In the wake of the Morrison government’s defeat, a culture war has broken out within the Liberal Party between those who consider recovering the teal independent seats a necessary precondition for a return to power and those who believe they should be abandoned to the political left so the party might pursue different constituencies in seats that have been swinging away from Labor, notably Hunter, Werriwa, McEwen and Gorton. Support for the latter notion has been provided by former Morrison government adviser Mark Briers, who says the party “must move our party’s focus, talent and resources away from Camberwell and Malvern towards Craigieburn and Melton”, and right-wing Victorian Liberal MP Tim Smith, who says his party should “stop obsessing with the woke concerns and obsessions with the inner-urban elites”, and “take the focus off Kew” – his own seat, until November at least – “and focus on Cranbourne”.
Repudiating his soon-to-be-former colleague, former Victorian Liberal leader Michael O’Brien told The Australian there was “no path to 45 seats” at the November state election “that doesn’t run through Malvern, Kew and Hawthorn”, the latter of which was unexpectedly lost to Labor in 2018. Similarly, federal MP Paul Fletcher – who has an interest in the matter as member for the Sydney seat of Bradfield, one of only two out of the ten wealthiest electorates that remain with the Liberal Party – wrote in The Australian on Saturday that he has not heard notions to the contrary “seriously advanced by fellow Liberals”, by which I think he means he has not heard it advanced by serious fellow Liberals. However, his prescriptions for accomplishing took pains to avoid seriously criticising his own party and offered no suggestion of any policy reorientation.
Scott Morrison, who clearly isn’t kept awake at night by jibes about him being “from marketing”, proposes a middle course, seemingly based on the notion that brand damage from the Nationals had a lot to do with his government’s defeat. As reported by Sharri Markson of The Australian, Morrison proposes the solution of a re-forged coalition in which a Queensland-style Liberal National Party serves as the main brand, allied to a distinct “new progressive Liberal movement” to run in the kinds of seats lost to the teal independents.
The loss of those seats has prompted much talk about the demise of the socio-economic cleavage that has historically defined the Australian party system, including a claim in a Financial Review headline that “for the first time Labor voters earn more than Coalition voters” – later amended to “Labor electorates earn more than Coalition seats” after it was pointed out that the initial claim was wrong. The issue with such analyses is known as the ecological fallacy, whereby inferences about individual behaviour are drawn from aggregate-level data — in this case the notion that because the electorates held by the Coalition have declined in income, it follows that their support base has as well.
YouGov data scientist Shaun Ratcliff addressed this issue by drawing on the surveying for the pollster’s multi-level regression and post-stratification poll, which reached 18,923 respondents three to five weeks out from election day. Ratcliff found that while the traditional income cleavage was reduced at this election, it certainly did not disappear. Among home-owners on $150,000 a year or more, 44% voted Coalition, 31% Labor and 10% Greens; among those on $50,000 a year or less who did not own homes, 40% voted Labor, 27% Greens and just 16% voted Coalition. While the effect was somewhat weaker among those under 35, Ratcliff provides a series of charts illustrating the clear tendency of wealthier voters to favour the Coalition over Labor and “others” (Greens support did not appear contingent on income).
This was also true within the teal independent seats, with Kooyong and Goldstein in particular having experienced an influx of apartment-dwelling “young middle-income professionals”, as noted by Remy Vega in The Australian. Data from the YouGov poll suggests the Liberal vote in the twenty seats targeted by Climate 200 was around seven points lower among those on $50,000 or less than among those on higher incomes. More broadly, Ratcliff notes that “renters also swung away from the Liberal and National Party more than homeowners and the young more than the old”.
the morrison club through allix hawkes attack dog elliott is not a smart move as kean is the only posible mp to go federal that can winn the teels back the morrison club were disliked buy kean as well as conie feiravanti wells hard right elliott should focus on fixing the trains in stead of joining fordim intrashing his fgovernment thedeaves was a terible pick by hawke
TheLibs were taken over, root, stock and dividend stream by the fundamentalist Christians about 20-30 years ago. They didn’t see it coming so did nothing to defend themselves. Supply Side Jesus fans now run the LNP.
