Mopping up operations

Late counting adds some extra grunt to the backlash against the Liberals in wealthy city seats, slightly reducing the size of their expected winning margin on the national two-party vote.

The Australian Electoral Commission is now conducting Coalition-versus-Labor preference counts in seats where its indicative preference counts included minor party or independent candidates – or, if you want to stay on top of the AEC’s own jargon in these matters, two-party preferred counts in non-classic contests.

Such counts are complete in the seven seats listed below; 94% complete in Warringah, where the current count records a 7.4% swing to Labor, 78% complete in New England, where there is a 1.2% swing to the Coalition; at a very early stage in Clark (formerly Denison, held by Andrew Wilkie); and have yet to commence in Farrer, Indi, Mayo and Melbourne. Labor have received unexpectedly large shares of preferences from the independent candidates in Kooyong, Warringah and Wentworth, to the extent that Kevin Bonham now reckons the final national two-party preferred vote will be more like 51.5-48.5 in favour of the Coalition than the 52-48 projected by most earlier estimates.

We also have the first completed Senate count, from the Northern Territory. This isn’t interesting in and of itself, since the result there was always going to be one seat each for Labor and the Country Liberals. However, since it comes with the publication of the full data file accounting for the preference order of every ballot paper, it does provide us with the first hard data we have on how each party’s preferences flowed. From this I can offer the seemingly surprising finding that 57% of United Australia Party voters gave Labor preferences ahead of the Country Liberals compared with only 37% for vice-versa, with the remainder going to neither.

Lest we be too quick to abandon earlier assessments of how UAP preferences were behaving, this was almost certainly a consequence of a ballot paper that had the UAP in column A, Labor in column B and the Country Liberals in column C. While not that many UAP votes would have been donkey votes as normally understood, there seems little doubt that they attracted a lot of support from blasé voters who weren’t much fussed how they dispensed with preferences two through six. There also appears to have been a surprisingly weak 72% flow of Greens preferences to Labor, compared with 25% to the Country Liberals. It remains to be seen if this will prove to be another territorian peculiarity – my money is on yes.

Note also that there’s a post below this one dealing with various matters in state politics in Western Australia.

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.

2,119 comments on “Mopping up operations”

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  1. A compliant EBA might save the bosses hundreds of thousands, more likely millions, for a union sanctioned EBA rather than sit under the award. It was a classic pay for play operation. The union gets the dues and cash payments from the company, they also get to use the worker numbers for delegates at conference. The company saves a fortune in getting an agreement that works around the award. It is the SDA business model which both Greg Sword and then Bill Shorten emulated starting in the 1990s.

  2. Steve777 @ #2092 Sunday, June 16th, 2019 – 11:15 pm

    I would like to see the private school sector shrink to the 5-10% it is in comparable countries.

    I’m happy with any size, so long as it’s truly private and self-supporting and not receiving any public funds whatsoever. A publicly subsidized private school is just a blatant ripoff factory.

  3. a r says:
    Sunday, June 16, 2019 at 11:46 pm

    Steve777 @ #2092 Sunday, June 16th, 2019 – 11:15 pm

    I would like to see the private school sector shrink to the 5-10% it is in comparable countries.

    I’m happy with any size, so long as it’s truly private and self-supporting and not receiving any public funds whatsoever. A publicly subsidized private school is just a blatant ripoff factory.
    ____________________________
    I’d like to see a revolutionary new public school funding model. The lower the socio-economic level of the surrounding suburbs, the higher the funding the school gets. We gear the highest public funding to the poorest areas. Balwyn High, is a public school that recieves the same funding as any comparable public school. However, the wealthy parents donations have built a brilliant public/private school.

    By gearing the most funding to the most disadvantaged schools we could break cycles of poverty. It is certainly worth a trial.

  4. Going to an election to positively fund schools in disadvantaged areas to break the cycles of poverty !
    Evidence suggests that half the population are very happy to see the other half remain in an unbroken cycle of poverty.

  5. Goll
    says:
    Monday, June 17, 2019 at 12:20 am
    Going to an election to positively fund schools in disadvantaged areas to break the cycles of poverty !
    Evidence suggests that half the population are very happy to see the other half remain in an unbroken cycle of poverty.
    _______________________________
    State governments could prioritise new funding to high schools in the poorest areas. They could do it tomorrow.

  6. Instead of directing Commonwealth funds into State education, the Liberals allocate funds to the private sector. The effect is to deprive the public sector of the income they need. This is a very deliberate choice by the Right.

    The Irregulars are co-sponsors of this misallocation. The green-anting and blue-anting of social justice is well-advanced.

  7. One of the great ironies of Australian political history may well turn out to be that federal Labor’s most successful period electorally also sewed the seeds of it’s long term decline.

    Union membership was 60% when Hawke took power, by the time Keating got demolished in 96 it was down to 30%, under a Labor government the Labour movement had been cut in half.

    Today Labor membership is less than some football clubs, private sector union membership is maybe 10% tops, the coalition will keep shrinking the public sector and with it what is left of the Labour movement.

    Sure there is not much left of the liberals either, but they are a different kind of movement, all they need is a few billionaires to tip in some coin and they will be sweet.

    Labor are like a car in a dodgy used car lot, from a distance they look bright and shiny but scratch the surface and it is just paint and bog.They are a relatively poor. very structurally weak and very vulnerable with the forces of capital circling like sharks that smell blood in the water, a bad loss in 2022 and the whole thing might just go pop like a pricked balloon.

  8. Today Labor membership is less than some football clubs, private sector union membership is maybe 10% tops, the coalition will keep shrinking the public sector and with it what is left of the Labour movement.
    ____________________________
    And a lot of that private sector union is the supermarket and fast food workers, 250,000 of them, managed by the SDA. Their pay and conditions has hardly been an advertisement for unionism! So it is really the left wing public sector unions, plus the CFMEU, which is all that is left. The right wing unions are not even real unions anymore.

  9. Nath:

    Well I think Lars would be an exceptional dinner guest and quite a bit of fun.

    That’s the kind of compliment you usually reserve for yourself, Baron Littlefinger

  10. He goes on a bit, but nath is basically right – elitist, right wing union careerist toffs like Shorten and Marles are a cancer on the labor party and should be opposed by the labor rank and file. The labor party needs to be reclaimed by the actual labor movement.

  11. The fall in the private sector union membership is worthy of discussion.

    In my workplace, union membership dwindled to only a handful until the enterprise bargaining agreement came up for re-negotiation. It then tripled.

    This might be a temporary lift, but it suggests that many people are not happy to represent themselves, and they do care about the outcome.

  12. Big A Adrian @ #2112 Monday, June 17th, 2019 – 2:39 am

    He goes on a bit, but nath is basically right – elitist, right wing union careerist toffs like Shorten and Marles are a cancer on the labor party and should be opposed by the labor rank and file. The labor party needs to be reclaimed by the actual labor movement.

    What’s wrong with people being well-educated!?!

  13. I spent a couple of weeks in Budapest in 2001. Loved it. Then went out to lake balaton (?). It was a fun language to try to learn. All I remember is ya napot kivanok and kersernerm.

    They had a nice spicy spirit from memory. Kinda like the Czech Becharovka.

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