Preferences and preselections

More data on One Nation voters’ newly acquired and surprisingly forceful enthusiasm for preferencing the Coalition.

The Australian Electoral Commission quietly published the full distributions of lower house preferences earlier this week, shedding light on the election’s remaining known unknown: how close One Nation came to maybe pulling off a miracle in Hunter. Joel Fitzgibbon retained the seat for Labor with a margin of 2.98% over the Nationals, landing him on the wrong end of a 9.48% swing – the third biggest of the election after the central Queensland seats of Capricornia and Dawson, the politics of coal mining being the common thread between all three seats.

The wild card in the deck was that Hunter was also the seat where One Nation polled strongest, in what a dare say was a first for a non-Queensland seat – 21.59%, compared with 23.47% for the Nationals and 35.57% for Labor. That raised the question of how One Nation might have done in the final count if they emerged ahead of the Nationals on preferences. The answer is assuredly not-quite-well-enough, but we’ll never know for sure. As preferences from mostly left-leaning minor candidates were distributed, the gap between Nationals and One Nation barely moved, the Nationals gaining 4.81% to reach 28.28% at the final distribution, and One Nation gaining 4.79% to fall short with 26.38%. One Nation preferences then proceeded to flow to the Nationals with noteworthy force, with the final exclusion sending 19,120 votes (71.03%) to the Nationals and 28.97% to Labor.

Speaking of, the flow of minor party preferences between the Coalition and Labor is the one detail of the election result on which the AEC is still holding out. However, as a sequel to last week’s offering on Senate preferences, I offer the following comparison of flows in Queensland in 2016 and 2019. This is based on Senate ballot paper data, observing the number that placed one major party ahead of the either, or included neither major party in their preference order. In the case of the 2016 election, this is based on a sampling of one ballot paper in 50; the 2019 data is from the full set of results.

It has been widely noted that the Coalition enjoyed a greatly improved flow of One Nation preferences in the lower house, but the Senate results offer the interesting twist that Labor’s share hardly changed – evidently many One Nation voters who numbered neither major party in 2016 jumped off the fence and preferenced the Coalition this time. Also notable is that Labor received an even stronger share of Greens preferences than in 2016. If this was reflected nationally, it’s a phenomenon that has passed unnoticed, since the flow of One Nation and United Australia Party preferences was the larger and more telling story.

Other electorally relevant developments of the past week or so:

Laura Jayes of Sky News raises the prospect of the Nationals asserting a claim to the Liberal Senate vacancy created by Arthur Sinodinos’s appointment to Washington. The Nationals lost one of their two New South Wales seats when Fiona Nash fell foul of Section 44 in late 2017, resulting in a recount that delivered to the Liberals a seat that would otherwise have been held by the Nationals until 2022. Since that is also when Sinodinos’s term expires, giving the Nationals the seat would restore an order in which the Nationals held two out of the five Coalition seats.

• Fresh from her win over Tony Abbott in Warringah, The Australian reported on Tuesday that Zali Steggall was refusing to deny suggestions she might be persuaded to join the Liberal Party, although she subsequently complained the paper had twisted her words. A report in The Age today notes both “allies and opponents” believe Steggall will struggle to win re-election as an independent with Abbott out of the picture, and gives cause to doubt she would survive a preselection challenge as a Liberal.

• Labor is undergoing a personnel change in the Victorian Legislative Council after the resignation of Philip Dalidakis, who led the party’s ticket for Southern Metropolitan region at both the 2014 and 2018 elections. Preserving the claim of the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, the national executive is set to anoint Enver Erdogan, a workplace lawyer for Maurice Blackburn, former Moreland councillor and member of the Kurdish community. The Australian reports former Melbourne Ports MP Michael Danby has joined the party’s Prahran and Brighton branches in registering displeasure that the national executive is circumventing a rank-and-file plebiscite. Particularly contentious is Erdogan’s record of criticism of Israel, a sore point in a region that encompasses Melbourne’s Jewish stronghold around Caulfield.

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.

1,628 comments on “Preferences and preselections”

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  1. Cat

    Wrong again.

    Whitlam did not fail for doing things too quickly.
    He failed in rushing things. There is a difference. That’s a hell of a long way from arguing Labor sold out its core values.

    Thanks for confirming you are a Liberal Lite believer

    Yet you rusted ons accuse others of being in a bubble.

  2. While I agree that drug users should be dealt with in ways other than gaol, this is a horrible paragraph.

    More people are being sent to prison now than at any time in the past 120 years — despite crime rates being on a steady decline.

    It says nothing substantive.

    Our population is increasing, so it would surprising if gaol populations were not also increasing with more people being sent there each year.

    A reducing crime rate is also no absolute measure of numbers going to gaol. Population growth could be faster than the decline or policing could be more effective in catching perpetrators. 🙂

  3. BiM
    Some good points, IMO.
    Correlation is not causation we are told.
    But here we have crime rates declining AND more people being sent to jail…

  4. So there we have it people. We really do have a Liberal Lite operatives in the Labor party thinking you beat the Liberals by being a pale shadow of them.

  5. There is no benefit focussing on what will work at next election in three years time.
    For eg tonight four corners is doing the water expose’.
    No idea how indepth it will be, save to say that Labor need to shame the govt in getting to the bottom of the corruption and rectifying the loopholes.
    That is the job of opposition, holding the current govt to account.
    As was seen during election campaign, Labor stupidly or deliberately focussed on their own agenda, and not exposing the corrupt govt we have had over six years.

    And the current legislated tax cuts are not a hill to die on for Labor, most of its base are looking forward to any morsel that comes their way.

  6. With the number of jails growing, at great expense, perhaps it would be worth dropping the number of charges which lead to confinement. Unless the crime actively hurts other people, why jail them and ruin their chances? Non payment of traffic fines? Use of marijuana?

  7. Andrew_Earlwood @ #1110 Monday, July 8th, 2019 – 7:30 am

    Whether one calculates according to catprog’s method or that favoured by briefly the case for further and immediate tax relief for lower to middle incomes is clear, and Rex is wrong about both fairness and economic equality issues relating to the same.

    It is also good politics for Labor to keep proposing being forward those Stage 2 cuts ASAP.

    Yes, if Lib lite want to win the next election they can target middle income households with more tax cut sweetners. The starving and destitute on Newstart can wait a little longer for assistance.

  8. But here we have crime rates declining AND more people being sent to jail…
    _______________________________
    It’s because Victoria has scaled back on parole after the murder of Jill Meagher by a parolee. So there is a backlog of people who would have been released earlier.

  9. Player One says:
    Monday, July 8, 2019 at 9:35 am

    Finally, someone has done the maths:

    https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6261371/australias-share-of-emissions-up-report/?cs=14231

    When we add Australia’s exported emissions to our domestic emissions, Australia rockets to equal fifth on the list of major global climate polluters, alongside Russia and behind only India, the European Union, the USA and China,” Mr McFadzean said.

    How long is it going to take before the truth sinks in that Australia is – per capita – the world’s worst environmental vandal, and by a long, long way?

    When they add exported emissions, do they then subtract imported emissions from a Country’s total?

    A Country that is a 100% importer of emissions would therefore have zero emissions.

    To do it any other way would be counting emissions twice. 🙂

  10. Victoria

    Labor has to work out an alternative agenda that will win. Trying to be Liberal Lite won’t work.

    Daniel Andrews winning rejecting the LNP narrative saw him win government from opposition. No worries about Sovereign Risk claims from him.

  11. Albanese and Swan should cut the ties between Lib lite and the unions.

    Lib lite should target more support from small business/tradies.

  12. Guytaur

    The Andrews govt won govt in 2014 due to the Liberals doing nothing for four years. Their only agenda was to build the east west link, and PSOs on public transport.
    Fast forward to 2018, the Andrew’s govt was re elected due to getting stuff done. Big road and rail projects that actually were completed.
    That is it in a nutshell.
    Anyone I spoke to who was usually a liberal voter said that was the reason why they gave their vote to team Labor.
    Your view that it has something to do with anything more than that, is misplaced.

  13. Sean Kelly get it:

    Most Labor MPs are understandably shattered right now, still shocked they could be beaten by a rabble. There is no sense the party has yet woken to the real threat posed by the invigorated Liberal team. If that confusion was not clear before last week, the absurd debate around the government’s tax cuts crystallised it.

    What seemed to be occupying many Labor MPs was the politics of the decision. Would it prove the party backed aspiration or hated it? What would it say to the party’s base? What were the implications for the next election?

    Let me see if I’ve got this straight. We have all just lived through a term in which one former prime minister constantly sniped at another prime minister, who was then torn down by a third prime minister, and yet still that bloke (the third one) went on to win the election – and Labor is worrying about the political ramifications of a decision immediately after an election about tax cuts that won’t kick in until after the next election. Got that?

    Has it not occurred to anyone that Bill Shorten lost not just because he got the politics wrong, but because he was so obviously thinking, all the time, about the politics of everything he did and said? The debate last week suggests the habit might have spread.

    https://www.theage.com.au/national/scott-morrison-is-no-progressive-and-he-s-going-to-change-the-country-20190707-p524up.html

  14. “God, in His infinite wisdom, told Morrison to lie to retirees and pensioners about taxes.”

    God, in His eternal plans, has decreed that at this time Australia needs to be ruled by an incompetent and corrupt right wing Government.

  15. Victoria.

    My point was that Andrews did not fall for the Sovereign Risk claims on the East West link. He confronted the scare campaign head on. Destroyed it. Pointed out the do nothing and won.

  16. guytaur says:

    Monday, July 8, 2019 at 10:39 am
    So there we have it people. We really do have a Liberal Lite operatives in the Labor party thinking you beat the Liberals by being a pale shadow of them.

    There is a lot of truth in RWer Le Pen’s comment that in a choice between an original and an imitation people always chose the original.

  17. Victoria @ #1215 Monday, July 8th, 2019 – 10:53 am

    Guytaur

    The Andrews govt won govt in 2014 due to the Liberals doing nothing for four years. Their only agenda was to build the east west link, and PSOs on public transport.
    Fast forward to 2018, the Andrew’s govt was re elected due to getting stuff done. Big road and rail projects that actually were completed.
    That is it in a nutshell.
    Anyone I spoke to who was usually a liberal voter said that was the reason why they gave their vote to team Labor.
    Your view that it has something to do with anything more than that, is misplaced.

    You’re a bit hard on Ted. He built a beautiful freeway down to Portsea.

  18. lizzie says:
    Monday, July 8, 2019 at 10:42 am

    With the number of jails growing, at great expense, perhaps it would be worth dropping the number of charges which lead to confinement. Unless the crime actively hurts other people, why jail them and ruin their chances? Non payment of traffic fines? Use of marijuana?

    Yep, I think in many cases gaol has been used to hide problems, rather than try to deal with them effectively.

    The first question needs to be,
    What purpose do we want our gaols to serve?

  19. C@t

    Yep. Its about time team Labor woke up and got with the program. They need to hold this corrupt govt to account.
    So far, they are showing themselves not to be to the task. Very disappointing.
    And I repeat, the tax cuts are popular with the electorate whether it is a good move or not.
    Labor need to move on and focus on other matters at hand

  20. Pegasus @ #1154 Monday, July 8th, 2019 – 9:32 am

    ajm

    As I have already posted in response to Dio’s question :

    Was Possum making those comments before the election or only after Labor lost?

    The comments made by Possum via his twitter account that sprocket so helpfully provided but without a time stamp were tweeted on July 6 2019.

    One of his tweets comprising his twitter rant:

    https://twitter.com/Pollytics/status/1147464923917631488

    Click on each separate tweet you will find the date stamp at the bottom.

    Perhaps ajm has blocked me. If so would someone like to inform him.

    Someone (can’t be bothered to check back – may have been Dio) asked whether Possum raised these concerns earlier or only after Labor lost. I pointed out that he had raised them during the election campaign when he discovered how incompetent the Labor polling operation was.

    You seem incapable of absorbing that fact so I have stated it again here. I know Greens are frantic to hit back at anyone who criticises them by trying to paint the critic as opportunistic or wise only after the fact, so perhaps you are facing some cognitive dissonance when faced which facts which show your criticism has no basis in the case of Possum. Of course he didn’t go on about it at length at the time, because he didn’t want to damage the campaign further, but he did make the statement – I follow his tweets closely because he is one of the few that has a real quantitative insight into how auspol works, due to his work on the Queensland campaigning that dislodged Newman.

  21. Victoria

    Voters are asking what is Labor for. At the very least pundits like Greg Jericho have asked this question.

    For Labor to win it has to show it stands for something other than being a pale shadow of the Liberals.

    Labor needs to stop being a tax cut party or economically conservative. People will vote for the original.

  22. Rex Douglas

    That particular freeway was already in the works. As soon as Ballieu won the election, the contract was signed off. It was going to happen whoever was in power.

  23. I think the core issue that is poorly understood is that the Australian Government will never have difficulty funding the Age Pension. The Australian Government won’t suddenly lose the capacity to keystroke numbers into bank accounts. The real cost of supporting older people in retirement is the goods and services consumed by older people. We can run out of goods and services. But a currency issuing government can never run out of its own currency.

    So the relevant question is, “What investments are we making to enhance the productive capacity of our economy?”

    Increasing productivity-enhancing factors and removing or reducing productivity-retarding factors are the key levers for the Australian Government to use.

    We need first class public services and public infrastructure to be highly productive. We need high levels of scientific knowledge and technological capacity to be highly productive. We need high levels of knowledge and skill in our labour force to be highly productive. We need high levels of health and well-being and cooperation and social cohesion to be highly productive. So cutting or neglecting those things is precisely the wrong thing to do. Investing wisely in those things enables us to improve people’s quality of life and increase people’s standard of living.

    Services and infrastructure, research and development, education and training, health care and social cohesion are related to almost everything else in public policy. Including the question of how to ensure that everybody is well-supported in retirement.

  24. guytaur @ #1219 Monday, July 8th, 2019 – 10:55 am

    Victoria.

    My point was that Andrews did not fall for the Sovereign Risk claims on the East West link. He confronted the scare campaign head on. Destroyed it. Pointed out the do nothing and won.

    Andrews direct action on solar has been popular. Copped a bit of blowback re banning fracking but not from farmers. Heraldsun and Neil Mitchell rendered irrelevant.

  25. Guytaur

    Labor lost this election on its proposed agenda.
    Any type of agenda as proposed by the likes of you, will ensure another loss in three years time. You can rant and rave till the cows come home. It is as Simple as that.

  26. @guytaur

    Although Victoria in the past had a very left-wing Labor Party and a Liberal Party dominated by small ‘l’ liberals. That explained the Liberal dominace in Victoria state and federally, until the 1980s.

    Now the local Liberals are dominated by the Hard Right and Labor Party is considerable more moderate than in the past.

  27. Tristo

    Yes. I am not saying a Labor should be the Greens. Just not Liberal Lite.
    The pro business tax cut party is the Liberal agenda. The whole small government thing.

  28. guytaur @ #1224 Monday, July 8th, 2019 – 11:00 am

    Victoria

    Voters are asking what is Labor for. At the very least pundits like Greg Jericho have asked this question.

    For Labor to win it has to show it stands for something other than being a pale shadow of the Liberals.

    Labor needs to stop being a tax cut party or economically conservative. People will vote for the original.

    Forget Labor.

    It’s quite clear they’ve morphed into Lib lite. The new agenda is clear to those who wish to see it. Tax cuts, strong borders, surpluses.

  29. Guytaur

    Actually since 1982 Labor in Victoria have been in power for 22 years out of the 37. So it hasn’t been a liberal state for a while.

  30. Poor Cory! 🙁

    ‘No one listened’: Cory Bernardi on the demise of his party – Australian politics live podcast

    I won’t post the link,

    why would we want to start listening now? 😆

  31. Victoria

    Yes. In none of those cases did Labor win by adopting the Liberal party economics. Especially winning against Kennett.

    Labor just needs to do the same Nationally. They will win more than they lose

  32. People who commit traffic offences that involve increasing the risk to life and property and who then refuse to pay a fine for same probably should spend some time in jail for their dangerous anti-social behaviour.
    Unpaid parking fines are another matter, IMO.

  33. Victoria

    Western Australia and Queensland are known to vote for Labor.

    Except for Rudd Labor did not have tax cuts and being economically conservative as their agenda.

  34. Victoria @ #1285 Monday, July 8th, 2019 – 11:03 am

    Guytaur

    Labor lost this election on its proposed agenda.
    Any type of agenda as proposed by the likes of you, will ensure another loss in three years time. You can rant and rave till the cows come home. It is as Simple as that.

    +1

    Sadly, I think we are going to get 3 more years of it from the likes of guytaur and Rex Douglas, who seem to have all day to spend here waging an unwinnable war till the dying of the light.

    Whereas I think, in due course, Labor will figure out what it wants to be by the next election. However, that won’t be Green Lite.

    Nor will it be Liberal Lite, though that seems like it will be the epithet du jour, tiresomely and predictably for the next 3 years here.

    As some here may not have noticed but the ‘Liberal’ Party is morphing at warp speed into The Authoritarian Conservative Party. And Labor will never be that. Nor a ‘Lite’ version of it.

  35. Nicholas
    Your solution to everything is to create more money.
    I am still interested in the actual numbers for your policy package.
    signed
    Still Curious.
    The reason I am interested is that the current retirement system needs root and branch overhaul.
    But voters will not, IMO, buy into that until they can see the numbers.

  36. Boerwar says:
    Monday, July 8, 2019 at 11:17 am

    BiM
    God instructed Cory’s followers to vote for the High Priest of the Happy Clappers, and Lo!

    But Cory was there first.

    Why did doG forsake him in such a way?

  37. C@t

    Yep. Although Labor will still need to be strong on border controls, cos that is what the majority of the electorate supports.

  38. Bitrhof
    My psephological theory is that it was the bestiality thing what dun Cory in. Or was that kamerad Abetz? I do get my nasties all mixed up.

  39. Victoria

    The results tell me that Queensland voters voted for the original not the Liberal lite.
    The voters were left the room to believe the scare campaign on tax rises precisely because Labor was competing on their turf. Of course that meant the LNP won.

  40. C@t

    On another subject, what are your thoughts on backpacker that went missing in Byron Bay. I know it’s far from where you are.

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