Call of the board: Sydney

Ahead of Newspoll’s apparently looming return, the first in a series that probes deep into the entrails of the May 19 election result.

In case you were wondering, The Australian reported on Monday that the first Newspoll since the election – indeed, the first poll on voting intention of any kind since the election, unless someone else quickly gets in first – will be published “very shortly”.

In the meantime, I offer what will be the first in a series of posts that probe deep into the results of the federal election region by region, starting with Sydney and some of its immediate surrounds. Below are two colour-coded maps showing the two-party preferred swing at polling booth level, with each booth allocated a geographic catchment area built out of the “mesh blocks” that form the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ smallest unit of geographic analysis (typically encompassing about 30 dwellings). The image on the right encompasses the core of the city, while the second zooms further out. To get a proper look at either, click for an enlarged image.

In a pattern that will recur throughout this series, there is a clear zone of red in the inner city and the affluent, established eastern suburbs and northern beaches regions, giving way to an ocean of blue in the middle and outer suburbs. The occasional patches of red that break this up are often associated with sophomore surge effects, which played out to the advantage of Mike Freelander, who had no trouble retaining Macarthur (more on that below); Susan Templeman, who held out against a 2.0% swing in Macquarie; and Emma McBride, who survived a 3.3% swing in Dobell (albeit there was little to distinguish this from a 3.1% swing in neighbouring, Liberal-held Robertson).

The second part of our analysis compares the actual two-party results from the election with the results predicted by a linear regression model similar to, but more elaborate than, that presented here shortly after the election. This is based on the correlations observed across the nation between booth-level two-party results and the demography of booths’ catchment areas. The gory details of the model can be found here (the dependent variable being Labor’s two-party preferred percentage). The r-squared values indicate that the model explains 76.5% of the variation in the results – and doesn’t explain another 23.5%. Among the myriad unexplained factors that constitute the latter figure, the personal appeal (or lack thereof) of the sitting member (if any) might be expected to have a considerable bearing.

Such a model can be used to produce estimates that hopefully give some idea as to where the two parties were punching above and below their weight, and where the results were as we might have expected in view of broader trends. The latter more-or-less encompasses Lindsay, which was the only seat in the Sydney region to change hands between Labor and the Coalition (the only other change being Zali Steggall’s win over Tony Abbott in Warringah). The table below shows, progressively, the model’s estimate of Labor’s two-party vote, the actual result, and the difference between the two.

The first thing that leaps out is that the current leaders of both parties did exceptionally well, with their margins evidently being padded out by their substantial personal votes. Beyond that though, patterns get a little harder to discern. The Liberal-versus-independent contests in Warringah and Wentworth appear to have had very different effects on the Coalition’s two-party margins over Labor, which reduced to a remarkably narrow 2.1% as voters turned on Tony Abbott in Warringah, but remained solid at 9.8% in Wentworth, suggesting Dave Sharma may have accumulated a few fans through two recent campaigns and a dignified showing in the wake of the by-election defeat. That there was nonetheless a 7.9% two-party swing to Labor illustrates that he still has a way to go before he matches Malcolm Turnbull on this score.

The modelled result further emphasises the particularly good result Labor had in Macarthur, a seat the Liberals held from 1996 until 2016, when Russell Matheson suffered first an 8.3% reduction in his margin at a redistribution, and then an 11.7% swing to Labor’s Michael Freelander, a local paediatrician. At the May 19 election, the seat defied the national pattern in which outer urban seats that responded had unfavourably to Malcolm Turnbull swept back to the Liberals, with Freelander in fact managing the tiniest of swings in his favour. In addition to Freelander’s apparent popularity, this probably reflected a lack of effort put into the Liberal campaign, as the party narrowly focused on its offensive moves in Lindsay and Macquarie and defensive ones in Gilmore and Reid.

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.

1,549 comments on “Call of the board: Sydney”

Comments Page 22 of 31
1 … 21 22 23 … 31

  1. Tristo

    Albanese’s had a 35% approval rating, 25% disapproval rating and 39% undecided.

