Call of the board: South Australia

Yet more intricate detail on the May federal election result – this time from South Australia, where normality was restored after the Nick Xenophon interruption of 2016.

Welcome to another instalment of the now nearly complete Call of the Board series, a seat-by-seat review of the result of the May federal election. Now is the turn of South Australia, previous instalments having dealt with Sydney (here and here), regional New South Wales, Melbourne, regional Victoria, south-east Queensland, regional Queensland and Western Australia.

So far as the two-party swing was concerned, South Australia was largely a microcosm of the national result, with the Coalition picking up a swing of 1.6% (compared with 1.2% nationally) and no seats changing hands. Similarly, Labor did particularly badly in the regions, suffering big swings in Barker and Grey, compared with a highly consistent pattern of small swings in the metropolitan area. Labor won the statewide two-party preferred vote, as they have done at four out of the past five elections, albeit by a modest margin of 50.7-49.3.

As in previous recent instalments, I offer the following image with colour coding of swings at booth level. Compared with other metropolitan capitals, the divide between Labor swings in inner urban areas and Liberal swings further afield is somewhat less clear here, although the Labor swings are a fairly good proxy for general affluence. This would be even more apparent if the map extended further afield to encompass the Adelaide Hills areas covered by Mayo, where, as noted below, the tide seems to be running against the Liberals, and not just in comparison with Rebekha Sharkie.

On the primary vote, comparisons with 2016 are complicated by the Nick Xenophon factor. The Nick Xenophon Team scored 21.3% statewide in 2016, but its Centre Alliance successor fielded candidates only in the non-metropolitan seats of Mayo, Barker and Grey. Rebekha Sharkie was comfortably re-elected in Mayo, but the party’s vote was slashed in Barker and Grey. Primary votes elsewhere followed similar patterns – to save myself repetition in the seat-by-seat account below, the Xenophon absence left between 16.7% and 20.0% up for grabs in Kingston, Makin, Spence and Sturt, which resulted in primary vote gains of 5.1% to 6.2% for the Liberals, 5.2% to 6.6% for Labor and 2.6% to 3.9% for the Greens.

The other factor worth noting in preliminaries is a redistribution that resulted in the abolition of a seat, part of a trend that has reduced the state’s representation from 13 to 10 since 1990. This caused Port Adelaide to be rolled into Hindmarsh, creating one safe Labor seat out of what were formerly one safe Labor and one marginal seat. The eastern parts of Port Adelaide and Hindmarsh were transferred to Adelaide, setting the seal on a seat that has grown increasingly strong for Labor since the Howard years, while the Glenelg end of Hindmarsh went to Boothby, without changing its complexion as a marginal Liberal seat.

The table below compares two-party results with corresponding totals I have derived from Senate ballot papers, the idea being that this gives some sort of idea as to how results may have been affected by candidate and incumbency factors (two-party results for Labor are shown). This shows a clear pattern of Labor doing better in the House than the Senate in the seats than they hold, whereas there is little distinction in Liberal-held seats. My guess would be that there is a general tendency for Labor to score better in the House and the Senate overall, which is boosted further by sitting member effects in Labor-held seats, while being cancelled out by those in Liberal-held seats. Taking that into account, it would seem Labor’s sitting member advantages were relatively weak in Adelaide and Hindmarsh, which stands to reason given the disturbance of the redistribution.

On with the show:

Adelaide (Labor 8.2%; 0.1% swing to Liberal): The Liberal swing in this now safe Labor seat was below the statewide par despite the disappearance of Kate Ellis’s personal vote. In this it reflected the national inner urban trend, and also the long term form of a seat that has drifted from the Liberals’ reach since Ellis gained it in 2004. However, a divide was evident between a Liberal swing at the northern end and a Labor swing in the south, for reasons not immediately obvious. It may be thought to reflect the demographic character of the respective Enfield and Unley ends of the seat, but this doesn’t explain why the Liberals gained in Prospect immediatley north of the city, an area that would seem to refect the inner urban mould. Nor was there any particularly evident effect from the redistribution, which added to the west of the electorate parts of Hindmarsh, formerly held by Adelaide’s new member, Steve Georganas. The Centre Alliance registered a relatively weak 13.7% here in 2016 – the Greens did particularly well in their absence, lifting from 10.0% to 15.7%, although they are still a long way off being competitive.

