Tidying up

Full preference counts should start unrolling over the next few days, but we’re probably still a fortnight away from being sure of the exact composition of the Senate.

So far as the outcome on seats is concerned, two questions from the federal election remain to be answered: who wins Macquarie, which could potentially deliver the Coalition a 78th seat, or – more likely – a 68th for Labor; and who gets the last Senate seat in Queensland. No new numbers have been added to the count in Macquarie since Wednesday, apparently because they’ve been gathering everything together for one last heave. Labor leads by 282; I make it that there are about 950 votes outstanding; the Liberals will need nearly two-third of them to close the gap. Their more realistic hope, if any, is that an error shows up during the preference distribution, but that’s highly unlikely after all the checking that’s been done already.

Out of the other lower house seats, I’ll be particularly interested to see the results of the preference distribution in Joel Fitzgibbon’s seat of Hunter, where there is a chance the One Nation candidate might draw ahead of the Nationals candidate to make the final count. The Nationals have 23.5% of the primary vote to One Nation’s 21.6%, but by applying Senate preference flows from 2016 to allocate the minor parties, I get this narrowing to 27.1% to 26.3%. If nothing else, One Nation making it to second will provide us with hard data on how Coalition preferences divide between Labor and One Nation, a circumstance that has never arisen before at a federal election. The result in the seat of Mirani at the Queensland election in 2017 suggests it should be a bit short of 80%. If so, Fitzgibbon should emerge with a winning margin of about 2%, compared with his 3.0% lead in the Labor-versus-National count.

As discussed here last week, I feel pretty sure Labor’s second Senate candidate in Queensland will be pipped to the last seat by the Greens, though God knows I’ve been surprised before. That will mean three seats for the Coalition and one apiece for Labor, One Nation and the Greens. We probably won’t know the answer for about a fortnight, when the data entry should be completed and the button pressed.

There are other questions we’re still a while away from knowing the answer to, like the final national two-party preferred vote. All that can be said with certainty at this point is that it will be nowhere near what the polls were saying, but the most likely result is around 52-48 to the Coalition. The AEC’s current count says 51.6-48.4, but this doesn’t mean much because it excludes 15 seats in which the two-candidate counts are “non-classic”, i.e. not between the Coalition and Labor. Only when separate Coalition-versus-Labor counts are completed for those seats will we have a definitive result.

We will also have to wait until them for a definitive answer on exactly how many United Australia Party and One Nation preferences flowed to the Coalition. This has been a contentious question for the past year, since pollsters recognised recent federal election results were unlikely to provide a reliable guide to how they would flow this time, as per their usual practice. As Kevin Bonham discusses at length, this was one of many questions on which certain pollsters exhibited an unbecoming lack of transparency. Nonetheless, their decision to load up the Coalition on preferences from these parties has been more than vindicated, notwithstanding my earlier skepticism that the split would be as much as the 60-40 used for both parties by Newspoll.

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.

866 comments on “Tidying up”

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  1. Lucky….good to see you on theme…cheers.

    Australian workers know very well that climate change is a serious challenge. For workers, it is not the only challenge. Making the monthly payments and getting the kids to school are more immediately pressing issues for most of us. It will only be possible to address climate change if workers have confidence that they will not be neglected, ignored or exploited in the process. They will not willingly become the sacrificial lambs. We live in a democracy. The democratic expression of workers on these matters must be and will be respected.

  2. Confessions @ #399 Monday, June 3rd, 2019 – 10:19 pm

    briefly:

    You are wasting you time trying to reason with commenters who have shown no openness to reasoning whatsoever.

    I have to agree with ‘fess, briefly. The Greens are the New Conservatives. They are never going to change. They are going to continue on in their doughty fashion, fighting the good fight ineffectively, until the day they die and get buried in a biodegradable hessian sack.

  3. Confessions says:
    Monday, June 3, 2019 at 10:19 pm
    briefly:

    You are wasting you time trying to reason with commenters who have shown no openness to reasoning whatsoever.

    I’m not trying to persuade the Greens, Fess, be assured. But I’m happy to declare myself just the same. They are opponents. They are devious and mendacious. They have to be described and challenged. It annoys some of the Green-ants. Too bad.

  4. briefly:

    When I say those impervious to reasoning I don’t just mean the Greens aligned commenters here. I think the last election shows those people are firmly in their own bubble and aren’t for convincing.

  5. I think quite a few of my themes have been taken up by the bludgers. Certainly, the Lib-kin see fit to try to sneer at the ‘briefly’ persona. Good. The remarks have registered with them. The Lib-kin at least no longer sermonise as much as they once did. Their sanctimony has been partly bottled up. Also a good thing.

