Hands off Sankey

A visual representation of how votes flowed between the parties at the 2016 and 2019 elections, plus other observations from the Australian National University’s post-election survey.

First up, note that you can find Adrian Beaumont’s latest British election post immediately below this one, and that The Guardian has preliminary details of what will presumably be the last Essential Research poll for the year, which I will blog about this evening when the full report is available (suffice to say for now that it still doesn’t feature voting intention numbers).

Now on to some further observations from the Australian National University’s post-election Australian Election Study survey, at which I took a preliminary look at the tail end of the previous post. Over the fold at the bottom of this post you can find a Sankey diagram showing how respondents’ vote choices in 2016 and 2019 compared, based on the slightly contingency of their recollections of what they did three years ago.

These suggest the Coalition actually lost a sizeable chunk of voters to Labor – 5.1% of the total, compared with only 1.6% going the other way. I might take a closer look at the survey responses for that 5.1% one day, but presumably they were the kind of Malcolm Turnbull-supporting voter who drove the swing to Labor in affluent inner urban areas. The key point is that the Coalition was able to make good this loss out of those who were in the “others” camp (i.e. everyone but the Coalition, Labor and the Greens) in 2016 – both directly, in that fully 30% of “others” from 2016 voted Coalition this time (or 4.1% of voters overall, compared with 1.6% who went from others to Labor), and indirectly, in that their preference share from what remained went from 50.8% to 56.3%.

Before that, some other general observations based on my reading of the ANU’s overview of its findings:

• The survey adds context for some intuitively obvious points: that the Coalition won because self-identified swinging voters rated them better to handle the economy, taxation and leadership, and rated those issues the most determinants of their vote choice. Labor’s strengths were, as ever, health and environment, which rated lower on the importance scale, and education, which hardly featured.

• Coalition and Labor voters weren’t vastly in their opinions on negative gearing and franking credits, with support and opposition being fairly evenly divided for both. However, there were enormously divided on their sense of the importance of global warming, which was rated extremely important by 64% of Labor voters but only 22% of Coalition voters.

• A drop in support for Labor among women caused the gender gap to moderate compared with 2016, although the unchanged 10% gap on the Liberal vote remains remarkable by recent historic standards. The new normal of Liberal doing better among men and Labor among women only really goes back to 2010 – back in the Keating era, it was Labor who had the women problem.

• Scott Morrison trounced Bill Shorten on popularity, their respective mean ratings on a zero-to-ten scale being 5.14 and 3.97.

• The number of respondents professing no party identity reached a new peak of 21%, maintaining a trend going back to 2010.

• The 2018 leadership coup was received as badly as the 2010 coup against Kevin Rudd. The 2013 and 2015 coups were less badly received, but both scored over 50% disapproval.

• Long-term trends show a steady erosion in trust in government, satisfaction with democracy and belief government is run for “all the people”, although the 2019 results weren’t particularly worse than 2016. Satisfaction with democracy is poor compared to the countries with which Australia is normally compared – though slightly higher than the United Kingdom, which is presumably one symptom among many of Brexit.

Based on weighted results from the AES survey, this shows how votes moved between the parties at the 2016 election (on the left) and the 2019 election (on the right). Roll your mouse pointer over it to see the percentage figures.

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.

702 comments on “Hands off Sankey”

Comments Page 6 of 15
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  1. Doyley

    you prove the point. LEAN ineffective on climate helping to push coal.

    No argument from them about lower electricity prices under a carbon price.

    No slogan at the bottom of every press release.

    Just blame the Greens for Labor pretending to be the LNP.

    Edit: And you wonder why voters don’t trust Labor

  2. Where the bloody hell are you in all that smoke?

    Gold star

    Also props to you on your suggestion Albo gets down with the RFS supporters. He could easily spend an hour out near Nattai NP turning sausages. It’s not that far from Marrickville!

