On reflection, my previous post, intended as the first in a series of “Call of the Board” posts reviewing in detail the result of the May 18 election, was deficient in two aspects. The first is that patterns in the results estimated by my demographic model were said to be “difficult to discern”, which can only have been because I didn’t look hard enough. In fact, the results provide evidence for remarkably strong incumbency effects. Of the 12 Liberals defending their seats in the Sydney area, all but Tony Abbott outperformed the modelled estimate of the Liberal two-party vote, by an average of 4.0%. Of the 15 Labor members, all but two (Julie Owens in Parramatta and Anne Stanley in Werriwa) outperformed the model, the average being 3.4%.
The other shortcoming of the post was that it did not, indeed, call the board – a now-abandoned ritual of election night broadcasting in which the results for each electorate were quickly reviewed in alphabetical order at the end of the night, so that nobody at home would feel left out. You can find this done for the Sydney seats over the fold, and it will be a feature of the Call of the Board series going forward.
Banks (Liberal 6.3%; 4.8% swing to Liberal): After winning the seat for the Liberals in 2013 for the first time since its creation in 1949, David Coleman has now scored three wins on the trot, the latest by comfortably his biggest margin to date: 6.3%, compared with 2.8% in 2013 and 1.4% in 2016. In a post-election account for the Age/Herald, Michael Koziol reported that Labor’s national secretariat and state branch were at loggerheads over the seat late in the campaign, with the former wishing to devote resources to the seat, and the latter recognising that they “didn’t stand a chance”.
Barton (Labor 9.4%; 1.1% swing to Labor): Located around the crossover point where the inner urban swing to Labor gave way to the outer urban swing to Liberal, Barton recorded a slight swing to Labor that was perhaps boosted by a sophomore effect for incumbent Linda Burney.
Bennelong (Liberal 6.9%; 2.8% swing to Labor): A fair bit has been written lately about Labor’s struggles with the Chinese community, particularly in New South Wales, but that did not stop the nation’s most Chinese electorate recording a reasonably solid swing to Labor. This perhaps reflected the quality of Labor’s candidate, neurosurgeon Brian Owler, but was also typical of a seat where Malcolm Turnbull had played well in 2016, when it swung 2.8% to the Liberals.
Berowra (Liberal 15.6%; 0.8% swing to Labor): Most of this outer northern Sydney seat is in the outer part of the zone that swung to Labor, barring a few lightly populated regions out north and west. However, Liberal member Julian Leeser is what I will call a half-sophomore – a first-term incumbent, but one who succeeded a member of the same party (in this case Philip Ruddock), so there was no reversal of the sitting member advantage. So the 0.8% swing to Labor is about par for the course.
Blaxland (Labor 14.7%; 4.8% swing to Liberal): The anti-Labor swing suffered by Jason Clare was fairly typical for Sydney’s south-west.
Bradfield (Liberal 16.6%; 4.5% swing to Labor): Apart from the exceptional cases of Warringah and Wentworth, this was the biggest swing against the Liberals in New South Wales. However, given it was only fractionally lower in neighbouring North Sydney, that’s unlikely to be a reflection on sitting member Paul Fletcher, instead reflecting the electorate’s affluence and proximity to the city. The seat also recorded the state’s biggest swing to the Greens, at 2.0%.
Chifley (Labor 12.4%; 6.8% swing to Liberal): Ed Husic suffered Labor’s biggest unfavourable swing in Sydney (and the second biggest in the state after Hunter), after enjoying the second biggest favourable swing in 2016 (after Macarthur).
Cook (Liberal 19.0%; 3.6% swing to Liberal): As noted in the previous post, Scott Morrison enjoys the biggest Liberal margin in New South Wales relative to what might be expected from the electorate’s demographic composition. Only part of this can be explained by a prime ministership effect, as his 3.6% swing ranked only twelfth out of the 47 seats in New South Wales.