Various church groups, (one particular one in Victoria) decided the way to true power was to take over the LNP and replace moderates with fundy conservatives – and they succeeded.
Why has no-one drilled down in to exactly what SfM, Stuart Robert, Alex hawke, George Christensen, Eric Abetz etc. actually believe? The Libs lost because enough people realised they were no longer the party of Menzies and Fraser but a meaningless rabble with no plans or ambitions other than the Christification of Australia. We took the bullet in 2019 but we missed it in 2022.
Who knows what Australia and the world will look like in 3 years time. There is a lot going on! But something we can be sure of is that Australia is going to have some serious economic problems in the short to medium term. Interest rates and mortgage repayments increasing, high price inflation for energy, food and everything else, wages not keeping up with prices, business conditions deteriorating, intractable government debt-it’s a long list. Other than LNP die-hards, no-one will blame the new government for any of this right now, but in 2025, the ALP is going to be held accountable for whatever state the economy is then in. Which is perfectly fair and reasonable!
In the short term, the LNP I think will just lie low, and wait for the honeymoon to pass. No need for a big internal battle over ideology, or any radical policy changes. And in 2025, if the economy still has major problems, the LNP might not need to do too much by way of rebranding to regain ground. A FICAC will be up and running by then, and probably won’t be an issue. You’d think the LNP would also take some steps to appear more climate change-friendly, even if it’s a sham. A campaign theme of “fixing Labor’s economic mismanagement” might be a winner. With a PV of less than 33%, Labor’s position is quite precarious-if their PV drops much further, a whole swag of seats are vulnerable.
Griff:
That’s happened once, a couple of years ago. There was some weirdness when Llew O’Brien got voted deputy speaker over Damian Drum (Labor shenanigans), and O’Brien changed from being a Nat to a “non-aligned LNP member”, whatever the hell that means.
At different times, the conservative side of politics in Australia has been more or less disciplined at an organisational level (albeit that it is fundamentally split between the country and the city), but it has far more consistently been a fairly unidisciplined coalition of different ideological positions, particularly after a major electoral defeat such as that which occurred on 21 May.
The idea that they now could transform themselves into a party of the outer suburban and rural and regional areas is an illusion: there will never be enough seats in those areas for them to win majority government. They need people in these areas, but they also need some of the wealthy people of the inner cities and leafy suburbs.
What will drive enough voters of that type in the Teal seats back into the arms of the Libs is some sort of threat to their prosperity (apparent or real).
There are two main ways that this could happen:
1. The ALP is stupid enough to try to implement some of their failed policies of 2019, or other policies that will adversely impact upper middle class people (eg, higher taxes on superannuation).
2. The economy continues to get worse and the Coalition is successful in pinning the blame for this on Labor: this approach worked wonders in the Whitlam era, but I suspect the electorate is now much better informed as to how much of what happens to the economy is driven by global forces.
Labor was very disciplined in the election, but there’s always a risk of a growing internal push for redistribution through taxation, with the resulting booty being used to give substantial pay rises to unionised public sector workers. It probably won’t happen, but there are many inside the ALP who’d like to have a crack at it.
Failing that, the Coalition will need to be patient for 2-3 terms. They should certainly soften their position on climate change, and I suspect they eventually will, but they’ll lose more than they win by chasing the Teals down the rabbit holes of refugee policy, transgender equity, etc.
I’m already convinced that, whatever happens, Dutton is not the answer. I was worried about his judgement before the election: the media tended to hail his periodic outbursts against China and accusations of Labor collaboration as being clever politics, but they seemed to me to be rather uncontrolled. And now he has published that ridiculous editorial about AUKUS, etc. No doubt he will try to sell this within his party as being a clever tactic to embarrass the government, but I reckon quite a few of his team will have their doubts about that. Again, it looked rather indisciplined, and running a bit against the grain of his self-representation as Mr National Security.