  7. Nah now is not the time to talk about Climate Change. You won’t see Albo doing that.

    Ah, G, the beauty of it is he wouldn’t have to talk about climate change. He’d just be there helping out, raising spirits and sharing thanks from the inner burbs. He’s quite a jolly fellow!

  8. We are going to ignore the latest state based Trump v Dem candidates polling. We are going to assume as it is a lowly rated polster the massive shift to Trump in the rust belt and Ariz in the last month (being attributed to impeachment) is just not reliable. We are hoping a more highly rated pollster comes along rather quickly to assuage any lingering doubts.

  9. Player Onesays:
    Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 12:25 pm
    Windhover @ #235 Tuesday, December 10th, 2019 – 12:14 pm

    Greg’s logic exposed reveals its escape from reality.
    …………………………………………………………………………………………………………
    If Greg Jericho is out of touch with reality, it may be because he is trying to comprehend a Labor policy that is itself out of touch with reality.

    ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
    Usually contemplating fantasy is not itself a cause of delusion. I did not suggest (and do not) that Greg is out of touch with reality. Just his argument. But i do admire your confess and avoid defence of Greg’s logic.

    When you write:

    You might forgive them this if it looked like it might win them the next election – but it won’t. Labor has dangerously misread the changing mood of the electorate.

    I am a bit confused. Are you suggesting the changing mood is going to blast away the two-party hegemony that has controlled Australia since Federation and bring in the dancing Greens?
    Or are you with Greg and think the “changing mood” of the electorate is going to lead to, who would have guessed, yet another edition of the LNP horror show? If so, plus ca change.

  10. Victoria,

    Perhaps people are just sick and tired of the whole debacle. Sick and tired of politicians screaming and shouting at each other trying to score political points as the country burns. Sick and tired of the failure of their elected representatives to achieve anything. Sick and tired of the same ol’ paralysis.

    Perhaps people just accept the reality that they are not being listened to. The reality that no matter how loud they cry out nothing gets done. Accept the reality that it is a waste of time and energy so why bother.

    Perhaps people have just had a gutful ?

  11. DavidWH,

    I’m having trouble coming to grips with the voting flows in the above article and chart.

    It seems Labor gained a net 3.5% from the Coalition but lost 1.4% overall. That must mean Labor gained 5% somewhere (ignoring Greens flows both ways). Are we supposed to take from that that unhappy ex-Labor voters shifted their votes to ON and PUP? Seems highly unlikely at the levels the above seems to indicate.

    I am still puzzling about what happened, and I have not seen a good explanation of exactly what lost Labor the election (despite the strong views of posters here). I think it was multiple factors.

    It has been shown that there was no direct effect from Clive Palmer’s candidacy to explain the unexpected increase in undecided preferences going to the Coalition at the last minute, but I think the Palmer ad campaign hurt.

    One take away from the ANU surveys is that among the undecideds, those who voted or preferenced the Coalition were more likely to vote than those who intended to vote ALP.

    I am watching the election in the UK on 12th December – 2.5 days! – for clues as to how politics in similar countries to Australia are evolving before I can have any sensible thoughts about how to move forward.

    I identify with the last paragraph of the Sean Kelly SMH article from yesterday (some bits already quoted here by several posters:

    We so often tend to look to local factors for political results. It is possible we overstate them. We think we are waiting for Morrison and Albanese, but perhaps they are only bit players, even in their own country. The global political landscape is shifting very quickly right now. Like many people, I am uneasy about the future. It feels like we are waiting, and also as though we have no idea what we are waiting for.

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/we-think-we-re-waiting-for-pm-to-act-but-bigger-forces-are-at-work-20191208-p53hvb.html

  14. doyley

    It would be interesting to see what the feedback has been on talkback radio in Sydney.
    I am in no doubt, if this were occurring in Melbourne right now, people would be voicing their concerns.

  16. “ “Factoid: an item of unreliable information that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as fact.”

    So you are saying that in future Labor should frame its messages and base its strategy on unreliable information?”

    Rope a dope.

