Of swings and misses: episode two

Talk of a new industry body to oversee polling standards gathers pace, even as international observers wonder what all the fuss is about.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – or the Herald/Age, to adopt what is evidently Nine Newspapers’ own preferred shorthand for its Sydney and Melbourne papers – have revealed their opinion polling will be put on ice for an indefinite period. They usually do that post-election at the best of times, but evidently things are more serious now, such that we shouldn’t anticipate a resumption of its Ipsos series (which the organisation was no doubt struggling to fund in any case).

This is a shame, because Ipsos pollster Jessica Elgood has been admirably forthright in addressing what went wrong – and, importantly, in identifying the need for pollsters to observe greater transparency, a quality that has been notably lacking from the polling scene in Australia. In particular, Elgood has called for the establishment of a national polling standards body along the lines of the British Polling Council, members of which are required to publish details of their survey and weighting methods. This was echoed in a column in the Financial Review by Labor pollster John Utting, who suggests such a body might be chaired by Professor Ian McAllister of the Australian National University, who oversees the in-depth post-election Australian Election Study survey.

On that point, I may note that I had the following to say in Crikey early last year:

The very reason the British polling industry has felt compelled to observe higher standards of transparency is that it would invite ridicule if it sought to claim, as Galaxy did yesterday, that its “track record speaks for itself”. If ever the sorts of failures seen in Britain at the 2015 general election and 2016 Brexit referendum are replicated here, a day of reckoning may arrive that will shine light on the dark corners of Australian opinion polling.

Strange as it may seem though, not everyone is convinced that Australian polling really put on all that bad a show last weekend. Indeed, no less an authority than Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight has just weighed in with the following:

Polls showed the conservative-led coalition trailing the Australian Labor Party approximately 51-49 in the two-party preferred vote. Instead, the conservatives won 51-49. That’s a relatively small miss: The conservatives trailed by 2 points in the polls, and instead they won by 2, making for a 4-point error. The miss was right in line with the average error from past Australian elections, which has averaged about 5 points. Given that track record, the conservatives had somewhere around a 1 in 3 chance of winning.

So the Australian media took this in stride, right? Of course not. Instead, the election was characterized as a “massive polling failure” and a “shock result”.

When journalists say stuff like that in an election after polls were so close, they’re telling on themselves. They’re revealing, like their American counterparts after 2016, that they aren’t particularly numerate and didn’t really understand what the polls said in the first place.

I’m not quite sure whether to take greater umbrage at Silver’s implication that Antony Green and Kevin Bonham “aren’t particularly numerate”, or that the are – huck, spit – “journalists”. The always prescient Dr Bonham managed a pre-emptive response:

While overseas observers like Nate Silver pour scorn on our little polling failure as a modest example of the genre and blast our media for failing to anticipate it, they do so apparently unfamiliar with just how good our national polling has been compared to polling overseas.

And therein lies the rub – we in Australia have been rather spoiled by the consistently strong performance of Newspoll’s pre-election polls especially, which have encouraged unrealistic expectations. On Saturday though, we saw the polls behaving no better, yet also no worse, than polling does generally.

Indeed, this would appear to be true even in the specifically Australian context, so long as we take a long view. Another stateside observer, Harry Enten, has somehow managed to compare Saturday’s performance with Australian polling going all the way back to 1943 (“I don’t know much about Australian politics”, Enten notes, “but I do know something about downloading spreadsheets of past poll data and calculating error rates”). Enten’s conclusion is that “the average error in the final week of polling between the top two parties in the first round” – which I take to mean the primary vote, applying the terminology of run-off voting of the non-instant variety – “has been about five points”.

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.

2,078 comments on “Of swings and misses: episode two”

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  1. meher:

    I also reckon her source was Sinodinos.

    I also think it’s somewhat trite to categorise the proposal for ending unsustainable tax breaks for certain people as improved bookkeeping for the govt.

