Election plus 11 days

Late counting, a disputed result, new research into voter attitudes, Senate vacancies, and the looming party members’ vote for the state Labor leadership in New South Wales.

Sundry updates and developments:

• As noted in the regularly updated late counting post, Labor has taken a 67 vote lead in Macquarie, after trailing 39 at the close of counting yesterday. However, there is no guarantee that this represents an ongoing trend to Labor, since most of the gain came from the counting of absents, which would now be just about done. Most of the outstanding votes are out-of-division pre-polls, which could go either way. The result will determine whether the Coalition governs with 77 or 78 seats out of 151, while Labor will have either 67 or 68.

• Labor is reportedly preparing to challenge the result in Chisholm under the “misleading or deceptive publications” provision of the Electoral Act, a much ploughed but largely unproductive tillage for litigants over the years. The Victorian authorities have been rather activist in upholding “misleading or deceptive publications” complaints, but this is in the lower stakes context of challenges to the registration of how-to-vote cards, rather than to the result of an election. At issue on this occasion is Liberal Party material circulated on Chinese language social media service WeChat, which instructed readers to fill out the ballot paper in the manner recommended “to avoid an informal vote”. I await for a court to find otherwise, but this strikes me as pretty thin gruel. The Chinese community is surely aware that Australian elections presume to present voters with a choice, so the words can only be understood as an address to those who have decided to vote Liberal. Labor also have a beef with Liberal material that looked like Australian Electoral Commission material, in Chisholm and elsewhere.

• Political science heavyweights Simon Jackman and Shaun Ratcliff of the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has breakdowns from a big sample campaign survey in The Guardian, noting that only survey data can circumvent the ecological fallacy, a matter raised in my previous post. The survey was derived from 10,316 respondents from a YouGov online panel, and conducted from April 18 to May 12. The results suggest the Coalition won through their dominance of the high income cohort (taken here to mean an annual household income of over $208,000), particularly among the self-employed, for which their primary vote is recorded as approaching 80%. Among business and trust owners on incomes of over $200,000, the Coalition outpolled Labor 60% to 10%, with the Greens on next to nothing. However, for those in the high income bracket who didn’t own business or trusts, the Coalition was in the low forties, Labor the high thirties, and the Greens the low teens. While Ratcliff in The Guardian seeks to rebut the notion that “battlers” decided the election for the Coalition, the big picture impression for low-income earners is that Labor were less than overwhelmingly dominant.

• As reported in the Financial Review on Friday, post-election polling for JWS Research found Coalition voters tended to rate tax and economic management as the most important campaign issue, against climate change, health and education for Labor voters. Perhaps more interestingly, it found Coalition voters more than twice as likely to nominate “free-to-air” television as “ABC, SBS television” as their favoured election news source, whereas Labor voters plumped for both fairly evenly. Coalition voters were also significantly more likely to identify “major newspapers (print/online)”.

• Two impending resignations from Liberal Senators create openings for losing election candidates. The Financial Review reports Mitch Fifield’s Victorian vacancy looks set to be of interest not only to Sarah Henderson, outgoing Corangamite MP and presumed front-runner, but also to Indi candidate Steve Martin, Macnamara candidate Kate Ashmor and former state MP Inga Peulich.

• In New South Wales, Arthur Sinodinos’s Senate seat will fall vacant later this year, when he takes up the position of ambassador to the United States. The most widely invoked interested party to succeed him has been Jim Molan, who is publicly holding out hope that below-the-line votes will elect him to the third Coalition seat off fourth position on the ballot paper, although this is assuredly not going to happen. As canvassed in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Financial Review, other possible starters include Warren Mundine, freshly unsuccessful in his lower house bid for Gilmore; James Brown, chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW, state RSL president and the husband of Daisy Turnbull Brown, daughter of the former Prime Minister; Michael Hughes, state party treasurer and the brother of Lucy Turnbull; Kent Johns, the state party vice-president who appeared set to depose Craig Kelly for preselection in Hughes, but was prevailed on not to proceed; Richard Sheilds, chief lobbyist at the Insurance Council of Australia; Mary-Lou Jarvis, Woollahra councillor and unsuccessful preselection contender in Wentworth; and Michael Feneley, heart surgeon and twice-unsuccessful candidate for Kingsford Smith.