Barker (Liberal 18.9%; 5.1% swing to Liberal): The Barossa Valley swung to Labor, but the rest of this seat followed the script of regional Australia in going strongly enough to the Liberals to substantially increase Tony Pasin’s already safe margin. A majority of the Centre Alliance collapse (from 27.6% to 2.9%) ended up with the Coalition, although the United Australia Party recorded an above average 5.9%, while the Labor primary vote made a weak gain of 4.7%.

Boothby (Liberal 1.4%; 1.3% swing to Labor): Labor once again failed to realise hopes of reeling in this southern Adelaide seat, despite it reflecting the national trend of affluent suburbia in recording a 1.3% Labor swing that overwhelmed whatever sophomore advantage may have accrued to Liberal member Nicolle Flint. The absence of the Centre Alliance left 18.5% of the vote up for grabs, and the Liberal, Labor and Greens primary votes were respectively up 3.5%, 7.7% and 3.8%.

Grey (Liberal 13.3%; 5.6% swing to Liberal): Another big regional swing to the Liberals, in this case to the advantage of Rowan Ramsey, who came within 2% of losing to the Nick Xenophon Team’s Andrea Broadfoot in 2016. Broadfoot ran again for the Centre Alliance this time and was down from 27.7% to 5.1%, of which a fair bit was accounted for by the entry of One Nation and the United Australia Party, a further fair bit went to the Liberals, while the Labor primary vote hardly budged.

Hindmarsh (Labor 6.5%; 1.9% swing to Liberal): The Liberals recorded a swing perfectly in line with the statewide result in a seat that is effectively a merger of the safe Labor seat of Port Adelaide, whose member Mark Butler now takes the reins in Hindmarsh, and what was previously the highly marginal seat of Hindmarsh, which extended into more Liberal-friendly territory further to the south. The income effect took on a very particular manifestation here in that the booths along the coast swung to Labor while those further inland tended to go the other way. With the Nick Xenophon Team taking its 17.0% vote into retirement, each of the main parties made roughly comparable gains on the primary vote.

Kingston (Labor 11.9%; 1.6% swing to Liberal): For the most part, this once marginal but now safe Labor seat followed the national outer urban trend in swinging to the Liberals, though not be nearly enough to cause serious concern for Labor member Amanda Rishworth. However, separate consideration is demanded of the northern end of the electorate, which is notably more affluent, particularly in comparison with the central part around Morphett Vale. This northern end consists of two parts separated by the Happy Valley Reservoir — the coast at Hallett Cove, and Flagstaff Hill further inland, the latter gained in the redistribution. For whatever reason, the former area behaved as did the rest of the electorate, whereas the latter swung to Labor.

Makin (Labor 9.7%; 1.1% swing to Liberal): So far as the electorate in aggregate is concerned, everything just noted about Kingston equally applies to Makin, which remains secure for Labor member Tony Zappia. There was perhaps a slight tendency for the more affluent parts of the electorate (in the north-east around Golden Grove) to do better for Labor than the low income parts, but not much.

Mayo (Centre Alliance 5.1%; 2.2% swing to Centre Alliance): As the Nick Xenophon/Centre Alliance vote tanked elsewhere, Rebekha Sharkie had no trouble repeating her feat of the 2016 election, when she unseated Liberal member Jamie Briggs, and the July 2018 Section 44 by-election, when she accounted for the now twice-unsuccessful Liberal candidate, Georgina Downer. Downer trod water on the primary vote this time, but nonetheless won the primary vote as Labor recovered market share from Sharkie after a particularly poor showing at the by-election. Sharkie’s winning margin of 5.1% was slightly down on her 7.5% by-election win. The Sharkie factor obscured what may be an ongoing trend to Labor in the seat, with Downer winning the Liberal-versus-Labor vote by a very modest 2.5%. This partly reflected a 2% shift in the redistribution, but there was also a 0.7% swing to Labor that bucked the statewide trend.

Spence (Labor 14.1%; 3.0% swing to Liberal): As well as changing its name from Wakefield, the redistribution removed the rural territory that formerly leavened the Labor margin in a seat that now encompasses Adelaide’s low-rent north, up to and including Gawler. For those with a long enough memory, it more resembles the long lost seat of Bonython, a Labor stronghold through a history from 1955 to 2004, than Wakefield, which was a safe Liberal seat until Bonython’s abolition drew it into the suburbs. Consistent with the national trend of low-income and outer urban seats, Labor member Nick Champion emerged with a dent in his still considerable margin.