    “liberals are better economic managers”

    “Scott Morrison is a better leader”

    “The Government has created millions of jobs”

    “The liberals are more trustworthy on taxation”

    are all by definition “factoids” and yet politics is perception.

    Labor going with an aggressive redistribution program played into those ‘factoids’ and permitted the Liberals – especially those New Zealand Wunderkids on social media- to create the mother of all scare campaigns to reinforce these factoids. Along the way Labor’s narrative on the environment and on social spending for health, education and childcare got kicked into the long grass. Along the way Labor was subjected to a wedge campaign by the Greens which simply compounded the problems.

    The little Green Pony jumping on your “pick up” with her typical frizzle says it all about her confirmation bias and Perspicacity defect.

  18. guytaursays:
    Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 12:27 pm
    Doyley

    you prove the point. LEAN ineffective on climate helping to push coal.

    No argument from them about lower electricity prices under a carbon price.

    No slogan at the bottom of every press release.

    Just blame the Greens for Labor pretending to be the LNP.

    Edit: And you wonder why voters don’t trust Labor
    ………………………………………………………………………………………………

    Thanks G. I used to think Labor were real about taking action on climate change.

    I used to think Labor sought for a bipartisan political fix to climate change policy (as done in NZ, UK and elsewhere) only to be undone by the Greens 10 years ago because the Greens needed to be relevant.

    I used to think Labor in Government managed to put a price on carbon and then lost an election over the issue.

    I used to think Labor had gone to the 2016 and 2019 elections proposing meaningful action on climate change.

    Thanks to you I know what so many other voters and you know, that Labor can’t be trusted so we can happily vote LNP (who presumably can be).

  21. Windhover @ #259 Tuesday, December 10th, 2019 – 12:42 pm

    When you write:

    You might forgive them this if it looked like it might win them the next election – but it won’t. Labor has dangerously misread the changing mood of the electorate.

    I am a bit confused. Are you suggesting the changing mood is going to blast away the two-party hegemony that has controlled Australia since Federation and bring in the dancing Greens?
    Or are you with Greg and think the “changing mood” of the electorate is going to lead to, who would have guessed, yet another edition of the LNP horror show? If so, plus ca change.

    No, the Greens are not a viable alternative. Their policies are just plain silly.

    The electorate increasingly wants action on climate change, but neither major party is currently offering very much. However, when the polls begin to show that this has become an election-deciding issue (which I believe is inevitable) then the LNP are much more likely to simply lie and come up with some sop of a climate policy, which will never achieve anything except to completely negate Labor’s feeble and incoherent attempt at doing the same. This is independent of whether you believe Labor’s new policy is based on honestly held beliefs, simple pragmatism, dangerous stupidity, or greed and corruption.

    End result: Labor will lose the next election, possibly quite badly. Which is a shame when it could so easily win it – simply by listening to the experts. If you don’t think this is true now, all you have to do is wait for another year of “record-breaking” drought followed by another “unpredented” bushfire season.

  22. Asha Leu

    I generally agree with your post but make the following points.

    1) Albanese has spoken strongly about the need to address the demand side of climate change, and that stopping coal exports will not make a difference as others can supply the coal.
    2) Tanya plibersek has spoken on the Greens secondary school politics.
    3) Penny Wong has pointed out that this 10 years of nonsense started with the greens voting down Labor policy.

    I think it would be fair to say the Greens behavior during the election has jolted a few people into realizing something has to be done about the Greens blocking action on climate change,that ignoring what they have done is not enough.

  23. Manu RajuVerified account@mkraju
    56m56 minutes ago
    NEW: Leaving Pelosi’s office, Eliot Engel told us that there will be an announcement TOMORROW – likely 9a – to lay out the articles of impeachment. He wouldn’t say how many articles there are, what’s in there and whether Mueller evidence will be in there.

    That’s 9pm WA time tonight.

  25. FredNK

    Still complaining about the Greens being effective campaigners I see

    More weasel words to excuse Labor backflip on coal embracing the LNP narrative.

