Ben Phillips of the Australian National University has been hawking research showing the demographic indicators that associated most clearly with the federal election swing, with the clearest patterns relating to Christianity, which correlated with a swing against Labor, and education and income, which went the other way. Evidently the Australia Institute has done something similar, with findings reported by Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald.
In considering research of this kind, one must acknowledge the perils of the ecological fallacy, whereby inferences about the behaviour of individuals are inappropriately drawn from aggregate-level data. My favourite illustration of this point relates to American politics, wherein the Republicans’ strongest states are those of the dirt-poor deep south, whereas wealthier voters favour the more conservative party in the United States as surely as they do here. As such, it should be recognised that Christian areas swinging to the Coalition need not signify that Christian voters did.
Nonetheless, the relationship between swings and the demographic features of the areas in which they did or didn’t happen is interesting in and of itself, and really all we have to go on until the Australian National University eventually publishes its Australian Election Study survey, particularly in the absence of intensive and high-quality exit polling that is conducted in the United States.
My own number crunching along these lines has involved collecting demographic measures of the areas in which each polling booth is located, and using multiple regression analysis to determine how well they predicted the primary vote swing to or against Labor. The results were as interesting for what didn’t prove predictive as for what did. In particular, an electorate’s age profile appeared to have little impact on its swing – or at least, none that couldn’t be better explained by other variables that might themselves correlate with age. This theme was picked up on in the article linked to above by Ross Gittins, which argues against the widely held notion that franking credits was the main culprit behind Labor’s poor show.
After a bit of trial and error, and whittling it down to variables that didn’t appear to be separately measuring identical effects, the most instructive variables proved to be income, home ownership, education and industry of employment, with a few ethnicity measures registering as worth-including-but-only-just.
| Estimate | Std. Error | t value | Pr(>|t|) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Intercept) | -6.9363 | 0.581753 | -11.923 | < 2e-16 | *** |
| Median Income | 0.318518 | 0.149976 | 2.124 | 0.033719 | * |
| Home Owned | 0.032418 | 0.005457 | 5.94 | 2.97E-09 | *** |
| Secular/No Religion | 0.105852 | 0.007944 | 13.325 | < 2e-16 | *** |
| PrimaryIndustry | 0.007588 | 0.008037 | 0.944 | 0.345122 | |
| Construction | -0.071534 | 0.015903 | -4.498 | 6.95E-06 | *** |
| Manufacturing | -0.115724 | 0.016538 | -6.998 | 2.82E-12 | *** |
| Retail Trade | -0.061778 | 0.018229 | -3.389 | 0.000705 | *** |
| Prof/Sci/Tech | 0.147833 | 0.021587 | 6.848 | 8.05E-12 | *** |
| Education/Health | 0.054147 | 0.01123 | 4.822 | 1.45E-06 | *** |
| Indian/Sri Lankan | 0.045852 | 0.018952 | 2.419 | 0.015571 | * |
| East/S-E Asian | 0.016341 | 0.007274 | 2.246 | 0.024706 | * |
| VICdummy | 3.132668 | 0.18731 | 16.724 | < 2e-16 | *** |
| QLDdummy | -1.626883 | 0.190881 | -8.523 | < 2e-16 | *** |
| WAdummy | -0.538074 | 0.244318 | -2.202 | 0.02767 | * |
| SAdummy | 5.385121 | 0.267704 | 20.116 | < 2e-16 | *** |
| TASdummy | -2.856952 | 0.369256 | -7.737 | 1.15E-14 | *** |
| ACTdummy | -3.811539 | 0.6012 | -6.34 | 2.43E-10 | *** |
| NTdummy | 0.879791 | 0.853752 | 1.03 | 0.302807 |
The numbers in the “Estimate” column show the coefficients, i.e. how much each increment of that variable associated with the Labor swing. Three stars at the end means the effect is highly significant, two stars somewhat significant, one star of some significance, and with no stars we can’t say with any confidence if the relationship was positive or negative.