Sturt (Liberal 6.9%; 1.5% swing to Liberal): In the seat vacated upon Christopher Pyne’s retirement, swing results neatly reflected the distribution of income, favouring Labor at the northern end and Liberal in the south. Whatever the impact of the loss of Pyne’s personal vote, it didn’t stop Liberal debutante James Stevens scoring a primary vote majority and 1.5% two-party swing.

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.

498 comments on “Call of the board: South Australia”

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  1. To change the subject, in news just in, Sonya Kruger has defected from Seven to Nine to broadcast Mini Golf. That brings to mind a few questions.
    1. Why is this important?
    2. Who watches Mini Golf?
    3. And who on Earth is Sonya Kruger?

  2. Jackol
    “To be “on your side” the LNP marks out all these groups that are “others” and hence “not on your side”. Demonize, marginalize, spin … huzzah the LNP are “on your side” and keeping those bludgers or muslims, or protesters, or vegans, or whomever down, just like you think they should.”

    Yes, I think that nails it.

  3. Simon Katich:

    [‘Ruth Bader Ginsburg in hospital again.’]

    That’s a worry, the US Supreme Court delicately balanced. I wish her well. I pick Roberts, CJ to bring to an end the rule of Trump.

  4. Bushfire Bill @ #454 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 7:26 pm

    Anyone who still believes that, by telling her/him/it to “Go and get fucked”, I single-handedly managed to chase away the hideous troll known as “Pegasus”, must have rocks in their head.

    I refer particularly to William Bowe’s weasel words on the subject. C@tmomna’s completely false attempt at setting up an instant sisterhood with the revolting “Pegasus” is not far behind WB in naiveity.

    Only exceeded by your own blinkered perspective. In case you hadn’t noticed, Pegasus has been sneering at and condescending to me all weekend. So, there is no ‘sisterhood’, only your pre-mixed narrative. But don’t let me get in your way. It feels too good to take a swing. Even if you miss, huh? 🙂

  5. Steve Schmidt has some advice for John Bolton. Seems everyone thinks he should set the record straight on his time in the WH.

    Steve SchmidtVerified account@SteveSchmidtSES
    14h14 hours ago
    @AmbJohnBolton The role of teasing ingenu does not suit you and it is not what your country requires of you. In announcing your Super Pac you say, “Let’s get back to discussing critical national security issues confronting America. The threats are grave and growing.” Indeed.

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1198309665873915904.html

  6. lizzie @ #464 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 7:51 pm

    Steve and Jackol

    A deliberate splitting of society into antagonistic groups for the sake of power. Just what we don’t need.

    It has been very, very successful for the Reactionary Conservatives though, and unless and until Labor learn how to play these games successfully, for the correct reasons, then they will keep on losing elections. No one cares if you have the right policies, they care if you have the wrong ones, even if those policies don’t personally affect them, and they sure as hell care about whether they feel comfortable around you. Hence the ‘Daggy Dad’ frame so many elite conservatives have been hanging their hat on when it comes to choosing party avatars and putting those people in the frame as their leaders of late.

  7. “A deliberate splitting of society into antagonistic groups for the sake of power. Just what we don’t need.”

    Wedge politics. Divide the country in two and go for the bigger half. And while you’re at it accuse your opponent of what you are doing.

  8. Outside left

    Right when we need a leader who will reconcile the strands of our society which is currently becoming more and more divided.

  9. C@tmomma @ #469 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 5:02 pm

    ‘fess,
    If it wouldn’t obviously rankle him, I reckon Steve Schmidt should run for the Senate for the Democrats.

    I think him and other Never Trumpers might be waiting for the bottom to fall out of the Republican party and/or it to finally explode so they can build a new conservative party from the ground up.

  10. BB is a pompous bore. Why anyone responds to his posts is beyond me, save to put him back in his box – a box dated circa 1950. I must admit, though, he can be entertaining from time to time.

