Some notable links and developments, as the Coalition inches closer towards a parliamentary majority in the latest counting:
• A few bugs remain to be ironed out, but I now have an regularly updated election results reporting facility in business that provides, among other things, booth results and swings in a far more accessible format than anything else on the market. If you would like to discuss the facility or the progress of the count in general, you are encouraged to do so on the late counting thread.
• Samantha Maiden at The New Daily has obtained the full gamut of tracking polling conducted for Labor throughout the campaign, which is something I can never recall being made public before. The overall swing shown at the end of the campaign is of 1.5% to Labor, just like the published polls were saying. The polling was conducted by YouGov Galaxy, as indeed was much of the published polling during the campaign, this being the organisation responsible for Newspoll and the polls commissioned by the News Corp tabloids.
• Nathan Ruser of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has produced fabulously revealing maps showing the distribution of two-party swings.
• Ladbrokes (no doubt among others) has a book open on the Labor leadership, which, with the withdrawal of Tanya Plibersek, has Anthony Albanese a clear favourite on $1.28, Jim Chalmers on $3.00, Chris Bowen on $5.50 and Tony Burke on $10.
William,
Thanks again for maintaining this site and putting up with us all. Your update gives me information would never have time to glean for myself.
And for all who visit, remember to thank William for his efforts by donating. The post you need is Donation Drive, below.
Some comments on the polling failure – I have never seen anything like this at the Federal level before. Even in 2010, when the polls were shifting away from the ALP to the coalition in the last week, most pollsters picked it up.
Labor needs the cut-through positive message and years of it. A three word slogan that piques real interest and curiosity, backed with opportunity that doesn’t look impossible for existing skill sets to seque into (the Coalition’s mid-Queensland coast mining school announcement went by my radar at the time, but was pitched brilliantly to the very demographic that cemented them in mid-Qld) and it also needs to back the nag called self-interest. The theme needs to be something like “Here for you. All of us.” It needs to emphasize what EVERYONE gains. It needs to compare and contrast the ease of making it for yourself when things like education, health, infrastructure and a secure old-age are provided versus when it isn’t. Show them what high-functioning society looks like, or can look like, as opposed to one that doesn’t (my US friends are sharing memes about the cost of insulin when not backed by insurance, for example).
And if charisma is needed in ad campaigns and the candidates aren’t quite there, look to the base. Voters charming voters. Start looking now. Start getting the vox pop grabs now. Make people want to be part of it.
Morrison’s one man campaign sold an idea of an emollient community, church and family and as has been pointed it, he stuck to the script and kept the motherhood statements coming. That’s about all he sold, and he stayed apart from the grubby stuff and scary stuff which was prosecuted online and just as quickly disappeared – plausible deniability. Labor needs to grasp this and understand it and work with it.
D&M: the polling “failure” is exactly what allowed this to be framed as a smashing success when in reality the needle didn’t move that far overall.
Make of that what we will. Framing is all.
Maiden had a chance to query Briggs about herding etc but appeared more interested in merely recording some disgruntlement about a conflict.
The comment at the end of the Maiden article by Briggs about the prevailing narrative is a little opaque.
Hi William
That ASPI map is interesting, and drove me to start looking at the seat by seat results. After a few minutes of scrolling through, it looks to me that, if you could superimpose a map of high vintage wine consumption across the map showing swings to the left, you’d probably get a pretty close match. Leaving aside the special cases of Wentworth and Warringah, it looks as if there was a small shift to the left in every blue ribbon Liberal seat and most inner city Labor- or Greens-held seats. And these swings could be found even in Brisbane and Perth.
It also appears that Labor’s vote held up ok in many of its traditional working class electorates, bar those in Brisbane and in any area where mining was an important economic activity.