The difference between the centre right liberals and right wing liberals is not great. Hawke prior to shifting was part of the right and was David Clarke’s protege.. seems centre right are stronger adherents to the so called prosperity gospel.
If Dutton is the answer what is the question
“Scott Morrison, who clearly isn’t kept awake at night by jibes about him being “from marketing”, proposes a middle course, seemingly based on the notion that brand damage from the Nationals had a lot to do with his government’s defeat.”
Of course actual failure as regards policy and governance, gross disrespect for other people (even on his own side)…….all that had nothing to do with it.
Brand damage from the Nats…….yeah, was a factor (Barnyard, Canavan…) but not nearly so much as that from Morrison.
I reckon that the take away from the Teals last election was that “brand management” is really not the issue, and since Morrison proved himself as bad at that as at everything else who the hell would take his advice on that anyway??
Reckon we have some final thrashing around to see as Morrison fades out as irrelevant, Dutton is Dutton for a while and the Lib / Nats become something else (dont know what).
A lot of talk about the Libs rebranding themselves as a sort of outer suburbs cum working class party is fanciful and far-fetched to say the least. I know some commentators got excited about a swing to Labor among higher income people and an apparent shift away in poorer regions, such as the NSW Hunter.
But I’ve heard this before. In 1976, a politics lecturer, David Kemp, who later became a Liberal cabinet minister, published some work purporting to show that Labor was increasingly a “middle class” party while the Liberals were drawing more support from manual workers.
His data largely concentrated on splits between white collar and blue collar workers, with little regard to income or education levels.
As surveys cited by William above show, people on higher incomes in the recent election still tended to vote Liberal while those on lower incomes tended towards Labor. It has been ever thus.
Conservative parties have always enjoyed some level of support among lower income and working class voters for many reasons: family tradition; ideological religious beliefs; or simply because Tories are perceived to be more competent at governing.
But the idea that Liberals will one day become a majority working class party is ridiculous.
Ross Gittins points out that education has been the main “driver” of votes towards Labor and the Greens. It’s worth remembering that education doesn’t always equal higher incomes, but it’s more likely to produce a more informed working class.
‘B.S. Fairman says:
Monday, June 13, 2022 at 12:14 pm
Citizen – The only benefit the Canberra Liberals do have is that the Hare-Clarke System allows the individual candidates for the party to run as basically individuals only aligned with the party. I suspect the moderates will become far more negative towards the Hard Right in their campaigning this time, virtually running a campaign inside the wider campaign. Hare-Clarke does therefore decentralise the party system somewhat.
The problem they do have is the ACT is not a monolith of voters. The biggest chunk of the locked in Liberal vote is the hardcore with lots of religious fundies. The moderate vote has always gotten lost in which ever third party grouping is cropping up at that election and disappearing before the next (Bullet Train anyone?).’
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By and large the quality of the Territory Liberal candidates has ranged from very ordinary to appalling.
LOTO Lee is probably the best opposition leader for some time. Her public utterances are measured and reasonable. Her attacks are well-targeted against some slackness or malfeasance by government parties that have been there for a long, long time.
The three questions are these: 1. will she be able to attract some top shelf candidates 2. will she be able to stop the splintering on the conservative side that probably cost the Liberals one or two seats in the last Territory election and (3) will she be able to put together some alternative policies that have serious policy grunt. (When I asked during the last Territory campaign where they were going to plant their pomised x million trees they did not have a clue: they were going to give the plants to primary schools.)
Getting rid of Zed helps but the extremist organizational people who put him there are still there, IMO.
Mick, agreed re differences between the NSW Lib hard right and centre right. The NSW hard right has a strong Catholic bent. If anything the differences between the two are more power and personality based than anything.
Elliott probably sees the writing on the wall. Relegated to transport minister (a poisoned position in NSW), his federal allies Morrison and Hawke marginalised, who knows is his preselection in Baulkham Hills even safe?
“:but because the ALP and the Greens kept playing the class game about rich people not paying taxes and those private schools those seats held their noses and kept voting Liberal but in smaller numbers.”