  2. C@tmomma says:
    Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 8:54 am
    nath,
    And?

    For a start I don’t think Mr Bowe would appreciate it if I made allegations, and secondly I don’t want to destroy Labor’s new leader. So if it comes out in the media, then I won’t be surprised. But we’ll see.
    _____________________
    The Walter Mitty of the Robertson ALP

  3. meher baba says:
    Friday, May 24, 2019 at 7:20 pm

    adrian: “BREAKING , How @PeterDutton_MP Ended Up Exchanging Genuine #Refugees From #Manus And #Nauru For Rhawandan Men Accused Of Raping And Murdering Tourists , @ScottMorrisonMP Faces Questions Over This Deal
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/17/how-australia-ended-up-taking-in-rwandans-accused-of-killing-tourists … #auspol #LNPCrroks”

    Consistent with my comments on #MeToo. These guys were extradited to the US where the case against them was dismissed by a court: on what would appear to be reasonable grounds that their confessions to their crimes were obtained by a form of torture.

    So, as far as I am concerned, they are innocent. I realise that some people on the political left think it’s clever to play this case against Dutton’s previous statements about murderers, pedophiles and rapists coming to Australia: indeed, I recall some posters on here claiming that, if only it could get enough publicity, this case alone would be enough to bring about the demise of the Morrison Government.

    But to me it isn’t clever, it just looks like a piece of very cheap point scoring that would be unlikely to impress too many people. And indeed it hasn’t. Yawn.

    ——————————————————–

    Jesus, Meher. You’ve built a career here as the Devil’s Advocate. But do you have to carry his pitchfork?

    If you can’t see the hypocrisy of the events of Medevac and the swap then I suggest you take remedial courses in logic.

    While there may be something in what you say about whether their convictions were brought about by torture, you don’t seem to think that our treatment of those asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru is also torture. I assume you agree with Morrison and Dutton that they are all rapists and murderers.

    Why haven’t you made the case for all of those people in Guantanamo. I haven’t heard you protesting their innocence.

    Defending the indefensible may be how you get off, but please save us the sanctimony.

    How someone can defend those two thugs Morrison and Dutton is beyond me. They are cut from the same cloth, one a failed cop and the other a failed advertising man. These are your heroes! They pretty well epitomize the gang that will take us back to the 1950’s in social and political terms.

    It’s your kind of thinking that makes the Coalition believe that they can convince those less educated than you to vote against their best interests.

  4. And this

    Pete EVANS
    @911CORLEBRA777
    ·
    8m
    This is absolute madness. Since when did the counter-intelligence aspect of the FVEY alliance become a criminal matter to be investigated???? Australia will find this move by Trump offensive in the extreme

    H/t
    @croxford

    @thespybrief

    @LouiseMensch

    @ericgarland

    @john_sipher
    Quote Tweet

    7NEWS Australia
    @7NewsAustralia
    · 51m
    US President @realDonaldTrump has announced he wants Australia’s role in sparking the FBI probe into links between Russia and his election campaign examined by US Attorney General William Barr. #7NEWS (link: https://7news.com.au/politics/trump-raises-aust-role-in-russian-hoax-c-131736) 7news.com.au/politics/trump…

  5. Barney,

    Douglas and Milko says:
    Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 6:35 am

    I am trying not to take this too personally, but I did raise a few times on this blog, both before and after the election, that FDOTM was unhelpful to getting rid of our Coalition government, because he was unrelenting on twitter in saying “Labor does not deserve your vote”. I did ask if he could at lease suggest Labor deserved people preferences, but he was adamant “Labor does not deserve people’s preferences.

    That suggests that he thinks the Liberals do!

    Or maybe he’s an advocate for the informal Party?

    I have wondered about this ever since the twitter conversation, which I should make clear was with cartoonist Jon Kudelka also. And it was reinforcing a campaign by the Independent Australia along the same lines. So it was not just one person.

    The conclusion I have come to, is that the people of the left who said “Labor does not deserve you vote (or your preference)” assumed several things:

    1) Labor was going to romp it home (see opinion polls at the time), and so had to obviously be forced to agree, before they won the actual election, to things that were desirable in a fair society, but which would lose Labor votes from the easily scared swinging voters.

    2) Unless Labor did commit to the above things, it was far better for the Coalition to remain in office. This would then cause Labor / voters to adopt the positions demanded in point (1), and so the three year delay in getting a more humane and progressive government would be worth the wait.

    3) Nothing much will change over the next three years. When John Bolton shoots down the odd passenger plane in the Arab gulf, or when a big financial crisis hits, its is immaterial whether Labor or the Coalition are in government. There will be no different in response.

    The last point particularly chills me.

  6. FDOTM

    Just another little pony pulling the cart down hill. He like the greens now own the Liberal party and all they do.