    They need another category. ‘Disappointed’ 🙂

  2. Labor deputy leader Richard Marles says the coal industry should be celebrated, as his party tries to regain support in Queensland.

    On tour in Rockhampton, Mr Marles admits he was ‘tone deaf’ prior to the election when he called the potential collapse of global coal markets ‘a good thing.’

    Is Marles actually a Coalition collaborator?

  3. I have been impressed so far by Anthony Albanese’s leader, to me he comes across as genuine and authentic, in a way Bill Shorten wasn’t when it came to me at-least. Also Albanese is genuinely interested in bringing the country together. Indeed if Albanese had been opposition leader at the recent election, no doubt to me Labor would have won a truly massive majority.

  4. Why “Mass Extinction Event”, Rex? Is the expression “End of Days” too religious-sounding for you?

    We’ve heard this pseudo-apocalyptic rhetoric from environmentalists for too long. It’s lost its urgency. If you believed ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ back in 2006, you’d have thought that by 2019 the ice caps would have disappeared entirely, Manhattan would resemble Atlantis and everyone in Tuvalu would require a snorkel. Well, it’s 2019 now, and while it’s clear that climate change remains a genuine and increasing danger, it’s also clear that The Rapture has not yet arrived.

    And let’s face it, if your “mass extinction event” was genuinely imminent, Sen. Rice would have better things to do in Parliament than play stupid schoolyard pranks.

  7. Naomi Klein has a new book out – On Fire: the Burning case for a New Green Deal.

    https://www.penguin.com.au/books/on-fire-9780241410738

    The fight for a green world is the fight of our lives. And with On Fire, Naomi Klein gives us the ammunition to do it.

    In frank, personal terms, she shows us how the only way forward out of a polluted world of our own making is only through policy reform – a concrete set of actions to combat the mounting threat of total environmental catastrophe. What’s needed, she argues, is something with radical verve and guaranteed protections: in other words, a New Deal.

    On Fire finds Klein at her most canny and prophetic, and the stakes of our imperiled global situation higher than ever before. In wide-ranging essays reporting from varying stages of ecological crisis – from prescient clarion calls from years ago to our panicked present – Klein wakes us up from our environmental sleepwalk and sets us on a course of potent, necessary action.

  11. Did successive Coalition and Labor governments, really notice that in the decades of their existence half the Great Barrier Reef died?

  13. Citation Needed @ #1053 Friday, July 19th, 2019 – 5:59 pm

    Why “Mass Extinction Event”, Rex? Is the expression “End of Days” too religious-sounding for you?

    We’ve heard this pseudo-apocalyptic rhetoric from environmentalists for too long. It’s lost its urgency. If you believed ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ back in 2006, you’d have thought that by 2019 the ice caps would have disappeared entirely, Manhattan would resemble Atlantis and everyone in Tuvalu would require a snorkel. Well, it’s 2019 now, and while it’s clear that climate change remains a genuine and increasing danger, it’s also clear that The Rapture has not yet arrived.

    And let’s face it, if your “mass extinction event” was genuinely imminent, Sen. Rice would have better things to do in Parliament than play stupid schoolyard pranks.

    …like vote against more thermal coal mining/export ..?

    You sound confused.

    Well, Albanese’s Lib lite isn’t as confused as Labor was before the election. Their stance is clear according to the clear and strong deputy leadership of Richard Marles.

  15. Twenty seven years, twenty seven years old
    Only thing I know, the only thing that gets old
    I gotta sell out if I want to get sold
    Don’t want the devil to be taking my soul
    I write songs that come from the heart
    I don’t give a fuck if they get into the chart, oh no
    Only way I can be, is to say what I see
    And have my shadow hanging over me
    I don’t know where I’m running, but I know how to run
    ‘Cause running’s the thing I’ve always done
    Oh I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know what I’ve done
    I’m a hungry heart, I’m a loaded gun

  16. It occurs to me that the best way for civil society groups to remove the Manus/Nauru issue would be by using their international connections to find permanent destinations for those still detained. At present it suits both the government and the Greens politically to have the detention continued.