Sadly, low income earners (workers, labour hires etc) don’t have a problem with tax cuts for the rich. They have more of an issue with people below them receiving centrelink. It’s sad but its true.
Promising to stops tax cuts for the rich isn’t the big vote getter some on the Left think it would be. But it doesn’t stop the Greens trolls on here playing the ‘Labor and the Liberals are just the same’ bullshit.
I believe Victorian Liberal Party is more right-wing than either the federal or NSW Liberals, I have noticed since the pandemic began that Vic Libs moved further to the far-right by opposing any pandemic mandates and aiming to appease the anti-vax voting base. Already evident with Several Victoria Liberal MP’s including frontbenchers going to the ‘freedom’ rallies. I believe some of their far-right bases could be from the alt-right religious Christians taking over the party in 2018 and they never received from the takeover
Political Nightwatchman says:
Monday, June 13, 2022 at 4:21 pm
“:but because the ALP and the Greens kept playing the class game about rich people not paying taxes and those private schools those seats held their noses and kept voting Liberal but in smaller numbers.”
Sadly, low income earners (workers, labour hires etc) don’t have a problem with tax cuts for the rich. They have more of an issue with people below them receiving centrelink. It’s sad but its true.
———————————–
They are two different groups because many people that swung to the Teals and the ALP in Higgins and Tangney had previously stayed Liberal because they didn’t want to pay higher taxes and were turned off by class envy but Albo and the teals stayed clear of that.
sprocket_ at 7.55 re David Elliott accusing Kean of ‘undermining’ Morrison’s campaign…
I hope the Liberals firm in their belief that they lost for any/all of:
1) Kean undermined Morrison (analogous to Howard believing ‘Joh for PM’ cost him the 1987 election)
2) They were too ‘woke’
3) People like to change curtains
Steve777 at 11.37 re ‘Liberal business model’…
Brilliant cartoon!
Works for Liberal policy at so many levels. Take tax/welfare: massive cuts for the wealthiest, enough crumbs to entice the middle/tradies and demonise welfare recipients (except age pensioners, of course)!
I’m intrigued by the hypothesis that Ms Deves was endorsed by the Liberals in Warringah with the aim of snaffling up a socially conservative working-class vote in the outer suburbs. Just how much evidence is there that those suburban voters are ripe for the picking?
From what I can see, the argument mainly flows from the fact that the Yes vote in the same sex marriage survey was lower in some of the outer Sydney seats. OK, but that doesn’t necessarily imply very much. When people are asked a very specific policy question on which their religion provides a rather clear answer, they may well provide that answer. That doesn’t mean that such issues are all that high on their personal agendas. Maybe some Muslim voters wouldn’t be so keen on transgender individuals competing in certain sports. But will that really matter more to them than the relative coalition and ALP positions on things like the Arab-Israeli conflict, and demonisation of refugees from Muslim-majority countries; not to mention the effects of 20 years of dog whistling from the coalition about threats from terrorists?
Bird of paradox @ Monday, June 13, 2022 at 2:02 pm
Thanks!
Parramatta Moderate at 1.39
In the short term, the LNP I think will just lie low…
A FICAC will be up and running by then, and probably won’t be an issue. You’d think the LNP would also take some steps to appear more climate change-friendly, even if it’s a sham….
______________________
1. No sign of them ‘lying low’ so far. Plenty of lies, however.
2. FICAC may well be an issue for several Liberals!
3. I think the ‘climate change reasonableness’ ship has well and truly sailed. Any ‘reasonable’ policy alterations would be seen as contradicting earlier stuff. Liberals would be quizzed about the change and twist in the breeze arguing they’re NOT changing. They’d also jeopardise UAP & PHON preference flows and Sky would go birko about ‘wokism!’
”
simm0888says:
Monday, June 13, 2022 at 3:41 pm
Mick, agreed re differences between the NSW Lib hard right and centre right. The NSW hard right has a strong Catholic bent. If anything the differences between the two are more power and personality based than anything.
Elliott probably sees the writing on the wall. Relegated to transport minister (a poisoned position in NSW), his federal allies Morrison and Hawke marginalised, who knows is his preselection in Baulkham Hills even safe?