    For all their finger wagging and evasion, no Official Green has yet to swear that they do not hope to destroy Labor. They cannot quite bring themselves to tell that monstrous a lie. We’re on to them. They know it. They are Labor-hostile. They will not dispute it.

  6. Confessions says:
    Monday, June 3, 2019 at 10:31 pm
    briefly:

    When I say those impervious to reasoning I don’t just mean the Greens aligned commenters here. I think the last election shows those people are firmly in their own bubble and aren’t for convincing.

    Persuasion is difficult. We need to get better at it. The Libs and the Lib-kin have been doing a better job than us. We need to learn from them.

  7. Voters are favouring short term over long term. That’s what humans normally do. Why is anyone surprised by that?

  8. Yep keep it up briefly. Your unrelenting hostility can only help the Greens in our plan to destroy the ALP. This plan is already well advanced. It was all nutted out at a secret meeting with the Menzies Centre, Palmer and various Conservative powerbrokers in 2017:

  9. Briefly,

    You’re a boring dickhead.
    And yes you plan is working. To make their blog so tedious that no Green would want to post here.
    So yeah, you sit yourself with pride that you have bored people away…

    Good night all

  10. William .. Hopefully as encouragement to continue this great blog I have repaid you with a$50 contribution. I would like to have been able to afford a few more zeros on the end but that will come when Wayne’s great LNP government works it’s economic magic over the next few weeks and my business recovers from it’s downward spiral. Thank you for the hours of reading pleasure provided by you through your blog and the knowledgable contributors who I often agree with and occasionally take inspiration from. Thank you.

  11. Astro….the Greens are an anti-Labor instrument. They hate Labor. We see their animosity paraded here in post after post. They have never denied their passions.

    They are Tories by another name. You may be bored by the description, but it’s news to most voters. I think the news should be relayed to all. The Greens are not proxies for Labor. They are not Labor-sympathetic. They are Labor-hostile. This is to make sense of things in Australian politics.

  12. Briefly .. sorry to rock your world but I am a Greens member who likes Labor and has never supported Liberal. Hope you get over the shock. Like everyone I have spoken to in the last 6 years I did not like Shorten.

  13. Briefly,
    No most vote Labor 2.
    What is happening is you chucking a massive Sook because Labor lost a normally unloseable election. You’re lashing out because you can’t undertake the introspection necessary to understand why they lost.

    Stop being a Sook.

  14. William Bowe
    says:
    Monday, June 3, 2019 at 11:15 pm
    Thank you ICanCU, both for the money and the reminder of Wayne, who was last heard from at 6:58pm on election night.
    _____________________________
    Intriguing……..

  15. I see the Labor Green self destruct sequence has been initiated.
    The left always sees everybody else as the ‘enemy’.
    The left is always negative in their approach.
    The last guy to win for Labor did so by being unrelentingly positive.
    Learn, idiots.

    PS: I am 100% correct about the US. But please continue with CNN for your view of things.

  16. Salk – The last bloke to win for Labor did so because of a trade union funded commercial tv advertising blitz that started months before the election campaign even began.

    Rudd didn’t win by being positive, he won by playing along with a campaign that frightened people about the security of their employment, wages, and by extension living standards.

  17. Rudd had the dream campaign

    someone apart from him was unrelentingly negative and he got to be the positive statesmen rising above the fray

    Labour need greens and some backbenchers in safe seats to be aggressive attack dogs while their leader gives an unrelenting positive message.

  18. IcanCU..>

    You belong to a Party that is institutionally hostile to Labor, yet you personally are not. You’re in the wrong Party.

    The Greens campaign against Labor all the time. I will repeat that. All the time. They are Labor-antagonists. The effect of their political approach is to help the LNP. This is a conscious, deliberate choice on their part.

    Astro, as usual, a Green is trying to tell Labor what’s wrong with Labor. Go take a running jump.

  19. Rudd’s success was the only time since 1996 that Labor has won an election. Labor has lost 4 elections on the trot because of the politics of climate change. We will not win another election until we cease being wedged by both the Lib-Libs and the Lib-kin on this issue at the same time. The loss in 2004 was also influenced by the jobs/environment divide.

    Climate change is getting worse, not better. The economy is getting worse, not better. This will make it more difficult for Labor to win unless it’s able to change the dynamics of the jobs/environment collision.

  20. Graham…the Greens are attack dogs. They attack Labor. They make their living campaigning against Labor every day.

  21. It should not be lost on anyone….Margaret Thatcher made a political killing by exploiting coal miners. The Greens are doing the same thing. They are doing a Thatcher, politically-speaking. Meanwhile, the Lib-Libs are doing a Trump.

  22. @briefly

    Well I am predicting (as well as economists Steve Keen and John Adams) that an housing market and banking collapse will come in the next two years. Australia as a result will go through an economic depression with unemployment rising to around 20%.