    As I understand it, there is no barrier to them going to third countries apart from finding the countries to accept them. Given the fact that otherwise they are destined for another 3 years in detention, real concern for the detainees as people rather than a political issue demands some new thinking.

  17. On the Drum atm is a young farmer, Anika Molesworth, who founded Climate Wise Agriculture.

    The face of the future and why grassroots powered action and other community based networks will coalesce and grow to exert pressure on the major party politicians to begin to take AGW seriously.

    http://www.climatewiseagriculture.com/

  18. At present it suits both the government and the Greens politically to have the detention continued

    At present it suits both the government and Labor politically to have the detention continued.

  19. ‘Pegasus says:
    Friday, July 19, 2019 at 6:17 pm

    On the Drum atm is a young farmer, Anika Molesworth, who founded Climate Wise Agriculture.

    The face of the future and why grassroots powered action and other community based networks will coalesce and grow to exert pressure on the major party politicians to begin to take AGW seriously. ‘

    The reality is that there has been a reduction of around 60,000 from around 140,000 broad acre farms in Australia since around 2000. In other words the trend is to massive increases in the size of broad acre farms. Further, broad acre farms are increasingly owned by corporates. The same broad pattern of increasing farm size and increasing corporatization is happening in irrigated agriculture.

    Not a grass root in sight.

    Naturally, the Greens completely and utterly miss the dominant trends in Australian farming.

  20. @ Pegasus: Did Naomi Klein really have to use the expression “Green New Deal?” The US bill of the same name was an ill-conceived disaster. Its failure has made future green policy reforms in the US practically unfeasible, at least for the foreseeable future. “On Fire”? “Put out” is more like it.

  21. Pegasus @ #1051 Friday, July 19th, 2019 – 5:53 pm

    Labor deputy leader Richard Marles says the coal industry should be celebrated, as his party tries to regain support in Queensland.

    On tour in Rockhampton, Mr Marles admits he was ‘tone deaf’ prior to the election when he called the potential collapse of global coal markets ‘a good thing.’

    In Marles actually a Coalition collaborator?

    Richard Marles is a strong and decisive deputy leader. Tell your grandkids…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrHjXY893IQ

  22. Citation Needed @ #1069 Friday, July 19th, 2019 – 6:23 pm

    @ Pegasus: Did Naomi Klein really have to use the expression “Green New Deal?” The US bill of the same name was an ill-conceived disaster. Its failure has made future green policy reforms in the US practically unfeasible, at least for the foreseeable future. “On Fire”? “Put out” is more like it.

    So you’re happy with current proceedings …?

  23. https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/resist-duttons-war-democracy

    Governments, whose job it is to regulate capitalism in the interests of a powerful few, often seek new powers to monitor and control dissent.

    In a situation of formal democracy under which important rights have been won by past struggles of working people and the oppressed, pro-capitalist governments cannot necessarily impose repression at will. But they will try to get away with what they can — particularly if opposing forces allow them to.

    Labor has opposed some of the more egregiously thuggish activities of Dutton and his security forces, such as the AFP raids.

    But recently-appointed shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally is keen to promote her national security priorities and emphasise that there is “no difference between Labor and the government when it comes to our border protection regime”.

    Labor fully accepts the ludicrous “national security” panic about the “threat” posed by desperate refugees and the enhancement of the national security state with which they are being victimised.

    The Greens have been more forthright in opposing increased security state powers.

    Last month, Greens justice spokesperson Nick McKim rightly said: “For two decades the major parties have endorsed wave after wave of increased surveillance powers for security agencies which have undermined Australians’ privacy and civil liberties.” He called for the creation of a Charter of Rights.