So, to pick one of the more striking results, for every 1% of population identifying as secular or “no religion”, Labor’s vote tended to be around 0.1% higher, independent of all other factors. Or to raise the stakes a little, Labor typically did 1% better in swing terms in places where 40% of the population identified as secular as compared with those where 30% did so. Note that the “median income” refers to weekly family income, and is measured in thousands of dollars – so an area with $2000 median family income typically did 0.3% for Labor than one with half that.
The biggest surprise for me is that “primary industry” – percentage of the workforce in mining, agriculture, forestry and fishing – had no significant explanatory power in and of itself. This doesn’t sit well with the drubbing Labor copped in central Queensland and the seat of Hunter, for which I can’t offer a ready explanation, except perhaps that I should have broken out mining and measured it independently of the others.
However, a significant negative effect is recorded for the other blue-collar industries of construction and manufacturing, together with the generally low-wage retail sector. This, remember, is independent of the effect of income, such that Labor would have suffered a combined whammy of the various effects in low-income areas with large workforces in the aforementioned industries.
On the other side of the coin, the “professional/scientific/technical” industry designation recorded a strong positive association with the Labor swing, and this too needs to be understood as part of a double whammy with the income effect. This was evident in the large-but-useless swings Labor picked up in blue-ribbon metropolitan seats. The positive effect recorded for education/health is interesting, perhaps suggesting a public-versus-private sector effect.
A fair bit has been said of Labor’s bad show with the Chinese community, but it was actually found that the “East/South-East Asian” population had a slight positive correlation with the Labor swing. However, the recorded effect is very likely drowned out by the strong positive result for “secular/no religion” variable, which records the effect of the swing against Labor in the various ethnic enclaves of Sydney and, to a less extent, Melbourne.
Finally, the “dummy” variables simply record how much of the swing could be explained by the state in which a booth was located, again independent of all other factors. Note that no measure for New South Wales is included, as it serves as the benchmark against which the other states and territories are being measured. The strong positive result in South Australian reflects that this is a primary vote measure, and both major parties rose in South Australia off the demise of the Nick Xenophon Team.
The r-squared value for the model is around 0.25, which is to say that all of this explains only about one-quarter of the variation in the Labor swing. In a future episode, I might take a closer look at what the model fails to predict by looking at individual electorates that bucked the various demographic trends just noted.
Note also: the new post below on the count for the Senate, in which only Queensland appears still in doubt, and the ongoing one dealing with close races in seat for the House, albeit that yesterday’s counting provided essentially nothing new to report.
E.G.T
You start hollowing out jobs with fewer tasks and bosses will be thinking they can do the same work with less staff.
Any argument they didn’t just do exactly that with the greatest dud to ever hold the PM’s office might get you a job offer from News Corp but everyone else will be laughing at you.
The Australian Labor Party can have a revival both in primary vote support and membership. Apart from making the party more democratic, it needs to comprehensively reject neoliberalism and adopt the sort of platform Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have been advocating.
Plus such a platform would be more popular in Central and North Queensland than many people would suspect. Because these regions are truly job starved like Industrial Towns of Midlands and the North of England which voted strongly for Leave in 2016, but strongly for Labour in 2017.
Mavis Smith @ #998 Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 – 8:45 pm
Jim Chalmers bowed out of any leadership role due to having a very young family. He’ll still be there in 3 years.
It doesn’t really want members, and certainly doesn’t give members anything like a meaningful role. I’m a member but I’m very aware I’m just wasting my time. The factional heavies, the self appointed ‘experts’ they don’t care a jot what members think or want. It is a very very out of touch arrogant feudal lord / patron type system.
I’m quite unhappy with politics tonight I might have a rest and write some of my fiction.
May the Goddess shine Her light on You; and may all your paths be scented with jasmine flowers.
Mavis Smith:
I could be wrong but I can’t recall a time when Victoria decided a federal election.
———————
If you’re happy to look all the way back to 1974, Victoria pretty much saved Gough. And at this last election it was pointed out that Labor’s path to victory – illusory as it turned out to be – was mostly through Victoria and Qld. At the next election, Chisholm, Deakin, Latrobe and maybe Higgins are likely to be key seats, though alone they wouldn’t get the ALP to 75. They’ll also need to snatch back Bass and Braddon and at least a couple of extras in one or more of NSW, Qld and WA
Labor referring the result of Chisholm to the Court of Disputed Returns.