”
I don’t agree that Transport Ministry is a poisonous chalice. Yes, it is a difficulty ministry but not Poisonous. Gladys B was the Transport Minister in the first NSW LNP government after 2011 election victory. She rose to become Treasurer and Premier. She was best Liberal Premier of the 4 Liberal Premiers since 2011, the best being Nick Griener. She was most popular after Bob Carr.
The federal Libs will follow the pattern of the state Libs in Vic, Qld and WA: reviews on why they should ignore ‘woke intellectuals’, and then suffer greater defeats at the following election.
Re Sandman at 7.35 am
Of your 6 “moderate” Lib Reps MPs only your local member, Bridget Archer, has any significance. Her margin is 1.9% off a 1.5% swing (not 3.4 off 2.9). Archer’s swing (1.46%) was only marginally above the rise in informal votes (1.42%) to 5.92%, just above the Tassie ave of 5.8% and below NSW at 6.2%.
Why did Archer win? Not because of ProMo’s visits, including his crass-tackle (no typo) visit to the neighbouring seat of Braddon on 18 May. The gap between pre-poll votes and 21 May votes was small, but Archer got 1% more on the day than in pre-poll (unusual for a Lib). The swing to her on 21 May votes was 2%, whereas there was a swing against her of 3.2% in the Launceston pre-poll, and the PV swing against her in that pre-poll was 5% (nearly double the 2.8% swing against Labor there).
In 2019 in Bass there was one ratbag candidate (Palmer at 4.9%, with the Nationals last on 1.4%). In 2022 three ratbags got 6.4% combined, an Indie got 5% (up on another Indie at 3.8% in 2019), and brand Lambie got 6.7%, above the 6.1% drop in Labor’s PV (to 28.6%, now 6% below the poor result in 2013 and 13.6% below the 1998 PV, when a current state MP for Bass, Michelle O’Byrne, won by 78 votes).
Once the preference flow is published it might be evident that Archer won on preferences from voters who went with Lambie. Depending on what happens with the LNP on the mainland, Archer may have a choice late in the current term, of whether to re-contest Bass as the sitting Lib or switch to Lambie. The reason for staying a Lib is that ensures she gets a strong PV (only twice since 1972, when the Lib PV was 36.8%, has the Lib PV been below 40%, marginally in 2010 and more so in 2016), particularly when the Lib PV in the state election in Bass was 50%. Then she just needs a good preference flow. In 2019 Archer won on Palmer preferences, and in 2022 her overall preference flow improved by 3%.
But what if the Lib Tas government becomes unpopular before the next state election, due in autumn 2025 (same time as federal election), and the LNP on the mainland becomes ever more divided and unpopular? In that context Archer might consider switching to Lambie worthwhile. If she did, she would just need to beat a replacement Lib candidate on PV, then win on their preferences. Lambie has not had much impact on Tassie state politics, but if Archer joined her brand, even that might change.
Of the other so-called Lib “moderates” only Entsch has any colour, and he is in the pre-retirement lounge. The other four combined are not worth a tinker’s curse. Of course, the same goes for Colbeck.
I work on the premise it’s a two party system and it’s always contestable at every Federal election. In fact, it has been since 1977. The only real landslides occur at State level. As such, if times are bad, or the Government is not especially competent, there is a good chance the LNP will win seats back, including its traditional ones. It might even get straight back into Government. The betting market has them at about 35% and I think that’s reasonable.
Another take on the “Liberal” business model.
Divide and rule…
I can’t see the attempt to rebuild themselves as a conservative party of the suburbs is going to work. The idea is trying and transform into something akin to the US Republican party. But that won’t really work as the racial politics here is different (plus we are actually more “white” than most people think despite the prevailing narrative) and the religious make up is different; The 2021 Census result will be out in 2 weeks and it is likely to show for that Christians are no longer a majority in Australia (in 2016 it was 52% of the reported population…. and a 2% drop might very well have happened).