  25. Jordan Steele-John

    Apart from getting a Senate lurk on some sort of arcane count back, no major substantive achievements at all.

  26. About time we had a Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability

  27. Siewert was a research officer and co-ordinator before snouting the Greens trough.

    What massive research discoveries she officered are not clear.
    She co-ordinated some environmentalist group. Actual achievements not listed.

  28. @ Rex: Voting against a motion that already has bilateral support achieves nothing. It’s a virtue-signalling exercise, as effective in its purpose as a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet.

  30. Faruqi is definitely the odd one out: a Greens senator with a longish track record of substantial achievements.

  31. Citation Needed @ #1054 Friday, July 19th, 2019 – 5:59 pm

    And let’s face it, if your “mass extinction event” was genuinely imminent, Sen. Rice would have better things to do in Parliament than play stupid schoolyard pranks.

    It is more than just “imminent” – it is occuring as we type.

    Do you not follow any environmental news at all?

  32. Citation Needed @ #1077 Friday, July 19th, 2019 – 6:37 pm

    @ Rex: Voting against a motion that already has bilateral support achieves nothing. It’s a virtue-signalling exercise, as effective in its purpose as a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet.

    Yes you’re right.

    The LibNats and Lib lite should reform parliamentary representation to do away with them. Waste of space, right ..?

  33. B

    Gotta love the way you focus on a few Greens fed parliamentarians and are not concerned with the hundreds and hundreds of Coalition and Labor fed parliamentarians who have had their snouts in the trough for decade after decade.

    Snouts-in-the trough parliamentarians who decade after decade have been joined at the hip to stymie any legislation to clean up the system, or are dragged kicking and screaming to tinker around the edges.

  35. B

    Faruqi is definitely the odd one out: a Greens senator with a longish track record of substantial achievements.

    Perhaps you would like to inform zoomster . You saw her posts yesterday re MF, didn’t you?

  36. Appalling as it is to see the ALP backflip on fossil fuels, I can hardly blame them. Supporting green issues loses them votes. They almost lost Hunter at the last election, an otherwise safe ALP seat that relies heavily on the coal and electricity industries, and which swung 9.5% on TPP to the Nationals.

    If the Greens really want climate change reform, then they need to think about these things. Virtue signalling is not enough.

  37. Peg

    You would be aware that Leader Di Natale has decided to appoint his senators as Shadow Ministers. Further you would be aware that he has announced that the Greens are serious about forming Government. Further you would also be aware that he has declared that the Greens ARE the Opposition.

    All Comical Ali fuckwittery, I grant you, but let’s take Di Natale at his words.

    If you go through the lot, including in particular J S-J who has done nothing at all, the combined real life achievements of the Greens Senators are thin policy and program gruel. These are the people who are suddenly going to be expected to run ministries with 30,000 staff and budgets of $30 billion!

    Seriously!

    No wonder they faff on about the Green New Deal, and the UBI and the MMT and make silly faces in the Senate.

    So, do stop kidding yourselves. And before you go into classic Greens outraged shame shit funk, even you must realize that S J-S is probably the least accomplished person to join the Senate in the history of the Federation.

  39. A great discussion on climate change on The Drum tonight, and interesting to hear that the global warming debate is not really politicised in the UK or Germany while of course Australia has, unsurprisingly, slavishly followed the ideologically rabid US approach.

  40. @ Rex: No, I’m not happy with current proceedings. Environmentalism is a worthy cause, and it’s actually quite easy to make a conservative case for supporting it. Unfortunately, the mindless zealotry of its most vocal acolytes has politicised what should be a bipartisan issue. Moderates lose votes from supporting it; conservatives win votes by mocking it. And stunts and virtue signals only make the problem worse.

  41. Boer wasn’t touting Faruqi as a game changing leader who would boost the Greens membership overnight.

    I was asking the posters who were saying that why they thought she was.

    I got crickets.