  7. Some posters on here keep getting excited about a map that purportedly shows that the “wealthier” seats swung towards Labor and the “poorer” seats swung towards the Coalition.

    It’s certainly true that the wealthier seats swung towards Labor on a 2pp basis (it wasn’t always the case that Labor’s PV went up): I put up a post yesterday that showed that just about every inner city and leafy suburban seat swung to Labor last Saturday.

    But the swing to the Libs in some traditionally red areas was much patchier: eg, it was strong in some and not in others. I’d like to see some analysis of demographic change in the traditional Labor electorates that swung to the Libs: some, particularly in Sydney, are changing rapidly, with a large influx of migrant communities, rapidly rising house prices until recently, and apartments going up everywhere.

    If you look at Sydney, there are three seats where the “housos” vote is traditionally very strong: Kingsford-Smith (covering the inner south), Macarthur (covering suburbs of the SW like Airds, Claymore and Macquarie Fields) and Chifley (covering Blacktown and Mt Druitt). Of these three, Kingsford-Smith and Macarthur didn’t swing, while Chifley (Ed Husic’s seat) swung markedly to the Libs.

    I find it very difficult to believe that the housos of Mt Druitt swung to the Libs. It’s my impression that there have been a lot of apartments going up in Chifley over the past 5-10 years. Perhaps the swing came here. What I suspect we’re seeing is that, across a city in which median house prices have been stretching up towards $1 million, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to define the difference between a “poor” electorate and a “wealthy” electorate. It’s absolutely staggering to see a large swing to the Libs – more than twice the national average -in an electorate like Blaxland: a migrant-dominated community with a large Muslim population. Such a swing would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

    What the seat-by-seat results clearly indicate is that Labor crashed out in the aspirational outer-suburban electorates. So perhaps some electorates that have traditionally been seen as “poor” are starting to take on more of the characteristics of these aspirational electorates. Certainly, it seems pretty clear that the recent cohorts of South and East Asian migrants are far more likely to immediately adopt the “aspirational” mindset than were the past cohorts of European migrants, many of whom proudly proclaimed their “working class” origins. And then, as I mentioned before, there is the socially conservative tendency of many of these migrants. It’s quite possible that ScoMo, who opposed SSM and wears his religious devotion on his sleeve, might have been particularly appealing to these groups.

    Anyway, to sum up, I still feel convinced that Labor’s main problem was its failure to connect to the aspirational part of the electorate, rather than any sort of alienation of “poorer” people, however you wish to define that group. And the element of Labor’s programme that the aspirationals disliked the most was the tax package. Any tendency towards identity politics probably didn’t help much either, but I though Labor managed to keep that stuff under wraps pretty well throughout the campaign.

  8. Can somebody explain rationally the ALP hatred for the Greens? Most Green voters preference Labor anyway, so why waste energy on hating or destroying them? Surely this energy is better spent focusing on the LNP?

    I know Albanese loathes the greens so I expect a lot more vitriol thrown their way. But it simply doesn’t make sense to alienate those who usually preference the ALP, it will only lose Labor preference votes.

  9. National Intelligence Director issues thinly-veiled warning to AG after Trump gives Barr broad powers

    The Director of National Intelligence has just issued a thinly-veiled warning to Attorney General Bill Barr to not overstep now that President Trump has created unprecedented, sweeping powers for the head of the Dept. of Justice. Thursday night the intelligence community and intel experts were stunned when Trump announced he had given Barr total authority to declassify any information related to any investigation of the 2016 election.

    Trump’s decision to hand Barr the keys to the Intelligence Community’s kingdom is seen as just the latest in a long line of actions – albeit possibly the most dangerous to date – of Trump using the presidency to attack the Intel community – and to “investigate the investigators.”

    https://www.rawstory.com/2019/05/national-intelligence-director-issues-thinly-veiled-warning-to-ag-after-trump-gives-barr-broad-powers/

  10. beguiledagain @ #886 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 8:44 am

    Think about this for a minute, as depressing as it sounds. And I don’t want this to be interpreted as defeatism. But………

    We spent the last six years meticulously documenting what a disgraceful government the Coalition was. Almost every week there was a new episode of scandal and mismanagement. There were deep divisions in the party, ruled by an extreme right wing faction As late as a week before the election there was the gross hypocrisy exposed by the refugee swap.