    Well done enjoy the election loss

  26. Player Onesays:
    Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 12:55 pm
    Windhover @ #259 Tuesday, December 10th, 2019 – 12:42 pm

    When you write:

    You might forgive them this if it looked like it might win them the next election – but it won’t. Labor has dangerously misread the changing mood of the electorate.

    I am a bit confused. Are you suggesting the changing mood is going to blast away the two-party hegemony that has controlled Australia since Federation and bring in the dancing Greens?
    Or are you with Greg and think the “changing mood” of the electorate is going to lead to, who would have guessed, yet another edition of the LNP horror show? If so, plus ca change.

    No, the Greens are not a viable alternative. Their policies are just plain silly.

    The electorate increasingly wants action on climate change, but neither major party is currently offering very much. However, when the polls begin to show that this has become an election-deciding issue (which I believe is inevitable) then the LNP are much more likely to simply lie and come up with some sop of a climate policy, which will never achieve anything except to completely negate Labor’s feeble and incoherent attempt at doing the same. This is independent of whether you believe Labor’s new policy is based on honestly held beliefs, simple pragmatism, dangerous stupidity, or greed and corruption.

    End result: Labor will lose the next election, possibly quite badly. Which is a shame when it could so easily win it – simply by listening to the experts. If you don’t think this is true now, all you have to do is wait for another year of “record-breaking” drought followed by another “unpredented” bushfire season.

    ………………………………………………………………………………………………………
    Player One, do tell me more about this “changing mood of the electorate” that is so fed up with Labor’s climate policy it stamps its little feet and votes LNP in increasing numbers.

    And then I want a proper bedtime story with princesses and frogs.

  28. I was very surprised when a nephew in the RFS from up the Hunter valley a ways posted he was fighting fires with Tony Abbott last week. Hmmm….. the cynic in me asked ulterior motives perhaps?

  30. Laborite pissants trying to rationalise and blame anyone but themselves for the situation, still.

    It is clear that spite is the overwheening motivation for many of them here. Better it seems to them, to make sure their criteria for “political action” is whether they can gratuitously post more BS on PB blaming the Greens for everything wrong with the world, than actually consider what is best for the people and planet…

    Far easier now it seems for the useless LEAN to try sucking up to their political masters in the fossil fuel industry and LNP by attacking those who are actually not beholden at all to fossil fuel lobbyists many of whom are or were their party colleagues.

    Vic with both ScoMo and Albo running a unity ticket about how you all should be being good quiet Australians and not brining up any difficult issues or questions, like you know the breakdown of ecological systems due to climate change. It might even seem like too many Australians are just just a pack of useless sheep too scared to bring their representatives to any sort of reckoning or account.

    Thanks to the LNP and Labor support we’ve got many laws in place to try and make sure that any cheeky pushback is jumped on or ignored and dismissed straight away as well.

    The ALP seems to be doing more of the bidding of the LNP in regard to the current circumstances than the LNP themselves are. The LNP couldn’t give a shit and the ALP seem to want everyone to remain quiet about that.

  32. Player Onesays:
    Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 1:02 pm
    Windhover @ #276 Tuesday, December 10th, 2019 – 1:00 pm

    And then I want a proper bedtime story with princesses and frogs.

    I can offer you Labor’s new pro-coal policy, and the story of the boiling frog. Will that suffice?

    ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
    Perfect!!! Told by a speaker such as yourself it is a story so somnolent I can hardly fini


  33. Douglas and Milko says:
    Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 12:45 pm
    …

    I am still puzzling about what happened,
    …

    Interesting read.

    That Albanese should prove quietly effective should worry Morrison more broadly, because you can see, in the Labor leader’s recent brutal rhetoric, that he is building a case against Morrison, and attempting to flip the recent wisdom of Australian political life. Albanese says that when Morrison says “quiet Australians” he wants Australians to “shut up”; when Morrison talks about unions, he is calling teachers and nurses “thugs”. Albanese also says the government “hates working people”. Morrison, leading a government with a history of scandal, is facing an opposition determined to attack.

