, 7775 postals and 943 special hospital votes swung somewhat more heavily to Labor (4.9% and 7.1%) than the election day result (3.4%). Since the LNP nonetheless won the postals 52.3-47.7, the raw lead has come down from 5.4% to 4.5%, but I’m now projecting a final margin of 4.3% rather than 3.4%.
• It’s not news anymore, but I thought it worth noting that the Daily Telegraph had a report on insiders’ expectations for Braddon and Longman on July 21 that proved unusually prescient, but which escaped my notice at the time – other such commentary having generally been unduly bullish from the conservatives’ perspective. According to the report, “a senior Liberal strategist said the polling was much tighter in Braddon and that while the LNP was still competitive in Longman, Labor would have to be considered in the box seat”. Also quoted as a “senior Labor source” who said Labor had “made considerable ground in the past couple of weeks”, and that the party was now feeling “pretty confident”.
• If by-election booth results in a spreadsheet-style format are of any use to you, I am maintaining them online for my own purposes for Longman and Braddon.
Robert Ball’s story is horse manure, see the discussion on it over pg15-18 in the other thread. But don’t dare question him or you’ll get blocked!
Lyndin,
You may like to read this about IPA:
Mike Seccombe “Rinehart’s secret millions to the IPA” (The Saturday Paper, July 28-Ausgust 3, 2018, N. 215).
Page 1 (cont. in p. 4): “It was revealed in proceedings before the New South Wales Supreme Court that Rinehart donated $2.3 million to the IPA in 2016 and another $2.2 million in 2017. These are tiny sums relative to Rinehart’s net worth, estimated by The Australian Financial Review in May to be $12.68 billion. But they loom very large for IPA. The institute’s annual reports tell us its total revenues were $4.96 million in 2015-16 and $6.1 million in 2016-17. Thus Rinehart’s money, given through her company, Hancock Prospecting, made up almost half of IPA’s income in one year and well over a third in the other. She has, in effect, a controlling interest.”
prediction…Turnbull will not contest 2019 election neither will Joyce
The Perth informal vote was very high as well as its lowest turnout.
Valid votes were a very small percentage.
57% of enrollment.
How much of that was lack of a Liberal candidate and how much having 15 candidates?
@ Alpo: “Swing in Longman at the last Federal election: +7.71% + 3.7% now, total swing since and including the Federal election in Longman = 11.41%!!! The Coalition are going to be decimated at the coming Federal election”
Adding the swing at the previous election to the swing at the by-election is meaningless.
In Aston, there was a swing of 1.4% to the ALP at the 1998 election and then a swing of 3.7% at the 2001 by-election.
At the 2001 federal election, it swung back to the Liberals by 5.6%.
Tetsujin
On the other hand, there are examples that go in the direction I am suggesting, such as those in Braddon and Longman…
I am obviously not predicting an ALP win on the grounds of some “law of probability”, but on the grounds of policies. Please do tell me in which way are this Coalition Government going to turn their political fortunes around?
“How much of that was lack of a Liberal candidate and how much having 15 candidates?”
I had thought / heard that the AEC just hadn’t bothered mentioning to voters that there was a by-election, most people in WA probably knew more about longman than they did about Perth or Fremantle.
“How much of that was lack of a Liberal candidate and how much having 15 candidates?”
The former, surely.
“most people in WA probably knew more about longman than they did about Perth or Fremantle”
Longman was a more interesting contest for most people in WA.