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.
By insisting that anything that journos ask about Brian Houston is “just gossip” and involving his bureaucrats in the denials, Morrison is simply giving the story legs.
Why the secrecy? After praising him as his mentor in his first speech to Parl, is the PM now pretending he hardly knows him!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/24/gossip-how-scott-morrison-continues-to-avoid-questions-about-brian-houston?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=soc_568&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1574564271
Mavis @ #285 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 1:33 pm
I am always happy to take my own advice. After all, it was given by an expert! 🙂
ummmmmm…..
Are the SDA still attempting to work out which of its members are gay and bar them from becoming shop stewards. I would expect so:
A second SDA member confirmed the lectures took place. ‘‘When we choose our shop stewards we have to make sure they are not gay and they have to have the same thinking lines along that type of thing,’’ the member said.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/battle-surrounds-unions-alleged-anti-gay-stance-20130524-2k573.html
C@tmomma @ #305 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 2:10 pm
The question you might want to ask yourself is why so many of the countries on the list that have so much coal in reserve would instead choose to buy our coal and ship it halfway across the planet 🙁
We have a Governement of crony-capitalist spivs, religious zealots and hard right ideologues who are intent on winding back the social security net to the 1930s and workers’ rights to the 1890s. They are corrupt, at least in a ‘soft’ sense (e.g. https://www.crikey.com.au/2019/11/18/climate-denialism-rotten-political-system/ $) and almost certainly in parts in a harder sense.
So I don’t give a stuff about the alleged pecadillos of Bill Shorten nor those of the SDA. Why bang on about the mote in Labor’s eye when there’s a whole bloody timberyard in the Coalition’s?
Steve777
says:
So I don’t give a stuff about the alleged pecadillos of Bill Shorten nor those of the SDA. Why bang on about the mote in Labor’s eye when there’s a whole bloody timberyard in the Coalition’s?
______________________
So you don’t give a stuff about corruption on your side of politics. Why should we expect liberal voters to be different?
nath
says:
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 2:21 pm
Steve777
says:
So I don’t give a stuff about the alleged pecadillos of Bill Shorten nor those of the SDA. Why bang on about the mote in Labor’s eye when there’s a whole bloody timberyard in the Coalition’s?
____________________________
It would actually be to the betterment of the ALP if these characters were not advanced in the party. If the ACTU had investigated the AWU and SDA under Shorten et al and stopped their practices it would actually improve the ALP and the state of unions.
Bring it on. Nunes has behaved like he’s a law unto himself the past 3 years and it’s about time he was made accountable for his conduct.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-house-democrat-says-ethics-probe-of-nunes-is-likely-over-alleged-meeting-with-ukrainian-about-bidens/2019/11/23/0dde6b22-0e0a-11ea-97ac-a7ccc8dd1ebc_story.html
Promotion?
SK:
If Republicans regain the House, undoubtedly!
Nath:
SSM is law today becuase Mr Shorten overrode the position of the SDA and supported SSM, at the cost of significant numbers of votes in the SSM-opposed electorates in the 2019 election.
Politics is complicated, sorry about that.
E. G. Theodore
says:
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 2:31 pm
Nath:
SSM is law today becuase Mr Shorten overrode the position of the SDA and supported it, at the cost of significant numbers of votes in the SSM-opposed electorates in the 2019 election.
Politics is complicated, sorry about that.
___________________
So we have SSM because of Shorten. I guess the people had little involvement.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg in hospital again.
Funny all this love for the former DLP-Union the SDA. Who kept Labor out of government for decades and which helped bring down the Whitlam government.
nath,
Here is another one for the S-Files:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/awu-betrays-pilbara-workers
In the great Labor split of 1955, the “Shoppies”, as they are called, were expelled from the union movement for supporting the Catholic controlled Democratic Labor Party (DLP). The DLP helped keep Federal Labor out of power for 17 years by directing its preferences to Menzies’ Liberals.
In the 1980s, Bob Hawke re-admitted the SDA in to the ACTU. With the support of SDA titan Joe De Bruyn and local power broker Senator Don Farrell, the union soon became the dominant faction in the South Australian ALP. Their socially conservative politics has not changed much since the 1950s.
The sheer number of current or former members of the SDA, who either work for the ALP in South Australia, and who have filtered through the party to senior public service roles, isnepotism on a grand scale.
In a parliamentary speech in 2008, Rob Lucas MLC said, “Their (SDA’s) influence on the party (ALP) and the government is cancerous in terms of its arrogance, and they are treating it as a job network for friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters in terms of jobs within ministerial offices, on boards, on committees, etc.”
The SDA controls about 45 per cent of state ALP conference delegates with almost 30,000 members. This dwarfs all other affiliated union memberships in the state. With the weakening of the dominant left wing Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, the SDA’s power is growing.
https://onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19160&page=2
C@tmomma @ #299 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 1:59 pm
I know your modus operandi is to attack without thinking, but what the actual fuck?
bakunin
says:
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 2:38 pm
nath,
Here is another one for the S-Files:
_______________________
Another dirty deal.
C@t
What’s your beef with Ben Eltham. Does he have a tinge of green, or something?
This is quite a strange thing to say. The questions are not directly about Houston himself (it’s public knowledge about the Houstons Jnr & Snr) but about whether Morrison tried unsuccessfully to get Houston invited to the WH dinner.
It’s also about the nature of the relationship between Morrison and Houston and ultimately about Morrison’s own character.
What do people think about “ageism” in medicine? See:
– https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/921665
Prof. Maddern at UofA and TQEH has some highly-selected centenarian patients (presumably colorectal metastases to liver?)
citizen
ScoMo is a master at deflection.