• Federal Labor may have evaded a party membership ballot through Anthony Albanese’s sole nomination, but a ballot is pending for the party’s new state leader in New South Wales, which will pit Kogarah MP Chris Minns against Strathfield MP Jodi McKay. The members’ ballot will be conducted over the next month, the parliamentary party will hold its vote on June 29, and the result will be announced the following day. Members’ ballots in leadership contests are now provided for federally and in most states (as best as I can tell, South Australia is an exception), but this is only the second time one has actually been conducted after the Shorten-Albanese bout that followed the 2013 election. As the Albanese experience demonstrates, the ballots can be circumvented if a candidate emerges unopposed, and the New South Wales branch, for one, has an exception if the vacancy arises six months before an election. Such was the case when Michael Daley succeeded Luke Foley in November, when he won a party room vote ahead of Chris Minns by 33 votes to 12.

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.

999 comments on “Election plus 11 days”

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  1. SK –

    Am I right to say that the ALP will need a 2PP of abt 53-47 to form majority government in 2022? With the usual assumption on uniform swings.

    I’d say around 52-48. Assuming they get 68 seats this time around, needing +8 seats gets you to a +4% swing (going off that table listed earlier) … they’re currently looking at an overall ALP 2PP for the 2019 election of around 48%, so … yeah, challenging, no doubt.

  2. Simon² Katich® @ #231 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 4:06 pm

    Looking at the new list of marginals….
    Am I right to say that the ALP will need a 2PP of abt 53-47 to form majority government in 2022? With the usual assumption on uniform swings.

    That seems very pessimistic. Probably because of the uniform swings assumption.

    Ignore that, and say Labor reverses their position on QLD and treads water in every other state. That would shift (on the current count) ~398,000 votes in their favor, deliver a very solid Labor majority (80+ seats, easily) and put them on a national TPP of just 51.5%.

    I think a slim majority government would be doable on a 51/49 result. But probably not if that comes from a uniform swing.

  3. Rex Douglas @ #245 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 2:21 pm

    How serious is the CFMMEU interested in a quick transition of their thermal coal mining members into more sustainable clean industry jobs ?

    Exactly what are these “sustainable clean industry jobs”?

    Most, if not all the components will be built/manufactured overseas. There will be very few maintenance jobs particularly with solar, because there are no moving/mechanical parts. Some jobs initially in the installation phase, but like mining construction these are temporary, and definitely not “sustainable”.

    Yet more reasons why we need to look at the whole concept of “work” and prepare for a post-industrial world just as we do with other traditional jobs being lost to automation.

  4. The Lib-Libs are very good at campaigning to their mob and against Labor. The same can be said of the Lib-kin. The values and organs of social democracy and social justice in Australia are in serious jeopardy as a result. Neither of Labor’s opponents subscribe to these values. They both hope to destroy them institutionally.

    There is an organ on the Left that hopes to destroy social democracy. They are succeeding by serving as the informal accomplices of the Right.

  5. Zoid, you missed the bit where the analyst said that Morrison’s re-election may save the economy.

    Morrison will also stop climate change sea level rises.

  6. Narns says:
    Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 2:39 pm

    …”the Abbott/Turnbull hatewank of the seven veils”…

    …”and Shouty McPantshitter sneering in his baseball cap and yelling at them about how fucking good everything is!”…

    Love it!
    Albanese should hire you as his chief advisor in charge of sticking it right up the fuckers.

  7. @briefly

    I think Labor will need to have a primary vote at least in the low to mid 40’s to win the next election. Also it needs to be probably leading by huge margins in the polls, around 55-60%.

  8. Astrobleme says:
    Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 4:39 pm

    …”Holy Hell what has happened to Briefly?”…

    He has been possessed by a (possibly alien) lifeform called a “lib-ling”.

  9. It is ridiculous that Ed Husic has had to stand aside for Kristina Kenneally – she presents well but never much evidence of much substance

    It absolutely beggars belief that they could even consider letting Joel Fitzgibbon go around again. Ed Husic sitting on the backbench while that paragon mediocrity sits up front …. first fail of the Albanese era.