The ASPI maps will provide further grist to the mill for those who think Labor’s main problem in the election came from self-interested mining workers and climate-denying blue collar workers. But I think that would be too superficial an explanation. It cannot be denied that mining communities turned against Labor, but this was probably unavoidable, given that Labor would have to turn itself inside out several times if it wanted to try to compete with the Liberals for the votes of people who oppose action on climate change.
But Labor’s failure to win over the aspirational voters in outer suburban areas must a consequence of both bad policy and bad tactics. And I still believe that the fatally flawed and incredibly badly-sold tax package lies at the heart of this failure.
And it seems that Albo, at least, agrees with me about this.
As I woke up this morning, I felt the anger rise within me (and it’s still there) at the deliberate lies about Labor policy that voters have been told by ministers such as Frydenberg.
This has been a social media success for the Coalition, spreading rumours and lies which voters believed, because they were posted by ‘friends’ on Facebook, etc.
And now, the inevitable:
https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/very-grim-abc-staff-brace-for-painful-job-and-programming-cuts-20190520-p51p8g.html
Why have the Nats never fought for the ABC?
If you put the ASPI map together with Labor’s tracking polling as reported by Samantha Maiden, you see how catastrophically-flawed the tracking polling must have been.
The true demographic picture was that Labor had probably achieved the 51-49 or better result across all safe seats – be they Coalition-held or Labor-held, but that the totality of the marginal seats were showing a swing against Labor.
This sort of trend has happened before: I think the 1987 election and the 1998 election both produced a swing to the government in marginals and a big swing against them in safer seats. Professional polling organisations should be really well-equipped to pick this sort of thing up.
Given such an incredibly bad performance, I can’t help wondering whether opinion polling as it has been traditionally undertaken can remain viable in future.
Warrigal,
Yep!
See article by Brian Schmidt in the Guardian, particularly the final two paragraphs.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/20/mathematics-does-not-lie-why-polling-got-the-australian-election-wrong
https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/20/false-election-claims-spark-push-for-truth-in-political-advertising-laws?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true
@meher baba
“And I still believe that the fatally flawed and incredibly badly-sold tax package lies at the heart of this failure.”
The media especially our tax funded abc refused to correct this lie. And they still refusing to according to the latest especially with Barrie vs Josh.
The mathematics does not lie: why polling got the Australian election wrong
Brian Schmidt – Astronomer and ANU Vice Chancellor
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/20/mathematics-does-not-lie-why-polling-got-the-australian-election-wrong
@lizzie
The only way to stop that is for labor to not go with any policy or at least major index just a couple of small ones that won’t effect taxes.
Labor made big mistake by going into the election doing a machine gun spray.
shellbell: “The comment at the end of the Maiden article by Briggs about the prevailing narrative is a little opaque.”
As reported by Maiden, his comments are all over the place. He justifies his total and embarrassing failure at the aggregate level by arguing that his individual seat results were more correct. But, if that’s the case, why couldn’t he also manage greater accuracy in a 20 marginal seat poll for Labor? And what is this statement – “If you come up with something that is not the prevailing narrative you get attacked.” – meant to mean? Newspoll has shaped the prevailing narrative in politics over the last decade: giving Rudd the ammunition to challenge Gillard, Turnbull that to challenge Abbott, and then Morrison that to challenge Turnbull. It convinced everyone that Labor was a shoo-in on Saturday.
All the national polling companies need to go off and take a good hard look at themselves IMO. They’ve received a massive, possibly fatal blow to their collective credibility.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/20/coal-industry-urges-re-elected-morrison-government-to-build-new-coal-plants?CMP=share_btn_tw
Uk politics…
@Mark Di Stephano:
Channel 4 source says the broadcaster has been blacklisted from Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party events since the investigation aired into Arron Banks and Farage’s finances last Thursday, confirming @paulwaugh’s previous tweet.
Very very worrying.
zoidlord: “The media especially our tax funded abc refused to correct this lie.”
What lie? It was a package that adversely affected perhaps 2 million people or more (I can give you a breakdown if you like): most only by a few $k per annum, but who is ever going to be enthusiastic about voting themselves a pay cut? So why would an opposition want to make things difficult for themselves with such a package?