Mavis Smith @ #998 Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 – 8:45 pm
I could be wrong but I can’t recall a time when Victoria decided a federal election.
________________________
In the recent election in Victoria the ALP got 21 seats, the greens 1, indy 1, coalition 15. If it wasn’t for Victoria the result would have been much larger for the Coalition.
max:
Thanks for that, though if you want to win big, Queensland’s the answer.
Victoria is a case of how things can change, in 1990 the ALP were smashed in Victoria, and without checking the ALP lost 9 seats, yet in 1993 the ALP won most of those seats back.
C@tmomma @ #984 Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 – 6:22 pm
I see your point, however Jeff Bezos isn’t a good example of an employer, quite the opposite in fact.
Plus how many of these new jobs are going to be in third world countries due to labour costs? On top of that, I’ve no doubt that eventually all the jobs they initially create will end up being automated as well. In fact it may well be that advances in automation is what gets these entrepreneurs off the ground in the first place.
I fear that we may well be the last generation to be better off than our parents. Unless something is done, and I fear that if something is done it’ll be too little too late, the future is not exactly looking rosy. I hope I’m not around to see it but there may well be blood on the streets, storming of the Bastilles, razing the Winter Palaces, etc., to come.
And on that cheery note, my stomach is telling me to fill it, so more important duties are calling. Luckily I still have bread so there’s no need for me to eat cake – yet.
NE QLD:
Maybe in some cases (and I acknowledge that would lead indirectly to loss of whole jobs)
Other possibilities are:
– pay employees less (over time) since the the employer must also pay a fee to a supplier of smart tools (Bosch., DeWalt etc.) providing automation of some of the tasks
– for “independent” contractor tradies, they keep less of their revenue since they too must pay a smart tools supplier in order to remain viable and stay in business
Note it will be a fee to lease the smart tools, not purchase. This is key: the tools supplier always owns the tools and can remotely disable them at any time…
Any way, in both the latter two cases the number of jobs does not necessarily decline, but the earning certainly do. In the case of tradies they will ultimately be reduced to the role of porters carrying smart tools from place to place (not worth it to automate the portage)
I am sure if all jobs were automated then it wont take a government long to introduce a 1000% corporate tax rate, after all the only case for lowering taxes is too create employment in marginal seats as computers and robots don’t vote.
C@tmomma says:
Tuesday, May 28, 2019 at 5:52 pm
Lucky Creed,
As has been observed by a raft of decent economists, if another global economic downturn occurs there no longer exists the monetary flexibility like there did through the GFC and after.
This is just wrong. There is no ‘limit’ to the creation of financial assets and liabilities.
The issue was, remains and will be assigning financial resources socially – that is, to those who most need them and can use them to satisfy real demand for goods and services, rather than assigning them to those who will simply hoard them. Most of what passes for investment is not investment. It is hoarding in the expectation of rent-collecting.
We need a socially-determined financial and fiscal order. We need a socially-determined investment environment.
nath:
That’s true, but Victoria’s fairly static federally relative to Queensland. Look, for example, at the seat of Dawson, where George Christensen enjoyed an 11.46% swing, despite him spending a fair bit of time in Manila. This could only happen in Queensland, north of the Brisbane line.
Victoria decided 2010, with it swing to the ALP, and 1961 with its lack of swing to the ALP (because of the DLP).
Mavis Davis @ #1016 Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 – 7:17 pm
Bob Brown and the Greens have a fair bit to answer for there.
LC:
“YBOB – Going all the way back to the seventies is irrelevant , nobody remembers it under the age sixty and our economy was structured very differently.Also inflation was the original source of the seventies malaise, ain’t likely to be a problem any time soon.”
Considering G Xers were around in the 70’s, I’d suggest that a fair few can remember the incompetence of JW Howards tenure as treasurer, even if we were children at the time. And besides, even if the 70’s were 40 odd years ago, the history is still relevant. Just because inflation is not as it was then, we are still stagnating, and the Libs just are not showing the wherewithall to fix it
“To be honest I don’t think the coalition would cut services in a serious downturn, I think they would just cut taxes to try and stimulate demand and run a large deficit.The service cuts would come as things started to pick up.”