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/we-think-we-re-waiting-for-pm-to-act-but-bigger-forces-are-at-work-20191208-p53hvb.html

  35. Quoll

    Who would you prefer to run this country. Labor or Liberal? A one word only answer please.

    What are you doing to ensure a Labor government?

  36. Cud,

    On a train from Sydney to Newcastle. Passing Cowan. Bloody hell this smoke is thick. Cough..

    If you could have it cleared by Thursday afternoon I’d be most grateful. Ta

  38. Didn’t Scott Morrison graduate from UNSW?

    The University of New South Wales (UNSW) have closed campuses at Kensington & Paddington.

    The Air Quality Index (AQI) rating at the nearby monitoring site at Randwick was 2149 — 11 times over the threshold for what is considered “hazardous air quality”.

    #sydneysmoke #NSWfires

  43. So the smoke is setting off fire alarms in Sydney train stations.

    When the alarms are triggered, the opal card system blocks entry to gated stations.

    Unhappy public transport using peeps are being made acutely aware of the extreme nature of the situation.

    I sense a conflagration of clusterfucks coming home to roost here.

  44. guytaursays:
    Tuesday, December 10, 2019 at 1:21 pm

    Workplace Safety. Not a thing for Cricket Australia apparently

    Just prepping for a tour of the sub-Continent.

  45. When the alarms are triggered, the opal card system blocks entry to gated stations.

    Are people in the stations able to get out when that happens?

  46. So Jacinda Adern is in the NZ parliament right now outlining the measures and investigations that will be undertaken in order to get to the bottom of a (frankly) medium level venting of a small volcanic island well away from population centres. A handful of tourists who paid to go “thrillseeking” in the caldera of an active volcano, some of them Australian, and some seagulls have been killed.

    Our own Prime Minister tells us that he has been in constant contact with Ms Ardern and he has mobilised AFP forensic services and the Foreign Affairs department to offer any assistance requested.

    Meanwhile, back home, millions of hectares are burnt in NSW and Queensland, hundreds of millions of wildlife devastated across hundreds of species, and property losses are in the hundreds of millions (perhaps eventually billions), with six lives lost so far. Sydney and much of the coast is under a pall of toxic smoke, which will cost more hundreds of millions and without doubt take more lives and cause more sickness.

    There is no end in sight forecast for this unfolding disaster, which has already been in progress for two months.

    We hear about Australia’s emergency response to a disaster in New Zealand involving, at most, 50 people, in the middle of a smoke infused press conference given by the PM, on the subject of… relgious freedom, specifically the right of employers to sack any employee who does not conform to the laws of their religion, laws written by a small collection of Semitic goat herders over 2,000 years ago, on the other side of the world.

    When asked about the Australian disaster Morrison tells us, without supplying any corroborative detail, that he knows all that there is to know, has spoken to everyone that he needs to speak to, and has done everything that needs to be done in response to the bushfires. In any case, it’s a state problem, not a federal one. He assures that he has cast his eye over the problem and is happy with how it is being handled. After that he shuts down all questions on the subject.

    Meanwhile ABC TV give blanket coverage to the disaster… the one in New Zealand, that is.

    Spot the flaw in this picture.

  47. Inside Central station. Smoke so thick you’d swear some part of the station was on fire. Staff wearng masks.

    Does anyone know if this is setting off smoke detectors?

  49. Vic,

    Are people in the stations able to get out when that happens?

    Don’t know, but I would assume so?

    Cud,

    Reports are yes, at some stations it is.

  50. I have the solution.

    I am going to form a new religious order.
    The Church of the Union Comrade. Worship shall occur at the holy temple of Trades Hall.

    Do not follow that false prophet Setka, though he was sacrificed at the alter of the media murdoch…

    What kind of stuff can you get away with if you register as a religious body under these laws?
    I hope that all unions register themselves as religious organisations…

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