And it was incredibly badly sold. Shorten had forgotten that he still had some measures targeting superannuation. When asked by a guy in hi-vis why he wasn’t getting a tax cut, Shorten said “we’ll look into that” rather than telling the truth, which was “bad luck pal, we’re actually going to up your marginal tax rate by 2 per cent and also double the tax on your super from 15 per cent to 30 percent.” (And then, although the details of what happened aren’t entirely clear, it seems possible that some genius working for the Queensland Government decided to punish the bloke for daring to ask his question.) And best of all, we had Bowen telling people who didn’t like his policies to go and vote Liberal.
No lies from the ABC here. Just incredibly bad political campaigning. Born of over-confidence and insufficient caution, which were themselves born from inaccurate polling information.
Bullshit! Saying that something is a new tax when it is clearly not is a lie.
Not only did the ABC not challenge the lie when repeated by various LNP liars, they repeated it as though it were fact acrossa wide range of programming.
adrian: “Bullshit! Saying that something is a new tax when it is clearly not is a lie.
Not only did the ABC not challenge the lie when repeated by various LNP liars, they repeated it as though it were fact acrossa wide range of programming.”
Adrian, I have a message for you and zoidlord and all the other highly-committed Labor people on this forum and elsewhere.
Stop blaming the ABC and the other media, and even the Australian people for your party’s loss on Saturday. I don’t deny that attitudes towards climate change in Queensland didn’t help, but the main problem was the tax package. In political terms, it was a load of toxic garbage.
The people who came up with it and sold it incredibly badly have let all you Labor supporters down big time. You should direct all your anger towards them. And certainly don’t reward Bowen by voting him in as leader or deputy.
Calm down everyone. Daddy ScoMo is in charge now so no one else need to use their brains at all.
https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/morrison-calls-for-more-civil-debate-after-nasty-campaign-20190520-p51pey.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1558357150
Have a look at some of the dross televised on both free to air TV and pay TV and an image of what appeals to mordern Australians is immediately forthcoming.
Morrison and the LNP, more by misadventure than design, were well attuned to the lack of depth and self gratifying nature of the voters.
Labor proposed a fairer and more circumspect delivery of their policies.
Australians are quite unwilling to graze beyond their misconceptions and expect room service on demand.
The motely crew of Morrison, Frydenberg, McCormack, Joyce and the other nefarious types occupying the ministry deliver policy totally devoid of integrity and foresight.
LNP policy has all the appeal of a take away pizza!
I’m at a loss here.
The reason the ALP got tossed out in 2013 was because of the leadership stuff (unstable government etc) irrespective that the economy was ticking along very well and a number of good reforms were introduced (NDIS).
Now in 2019, after the same leadership stuff by the Coalition, the economy actually worse than in 2013 and probably headed towards a recession and stuff all reforms over the past 6 years and the voting public endorses this gives them a handy majority.
What the **** am I missing?
This I know will sound cruel but the only thing to wake the voting public up is for this country to go into recession – then and only then will they realise the Coalition are not the superior economic managers. They will have been in power for 6+ years – no-one else to blame than them
@meher baba
This you have misunderstood the tax changes not tax increase.
A tax increase would be something like increasing our GST to 15%
Closing the tax hole involves changing the system in the into the original intent of the tax as Keating has said.
Josh Frydenberg doesn’t even understand it.
meher baba @ #20 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 6:53 am
MB, unlike you I don’t think that the loss can simplistically on one or two factors. It was caused by a complex interaction of factors that played differently in different parts of the country.
One of those factors was the poor selling of the policies, another poor advertising, another a hostile media, including the ABC.
My anger is directed partly at the ABC because as a public broadcaster it has such a vital role in Australian democracy, a role it has all but abrogated.
Well it looks as if it was not the well off protecting their patch, they accepted the tax system is a rort for capital. It was those that are being effected by all this that swung to the Liberals.
Rather than the rich rejecting Labor, the maps suggest that wealthier voters moved to them while lower income workers moved most strongly against them.
https://news.theceomagazine.com/news/maps-may-reveal-why-coalition-won-australias-election/
I still think it matters; and it would seem the wealthier voters think it matters; inequality is going to lead to a disaster; but you do have to ask; if the turkeys can’t help themselves why do people who have done well bother.
When the Greens set out to damage the environment, pissing off the mining states; what can you do?
adrian says:
Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 7:02 am
….
My anger is directed partly at the ABC because as a public broadcaster it has such a vital role in Australian democracy, a role it has all but abrogated.
The turkeys were told, your going to lose your head, and still they did it.
The role of the media, and the unrelenting negativity from the opposition. Same with the deficit.
• Ladbrokes (no doubt among others) has a book open on the Labor leadership, which, with the withdrawal of Tanya Plibersek, has Anthony Albanese a clear favourite on $1.28, Jim Chalmers on $3.00, Chris Bowen on $5.50 and Tony Burke on $10.
So, Tony Bourke is going to be the new Opposition Leader then? 😐
Kirky,
A more hostile media environment for Federal Labor than has been seen since 1970.
That is basically the story. Some of the media could’ve got behind Labor and explained that the people affected by the Franking Credits reforms only had to draw down a bit of their capital from their super funds, but they did not do this.
On the other hand, Australia in the 1960s and 1970s had greater diversity of media ownership, but it was still marked down in terms of democracy because the media all spoke with one voice. Nothing has changed except that now the ABC is towing the same line as the News Corp andNine press. The Guardians OK, and I support them financially, but they tend to sit on the fence.
It is weird going places like Chile, smaller population than Australia, and finding a genuine pro-left publication, “La Nacion”. “The Clinic” is also pretty funny, and a bit left leaning.
Catmomma
Looks like it. We need a poll putting Albanese in front to confirm it.
Morrison already setting up to reneg on the promise that tax changes will be reflected in tax refunds in a couple of months -.now have to wait another year. Anyone who thught Morrison would be pretty adept at running a government should reconsider – even Abbott waited until the next budget to start breaking promises.
In Hunter there is a minimal chance that the One Nation candidate will get past the National and then be a challenge to Fitzgibbons. The ON candidate is a CFMEU coal miner from Singleton.
His view:
“The Hunter has helped create the Labor party. We have spent our union dues and backed the Labor party in this seat for 90 years, and the moment that coal looks like it’s become unpopular they turn their back on us.
“That was a fundamental error, and it’s cost them the election. When it comes down to preferences, there’s a very outside chance they could lose this seat.”
https://www.theherald.com.au/story/6133236/we-ripped-the-heart-out-of-the-labor-party/?cs=13296
Also, see Adrian’s answer – far more pithy than mine 🙂
Jim Chalmers Seems to be the according to few people
@hcl2010 (heather L)
Jim Chalmers. An understanding of economics. A new face, generational change, no baggage and he is from QLD. The complete package.
Many people affected by franking credit losses did not know that if they were eligible for a part pension they kept their cash gift.
Many people eligible for a part pension are reluctant to apply for one. I worked hard to leave my housing Commission home next to the big ford factory. I thought success was not relying on a pension unlike mum & dad
Clive palmers lies and huge advertising spend ought to have consequences
Only a small % of population changed their vote.
ScoMo & the COALition tapped into their emotions through ScoMo stunts and Facebook & Palmer lies
The unemployed coal miners voted for PHON which fed their preferences to Liberals
Labor fought
The Greens
Liberals
Nationals
PHON
PUP
This I know will sound cruel but the only thing to wake the voting public up is for this country to go into recession – then and only then will they realise the Coalition are not the superior economic managers. They will have been in power for 6+ years – no-one else to blame than them
No, they’ll find a way to blame Labor still. It’s the only thing they’re really good at. Jeez, even I can think of a line. How about, ‘if Labor hadn’t wrecked the economy when they were in power, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in today’. Or, ‘Things are terrible in the economy, the headwinds from overseas mean that the nation will need the better economic managers to steer us through the choppy seas successfully’. And people will believe them.
D&M,
Ditto all your points.
Meher,
I think you are right.
My barber mate was reporting the same thing. He does “long form interviews with open-ended questions”, using a novel pricing method (the interviewee pays).
He reckons customers think they are the boss because they are paying, and his is a men’s barber shop, so the blokes let their guard down. He’d been making the same points as you, about hip pockets and identity politics, for a couple of years.
Labor, focus on worker’s material conditions.
lizzie 619am
Why have the Nats never fought for the ABC?
Because the Nats will do anything the Liberals say.
By the way, I can’t remember where I got this link (William, Marktheballot, Kevin Bonham?), but it is the final report into the polling failure of the 2015 UK election where the polls ‘herded’ into a Conservative-Labor tie around 34-34 and the actual result was 38-31 and a Conservative majority. It is interesting – mostly you only need to read the first few pages of background and executive summary.
The main problems seemed to be sampling and post-data analysis.
http://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/3789/1/Report_final_revised.pdf
meher baba
As the booths that would be affected by the tax changes swung to Labor and those that would not swung to the liberals, I think you might be missing something.
Perhaps turkeys are like chooks, they show more intelligence with their head off than on.
The One Nation candidate for the Hunter is also a raging bigot. Is that the sort of person you support to defeat Joel Fitzgibbon, Oakeshott Country? Simply, it seems, because he’s not Joel Fitzgibbon. So what if he’s a coal miner!?! Would you have supported a lamplight lighter if they stood against Joel Fitzgibbon too?
No wait, knowing how old and full of bitter bile about Sussex Street you are, you probably would have.
OC
It seems like Labor not sticking up for miners has cost them a lot.
As Doug Cameron says, the economics say that we need a transition plan away from thermal coal (which the world will provide by economic means over the next decade) but we still need coking coal.
From me, we also still need mining – much mining is about trace elements such as Lithium, without which our great new future of renewables cannot happen.
But, Labor has been too frightened to hammer the fact that mining is still essential home.
Any thoughts you have on this would be very much appreciated. I share my work building with a bunch of mining engineers, and they are as interested in ameliorating climate changes much as anyone else in the building.
Just popping in on day three to see how all seven of our progressive Qld boomers are getting on.
Once people’s minds are set, it is almost impossible to change them, in spite of subsequent events. Example: the LNP are good money managers. Another example: Barnaby’s good for the bush.
billie says:
Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 7:13 am
…
Your list is incomplete:
Labor fought
The Greens ( very successful wedge politics)
Liberals
Nationals
PHON
PUP ( 70 million in advertising)
MURDOCH ( buys ink by the barrel)
ABC ( turkeys about to lose their heads)
Conservatives churches
The polling agencies
And they lost.
In other news…
@ThespectatorIndex
BREAKING: Federal judge has ordered accounting firm Mazars to turn over President Trump’s financial records to Congress
I suggest we put a nuclear reactor in Queensland and hope it goes off.
Yep, Lizzie.
But given that set of beliefs, how do you convince a person to vote for Labor with a complicated tax package?
Answer: you don’t. Being correct doesn’t help.
frednk @ #31 Tuesday, May 21st, 2019 – 7:09 am
😆
Actually, seriously, the person who will lead Labor to stable, long-lasting government will probably be elected next time and that person needs to be a savvy investor with a heart of gold. If they voted for Labor this time then they will probably be the best head to make our policies relatable to those in the working world who want to protect their Super and the Retiree world who want to protect their investments but not be too greedy about it. Which kind of looks like the sort of policies we will need to win those demographics over.