What do you mean ? Cutting services is in the Libs DNA. likewise with cutting taxes, how many Market crashes, how many GFC’s have to occur before it sinks into your Liberal mates that “economic rationalism” is a massive fraud that never works.
“What would Labor propose in the middle of a recession? fight an election on the deficit,advocate tax rises or service cuts to cut the deficit?Budget deficit is never a political problem for the Liberals.”
Well, lets see, in 2008, as the rest of the OECD went into the deepest recession since the 1930’s, the ALP helped save Australia from following the pack down. It’s called a fiscal stimulus. Do your Lib buddies need a Keynsian Text book to see how they work ?
“Face the facts Australia doesn’t turf out Tory federal governments very often, it’s happened three times in seventy years once there in. you need fuckin TNT to shift em’.Something Labor should have though long and hard about back around 2009.”
And lets see what will happen when 2022 rolls around,
Were likely to be in another downturn
The housing Market will have crashed as a result, meanwhile households are in record levels of debt. So much so, that the proportion of income paid towards that debt is at least as high as the proportion paid towards debt when the interest rates were upwards of 17%.
Then theres wage stagnation, Job Security seems to be something that Grand Parents tell their Grand Children once used to happen.
Need I go on ?
by the looks of it, the times will be ripe for public to wipe out the LNP at the polling booth
Creed…..
No-one adheres to a ‘monetarist’ economic model these days, not least because it’s just not possible to adequately measure monetary volumes, flows or velocities; and because the basic proposition of monetarism – that monetary expansion will cause inflation – is empirically spurious, as we have seen since the GFC.
It’s not possible to separate cause and effect when it comes to prices, the real economy and money. No-one really tries any more, though the Magic Money Mob are thinking about it.
YBob, in your thesis, if there’s no economic downturn, Labor will stay in opposition. This is hopeless.
Cat:
[‘Jim Chalmers bowed out of any leadership role due to having a very young family. He’ll still be there in 3 years.’]
But he did say on Q&A that he would consider standing. Then voila, he pulled out in favour of Marles, a member of the Right. I really think that Labor erred, factionalism ruling the roost.
More underhanded tactics from Gladys Liu in Chisholm:
Liar From The Shire
@LiarFmTheShire
·
Labor is joining
@_Oliver_Yates
in contesting the LNP win of Chisholm. Ms Liu was involved in smearing Labor and directing Chinese voters to vote for her or their vote would not be counted.
How much more evidence would the High Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns need to overturn her election!?!
If the Government can’t get through the next economic downturn without going into Recession they will be in trouble at the next election. Even Labor can do that.
How likely the Court of Disputed Returns could force a by-election in Chisholm?
Mavis Davis @ #1021 Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 – 9:31 pm
They’re both from the Right.
And I would say that he weighed up the pros and cons between QandA and deciding he wouldn’t stand ultimately. Remember it took him a few days to come to a decision.
Tristo @ #1024 Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 – 9:33 pm
I think they can.
Confessions:
[‘Bob Brown and the Greens have a fair bit to answer for there.’]
Yes, the convoy went down like a led balloon. Maybe briefly’s right.
C@tmomma:
[‘They’re both from the Right.’]
My mistake. But I still maintain Chalmers would’ve been the better choice, for no better reason than he’s
from Queensland.
If Chalmers has ambitions to be PM, I don’t think Deputy Labor leader is the right path atm. If he becomes Shadow Treasurer offering a better way forward during the next recession, he will be front and centre anyway.
LC”
“You need a big asset bubble to burst to get high enough unemployment for the official numbers to look ugly like the aftermath of the eighties stock market crash.(Labor didn’t manage that one so well, as they went down a brutalist monetarist path)”
Much like the current housing bubble, no ?
“What you get is what we have now, lots of underemployment. stagnant real wages and continuation in the transfer of the profit share from Labour to capital , all of which began under Hawke and Keating.”