Dobell (Labor 1.5%; 3.3% swing to Liberal): The two seats on the Central Coast behaved similarly to most of suburban Sydney in swinging solidly to the Liberals, but there was enough padding on the Labor margin to save Emma McBride in Dobell, a marginal seat that lands Labor’s way more often than not.
Fowler (Labor 14.0%; 3.5% swing to Liberal): Labor’s Chris Hayes suffered a swing unremarkable by the standards of western Sydney, or perhaps slightly at the low end of average.
Grayndler (Labor 16.3% versus Greens; 0.5% swing to Labor): As illustrated in the previous post, Anthony Albanese’s personal popularity continues to define results in Grayndler, where the Labor margin is well out of proportion to demographic indicators. Whereas the Greens hold the largely corresponding state seats of Balmain and Newtown, in Grayndler they struggle to harness enough of the left-of-centre vote to finish ahead of the Liberals. They just managed it on this occasion, as they had previously in 2010 and 2016, outpolling the Liberals 22.6% to 21.8% on the primary vote, narrowing to 24.2% to 23.8% after the exclusion of three other candidates. Albanese cleared 50% of the primary vote for the first time since 2007, helped by a smaller field of candidates than last time, and had a locally typical 1.5% two-party swing against the Liberals.
Greenway (Labor 2.8%; 3.5% swing to Liberal): The swing against Labor’s Michelle Rowland was typical for middle suburbia, and roughly reversed the swing in her favour in 2016.
Hughes (Liberal 9.8%; 0.5% swing to Liberal): Craig Kelly did rather poorly to gain a swing of only 0.5% – as a careful look at the results map shows, the boundary between Hughes and Cook marks a distinct point where Labor swings turn to Liberal ones. The demographic model suggests Kelly to be the third most poorly performing Liberal incumbent out of the 13 in the Sydney area, ahead of Tony Abbott (Warringah) and Lucy Wicks (Robertson).
Kingsford Smith (Labor 8.8%; 0.2% swing to Labor): It was noted here previously that Matt Thistlethwaite strongly outperforms the demographic model, but the near status quo result on this occsion did little to contribute to that. This seat was roughly on the geographic crossover point between the Labor swings of the city and the Liberal swings of the suburbs.
Lindsay (LIBERAL GAIN 5.0%; 6.2% swing to Liberal): One of five seats lost by Labor at the election, and the only one in Sydney. Like the others, Lindsay was gained by Labor in 2016, with Emma Husar scoring a 1.1% margin from a 4.1% swing. This was more than reversed in Husar’s absence, with Liberal candidate Melissa McIntosh prevailing by 5.0%. The 6.2% swing against Labor was the biggest in the Sydney area, and produced a Liberal margin comparable to Jackie Kelly’s strongest.
Macarthur (Labor 8.4%; 0.1% swing to Labor): To repeat what was said in the previous post: Labor strongly outpolled the demographic model 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. The swing to Labor, tiny though it was, ran heavily against the trend of urban fringe seats across the country. In addition to Freelander’s apparent popularity, this probably reflected a lack of effort put into the Liberal campaign compared with last time, as the party narrowly focused on its offensive moves in Lindsay and Macquarie and defensive ones in Gilmore and Reid. Macarthur was one of six seats in New South Wales contested by One Nation, whose 8.6% seemed to be drawn equally from Labor and Liberal.
Mackellar (Liberal 13.2%; 2.5% swing to Labor): Jason Falinski’s northern beaches seat participated in the swing to Labor in inner and northern Sydney, though in this case it was a fairly modest 2.5%, perhaps reflecting Falinski’s half-sophomore effect. A 12.2% vote for independent Alice Thompson caught most of the combined 14.9% for three independents in 2016, leaving the large parties’ vote shares little changed.
Macquarie (Labor 0.2%; 2.0% swing to Liberal): A sophomore surge for Labor member Susan Templeman surely made the difference here, with the 2.0% swing to the Liberals being below the outer urban norm, and just short of what was required to take the seat.
McMahon (Labor 6.6%; 5.5% swing to Liberal): The swing against Chris Bowen was well at the higher end of the scale and, typically for such a result, followed a strong swing the other way in 2016, in this case of 7.5%. This was among the six seats in New South Wales contested by One Nation, whose 8.3% contributed to a 7.4% primary vote swing against Bowen, and perhaps also to the size of the two-party swing.
Mitchell (Liberal 18.6%; 0.8% swing to Liberal): Where most safe Liberal seats in Sydney were in the zone of inner and northern Sydney that swung to Labor, Mitchell is far enough west to encompass the crossover point where Labor swings gave way to Liberal ones. This translated into a modest 0.8% swing to Liberal member Alex Hawke, and very little change on the primary vote.
North Sydney (Liberal 9.3%; 4.3% swing to Labor): Trent Zimmerman’s seat caught the brunt of the inner urban swing to Labor, the 4.3% swing to Labor being the state’s fourth highest after Warringah, Wentworth and Bradfield, the latter of which just shaded it. Labor managed a hefty 8.3% gain on the primary vote, largely thanks to the absence of Stephen Ruff, who polled 12.8% as an independent in 2016. The one independent on this occasion was serial candidate Arthur Chesterfield-Evans, a former Democrats member of the state upper house, who managed only 4.4%.
Parramatta (Labor 3.5%; 4.2% swing to Liberal): Parramatta marks the crossover point where the Liberal swing in western Sydney begins, producing a 4.2% swing against Labor’s Julie Owens that only partly unwound the 6.4% swing she picked up in 2016.
Reid (Liberal 3.2%; 1.5% swing to Labor): The Liberals maintained their remarkable record in this seat going back to 2013, when they won it for the first time in the seat’s history, by limiting the swing to Labor to a manageable 1.5%. While the 3.2% margin is only modestly higher than that predicted by the demographic model, it was achieved despite the departure of two-term sitting member Craig Laundy, who is succeeded by Fiona Martin.
Robertson (Liberal 4.2%; 3.1% swing to Liberal): Similarly to neighbouring Dobell, the Central Coast seat of Robertson swung 3.1% to the Liberals, in this case boosting the margin of Lucy Wicks.
Sydney (Labor 18.7%; 3.4% swing to Labor): The inner urban swing to Labor added further padding to Tanya Plibersek’s margin. The Greens continue to run third behind the Liberals, who outpolled them by 26.6% to 18.1%. As is the case in Grayndler, this presumably reflects local left-wing voters’ satisfaction with the incumbent.
Warringah (INDEPENDENT GAIN 7.2% versus Liberal): Zali Steggall took a big chunk out of the big party contenders in recording 43.5% of the primary vote, but the largest of course came from Tony Abbott, down from 51.6% to 39.0%. Abbott won four booths around Forestville at the northern end of the electorate, but it was otherwise a clean sweep for Steggall. She particularly dominated on the coast around Manly, by margins ranging from 10% to 18%.
Watson (Labor 13.5%; 4.1% swing to Liberal): In a familiar suburban Sydney pattern, Tony Burke had an 8.8% swing in his favour from 2016 unwound by a 4.1% swing to the Liberals this time.
Wentworth (Liberal 1.3% versus Independent): Listed as a Liberal retain in a spirit of consistently comparing results from the 2016 election, this was of course a Liberal gain to the extent that it reversed their defeat at the hands of independent Kerryn Phelps at last October’s by-election. There was an unblemished divide between the northern end of the electorate, encompassing the coast north of Bondi and all but the westernmost part of the harbourside, where the Liberals won the two-candidate vote, and the southern end of the electorate, where Phelps did. As noted in the previous post, there was a swing to Labor of 7.9% on the two-party preferred count, but this was testament more than anything to Malcolm Turnbull’s local support.
Werriwa (Labor 5.5%; 2.7% swing to Liberal): A half-sophomore effect for Labor’s Anne Watson may have helped limit the swing here in this outer suburban seat.
I understand that Pyne and Bishop both retire on the “old” more generous pension. Comments have suggested (not from PB) that of course such brilliant talents should not be wasted in retirement.
Here’s a radical notion: how about they worked for community voluntary organisations without remuneration, so that they can continue their contribution to society in the way they would protest they have been doing.
Cat
Maybe the Greens don’t think the Senate is unrepresentative swill.
NDIS
Morrison Government set to make ‘NDIS great broken dream of Australian politics’, Steele-John says:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/ndis-great-broken-dream-of-australian-politics/10961692
Your questions answered: A chat with Greens spokesperson on Disability Services Senator Jordon Steele-John:
https://www.everyaustraliancounts.com.au/your-questions-answered-a-chat-with-the-greens-spokesperson-on-disability-services-senator-jordon-steele-john/
NDIS Minister appointment a ‘spasm in a positive direction’, Steele-John says:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/ndis-minister-a-spasm-in-a-positive-direction/11155308
Boerwar
Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 5:33 pm – NEW!
Comment #1784
The difficulty, as I understand the world, is that another you in other circumstances may have been overwhelmed
Or done vastly better financially but been attracted by the bright lights, beaver hats, tailcoats and canes and come to think of himself as a superior creature for whom an underclass should be happy to grovel and exist catch as catch can.
You sound more than OK to me but my dear late wife called me a goat.
As previously mentioned she liked goats.😇
Great news the greens got over the line with their push for increase in Newstart.
How long before the first $150 top up hits the pockets of the unemployed ?
Tick , tick, tick.
Didn’t happen under Labor governments. Didn’t happen under Coalition governments.
For 25 years it hasn’t happened. Congratulations. What an achievement.
Rex
This is what she said she got over the line —
‘I have been campaigning for a change to Newstart for a long time without any movement from the major parties.’
A change to Newstart.
But that’s not what she did get over the line.
‘Didn’t happen under Labor governments. Didn’t happen under Coalition governments.
For 25 years it hasn’t happened. Congratulations. What an achievement.’
And a motion in the Senate has now made it happen?
peg
I have no difficulty in the idea that Siewert achieved something, but she over egged it.
Better to treat it as ‘a good start, but we still have a long way to go…” then jump up and down and proclaim a major victory at the first step.
zoomster @ #1806 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 5:53 pm
She got her motion of recognition over the line.
She’s been campaigning for a change to Newstart and will continue to do so.
But you feel the need to shamelessly misrepresent, as is your way. So be it.
z
More of your tricky semantic games. She didn’t say that and you know it.
Pegasus @ #1806 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 5:51 pm
Didn’t happen while The Greens had the Balance of Power in the Senate. What an achievement!
Don’t choose national security over human rights and privacy, information commissioner warns
Making a choice between crime-fighting and human rights is a false dichotomy, Sven Bluemmel says
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/24/dont-choose-national-security-over-human-rights-and-privacy-information-commissioner-warns
Who passed this legislation?
peg
I know she didn’t. I was checking to see if you and Rex knew it.
C@tmomma @ #1772 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 3:20 pm
I heard that speech. It was blotted somewhat by his claim that, “Unlike the Labor Party which is owned by the unions, the Liberal Party is not owned by any special interest group“.
S.M.F.H.
z
lol sure sure. What a pity we were around to highlight your usual ‘misrepresentation’.
The main thing is to ensure that Morrison is held accountable for his stubborn assertion that Newtart is not in play and that Morrison is held accountable for bastardizing the NDIS.
It is good to see Labor and the Greens are intent on these two objectives!
Pegasus @ #1805 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 5:51 pm
We know the ignorant and cold hearted LibNats care little for the starving and destitute surviving on Newstart. We also know Lib lite couldn’t find the necessary funding prior to the last election thanks to their drive for tax cuts.
Motions passed like todays from the Greens helps to increase the pressure for a raise in Newstart.
The misrepresentation was Siewert’s.
And of course you were around, otherwise there wouldn’t have been a cut and paste to quote from.
Duh.
DG
Had to google smfh. I have learnt so much since coming to PB.
I’ve got no probs with admitting Siewert got a motion through the Senate, and that this is a start.
She over egged her achievement.