  42. BW

    I didn’t know you were a Passenger fan, 27 is one of his few up tempo numbers. Has to be in my top few favourite artists.

  43. CN

    Looking at falling national farm production it is a pity that the idiot Right is cutting its environmental nose off to spite its face. The Right’s notion that environment and economy are somehow separate and that the environment is therefore politically dispensable is about as intellectually stupid as you can get.

    The idiots fell for their own feelpinions. The fools still haven’t quite figured out that suppressing news about coral bleaching outbreaks in the GBR will not stop the Reef dying. Bang goes 60,000 jobs and around $6 billion in GDP. Charlatans. Vandals. Fools.

  44. Bellwether

    Agree. Abbott and his fellow travellers will be remembered for one reason only. Turning the greatest challenge of out time into scare campaign to foster their own re-election.

  45. Bellwether @ #1089 Friday, July 19th, 2019 – 6:51 pm

    A great discussion on climate change on The Drum tonight, and interesting to hear that the global warming debate is not really politicised in the UK or Germany while of course Australia has, unsurprisingly, slavishly followed the ideologically rabid US approach.

    Yeah great, not one person on the program prepared to finger Abbott, the Liberal party, the coalition. Not one prepared to say the coalition have completely fucked us.
    It’s like the Gillard government never happened.
    Unfucking befuckinglievable.

  46. While we are on the background of Greens Senators, a big loss to their diversity when Lee Rhiannon got the boot – though her red ragging continues in the Greens NSW politburo.

    “Rhiannon was born Lee Brown, the daughter of Bill and Freda Brown, who were long-term members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and later the Soviet-loyal Socialist Party of Australia (SPA).[1] Her parents’ membership of the CPA and Lee’s membership of the CPA’s youth league led to documentation of her life by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) from as early as the age of seven.[2][3] In 1968, she and some friends formed High School Students Against Vietnam War.[4] She sat the New South Wales Higher School Certificate at Sydney Girls High School in 1969 and graduated in 1975 as a Bachelor of Science, majoring in botany and zoology with honours in botany, at the University of New South Wales.

    “She joined the SPA around 1973.[6] In the 1980s she helped organise a “peace camp” protest outside the joint US-Australian defence facility at Pine Gap, in central Australia.[7] According to Mark Aarons, she left the SPA in the early 1980s.[8] She edited the magazine, Survey: a monthly digest of trends in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, from 1988 until it ceased publication in 1990. This aspect of her past came under scrutiny when she ran for the Senate.

  47. ‘sprocket_ says:
    Friday, July 19, 2019 at 6:56 pm

    BW

    I didn’t know you were a Passenger fan, 27 is one of his few up tempo numbers. Has to be in my top few favourite artists.’

    The interesting thing is that those lyrics have been hovering just beyond consciousness since the last Fed election. And today, lo!, they finally forced their way to front of brain. I think it was the self-indulgent fatuous and destructive grandstanding of McKim wot did it.

  48. A fantastic movie on SBS right now entitled Love and Friendship. Set in 18th century English society. A central character is the most gorgeous woman who is such a talented and voluble bullshit artist of such prodigious ability that one is in complete awe of such talent.
    One can never aspire to reach such heights and can only dream and attempt to fumble one’s way to a mere second rate. 😇

  49. mikehilliard @ #1094 Friday, July 19th, 2019 – 7:00 pm

    Bellwether

    Agree. Abbott and his fellow travellers will be remembered for one reason only. Turning the greatest challenge of out time into scare campaign to foster their own re-election.

    You reckon?
    No one ever mentions them by name.
    They talk about politicians.
    No one says flat out Labor had it right the Liberal party got it wrong.
    No one.
    Not even the Labor party says it.

  50. And the winner of the Obsessive Compulsive posting award since midday today is…Boerwar with 46 posts!

    Followed doughtily by blog spammer-in-chief for The Greens, Pegasus, with 29 posts.

    I will say no more.

Comments Page 22 of 31
1 … 21 22 23 … 31

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *