Autopsy turvy

Amid a generally predictable set of recriminations and recommendations, some points of genuine psephological interest emerge from Labor’s election post-mortem.

The public release of Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill’s report into Labor’s federal election campaign has inspired a run of commentary about the way ahead for the party after its third successive defeat, to which nothing need be added here. From the perspective of this website, the following details are of specific interest:

• Labor’s own efforts to use area-based regression modelling to identify demographic characteristics associated with swings against Labor identifies five problem areas: voters aged 25-34 in outer urban or regional areas; Christians; coal mining communities; Chinese Australians; and the state of Queensland. The variable that best explained swings in favour of Labor was higher education. However, as has been discussed here previously, this sort of analysis is prey to the ecological fallacy. On this basis, I am particularly dubious about the report’s suggestion that Labor did not lose votes from beneficiaries of franking credits and negative gearing, based on the fact that affluent areas swung to Labor. There is perhaps more to the corresponding assertion that the Liberals were able to persuade low-income non-beneficiaries that Labor’s policies would “crash the economy and risk their jobs”.

• Among Labor’s campaign research tools was a multi-level regression and post-stratification analysis, such as YouGov used with notable success to predict seat outcomes at the 2017 election in the UK. Presumably the results were less spectacular on this occasion, as the report says it is “arguable that this simply added another data point to a messy picture”. The tracking polling conducted for Labor by YouGov showed a favourable swing of between 0.5% and 1.5% for most of the campaign, and finally proved about three points off the mark. YouGov suggested to Labor the problem may have been in its use of respondents’ reported vote at the 2016 election as a weighting factor, but the error was in line with that of the published polling, which to the best of my knowledge isn’t typically weighted for past vote in Australia.

• An analysis of Clive Palmer’s advertising found that 40% was expressly anti-Labor in the hectic final week, compared with only 10% in the earlier part of the campaign. The report notes that the Palmer onslaught caused Labor’s “share of voice” out of the sum of all campaign advertising fell from around 40% in 2016 to 25%, and fell as low as 10% in “some regional markets such as Townsville and Rockhampton”, which respectively delivered disastrous results for Labor in the seats of Herbert and Capricornia.

• It is noted that the gap between Labor’s House and Senate votes, which has progressively swollen from 1% to 4.6% since 1990, is most pronounced in areas where Labor is particularly strong.

Other news:

• The challenge against the election results in Chisholm and Kooyong has been heard in the Federal Court this week. The highlight of proceedings has been an admission from Simon Frost, acting director of the Liberal Party in Victoria at the time of the election, that the polling booth advertising at the centre of the dispute was “intended to convey the impression” that they were Australian Electoral Commission signage. The Australian Electoral Commission has weighed in against the challenge with surprising vehemence, telling the court that voters clearly understood that anything importuning for a particular party would not be its own work.

• The ABC reports there is a move in the Tasmanian Liberal Party to drop Eric Abetz from his accustomed position at the top of the Senate ticket at the next election to make way for rising youngester Jonathan Duniam. The Liberals won four seats at the 2016 double dissolution, which initially resulted in six-year terms being granted to Eric Abetz and Stephen Parry, and three-year terms to Duniam and David Bushby. However, the recount that followed the dual disqualifications of Jacqui Lambie and Stephen Parry in November 2017 resulted in the party gaining three rather than two six-year terms, leaving one each for Abetz, Duniam and Bushby. Bushby resigned in January and was replaced by his sister, Wendy Askew, who appears likely only to secure third place on the ticket, which has not been a winning proposition for the Liberals at a half-Senate election since 2004.

• Andrew Clennell of The Australian ($) reports that Jim Molan is likely to win a Liberal preselection vote on Saturday to fill Arthur Sinodinos’s New South Wales Senate vacancy. The decisive factor would appear to be support from Scott Morrison and centre right faction powerbroker Alex Hawke, overcoming lingering hostility towards Molan over his campaign to win re-election by exhorting Liberal supporters to vote for him below the line, in defiance of a party ticket that had placed him in the unwinnable fourth position. He is nonetheless facing determined opposition from Richard Shields, Woollahra deputy mayor and Insurance Council of Australia executive, who was runner-up to Dave Sharma in the party’s hotly contested preselection for Wentworth last year.

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.

1,909 comments on “Autopsy turvy”

Comments Page 13 of 39
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  2. David Elliott is just the sort of person you would like to see drop-down a whole stack of notches.

    An overbearing thug of a man his background including working for that horrible Australian Hotels Association. I can’t remember if it was at the time that that the organisation sought private information concerning the death of Thomas Kelly in King’s Cross to bolster its resistance to lock out laws.

    Elliot, of course, sought to exploit Kelly’s death and the sentencing of his killer for personal political gain in this fundamentally racist piece

    https://www.davidelliott.com.au/archives/1185

  3. zoomster you should really outline again the horrible way Albanese treated you in that infamous meeting. Just in case some here didn’t see it before.

  6. I like to recall back in the Gillard era, when it was becoming obvious, even to the most rusted-on that Labor were headed for electoral defeat and Labor brokens had to have a moment of introspection over what is happening. And for a brief moment it had to have crossed their mind that Labor and its glorious infallible leadership made some mistakes. However, just like that famous Principal Skinner meme, they very quickly decided that, no, they did everything right. It was those wicked Greens that were wrong. And since then, calling everyone they don’t like a Green, diving into deranged conspiracies about the Greens and living to spite the Greens has been their whole identity.

  7. nath

    I’ve set out what happened before. If you didn’t understand it the first time, I doubt you will the second.

    Anyway, grow up, and stop bullying.

    I’ve spent a day dealing with people just like you. Their excuse is that they’re twelve.

  9. But I wish they would grow the fuck up on how politics really works, and accept the absolute necessity of sometimes shitty compromise in order to get anything good done in this world.

    They’re no different to any other minor party really: all care no responsibility or accountability. I don’t expect them to change until such time that they have to be accountable for their actions.

  11. nath

    You are lying. Previously, you admitted you were, and that this was, apparently, in the spirit of light banter. You apologised for this.

    Says everything anyone needs to know about your credibility and your ethics.

  12. …and of course it’s bullying. You know it is. You are a particularly low kind of coward, the kind who can’t admit to what they’re doing, when it’s quite deliberate and conscious.

  19. zoomster
    says:
    Friday, November 8, 2019 at 8:59 pm
    nath
    Because you are.
    And yes, I do deny that. I did not say he was the rudest person I’d met.
    ______________
    Just the rudest politician you have ever met? that’s right isn’t it?

  22. The Gillard years were the last period we had anything exciting to argue about. Politics is just aimless and boring at present. Thank heavens for the public service.

  24. I see Pegasus has returned from the fit of the vapours it was alleged she suffered a few weeks ago. As fatuous and nasty as ever, too: a full recovery.

    Perhaps her brand new besty and bosom pal, C@tmomma, nursed Peggy back to health?

    If so, clearly a wasted effort.

  26. Davidwh

    There’s still lots of policy issues – to do with drought, climate change, and how we deal with these, for example – which are worthy of discussion, and which aren’t particularly party political.

    I’m interested, for example, in the problem of trapping farmers on the land, by encouraging them to take on debt. The current government line – hold on, because the good times are coming – and the tendency to throw money at farmers in drought areas – might prove true in the short term, with enough good years for those farmers to get through this drought and repay debt, but in the long term, some areas presently being farmed will become unviable and such messages will be actively detrimental.

    A farmer who is told that there are good times coming may take on more debt than they can ever repay. This encourages poor farming practices, because in slightly better environmental conditions they’ll be determined to wring every cent they can from the land, and the pressure to pay off debt will inhibit their spending in other areas, particularly when it comes to future proofing.

    Eventually, we’ll have farmers living on land which is simply no longer viable, with debts they simply cannot repay, and an asset which is worthless.

    …just one example of a policy area which is worthy of discussion, regardless of what’s happening in Canberra!

    My own policy take on this area is that we should bite the bullet and actively encourage/help farmers to leave areas where farming is, at best, a marginal enterprise, while they can leave with dignity.

    I’d also like to see schemes which give farmers accreditation for skills they already have, so that they can find off farm work in tough times.

  27. If Albanese can’t grind Scrott into the dirt Labor is spent.

    I am worried this is gonna be like the Howard years where Labor is bewildered as to how to effectively oppose him.

  28. BB

    Yes, peg preaches a lot of peace and love but doesn’t seem to understand how it applies in practice.

    I’ve tried to mend bridges, but she doesn’t want them mended.

    So be it.

  30. Well up here in Northern Rivers, the wettest part of NSW, we’ve had no rain for months, surrounded by fired and with eerie smoke filled skiers. It’s a sort of the end-of-the-world ambience.

    I wonder, as far as one can deduce from the politicians’ policies, the vision for Australia is three Serco owned mega-cities (Mel-Syd-Seq) each reliant on a couple of massive desalination plants (three big Hong Kongs) on the periphery of, but disconnected from, a vast desert with a few foreign-owned mines and inhabited by some Aboriginies and a few descendants of earlier settlers.

    The neo-liberal dystopia!!

  31. Zoomster agree there are many policy areas we should be seeing alternative policies for discussion. Sadly it’s not happening.

  32. Zoomster……..don’t be sucked in by the obsessives here……………like ghoulies and other side-show alley freak types they come out once the sun has set……………………You are too honest to deal with them as they are not at all interested in any kind of intelligent debate……………………..They aim to be offensive when pretending to have discourse……………………….

  34. Bellwethersays:
    Friday, November 8, 2019 at 6:52 pm
    Let’s face it guys, everyone here new that Labor would lose in a canter in May, right?

    WAYNE knew.

  37. Hmmm. Has anyone heard of the ‘Blue Dot’ cunning plan we are apparently part of ?
    .

    US-Australia-Japan alternative to Belt and Road helps explain why the US sent a junior delegation to Thailand and why India opted out of RCEP

    Blue Dot is described, officially, as promoting global, multi-stakeholder “sustainable infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world.”

    It is a joint project of the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, in partnership with Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

    ………..Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is still between a rock – Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy – and a hard place – Eurasia integration. They are mutually incompatible.

    Blue Dot is a de facto business extension of Indo-Pacific, which congregates the US, Japan, Australia – and India: the Quad members. It’s a mirror image of the – defunct – Obama administration Trans-Pacific Partnership in relation to the – also defunct – “pivot to Asia.”

    https://thesaker.is/a-blue-dot-barely-visible-from-new-silk-roads/

    Blue Dot site

    BANGKOK — The U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) today unveiled Blue Dot Network—a multi-stakeholder initiative that brings together governments, the private sector, and civil society to promote high-quality, trusted standards for global infrastructure development in an open and inclusive framework.

    https://www.opic.gov/press-releases/2019/launch-multi-stakeholder-blue-dot-network

  40. Confessions @ #609 Friday, November 8th, 2019 – 7:21 pm

    But I wish they would grow the fuck up on how politics really works, and accept the absolute necessity of sometimes shitty compromise in order to get anything good done in this world.

    They’re no different to any other minor party really: all care no responsibility or accountability. I don’t expect them to change until such time that they have to be accountable for their actions.

    True dat. The Greens suddenly having to run government, with absolutely no real experience of it, would be amusing and scary.

  41. JM @ #640 Friday, November 8th, 2019 – 10:05 pm

    Confessions @ #609 Friday, November 8th, 2019 – 7:21 pm

    But I wish they would grow the fuck up on how politics really works, and accept the absolute necessity of sometimes shitty compromise in order to get anything good done in this world.

    They’re no different to any other minor party really: all care no responsibility or accountability. I don’t expect them to change until such time that they have to be accountable for their actions.

    True dat. The Greens suddenly having to run government, with absolutely no real experience of it, would be amusing and scary.

    At some moment the Leaders work out they are never going to be a player at the big table and either accept the humiliation and take the money or look for alternative arrangements like Kernot or just fade to black.

    this is the history of minor parties in the Australian polity.

  42. zoomster @ #626 Friday, November 8th, 2019 – 9:10 pm

    I’m interested, for example, in the problem of trapping farmers on the land, by encouraging them to take on debt. The current government line – hold on, because the good times are coming – and the tendency to throw money at farmers in drought areas – might prove true in the short term, with enough good years for those farmers to get through this drought and repay debt, but in the long term, some areas presently being farmed will become unviable and such messages will be actively detrimental.

    A farmer who is told that there are good times coming may take on more debt than they can ever repay. This encourages poor farming practices, because in slightly better environmental conditions they’ll be determined to wring every cent they can from the land, and the pressure to pay off debt will inhibit their spending in other areas, particularly when it comes to future proofing.

    Eventually, we’ll have farmers living on land which is simply no longer viable, with debts they simply cannot repay, and an asset which is worthless.

    You can make pretty much exactly the same argument with coal miners. Labor is doing them no favors by pretending that their industry is sustainable, and that they should (for example) invest in mortgages or other long-term financial commitments.

    These people will not thank you when it all turns to shit – which it is guaranteed to do in a very few short years 🙁

  46. Southerly just hit here. Much cooler, and a short rain shower to ring in the changes. Doubt any fire could do the doin’s tonight.

  47. A very good day for Labor. Albo has now set himself apart from the CFMMEU, the Greens/Adani sham and the pop-left on free trade.

    I approve. I must tell him so next time I see him.

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