Nicholas @ #1789 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 3:38 pm
And for them to rise every time that pollies pay rises, and at the same rate.
C@tmomma @ #1800 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 3:47 pm
One small step….
Bragg wants to destroy compulsory superannuation for lower paid employees. What proportion of the LNP does he represent on this issue? Is he speaking for Morrison?
zoomster @ #1820 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 6:05 pm
You over-egged your misrepresentation.
Not sure why you do it…?
What a ragbag…………
Are the Greens the real enemy, poseurs or just dreamers?
Who the real enemy is has not been worked out by some yet – and for mine, it is not the bloody Greens – dreamers though they may be.
The Toxic Populous Right is on the march and all some can do here is get bogged down in useless debate about whether the People’s Liberation Front or the Front For the Liberation of People are the real enemy………….
“Life of Brian” has nothing on what passes as important for some here.
Achieved by the Greens. You would think some Laborites would be pleased with the incrementalism after 25 years of no real increase in Newstart during successive governments of both stripes.
Pegasus says:
Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 5:51 pm
Because the $75/week won’t be in any Newstart recipient’s bank account tomorrow. Or any time soon.
Didn’t happen under Labor governments. Didn’t happen under Coalition governments.
For 25 years it hasn’t happened. Congratulations. What an achievement.
Several months ago the Green made sure it would not happen for three years.
Now they a pretending it did happen when it didn’t.
And I am pretty dam sure if i does happen in a future party because Labor has won despite the Greens, the Green will not be the reason.
The Greens can sure trowel it on thick.
Both major parties will come on board only after concerted and growing chorus of a coalition of once unthinkable voices demand an immediate increase.
Sound familiar.
Pegasus says:
Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 6:11 pm
Labor measure success in results, the Greens measure success in stunts.
Pegasus says:
Wednesday, July 24, 2019 at 6:14 pm
Both major parties will come on board only after concerted and growing chorus of a coalition of once unthinkable voices demand an immediate increase.
Sound familiar.
It’s the standard tag line for just about every Green stunt. That so few members can cause so much damage to environmental politics with there empty stunts is truly amazing.
Tricot
Point to one post where the Greens have attacked any party other than Labor.
There’s nothing like passing a motion.
You’ll sleep more soundly every time.
Yep. I think it would be very healthy to have such a link between the minimum wage and a federal MP’s wage. It would help to keep inequality of income and wealth down to a moderate and non-destructive level.
Lecturing members of the Labor Party with judgemental language is not a constructive contribution. It won’t change their behaviour. If anything it will cause them to dig their heels in.
The most useful attitude that the Greens can take towards the Labor Party is to critique their policies in a respectful and non-judgemental way. Keep your moral judgements about the Labor Party and the individuals within it to yourself. I can well understand the frustration that the Greens feel about the Labor Party. But expressing those frustrations publicly only helps the LNP by making progressives appear divided and incoherent. There is dysfunction on the progressive side of politics and it is reinforced by these unnecessary attacks back and forth between the Greens and the Labor Party.
Nicholas
If the Greens actually cared about their policies they would be looking for support, you don’t get support trying to pull the party likely to support down. The Greens are basically a waste of space, not only are they impotent, they devote all their effort in making sure Labor are the same. Net result, the Liberals win.
A woman who reportedly fired a gunshot inside a McDonald’s kitchen had a reason for her crime: cold fries.
The woman left the Garden City outlet in Kansas with her order of fries on Monday (local time), only to return to complain that her food was cold, the store owner told WTOC.
The owner claimed that as the manager went into the restaurant’s kitchen to collect new fries, the woman followed him and fired a shot into the floor.
Police arrived later to find the woman had already left. They soon tracked her down in her car and arrested her.
https://t.co/tyfH3bJTEI
In this blog post Benjamin Studebaker expresses the view that although AOC does campaign on economic justice issues such as a Job Guarantee and Medicare For All, she prioritizes immigration, anti-racism, and other culture war topics. He thinks that the Democrats are will continue to lose presidential elections and fail to win majorities in the Senate because of this failure to emphasize policies that provide economic security to hundreds of millions of people.