Simon Katich @ #308 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 2:16 pm
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.
Ben Eltham writes for New Matilda, you know, that relatively lefty online site.
He writes articles like this:
Labor Now A Party Of Capitulation And Parliamentary Irrelevance:
https://newmatilda.com/2019/07/10/labor-now-a-party-of-capitulation-and-parliamentary-irrelevance/
And he has a go at the Greens too.
lizzie @ #325 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 2:42 pm
I just thought it was a rather petty thing to Tweet, from a journalist who has been around awhile to no great effect either.
One person’s ‘facts’ is another persons’s historical revisionism.
nath:
I posted “SSM is law today” not “we have SSM today”, which are completely different things and we are a country where Parliament makes the laws.
On the upside you have my nomination for today’s “Basher Bowe” prize for responding to something that wasn’t posted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J419E4KTWa4
1984, to be exact. Meaning that it can’t even truthfully be claimed that re-admitting them has helped the party electorally, as they are still yet to match, let alone exceed, their 2PP figure from 1983.
I actually consider Hawke our best PM overall, but I must sadly acknowledge his decision to coddle these traitors as playing a big part in much of Labor’s present-day woes.
nath, it is bad enough posting all that rubbish from 2013 and before about the SDA. If we want to read that stuff we would go to the National archives or Trove.
But dragging out the DLP from fifty years ago to make some stupid point about the politics of 2019 diminishes your bile.
There must be something wrong with the image I am getting…. oh wait, now I see the detail. Before it was coming up as just a graph.
Question – why is ignorance of the nature of our political system so prevalent on a blog allegedly concerned with psephology? Alternatively, do people just prefer to be disingenuous or are they merely stupid?
Peg
Thanks for the link. I have always found Eltham a very intelligent writer. And to your extract I would add this:
nath must be getting his lines from Josh Frytheplanet.
On Insiders today, he was blaming Labor for the Stockmarket crash of 1929.
Meanwhile in the USA
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-24/climate-change-protest-hits-harvard-yale-football-game/11733086
SK:
I’m sure every time she sneezes or complains of a headache people tense!
Hopefully she’s back fighting fit very soon.
sprocket_ says:
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 2:58 pm
nath, it is bad enough posting all that rubbish from 2013 and before about the SDA. If we want to read that stuff we would go to the National archives or Trove.
But dragging out the DLP from fifty years ago to make some stupid point about the politics of 2019 diminishes your bile.
________________________
The point was that the ALP would have been better served not admitting the SDA. They helped vote in Menzies for years and only returned when their political vehicle had become extinguished. The ALP has been therefore made complicit in all the activities that the SDA have involved themselves in.
I guess generalist garbage like this leads me to my conclusion about Ben Eltham and his writing from the backblocks of new matilda:
He is dressing up his pre-ordained contempt for Labor in a few Panglossian conclusions which have no basis in fact.
As an astute commentator observed this week, successful political parties identify with the grievances of the electorate, they don’t hold out utopian solutions. Hmm, maybe Labor has gotten that message and The Greens and various journalists who keep criticising Labor for not being all things to all men, haven’t.
itsthevibe says:
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 2:58 pm
I actually consider Hawke our best PM overall, but I must sadly acknowledge his decision to coddle these traitors as playing a big part in much of Labor’s present-day woes.
______________________
I think that’s true. The presence of the SDA certainly helps the rise of the Greens. Politically aware young progressives would despair at having to vote for a party that includes this sectarian mob. They turn to the Greens instead. Kimberley Kitching and her ‘judeo-christian’ values campaign presents the same problem to progressive voters.
…which makes the Liberals complicit in all the bad behaviour of big businesses, surely? So they’re responsible for Coles et al underpaying workers, if you use that kind of logic.
omg Leroy linked to, and quoted from, The Australian.
Where were the howls of protest from the usual suspects? (Rhetorical)
Or, is it has been argued here… you can’t believe anything that’s said in this newspaper.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/andrews-agenda-keeps-libs-out-in-the-cold-in-victoria/news-story/08a65a764639bdf3ecb2324aaea393bb
What to believe.
Confessions says: Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 3:02 pm
SK:
I’m sure every time she sneezes or complains of a headache people tense!
Hopefully she’s back fighting fit very soon.
*****************************************************************************
Tea Pain @TeaPainUSA
Justice Ginsberg can have one of anything Tea Pain has two of.
lizzie @ #342 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 3:00 pm
Yep, still a load of garbage, written by someone still looking backwards towards his utopian vision of Labor, which can never be satisfied.
On the other hand, it looks to me as if Labor have looked at what successful politicians are doing to win elections and are adapting their vision to suit the times.
zoomster says:
Sunday, November 24, 2019 at 3:07 pm
…which makes the Liberals complicit in all the bad behaviour of big businesses, surely? So they’re responsible for Coles et al underpaying workers, if you use that kind of logic.
_______________________
Possibly. The Liberal party don’t normally recruit a fair percentage of their parliamentarians from executives at Coles/Woolworths like the ALP does out of the SDA though.
Certainly any political party should be aware of the business practices of companies that donate to them. If the Liberal party had an ounce of integrity it would hand donations back to the supermarkets.
phoenixRed:
What Tea Pain said!!
Simon Katich @ #340 Sunday, November 24th, 2019 – 2:58 pm
Sorry, here’s the link:
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/coal_reserves/
I did enjoy this take on history.
“It’s not thanks to capitalism that we’re living longer, but progressive politics”
I can’t quote it all, obviously.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/22/progressive-politics-capitalism-unions-healthcare-education