They might be thinking then more akin to the UK Conservative Party but there again are major differences. The Conservatives have managed to bring in people of different backgrounds and have had better female leadership (including two leaders). And the major issue that has been running through UK politics for decades is where is it place in the world (so the role of EU, Brexit, workers from “elsewhere” etc).
I might play devil’s advocate about how the Liberals could go about attempting to this “suburb” strategy after thinking about it some more. But my initial feelings is I suspect that it is not going to be particularly popular with the PB crowd.
Thanks so much for this analysis Monsieur Bowe. I expect there’s going to be a lot of it over the next five years or so.
It really does look like it is shaping to be a full-on split. Half the liberals seem to think there’s no chance they’ll ever form government without re-capturing the toff seats, and half of them seem to want to burn the bridge down.
Do not buy this lyne about kean cost morrison the election did one interview about deaves than fordim on 2gbgave it further publisity buy attacking him over it ddesbite deaves being morrisons third choice after mike baird and gladys knocked back his offers with acseption of gladys transport is a poison chalis conie wells did more damage from the david clarke faction did mor damage to morrison than kean with her senate speech
morrison attack dog hollie hughes on sky news shortly after fordims cue claimed on sky news is liberals lose it would be keans fault perettett and his right and keans group get along well only the allex hawke center right and the remaining david clarke group connie wells now not in senate dislike kean i think dutton does not mind him would help if hawke retired from mitchel i acspect he will when morrion quits elliott can then run for mitchel which is the state seat of bolcomhills
The funny/strange thing is that the Perrottet/Kean dynamic might be the only thing that is working with the liberals right now. For all of his background, Perrottet has been a surprise for me, and in no world is Kean a climate change denialist fruitloop. If the libs can demonstrate that the dynamic can work, there is a way out of the wilderness.
But Kean has no time for Taylor. Publicly. One of them is going to stare at the wreckage of the other sooner or later. That really is the battle for the heart of the liberals. The NSW state treasurer, and energy minister, has no time for the federal liberal treasurer, and ex energy minister. That problem doesn’t just go away.
peretett is asosiated originly with clarkes group but seems to be a economickconservative but leaving his personal views outside he is not as good a premier as Gladys it seems most nsw transport ministers with acseption of gladys have not performed well wonder when constence will concede gilmore
Do enjoy the fascination people have with Kean and that Kean has with himself. Dom and Kean did a deal a while ago and have enacted that now with the political passing of Gladys. Kean think it helps to be out there pissing on the Fed Libs to try to differentiate the NSW Libs. It also serves his massive ego that if Dom goes down in March that Kean will be there to pick up the pieces and rebuild the Liberals.
Gladys did not perform exactly well in Transport @aaron Newton. That whole tram debacle was on her watch. It was and is a disaster. The whole buy anywhere but Oz was also pushed by her. Which is now coming home to roost for the commuters of NSW.
Wranslide, I’m not so sure Perrottet/Kean will lose in the NSW state election. If anything, the lodestone of Taylor and the federal libs has been removed. Kean will probably work effectively with federal Labor getting the renewables infrastructure started. Not even started; continued.
I reckon NSW libs winning 60/40. Maybe even 75/25. Perrottet isn’t scaring the horses. That’s kind of all he has to do. Totally see the dynamic of Kean being untouchable, but right now he is even more effective where he is. At least for the libs. For now.
In the US, a political strategy of abandoning the major cities works for the Republicans because the five largest cities only make up about 15% of the population (and in Presidential elections are in states which are largely irrelevant to the contest). In Australia the five largest cities make up comfortably over 50% of the population.
It’s even more than that BT. The ability of conservatives to get out their voters in the US because they don’t have mandatory voting means they can polarise more effectively. They can get that 25% of people they control to count.
In Oz, because of mandatory preferential voting, the libs can’t be divorced from the people that hate the nats. They can’t go kulchawar on a single thing. It takes a number of things really.
The libs don’t have their toff cohort anymore. It’s a big thing. The party of Menzies is gone. Surely this is also going to play out in the lib regional seats too. Liberal regionals also ideologically aligned with the inner-city toffs. What happens to that political relationship?