  10. Holden Hillbilly says:
    Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 4:26 pm
    “According to The Australian today, the ABC and SBS could be forced to merge as streaming services wreck the broadcast licence revenue that the government uses to fund public broadcasting.”

    One aspect of this re SBS, which when set up, had as its target audience the non-English speaking migrant communities. That’s still the case with SBS radio, but its TV services today are very different. Where once you had range of programming (film, series, documentaries) in various languages, today (apart from morning news services relayed from overseas) the free to air is practically all in English and the evening schedules are geared to what demographic, ie check the commercials?

    ““Our audiences are discerning, well-informed, well-travelled, are highly influential in the community. Not all reach is created equal” – SBS Media director Adam Sadler.

    https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/majority-of-our-viewers-don-t-watch-commercial-rivals-says-sbs-media-director-20181120-p50h7k.html

    When you hear someone from the inner city professional class talk about multi-culturalism, just remember what happened to the TV multicultural broadcaster once that class got hold of it.

  11. It would take a brave government to declare that whole jobs will disappear, the media for one wont know how to respond and the stock jocks would go into meltdown, I don’t think Australians could handle it. Its like the cheerful way the new driverless trains in Sydney were greeted with little questioning.

  12. “He has been possessed by a (possibly alien) lifeform called a “lib-ling”.”

    Hmmm… Or maybe is simply deranged?

  13. “How serious is the CFMMEU interested in a quick transition of their thermal coal mining members into more sustainable clean industry jobs ?”
    If the CFMMEU covered renewable industry workers they would be more likely to do that. But otherwise they would be the proverbial turkeys voting for Christmas.

  14. Shorten staying on the Labor front bench is a bad idea, but I suppose Albo hasn’t got much choice in that regard.
    The whole lineup needs a cleanout, the problem is there’s not really sufficient new talent to replace the old timers, as of now.
    Don Farrell is the worst example of factionalism personified, why he’s still in a senior position in the Labor Senate team is beyond me.
    Chalmers as Shadow Treasurer wouldn’t be a bad idea, I’d keep Catherine King in health and Penny Wong in Foreign Affairs.

  15. Doesn’t this just say everything about our new insect overlords:
    Goldman Sachs’ CEO picks New York’s best new restaurants

    I am sick of all this class warfare.

    Look, it is goddamn hard work going to new NY restaurants with your mates trying to figure out innovative ways to avoid tax and screw people over for personal enrichment of the already insanely wealthy. Do you have any idea the number of hours of this hard work they undertake? Just for personal enrichment? You ungrateful pleb!

  16. @Paul_Karp

    Oh look the Home Affairs department just gained responsibility for migrant adult education and settlement services for refugees and humanitarian migrants #auspol

  17. That AAO says a lot about the government’s priorities and intentions.

    Expect close to zero analysis from most of the press gallery goons.

  18. Astrobleme says:
    Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 4:49 pm

    …”Hmmm… Or maybe is simply deranged?”…

    I am unqualified to say, but I guess to much probing could have all sorts of unpleasant consequences.

  19. I am unqualified to say, but I guess to much probing could have all sorts of unpleasant consequences.

    Please let us not question the mental well being of other posters.
    ?itemid=7589229

  20. KayJay @ #235 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 3:37 pm

    ltep @ #169 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 4:02 pm

    I’ll wait a bit to judge Senator Faruqi, but she reads all of her speeches rather than speaking off the cuff, which is a bad sign. A truly great advocate should have the skills to speak without referring to pre-written speeches in my view. I’ve yet to also see a burning passion from her.

    Speaking of burning, one thing that has been puzzling me recently is Morrison’s repeated use of the phrase that the Government will “burn” for Australians. What on Earth does that mean?

    Just guessing – it may be this —

    What is Zeal? – The Gospel Coalition
    https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/what-is-zeal/

    Aug 26, 2014 – Zeal in Christianity is a burning desire to please God, to do His will, and to advance His glory in the world in every possible way. It is a desire, …

    Hallelujah Brother.

    There is a fundamental problem there.

    God is female.

  21. Simon² Katich® says:
    Wednesday, May 29, 2019 at 5:31 pm

    …”Please let us not question the mental well being of other posters”…

    I did no such thing.