  11. I scroll past the arguments between Bludgers. That’s sort of what I do in real life too. And a few here from time to time might give a good impression of a pompous bore. Some have bees in their bonnets about this or that topic / person. But everyone here posting here, past and present has / had interesting stuff to say, at least some of the time, even He Who Cannot Be Named. That’s why I and others keep coming here.

    Public figures are fair game – they deserve it and anyway they crave attention. Other posters here aren’t.

  12. I was enjoying lunch today with an irrigator from Southern NSW. We discussed MDB water management, endangered species management (he plants trees to provide habitat for Superb Parrots), climate change and the best farming strategies to address it, whether Lake Alexandrina is naturally salty*, and the Can the Plan Convoy due to beset Canberra in the first week of December.

    One of the physical realities that is stoking anger is that the Murray is in full flow at the Barmah Choke while adjacent irrigators are getting zero per cent allocations of general security water rights for the second year in a row. It is psychologically very hard to see a river running abanker while you are going bankrupt for want of water.

    He thought that Morrison’s plan to pay SA to desal water and then to distribute the offsets to farmers to grow fodder was absurd.

    In passing he mentioned that Ms Ley is known in parts of her electorate as ‘Lazy Ley.’

    *Lake Alexandrina’s natural state – whether fresh water or salty – is a focus of those who believe that environmental water allocations to keep Alexandrina fresh are a waste.

  13. Steve777:

    [‘And a few from time to time might give a good impression of a pompous bore.’]

    You would say that. Maybe you should’ve enclosed my description of BB in single inverted commas? Why do I have a feeling that GG will shortly come to BB’s defence(?) – two peas in a pod.

  14. @Pegasus

    Albanese might be the right leader at the right time, like John Howard was, if the particular set of circumstances, that I am predicting comes to pass.

  15. Confessions @ #473 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 8:08 pm

    C@tmomma @ #469 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 5:02 pm

    ‘fess,
    If it wouldn’t obviously rankle him, I reckon Steve Schmidt should run for the Senate for the Democrats.

    I think him and other Never Trumpers might be waiting for the bottom to fall out of the Republican party and/or it to finally explode so they can build a new conservative party from the ground up.

    And, you know, I don’t think that’s going to be possible for a very long time. The Trumps have got their claws into the Republican Party and I think Don Sr. wants Don Jr. to come after him and I reckon he wants Ivanka and Jared to be a sort of Dynamic Duo to share the Secretary of State role. Call me crazy but I reckon Don Sr. thinks running America is now the family business.

  16. This is unsurprising for an authoritarian government, routinely flouting laws designed to expose the machinations of the Executive:

    [‘The federal government is flouting laws designed to expose its decisions to scrutiny, with internal emails revealing that top officials are “unfazed” by the breaches of the Freedom of Information Act.’]

  17. Just got my latest copy of IEEE power and Energy. IEEE is the USA electrical and electronic Engineering professional body, power and energy is the society that deals with well, it’s pretty obvious.
    https://magazine.ieee-pes.org/

    Sorry I can’t post a link tot he articles as you have to be a member, which is a pity there is a lot of good stuff in this issue. I fork out the money to be a member to keep up to date; this magazine is worth the years subscription.

    Looked hard but found no discussion of the Green’s Coal blockade.

    Lot of discussion of the transformation of the Grid.

    The efforts Briefly mentioned in Western Australia got a mention on page 10.

    When the Western Australian government needed insight about how to enable the higher levels of advanced energy technologies that will equip its residents with the low carbon, reliable and resilient future they expect, PES leaders provided the objective expertise to support the mitigation of the region’s urgent needs and facilitate it’s policy aspirations.

    I wonder if the Liberals or the Greens still have the nous or the ability to use experts.

    The article future’s energy mix, the journey to integration had some interesting quotes.

    With clean electrical energy expanding rapidly we understood that the next big challenge it to use renewable energy from the electric system to clean up our or energy systems as well-fuels that we use for heating, transportation, building and industrial systems. By doing so, we soon realized that we could access many more source of flexibility to help balance the system at the same time.

    Jim Robo the CEO of Nextera Energy ( http://www.nexteraenergy.com/) said at the San Diego convention:

    Solar and wind plus storage will be cheaper than coal, nuclear power early in the next decade, this will massively disruptive to the conventional fleet and it will provide opportunities to developers through the next decade.