    In those six years we also documented a program of reform and Labor policies designed to make Australia a better place. As unpopular as ending the rorts was, they were hardly revolutionary ideas.

    And you know what? It didn’t make the slightest difference.

    We don’t have to go into endless post-mortems or flagellate ourselves over what went wrong. It is a monumental waste of time.

    We can fix what we think caused our defeat and go through another three years, and this is what will happen.

    The coalition, as soon as the election is called, will start the same campaign that proved so successful this time. A farrago of lies and deception swallowed by a gullible electorate that seems to always vote against its best interests.

    We are into uncharted waters where a few posts to Facebook can shatter the best political strategies and programs. Not to mention Clive Palmer’s $60 million investment which will be paid back with interest by a grateful Coalition.

    What makes you think it will be any different in 2022?

    I agree the reason the ALP lost is the constant hammering by Clive Palmer and the constant lies regarding Death Tax and increased Tax. I saw people being interviewed from northern Tasmania and they were all worried about jobs, jobs, jobs. UAP gat 10% of the vote and if they need jobs the LNP have been in power for six years. Yet they changed their vote away from Labor. The State Libs are also in power.
    So, stop analysing the loss. We should know by now it was the LIES LIES LIES.

  11. It is hilarious how the Liberals going after welfare recipients and offering huge tax cuts to the already wealthy is somehow not class warfare, but Labor proposing to remove some perks, largely enjoyed by the wealthy, is!

  12. One further comment flowing from the above, re the attitudes of Chinese and Indian voters (and possibly some other Asian, Middle Eastern and African groups too, but I don’t know people from these backgrounds quite as well).

    My strong sense is that, no matter what their current financial circumstances might be, the message these people desperately want to hear from these politicians is not “we’re going to take money off the wealthy and give it to you” but “we’re going to help you to join the ranks of the wealthy.” A strong driver among many Chinese and Indian people who migrate to the West is to break free from traditional class and caste structures under which they and their families are dismissed as lowlifes because they didn’t grow up in the right families, speak with the right accent, etc. They are therefore not going to react warmly to any politician who speaks to them as if they are “poor” or “disadvantaged.” This is exactly how they don’t want to be spoken to.

    Rudd understood exactly how to talk to these people, as did Hawke before him. And, from what I saw, ScoMo ha some idea as well. It’s a message of “welcome to our wonderful egalitarian country, you’ll make it here, we’ll help you.” Not “let’s grab the loot from those bastards at the big end of town and distribute among our constituency.” That’s exactly the sort of rhetoric many of these people used to hear all the time from corrupt politicians in the countries from which they come. It must have been a huge turn off for many of them. When I look at the voting figures from western Sydney, I reckon I can see the effect of this.

  13. Trump’s decision to hand Barr the keys to the Intelligence Community’s kingdom is seen as just the latest in a long line of actions – albeit possibly the most dangerous to date – of Trump using the presidency to attack the Intel community – and to “investigate the investigators.”

    Weak journalism, that paragraph. Trump’s not “investigating” anyone. He’s trying to create a scapegoat.

    Calling it an investigation just lends legitimacy to Trump’s actions and his “deep state” conspiracy-theory bullshit.

  14. @Muskiemp

    I agree fully

    One thing I have noticed is that Brexit, election of Donald Trump and recent federal happened in countries where News Corporation has a presence. Such shock election results have not occurred in either Canada or New Zealand where News Corporation does not have a presence.


  15. Daisi says:
    Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 9:41 am
    ….
    I know Albanese loathes the greens so I expect a lot more vitriol thrown their way. But it simply doesn’t make sense to alienate those who usually preference the ALP, it will only lose Labor preference votes.

    The Greens as a party campaigned against Labor for six years. Those that voted for Greens 1 and labor 2 need to face up to the fact their preference may be for Labor, but the party they voted for is for the Liberals. They and the Greens now own the Liberals actions for the next three years. Don’t come with the whine, Labor should do this and Labor should do that to stop the Liberals bastard behaviour. You supported a party that worked hard for this outcome.

  16. I know Albanese loathes the greens so I expect a lot more vitriol thrown their way. But it simply doesn’t make sense to alienate those who usually preference the ALP, it will only lose Labor preference votes.

    The Greens as a party campaigned against Labor for six years.