  22. Having learnt a little about the personalities of some of the new govt. members during the recent election, I am now even more despondent and dismissive of all the cliche-ed statements that ScoMo has been blessing us with.

  23. BREAKING: The Supreme Court has found the Palaszczuk Government’s controversial new solar laws – that allowed only licensed electricians to mount, locate, fix or remove solar panels – invalid #Qldpol

  24. Simon² Katich® @ #274 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 4:41 pm

    Doesn’t this just say everything about our new insect overlords:
    Goldman Sachs’ CEO picks New York’s best new restaurants

    I am sick of all this class warfare.

    Look, it is goddamn hard work going to new NY restaurants with your mates trying to figure out innovative ways to avoid tax and screw people over for personal enrichment of the already insanely wealthy. Do you have any idea the number of hours of this hard work they undertake? Just for personal enrichment? You ungrateful pleb!

    Just coz I had to sleep on newly tarred potholes at night just to get a bit of warmth does not mean I do not know what gratitude is. I am grateful me Mam brought me up a good pleb, and not a fkn crazy happy-clapper.

  25. PuffyTMD
    Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 5:32 pm
    Comment #280

    God is female.

    Although, to be fair (ha de hah ❗ ) how one is to mis/understand the above in terms of the following is beyond my poor powers to comprehend ——👇👇👇👇

    Iceland to Reinstate the Worship of Norse Gods | Gnostic Warrior
    https://gnosticwarrior.com/iceland-to-reinstate-the-worship-of-norse-gods.html

    Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in …

    and so on. 🙏 📿

  26. poroti @ #285 Wednesday, May 29th, 2019 – 5:09 pm

    Roll on the electrocution entries from Qld. for the Darwin Award.

    Blame it on Labor. I thought, though, that the actual panels etc could be fitted by anyone but all the electrical connections be done by an electrician. Who needs an electrician to actually haul the panels onto the roof and mount them? Probably too simple, but that I would have thought would be the way to design them.

  27. Kayjay
    I am for whatever gets us a campfire in the backyard in the middle of winter, to dance around naked under the full moon.

    And if ‘chaplains’ in schools are required this should be too.

  28. Kayjay
    Of course God is a woman. A male god would be trying to fix the broken house. The female god looks at us messing up our home, beating on each other and crapping on our beds, and turns away sneering, ‘You’ll regret this. Mark my words, you WILL regret this.”

  29. I think the Lib-kin should be congratulated. They have over-achieved. They will have a monument erected to celebrate. It will take the form of a coal-powered electricity generating plant in central Queensland and will be supplied by low-grade thermal coal railed in from the Galilee. The locomotives can be named after Lib-kin MPs. There will be The Bandt. The Richard. The Sarah. The Christine (for old times’ sake).

  30. Briefly

    “I think the Lib-kin should be congratulated. They have over-achieved. They will have a monument erected to celebrate. It will take the form of a coal-powered electricity generating plant in central Queensland and will be supplied by low-grade thermal coal railed in from the Galilee. The locomotives can be named after Lib-kin MPs. There will be The Bandt. The Richard. The Sarah. The Christine (for old times’ sake).”

    You need help, mate… Go and seek assistance.

  31. Briefly

    Very, very few who read PB are completely stupid and have no need to be told the same thing a hundred times a day. I have always admired your prose, but you are becoming block-worthy, which would be a great tragedy.

  32. Di Natale: the longest running leadership failure.
    Good for keeping the Liberals in power. Useless for everything else.

  33. 2 bad.

    The green-ants are chewing away all the time. Munching on social democracy. They hope to topple the building. They may well succeed. I’ve read a lot of history and done my share of politics. The green-ants and the blue-ants. They will eat us out of house and home.

  34. Lizzie, do you have any comment to make about the destruction of the Labor PV in QLD? How did it happen? What will happen if it’s not repaired? How can it be repaired? We have won just the election in the last 23 years. How many more years will elapse until Labor win again? Can they win again?

    I’ve been stating my views. Very few respond to them.

  35. Briefly
    Your intepretation of events are plausible.
    Your imagery ‘cartoonish’ and appropriate considering the Qld debacle

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