    His predicted unsubsidized costs are:
    wind: $0.02->$0.025 kWh
    solar: $0.025->$0.03 kWh
    Storage will add $0.005->$0.01 kWh
    Combined gas cycle plant $0.04 cents; which does not account for fuel cost uncertainty

    Cost uncertainty, I didn’t know the greens where targeting gas,

    The article goes on:

    One of the interesting things about this path is that it follows a similar route in most of the countries around the world. Although it is true that some countries are at different stages of development, everyone considers a sustainable energy future as their end goal.

    The federal government and the Greens have failed in there efforts to prevent Australia being part of the story; sorry Greens it was bout SA a Labor effort. As I said above, your coal blockade did not get a mention.


    The state of South Australia sits at one end of the Eastern Australian Interconnection also know as the National Energy Market ….

    The article discusses how week the interconnector is. Mentions AEMO have modeled the system and in the short term are insisting on synchronous machines to provide the inertia and fault currents needed, that there are no synchronous condensers to add non generating inertia to the system and that that is going to be addressed.

    Six other grids with high levels of renewable penetration are also discussed.

    In the transformation of the grid, the Australian high level of distributed solar is also discussed.

  18. To Lizzie’s question on the Liberal Party’s attitude towards the unemployed and disabled.

    I think the answer is complex but part of it is political because there are many people that believe getting a job isn’t hard and can point to an example of someone they know was budging or rorting the system even if the case was decades ago and another reason is the cost which the Liberals see as an unearned cost being left for taxpayers to pick up.

    Today’s Liberal Party membership is made up largely by people with little real experience of today’s jobs market or their experience is that of uni straight to work with the only welfare experience being the usual uni student experiences.

    When it comes to the disabled, unfortunately because Howard got rid of the Sickness Allowance we now have people on DSP that should not be and that now means that the Liberals see those people as evidence the system is being taken advantage off despite the fact it is self-inflected by the government.

    The thing which Briefly has touched on since wages are stagnate the government is channeling people’s dissatisfaction with the economy to the unemployed and disabled as a way of diverting attention from the economic realities.

  19. frednk,
    Unless America gets a leader at their helm who can steer the ship of state in the right direction and away from Coal, then they are doomed to become a 2nd World nation.

  20. Mavis @ #485 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 8:50 pm

    The link:

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/morrison-government-flouts-law-on-freedom-of-information-20191124-p53dn1.html

    Thanks for this, Mavis. This is what I expected from the Morrison government, even if Labor don’t get the exact details:

    Advisers to Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese sought documents from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet as far back as August relating to media analysis and Question Time preparation, but they are still waiting for decisions.

    One request was for a document provided to ministers after the last election that outlined the audience size for different media outlets, seen as guiding ministers on their media appearances.

  21. Hope this NyTimes polling article is readable – some tangential lessons for our debacle. The 4 problems with 2016 it points to are:

    – non weighting for low education voters
    – shy Trump voters
    – poor samples
    – late deciders

    ‘Meetings of the American Association of Public Opinion Research tend to be pretty staid affairs. But when members of the group gathered for a conference call at this time in 2016, the polling industry was experiencing a crisis of confidence.

    Donald J. Trump had swept most of the Midwest to win a majority in the Electoral College, a shocking upset that defied most state-by-state polls and prognoses. An association task force, which was already working on a routine report about pre-election poll methodologies, was suddenly tasked with figuring out what had gone wrong.‘

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/23/us/politics/2020-trump-presidential-polls.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

  22. “The thing which Briefly has touched on since wages are stagnate the government is channeling people’s dissatisfaction with the economy to the unemployed and disabled as a way of diverting attention from the economic realities.”

    The Government is doing what the Right does, selecting scapegoats to blame for the downsides of their “reforms”, for their incompetence, for their corruption and for their numerous stuffups. Have to work ’til you’re 70? It’s the money we have to spend on asylum seekers. Finding it hard to get a job? It’s the “red tape” (regulation for fair work, fair trade and the environment). Power prices too high? It’s renewables. Bushfires? They’re caused by inner city greenies.

  23. C@t:

    And, you know, I don’t think that’s going to be possible for a very long time.

    Yeah I can see that too. At least not until the cult of Trump is cut free.

  24. Steve

    Yes this is why Labor and the Greens have more in common than what divides them.