In my view Benjamin doesn’t give AOC enough credit for using her public profile to contradict mainstream falsehoods about economic policy. AOC has used committee hearings to tackle some very important belief structures that hinder the proper use of fiscal policy.
For instance, AOC has publicly questioned economic officials about the concept of a Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment. Her questioning was extremely well-informed and masterly. She is advised and mentored by excellent macroeconomists such as Stephanie Kelton (chief economic advisor to Bernie Sanders) and Randall Wray. She is obviously a quick study.
The reason why NAIRU is important is that it is THE reason why policymakers don’t expand the size of the public sector until unemployment is brought down to 1 or 2 percent and underemployment is brought down to zero. They could do this, but they don’t because they wrongly believe that it would be inflationary to do so. There is no empirical support for this concept and it is a crime against humanity to deliberately keep total labour underutilization at 7.2 percent because of an unverified and illogical guess that bringing it down to 1 or 2 percent would be inflationary. Surely the sensible course of action is to use expansionary fiscal policy to bring labour underutilization down as low as possible, and if inflation starts to get too high you can stop the expansion.
AOC understands this point and she is in close touch with macroeconomists who are at the cutting edge of the research on these issues. For instance, she has endorsed the best macroeconomics text book in the world today. It is called Macroeconomics; it was published in 2019; and it was written by William Mitchell, Randall Wray, and Martin Watts.
AOC supports a Job Guarantee to eradicate involuntary unemployment and act as a macroeconomic stabilizer.
https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2019/07/23/the-left-cannot-win-the-country-by-campaigning-like-hillary-clinton/?fbclid=IwAR0tS-rlTTfCIC3M1VnKFf1e_9APBxKDy5F9ZWchfDSEatiyKLkBzbfGp7Y
timdunlop
@timdunlop
adrian @ #1838 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 6:37 pm
Blah is the new black!
Bill Shorten’s had a relaxing time since losing the election. Holidays to Bali, Japan and now just back from a whirlwind tour of the European capitals. I wonder how the average worker could sneak in 3 holidays in less than 3 months? Also, is the taxpayer somehow paying for this? We know most politicians don’t like going into their own pockets for things like this.
Nicholas @ #1835 Wednesday, July 24th, 2019 – 6:27 pm
From a policy perspective what are the key differences between the LibNats and Labor ?
Drum worth watching for the young woman with dark hair (missed her name) demolition of Morrison’s concern over suicide.
sprocket
‘Police arrived later to find the woman had already left. They soon tracked her down in her car and arrested her.’
Firing off shots at random is a CRIME in the US?
I thought it was part of their Constitutional rights.
nath
I did wonder why Shorten was late to return to parliament.
I just read the article about that and decided not to link to it.
But I will now to provide context for your comment.
https://www.theage.com.au/cbd/bill-shorten-s-dinner-dummy-spit-leaves-a-sour-taste-20190724-p52aej.html
nath
Still obsessed? It’s a bit sad.
There’s a character in Dickens’ ‘David Copperfield’ who is unable to write anything without referring to King Charles’ head.
You remind me of him.
Zoomster, I consider my duty to stay on Shorten watch until he shuffles off from Parliament. If he had resigned I would have ceased to comment upon him.
Your far more worrying obsession with Albo is a greater concern. No doubt he will rue the day he was rude to the ALP boss of Indi and refused a selfie to your minion.
No, it isn’t. And as I said earlier, saying so without evidence is basically a Godwin, because you’re admitting you can’t tackle my statement in any other way.
zoomster, I think your obsession with Albo is significant. Particularly because you falsely assumed he was involved, or had knowledge about corruption because he was Lebanese. As I said at the time, Albanese may sound Lebaneezy but you were wrong. It was Melham you were thinking about right? But you liked Melham, so somehow found a mental cartwheel and stuck it with Albo. Because he was rude to you once. Weird.
nath
Sorry, I very rarely comment on Albanese. I don’t think I have today at all. So no, no obsession.