    Just because the Greens do something doesn’t mean Labor should do the same.

    Both the Greens and Labor need to knock it off, otherwise the Libs will just keep winning.

  17. We have been saying the same on these blogs over the last 14 years regarding the myth of the LNP being the better economic managers. Yet it still exists. This is the story that the ALP should start fixing. The ALP should start showing and explaining where and how the ALP has proved the better economic managers. Most of the economist agree.

  18. And a below par panel for Insiders. Think I’ll give it a miss.

    Insiders ABCVerified account@InsidersABC
    May 23
    This Sunday on #Insiders @barriecassidy will be joined by Gerard Henderson, @annikasmethurst and @PhillipCoorey #auspol

  19. Daisi,
    The animosity between Labor Party members and The Greens members is ubiquitously mutual. This singular lack of comity was engendered when, during the Punic Wars, older generations/iterations of the current Greens members were still a relatively minor faction in the Labor Party. I was a member of that minor faction for a couple decades, and active participation in this endeavour required a rhinoceros hide as well as a high threshold of pain.

    If the current Greens would stick primarily to being dedicated to remediation of global warming party, I would be an avid supporter of them. Instead they have pursued too many other issues, no matter how worthwhile they might be, which have distracted them from being our most significant political force to save human beings from extinction. Ruefully, they have also done a Meg Lees a few times on non-environmental issues. All the same, I’ll continue to have a soft spot in me olde ticker for them! 🙂

  20. Muskiemp @ #920 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 8:03 am

    We have been saying the same on these blogs over the last 14 years regarding the myth of the LNP being the better economic managers. Yet it still exists. This is the story that the ALP should start fixing. The ALP should start showing and explaining where and how the ALP has proved the better economic managers. Most of the economist agree.

    Terrific idea, but……

    How exactly though are they going to get that message through a compliant media with a vested interest in perpetuating that myth?

    Any attempt to do that will, at best, be completely ignored by the Murdoch/Stokes/Costello/IPABC media cartel. At worst, attacked from pillory to post.

  21. Tristo: “I don’t know if this has been posted before, however I have some very troubling thoughts.

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/may/22/the-eight-charts-that-help-explain-why-the-coalition-won-the-2019-australian-election

    Another stirling effort to try to prove that, whatever it was that caused Labor to lose on Saturday, it was anything but the taxation policies. I have no idea why this is so important to so many people, and can only hope that these arguments don’t exercise too much influence the thinking of the Labor brains trust (such as it is ) going forward.

    Unfortunately, the author of the article seems to have become completely confused about the difference between franking credits and franking tax offsets, which doesn’t help very much.

    Also, any seat-by-seat analysis of anything to do with income levels, migrants, etc. needs to take account of the fact that the safe National and Liberal rural and regional electorates typically have the lowest average incomes in the country and the highest concentration of Australian-born. Swings to or against the Coalition in such electorates doesn’t tell you anything much about who is going to win any election.

    When I look seat by seat at western Melbourne and particularly western Sydney, I see quite a few seats with high migrant populations where there have been significant swings against Labor. And, while I don’t have the data to hand, I reckon that the average incomes and – thanks to rising house prices – the average level of wealth in many of these suburbs has been growing rapidly.

    I’m starting to feel that the big demographic story coming out of recent elections is that more and more electorates that we might once have classified as “working class” and coloured a deep shade of red are becoming more marginal as 1) the proportion of non-European ethnic groups in these steadily electorates grows, bringing with it a growing level of social conservatism and mistrust of western social democratic concepts such as the welfare state; and 2) rapidly rising house prices make home owners in those electorates theoretically more wealthy.

    Labor is going to have to engage in prolonged introspection about how to win the support of this emerging demographic. I would suggest that the problem is primarily not that of climate denialism or pure greed. A lot of it is about language: as the failure of the “big end of town” rhetoric demonstrated profoundly.

    It’s incredibly ironic that it was the big end of town itself that was easily the most attracted to the idea of taking stuff away from the big end of town. Time for a big rethink guys and gals.

  22. meher

    ‘It’s absolutely staggering to see a large swing to the Libs – more than twice the national average -in an electorate like Blaxland: a migrant-dominated community with a large Muslim population. Such a swing would have been unthinkable a decade ago.’

    Many migrant dominated seats voted against ME. It’d be interesting to do an overlay of ME votes over electorates which swung to the Liberals.

  23. meher

    ‘And the element of Labor’s programme that the aspirationals disliked the most was the tax package.’

    …as I said yesterday, any analysis you do will end up here, because that’s where you started.

  24. beguiledagain: “Jesus, Meher. You’ve built a career here as the Devil’s Advocate. But do you have to carry his pitchfork? If you can’t see the hypocrisy of the events of Medevac and the swap then I suggest you take remedial courses in logic.”

    I don’t mind attacking hypocrisy, but if that means ignoring the principle of innocent until proven guilty, then count me out.

  25. @ALeighMP
    2h2 hours ago

    Wouldn’t it be great if the Greens were focused on trying to unseat conservatives rather than progressives? (Then again, this is the same party that voted against the CPRS & Murray-Darling Basin Plan) #auspol

    I’ve been mulling over the Greens/Labor problem, and it seems to me that the Greens target progressive seats because they are the ones they are more confident of winning. That’s the RDN campaign strategy talking.

    But the bulk of Greens supporters tend to vote Greens first then Labor. Perfectly logical. But the damage has already been done by their ‘strategists’ condemning Labor and demanding ‘action’ immediately on various fronts. Such as Bob Brown’s convoy.

  26. Daisi says:
    Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 9:41 am

    Can somebody explain rationally the ALP hatred for the Greens? Most Green voters preference Labor anyway, so why waste energy on hating or destroying them? Surely this energy is better spent focusing on the LNP?

    I know Albanese loathes the greens so I expect a lot more vitriol thrown their way. But it simply doesn’t make sense to alienate those who usually preference the ALP, it will only lose Labor preference votes.

    The problem on the Left is that the Greens and Labor are fighting over similar constituencies. Basically the Greens potential growth is largely about taking seats from Labor.

    So, Labor at an election not only has try and win and defend seats from the Coalition, it also needs to defend against challenges from the Greens.

    The Right don’t really have this problem as the Nationals largely have their patch and the Liberals theirs and while one holds a seat the other won’t challenge.

    The other frustrating point regarding the Greens is that they have been ineffective and at times have obstructed achieving progress on their stated objectives, so as a political movement, what is the point of them.

  27. Daisi

    Can somebody explain rationally the Green hatred for the ALP? Most Green voters preference Labor anyway, so why waste energy on hating or destroying them? Surely this energy is better spent focusing on the LNP?

    I know di Natale loathes the ALP so I expect a lot more vitriol thrown their way. But it simply doesn’t make sense to alienate those who usually preference the ALP, it will only lose Greens preference votes.

  28. @meher baba

    I have a hypothesis, the politically disengaged who don’t know how to navigate the online world were the ones who decided the election. These were the people targeted and duped by sophisticated disinformation campaign waged by Clive Palmer, Palmer boasted that his campaign helped to re-elect the Morrison government.

    It is notable that the 2016 US Presidential Election and the Brexit referendum were subjected to similar disinformation campaigns, which I argue decided the result. All three elections were pretty close, so it is quite plausible.

  29. Muskiemp @ #919 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:03 am

    The ALP should start showing and explaining where and how the ALP has proved the better economic managers. Most of the economist agree.

    Most voters aren’t economists. The ALP has 5-10 seconds in which to cut through. That’s not long enough for them to explain anything that complex, however correct the explanation might be.

  30. Steven Adlard @steven_adlard
    1h1 hour ago

    A blind Iranian Kurd refugee in my electorate of Kooyong, who learned English from scratch and is now studying psychology, learned he would by rejected by email on Sunday. As soon as election result known. Complete bastardry

    Who said the bureaucracy is not tied to the Coalition? So bloody obvious.

  31. Re Labor vs the Greens: what a beltway issue! As the seat-by-seat results demonstrate, it’s a battle to the death for the support of the voters at the “big end of town”.

    If we had first past the post in Australia, it might matter. As we don’t, I think it’s actually a pernicious tendency for Labor, drawing them to focus far more closely on the concerns of the chardonnay-sipping set and far less on those of the aspirations.

  32. Barney in Saigon @ #929 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:13 am

    So, Labor at an election not only has try and win and defend seats from the Coalition, it also needs to defend against challenges from the Greens.

    They actually don’t need to do that second thing. The Greens will vote with Labor anyways, so in practical terms it makes no difference to Labor who wins the seat. The only difference is the label on the product.

    Greens-Labor, same-same. 🙂

  33. Daisi says:
    Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 9:41 am

    Can somebody explain rationally the ALP hatred for the Greens? Most Green voters preference Labor anyway, so why waste energy on hating or destroying them? Surely this energy is better spent focusing on the LNP?

    I think you find the Greens bash Labor every day on both here and on twitter.

    Janet Rice for example bashes Labor every day like A disease.

    Janet Rice
    ‏Verified account @janet_rice
    May 17

    A great explainer on how the major parties:
    ❌ have faffed around with gas prices
    ❌ won’t stand up to their corporate fossil fuel donors

  34. a r @ #934 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:18 am

    Muskiemp @ #919 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:03 am

    The ALP should start showing and explaining where and how the ALP has proved the better economic managers. Most of the economist agree.

    Most voters aren’t economists. The ALP has 5-10 seconds in which to cut through. That’s not long enough for them to explain anything that complex, however correct the explanation might be.

    That’s why I and others here have spoken of a campaign over time to disavow voters of these myths, perceptions and false claims which constantly undermine the ALP’s efforts to ‘cut through’ as you say. A bit of lateral thinking wouldn’t hurt.

    It’s just so Labor to wring your hands and so oh that’s to hard…tories win again. Oh woe are we. As I’ve said several times, Labor have to stop behaving like the 90lb weakling at the beach having sand kicked in their face by those nasty big coalition types.
    Muscle up, smarten up.
    Find some passion. Buy it if necessary.
    And as Gough said ‘maintain the rage AND ENTHUSIASM’

  35. lizzie @ #934 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 8:20 am

    Steven Adlard @steven_adlard
    1h1 hour ago

    A blind Iranian Kurd refugee in my electorate of Kooyong, who learned English from scratch and is now studying psychology, learned he would by rejected by email on Sunday. As soon as election result known. Complete bastardry

    Who said the bureaucracy is not tied to the Coalition? So bloody obvious.

    Wouldn’t that be because of the caretaker provisions?

  36. Dan Gulberry @ 10:08
    You are spot on. Keep needing to remind Labor Party supporters among my friends and family of this excruciatingly frustrating reality: the Murdochisation and the trivia Footyshowification of Australia’s MSM.

    ABCNews is all the more deserving of contempt because we are forced to pay for their “celebrity” bloviators lucrative secret contracts while they’re assiduously spewing epically destructive disinformation which assists the extremist IPA/Coalition agenda to obliterate our social safety net, economic equitableness and ultimately the human habitation of Earth. Poor fellows, our country and planet.

  37. Dan Gulberry @ #925 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:08 am

    Muskiemp @ #920 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 8:03 am

    We have been saying the same on these blogs over the last 14 years regarding the myth of the LNP being the better economic managers. Yet it still exists. This is the story that the ALP should start fixing. The ALP should start showing and explaining where and how the ALP has proved the better economic managers. Most of the economist agree.

    Terrific idea, but……

    How exactly though are they going to get that message through a compliant media with a vested interest in perpetuating that myth?

    Any attempt to do that will, at best, be completely ignored by the Murdoch/Stokes/Costello/IPABC media cartel. At worst, attacked from pillory to post.

    BUY ADVERTISING.
    I’m happy to keep donating.
    BUY ADVERTISING. The compliant media will do anything for revenue.

  38. a r says:
    Saturday, May 25, 2019 at 10:22 am

    Barney in Saigon @ #929 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:13 am

    So, Labor at an election not only has try and win and defend seats from the Coalition, it also needs to defend against challenges from the Greens.

    They actually don’t need to do that second thing. The Greens will vote with Labor anyways, so in practical terms it makes no difference to Labor who wins the seat. The only difference is the label on the product.

    Greens-Labor, same-same.

    You seem to be suggesting Labor should just walk away and give the Greens what they haven’t been able to achieve themselves.

  39. zoidlord produces evidence:

    Janet Rice for example bashes Labor every day like A disease.

    Janet Rice
    May 17

    A great explainer on how the major parties:
    ❌ have faffed around with gas prices
    ❌ won’t stand up to their corporate fossil fuel donors

  40. Muskiemp @ #913 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 9:46 am

    beguiledagain @ #886 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 8:44 am

    Think about this for a minute, as depressing as it sounds. And I don’t want this to be interpreted as defeatism. But………

    We spent the last six years meticulously documenting what a disgraceful government the Coalition was. Almost every week there was a new episode of scandal and mismanagement. There were deep divisions in the party, ruled by an extreme right wing faction As late as a week before the election there was the gross hypocrisy exposed by the refugee swap.

    In those six years we also documented a program of reform and Labor policies designed to make Australia a better place. As unpopular as ending the rorts was, they were hardly revolutionary ideas.

    And you know what? It didn’t make the slightest difference.

    We don’t have to go into endless post-mortems or flagellate ourselves over what went wrong. It is a monumental waste of time.

    We can fix what we think caused our defeat and go through another three years, and this is what will happen.

    The coalition, as soon as the election is called, will start the same campaign that proved so successful this time. A farrago of lies and deception swallowed by a gullible electorate that seems to always vote against its best interests.

    We are into uncharted waters where a few posts to Facebook can shatter the best political strategies and programs. Not to mention Clive Palmer’s $60 million investment which will be paid back with interest by a grateful Coalition.

    What makes you think it will be any different in 2022?

    Most intelligent post election post yet. (except for two of Mundo’s)

  41. mundo @ #946 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:35 am

    Muskiemp @ #913 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 9:46 am

    beguiledagain @ #886 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 8:44 am

    Think about this for a minute, as depressing as it sounds. And I don’t want this to be interpreted as defeatism. But………

    We spent the last six years meticulously documenting what a disgraceful government the Coalition was. Almost every week there was a new episode of scandal and mismanagement. There were deep divisions in the party, ruled by an extreme right wing faction As late as a week before the election there was the gross hypocrisy exposed by the refugee swap.

    In those six years we also documented a program of reform and Labor policies designed to make Australia a better place. As unpopular as ending the rorts was, they were hardly revolutionary ideas.

    And you know what? It didn’t make the slightest difference.

    We don’t have to go into endless post-mortems or flagellate ourselves over what went wrong. It is a monumental waste of time.

    We can fix what we think caused our defeat and go through another three years, and this is what will happen.

    The coalition, as soon as the election is called, will start the same campaign that proved so successful this time. A farrago of lies and deception swallowed by a gullible electorate that seems to always vote against its best interests.

    We are into uncharted waters where a few posts to Facebook can shatter the best political strategies and programs. Not to mention Clive Palmer’s $60 million investment which will be paid back with interest by a grateful Coalition.

    What makes you think it will be any different in 2022?

    Most intelligent post election post yet. (except for two of Mundo’s)

    Agree.

  42. My biggest disappointment after the 1996 loss was that the ALP never mentioned how effective the Hawke Keating economic management set up Australia for the future. In fact, they denied Keating and would not mention his Government.
    They must take back Hawke and Keating’s legacy. Admit that although people hated him (Keating) his policies helped all Australians and set us up for 30 years of continued growth. Now because of the Howard Govt’s structural deficit, we are heading for a possible recession. Those people who will suffer are those who believed the Lies, Lies. Thanks, Clive for nothing.

  43. a r,

    … I certainly agree that where the Greens are not a threat to Labor holding a seat, attacking the Greens candidate is wasting resources for little to no gain.

  44. Barney in Saigon @ #941 Saturday, May 25th, 2019 – 10:30 am

    You seem to be suggesting Labor should just walk away and give the Greens what they haven’t been able to achieve themselves.

    Yes.

    Labor shouldn’t waste resources campaigning in seats that are a contest between ‘Left Party A’ and ‘Left Party B’. They should pack up, content that some ‘Left Party A|B’ will win the seat, and reallocate their resources towards contests that are between ‘Right Party A’ and ‘Left Party A’.

    The first objective for Labor (and the Greens) in any election should be to ensure that right-wing parties don’t end up with a majority of seats amongst themselves. An outright majority of seats for Labor (or the Greens) is an optional bonus prize that goes into play only after left-wing parties have secured a majority amongst themselves.

  45. Jonathan Green
    @GreenJ

    elsewhere:
    13-Time Felon Accidentally Shoots Himself in the Testicles While Carrying Drugs in His Anus – As You Do

    I wonder where he was carrying the gun…

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