Actually what Hawke/Keating did was create the foundations that our current economy is built on. However, under the Libs in Howard and Costello, they just lazily redistributed the revenue from the resources boom, for short term electoral gain. The “chooks” as it were, from those days are now starting to come home to roost(Structural Deficit)
“A better question is how to get real wage growth and if you are limited to working within a neoliberal monetarist model working tax credits for low and lower middle income earners looks the only realistic option, but that would mean tax rises for upper middle income earners to pay for it which might be a tricky thing to sell.”
As I said earlier, Taxcuts, the opposite to this, but which the Libs use as a defult, never works, and never has.
Perhaps Tax increases, properly targeted and explained will work
Tristo says:
Tuesday, May 28, 2019 at 8:52 pm
The Australian Labor Party can have a revival both in primary vote support and membership. Apart from making the party more democratic, it needs to comprehensively reject neoliberalism and adopt the sort of platform Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have been advocating.
Plus such a platform would be more popular in Central and North Queensland than many people would suspect. Because these regions are truly job starved like Industrial Towns of Midlands and the North of England which voted strongly for Leave in 2016, but strongly for Labour in 2017.
The Nationals in QLD are advocating an old-style industry policy tailored to conditions in north and central QLD. They are the promoting themselves as the social face of capitalism. Labor declined to commit public money to the Galilee, as have the citified in-laws of the Nats, the Lib-Libs. The Lib-kin promised money to those who might lose by shutting mines.
Any public funds that go to the Galilee will be subsidies paid to eliminate jobs in other coals mines. Even so, the Libs and their associates will probably do it for purely political reasons. None of this has much to do with liberal economics. It has to do with partisan political advantage.
I would think that they would be very reluctant to do this without really strong evidence.
Evidence such as a fair number of people willing to say on the record that they were fooled by this.
Speculating that these tricks had a material effect on the outcome would not be enough I would think.
As I said elsewhere, I’m not sure the CoDR is the right avenue to pursue this because really it should fall under the AEC policing of election material to ensure it doesn’t mislead people as to how to vote. But the AEC seem neutered on this (as we saw with the immediate response about the purple signage) … perhaps there have been court rulings that have effectively made their powers under the act unusable.
So, yeah, I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope on this front, and worse a ruling from the CoDR that they aren’t going to really consider this kind of stuff sends the message that hey, do what you like, be as tricky and deceptive as you can, all good mate!
led balloons:
Mavis:
max:
Thanks for that, though if you want to win big, Queensland’s the answer.
——————-
True enough. At this last election Antony Green pointed out that Victoria could get Shorten over the line but it would be wins in the then Qld marginals that would give it a decent majority. Victoria can also swing big though from time to time. In a bad election for Labor like 1990 the coalition can pick up stacks of seats. Usually they’re only held for one term though.
Breifly Perhaps, but according to most, we are heading for a downturn. Besides which, even baring a downturn, the Libs will start to piss the masses off, you would think. What with, tax-, cuts, but only for the wealthy, the rest “promised”, but never eventuating. That wages will continue to stagnate, that Job security will never be thought about.
Then there are the service cuts that they cant help but impliment.
Mexicanbeamer:
I take it you mean 100%, not 1000%
In any event it will be 100% of nothing, since:
– growth companies will reinvest everything they make into growth, so as to deliver the growth sought by their equity investors – see the example of Amazon
– mature companies will finance themselves by issuing bonds, since “debt is cheaper than equity” and hence just pay their debt claimants, again avoiding reporting a significant profit. Interestingly some such companies may end up with no stockholders at all; alternatively stocks (that never produce dividends) will be stapled to bonds
This is actually a fallacy.
“Gee it must burn that Wayne Swan was awarded World’s Best Treasurer because he spared Australia from the ravages of the GFC! An award that your beloved Peter Costello (“hit in the arse with a rainbow”) never achieved.”
At that time Swan was a nervous shaky kneed learner Treasurer out of his depth.
It was Ken Henry and Kevin Rudd that produce the GFC crisis policies.