    Scott Morrison made a lot of promises about keep the economy strong during the economy campaign, if this severe economic downturn occurs complete with house prices fall by between 50-80%. A lot of people especially in the mortgage belt are going to be angry at the government.

  23. Terry Australis@AustralisTerry
    14h14 hours ago

    So get this. Surprise, surprise #Brexit is all about destroying the NHS for US pharmaceutical industry #auspol

  24. The mining boom in WA did not end well for many hopefuls, many towns, the price of housing, continuous employment and the Liberal Party of WA.
    It makes you wonder!

  25. Hi from Bonn,

    After looking at Twitter, I decided to watch Q&A from last night. Jimmy Barnes was absolutely brilliant, and the rendition of “They’re shutting down our town” summed up Q&A brilliantly.

    I would suggest everyone interested in politics in Australia now watch it. It was a microcosm of where the different players and voters sit in Federal Australian politics right now.

    There is no simple answer to the problems facing Australia and the rest of the world. But, most importantly, we who feel strongly about a particular policy stance need to work out how to convince Australian voters to support us.

  26. More than a quarter of voters in the sample, 26%, had not yet made up their minds as the federal campaign entered its closing weeks. That number was down to 11% by polling day, with those voters making their decision on the day they cast their ballots.

    The Essential review underscores the fact that undecided voters broke the Coalition’s way in the final weeks of the campaign, with 40% of people who made up their minds in the closing week backing the Coalition, compared to 31% for Labor.

    For the cohort who made their decision on the day, 38% broke Morrison’s way and 27% Bill Shorten’s way. Labor’s campaign pace slowed in the final week of the contest, with a hiatus to mark the death of the former prime minister Bob Hawke.

    The voters who made their decision comfortably in advance of the closing campaign pitches were more likely to be older. Voters aged over 55 were the most likely cohort to decide more than a month before voting (60%), while people aged 18-34 were most likely to decide in the week before voting day (21%).

    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/04/post-election-research-shows-11-of-voters-made-up-their-mind-on-polling-day

  27. Also, as a physicist (and so yes, I do understand catastrophic climate change, and the risks thereof) I think we should stop scaring people into believing that without stopping Adani, catastrophic climate change will occur, and the Earth will be uninhabitable within x years (where x is between 5 and 15 years, depending on who you listen to).

    Stopping Adani will not prevent possibly catastrophic climate change. If the climate could be fixed by the two word slogan “Stop Adani” that would be great. But it cannot be.

    So, can we please have an adult conversation about what can be done, talking about the science? To get the best possible consensus outcome.

    And this conversation will need to include people who believe that “unless we act within 5 years the Earth is stuffed, so nothing else matters!”

    Unfortunately, the people who believe that “unless we act within 5 years the Earth is stuffed” have been proved wrong so many times -I heard this in 2007. It is now far more than 5 years after 2007. But, by this black and white situation, with shifting goalposts, these people are actually portraying to the world that it is probably too late, and so “Let’s just keep dancing”.

  28. Washington Post Conservative Max Boot : Here are seven reasons Trump should be impeached

    Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s presentation last week, although it contained no new information, has renewed pressure to impeach President Trump. You can debate whether impeachment makes sense politically, but there is no doubt that it is justified legally and morally. There is already more than enough evidence for at least seven articles of impeachment – four more than President Richard M. Nixon would have faced had he not resigned in 1974 .

    Here are seven reasons Trump should be impeached

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/03/here-are-seven-reasons-trump-should-be-impeached/?utm_term=.1edbc8357435

  29. Haha Twitter banned me for 24 hours again while they let abc get way with lies..

    Oh it’s fuxking cold as in Sydney (and raining).

  30. Don’t know if anyone caught Media Watch last night, but apparently there was an item regarding ABC news and AM spiking an anti-Adani story.

    Gavin Morris has questions to answer and some staff are not happy.

    Also kudos to 7.30 and Adele Ferguson for pursuing the ATO whistleblower story.

  31. adrian

    From the MW report, Adani has made many objections to stories. Most have, I think, been shut down. They are said to have a policy of aggressively attacking anything that is not favourable to them, with legal threats.

  32. @Samantha Maiden
    NEW: PM has known since the day he called the election it was near impossible to call Parliament before July 1 to pass tax cuts That’s because he nominated Friday, June 28 for the rerun of writs in his hand signed letter to the GG . thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/…

  33. @ShiannonC
    13h13 hours ago

    “African gangs have invaded the main Chinese residential suburbs!”.. is the message being spread through the Chinese community by alleged supporters of Gladys Liu. The lies and misinformation continue in support of Liu.

  34. Lizzie,

    OMFG – the measured, reasoned truth has no defence against lies like these.

    Lies are so quick to disseminate, but the rebuttal involving facts takes so long to put together, and in the end, no one will read it – too nuanced.

  35. lizzie @ #439 Tuesday, June 4th, 2019 – 7:17 am

    @ShiannonC
    13h13 hours ago

    “African gangs have invaded the main Chinese residential suburbs!”.. is the message being spread through the Chinese community by alleged supporters of Gladys Liu. The lies and misinformation continue in support of Liu.

    Could someone tall Gladys that this is Australia, not China, and African Australians have as much right to live where they like as Chinese Australians do!?!

  36. Douglas and Milko @ #440 Tuesday, June 4th, 2019 – 7:20 am

    Lizzie,

    OMFG – the measured, reasoned truth has no defence against lies like these.

    Lies are so quick to disseminate, but the rebuttal involving facts takes so long to put together, and in the end, no one will read it – too nuanced.

    That’s why Labor have to learn how to tell the truth in an easily digestible soundbite form.

  37. So, quoting my own post:

    Manus Island Detainee Farhad Bandesh releases a song, in collaboration with artists around the globe:

    https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/jun/04/writing-for-his-life-manus-island-detainee-farhad-bandesh-releases-soaring-new-song

    How much does it cost for a community, in Australia, or anywhere, to sponsor one of the Manus / Nauru refugees to immigrate to a new community? I am guessing we could crowd-source the funding from Australia and around the world.

    Does anyone know the practicalities surrounding this?

    Personally, as I said last night, I think the politically smartest thing for the LNP to do right now, while the MSM has all eyes on Labor, is to suddenly find a way to get refugees off Manus and Nauru, and defuse the situation.

    Of course, from a humanitarian point of view it is a no -brainer, but it would be also good politics for the LNP to do this.

    May be this is why the MSM’s focus is so sternly on Labor, despite the fact that they lost the election – they will use the cover of attacking Labor to get those poor bastards out of the concentration camps.

    Well, I can hope 🙁

  38. phoenixRED,
    Did you read this piece put up by Confessions yesterday, by George Will:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/impeachment-would-be-a-debacle/2019/05/31/61474462-8315-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html?utm_term=.a95591042699

    For once I’m in agreement with the guy wrt impeachment. He takes the classical view and has reviewed papers and books about it and his conclusion is best expressed in this paragraph:

    But Democrats should heed Weiner: “That an offense is impeachable does not mean it warrants impeachment.” Potential impeachers must consider “the general political context of the times,” including “the potential public reaction.” Democrats should face two lamentable but undeniable facts: Trump was elected because many millions of Americans enjoy his boorishness. And he essentially promised to govern as a lout. Promise-keeping would be an unusual ground for impeachment.

    I’d say to the Democrats, hasten slowly!

  39. Douglas and Milko,
    Hopeless situation I think, especially now that KK is in the job opposite Dutts. Those poor refugees will again be used as a wedge against the more compassionate Labor.

  40. C@tMomma,

    Douglas and Milko @ #440 Tuesday, June 4th, 2019 – 7:20 am

    Lizzie,

    OMFG – the measured, reasoned truth has no defence against lies like these.

    Lies are so quick to disseminate, but the rebuttal involving facts takes so long to put together, and in the end, no one will read it – too nuanced.

    That’s why Labor have to learn how to tell the truth in an easily digestible soundbite form.

    C@t, absolutely. it is actually surprisingly hard to distill a positive message. Psychology now has good evidence that a negative message has 3 to 5 times the cut through of a positive message, but we must keep trying.

    Also, it is not just the Coalition. The Green’s “same-same”, and “stop-Adani” messages are negative, simple, but unfortunately they did cut through. I do not think it was the major factor in the ALP loss, but this Greens messaging, particularly in the campaign, where their message was “Do not vote for the duopoly” did hurt Labor, and probably helped drive up the informal vote.

    For what it is worth, I do not think this was the result most Greens voters wanted, but living close to Newtown in Sydney, it is definitely what the Greens party members in that area wanted.

  41. Douglas and Milko @ #429 Tuesday, June 4th, 2019 – 6:44 am

    Hi from Bonn,

    After looking at Twitter, I decided to watch Q&A from last night. Jimmy Barnes was absolutely brilliant, and the rendition of “They’re shutting down our town” summed up Q&A brilliantly.

    I would suggest everyone interested in politics in Australia now watch it. It was a microcosm of where the different players and voters sit in Federal Australian politics right now.

    There is no simple answer to the problems facing Australia and the rest of the world. But, most importantly, we who feel strongly about a particular policy stance need to work out how to convince Australian voters to support us.

    If the Liberals can go after Angry Anderson, I reckon Labor should go after Jimmy Barnes. Yes, yes, I know, Peter Garrett. 😐

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