    For instance I have continually said Labor Qld supporting the Adani mine will destroy Labor’s credibility on the environment.

    However that’s pointing out what I think is Labor crossing a line in the name of pragmatism. That does not mean I support the LNP over Labor as my binary choice for government.

    Yet you would think from commentators on this blog that voters don’t have this choice.

    Types like GG will take it for granted but I will be voting. Green and Labor will be above all the right wing parties. I am not alone in this. Other voters are doing the same on both the left and right.

    We are the increasingly growing numbers of voters that see parties not representing us. Despite the narrative our system does support hung parliaments if the voters so choose.

    That’s the direction we are going in. More Independents and minor parties. An inevitable consequence of party machines excluding people on issues while they chase the neoliberal agenda.

    So one way or the other both parties will have to compromise to form government. I think the crisis for the Coalition threatens the survival of the party more than Labor’s and explains their lurch to the extreme right.

    What is very clear is that there are far less party loyal voters today than there used to be.

  25. guytaur @ #489 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 10:07 pm

    Steve

    Yes this is why Labor and the Greens have more in common than what divides them.

    For instance I have continually said Labor Qld supporting the Adani mine will destroy Labor’s credibility on the environment.

    However that’s pointing out what I think is Labor crossing a line in the name of pragmatism. That does not mean I support the LNP over Labor as my binary choice for government.

    Yet you would think from commentators on this blog that voters don’t have this choice.

    Types like GG will take it for granted but I will be voting. Green and Labor will be above all the right wing parties. I am not alone in this. Other voters are doing the same on both the left and right.

    We are the increasingly growing numbers of voters that see parties not representing us. Despite the narrative our system does support hung parliaments if the voters so choose.

    That’s the direction we are going in. More Independents and minor parties. An inevitable consequence of party machines excluding people on issues while they chase the neoliberal agenda.

    So one way or the other both parties will have to compromise to form government. I think the crisis for the Coalition threatens the survival of the party more than Labor’s and explains their lurch to the extreme right.

    What is very clear is that there are far less party loyal voters today than there used to be.

    ‘Yes this is why Labor and the Greens have more in common than what divides them.’
    They both have equally fucked chances of getting in to government?

  26. C@tmomma @ #330 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 2:53 pm

    Simon Katich @ #308 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 2:16 pm

    This is for the next time some idiot here says we just should ‘Stop Adani’ and selling Coal to India:

    ummmmmm…..

    Or, in other words, India can quite easily supply itself with Coal from its own coal reserves, if it chooses to, as it’s #5 on the list behind Australia at #3.

    The utter bullshit about coal on here is mind-blowing. The word coal is almost useless. The steaming coal extracted in the Hunter Valley is about 88% actual, combustible coal. The Adani shite in the Galilee Basin is around 73% coal. The rest is non-combustible shale (= ash) (their own figures, from the EIS). In India Adani are mining ‘coal’ which is only around 65% combustible, and has a moisture (ie water) content of 15%. It has a heating value (kj per kg) of about 55% of real Hunter Valley actual coal. Comparing ‘reserves’ of such radically different substances is an exercise in straight out stupidity. Much of the so-called ‘coal’ reserves in the world are not worth digging up, and they never will be.

    It would be really good if many of you could stop crapping on concerning subjects of which you are obviously completely ignorant.

  27. “Yes this is why Labor and the Greens have more in common than what divides them.”

    I agree. Labor needs the votes of people who are worried about their mortgage and power bills. The Greens don’t. Labor’s climate and environment policies will never be good enough for the Greens.

    I’m a democratic socialist. Any party that matched my views would be unelectable. So you go for what you can get. The Greens should do the same. Labor and Green shouldn’t be competing for what they think is a fixed left vote. They should work to increase the size of the left vote pie.

  28. Mundo

    Soon to be followed by the LNP.

    The Nationals voters are moving away from the party. It’s just happening more slowly on the right than it did for the left.

    However the pressure is building. There are a lot of climate aware people in conservative seats. That reality is going to bite soon. It won’t be just in NSW that more independents will happen. Also Centre Alliance could gain more dominance than One Nation. At least I hope so. That’s not even taking into account the Shooters and Fishers.

    The problem with conservative voters is that they are conservative and it takes longer for them to move. Once that party loyalty is broken it’s a whole new ball game.

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