It was only the Rudd hatred spread here by a certain person when Shorten’s office decided to knife Rudd for Gillard. It was then all of a sudden not acceptable to give Rudd credit for anything.
I think the poison spread by Shorten’s coup here and elsewhere at the time still lingers.
I was fascinated to read this blog at that time. It make a good study on the weather vane nature of Blogs.
One moment Rudd was great, then a certain person related to the political sphere commenting on the blog, started a smear campaign against him, in the run up to the Shorten backstabbing for Julia Gillard. In the space of a week commenters here went from full 100% support for Rudd to near on universal hatred.
Some things never change.
The scary thing about QLD is there are really only two safe Labor seats, on a bad night other than Oxley and Rankin the rest can go.
In 77 Labor were reduced to one and in 96 to two, if you think QLD can’t get worse, think again.
Liu is about 1400 ahead in Chisholm so it may be difficult to sustain a plausible case that the deceptive posters would have made a difference to the ultimate result. Still worth pursuing. If the Government could be pushed back to 76 seats by a by election loss, assuming Macquarie goes the right way, they’re only one additional by election loss from oblivion. However by elections held in circumstances like that shortly after a general election often end up going the government’s way.
@Max
Even if the court of disputed returns forced a by-election in Chisholm and the Liberals lost it, the government would still have 76 seats.
If Labor retains Macquarie and the court of disputed returns do not force a by-election. The Coalition have 77 seats, with possibly all of Katter, Sharkie, Steggal and Haines supporting the government at least on confidence and supply.
It’s not just Queenslanders who can be a bit parochial. Presuming Albo leads Labor into the next election, and all else being equal (which of course it never is), I would think the swing will be relatively better for Labor in NSW than in Victoria.
“How much more evidence would the High Court sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns need to overturn her election!?!”
I would think there was zero chance of this. You would have to provide clear evidence that it affected the vote in a meaningful degree.
I guess then you would get a ton of labor voters ‘making out’ they voted Liberal stating that they changed their vote because of all this. .i.e. impossible to attain.
Likwise a person’s facebook page is usually only visited and shared between people who support them anyway, and a person interested in politics of that bent.
The upshot is – it made bugger all difference to the outcome.
If it were not for Shorten you would be probably enjoying Gillard’s second term now.
They’d still have minority government
The ALP has a standing policy of not blocking supply so the government wont have an issue.
caf @ #1042 Tuesday, May 28th, 2019 – 8:00 pm
I’d want to see data before agreeing with that assumption. My assumption is that Albo speaks to a certain specific demographic in NSW rather than to NSW as a whole.
Even if a Chisholm legal challenge goes nowhere, launching one does force the Liberals to publicly defend (and bring attention to) some campaign tactics which one would expect the public to consider pretty dubious.
On the other hand, there is more than enough evidence now to show that launching a section 44 challenge is a waste of time (which probably won’t stop some individuals from doing it within the 40-day cutoff). Without exception, every MP in the last few decades who’s been forced to recontest due to a s44 issue, going back to Jackie Kelly, has emerged with a similar or increased majority (including in seats lost at the following general election) – the only change that’s occurred is that it gave Labor an excuse to replace an unpopular local member with a popular one in Batman/Cooper, now held by a margin well into double digits.
Still, when it comes to the public showing exactly what they think of a technical legal challenge to an election result, it’s hard to go past the 1997 UK election in Winchester – the Liberal Democrats beat the Conservatives by 2 votes the first time around, by over 20,000 on the re-run…
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/shorten-wants-health-role-but-some-in-labor-say-thats-a-sick-joke/news-story/383a52f0da17486473b862ec6c65841f
Does not sound like a by-election anytime soon.
Labor was planning on Infrastructure spending of about a million in each of the regional seats in Qld and got no good result.
Businesses and workers in country Qld have lost big time because this message didn’t get through.
Albo may get those workers back.
The L/NP vote also fell. Those who left may have been unhappy with regional rivers, helloworld, governance with the reef, factional brawling, love of coal, church and state, electricity costs, climate change inaction.
Will the L/NP be able to fix these issues and win those lost voters back? If not, might they lose even more next time around?
Try a billion!!!