This is the liberals losing contact with their electorate volunteers. People have been saying this for years… That the volunteer base of the liberals has been falling apart. They have to pay people to spruik their stuff. They are a party of donors now.
I’m not sure how you turn that around when everyone knows that the LNP doesn’t want you anymore. Even their own members like Smith (like wtf having to qualify that) saying that his own voters aren’t where the LNP should be focusing.
Are there going to be state Teal candidates in Vic and NSW elections? The real big question will be whether the libs can contain the teal phenomenon to the federal arena. If they do that, then it will make them stronger; They might have more ways out.. If they don’t, that’s when the real soul searching happens. That’s when the people who are now called Teals, decide whether they want to coordinate as a party.
Interesting across the Victorian seats, and generally, is the collapse of the Liberal Party vote – and the drop in the Labor vote
These losses have gone to some extent to the Greens, but more so to a combination of Hanson and Palmer (where in some seats they aggregate upwards of 14% primary vote)
If the Liberals are looking to the Labor heartland it would appear Palmer and Hanson have got there first but not to a level which effects the 2PP healthy margins the Labor Party enjoy, which have basically held up
So what is the demographic voting Palmer and Hanson?
Noting Gittens contribution, are they those of lower education therefore buying the promoting of housing loan rates being capped at 3% and other such presentations along with the race card – noting it was once put to me that the most racist are those who have immigrated to Australia bringing their prejudices with them?
And noting also that both Federally and at State level the Labor vote is at a high water mark
But it appears that any loss is not going to the Liberal Party including via Palmer and Hanson or via the Greens
Look for the seats where the Liberal Party primary vote has actually increased – and the losses across the remainder seats, losses which are to the order of 7% plus including the seats they retained (and former safe seats)
Then you get to the Teals taking “blue ribbon” seats – so where does that vote go to in a State election?
Back to the Liberals?
I probably think not
And, I would suggest that whilst the Greens may be marginal beneficiaries, Palmer and Hanson will not be beneficiaries
So, buoyed by the likes of Hawthorn then Deakin and Menzies, do Labor target these suburbs?
Holding the seats they hold even on a reduced primary vote because the votes lost are fractured across Palmer, Hanson and the Greens – not the opposition Liberal Party which is losing primary vote itself
Pi @ Monday, June 13, 2022 at 9:44 pm
“I reckon NSW libs winning 60/40. Maybe even 75/25. Perrottet isn’t scaring the horses.”
NSW Libs getting 75 with Perrottet is a big call. While they are in the front seat, they are tired, and they have lost their best electoral asset. Still waiting for ICAC to pounce as well.
75% chance of win sorry if that wasn’t clear. But yeah, I think it is more likely they win than lose, by some margin.
The fact that some in the LNP are still trying to talk about the ALP primary while the libs are in the midst of a crisis, demonstrates part of the problem. How can it be that this blind spot is so clear?
The problem with the LNP is it’s now less a political party and more a political machine designed simply to win elections and to hold government for the sake of it, but with little connection to the electorate and no defining agenda or connection to any significant cohort of voters. People are getting increasingly sick of the inward looking, disconnected and self serving political class and I don’t think the LNP have sufficient ability to understand the electorate and self-reflect to be able to fix this at the moment. Sure they might win a few more votes in the outer suburbs taking a cynical populist right approach but that’s not going to flip even a handful of seats and will further their woes in the inner suburbs.
Labor is also facing this problem of who they actually represent, probably to a lesser extent, but it would still be concerning that their primary vote even in a winning election has dropped to a level not seen since the Labor split in the 1930’s. From here on in it’s probably going to be difficult for them to form government in their own right unless they perform very well this term and remain united.
It’s difficult to predict future electoral trends, there’s so many variables and it’s particularly fraught predicting anything at the moment as we’re likely heading into an economically difficult period, but the election result confirms the trend that the Australian public are increasingly voting for third parties/independents – chances are that trend will likely continue as more and more young people are left worse off than previous generations and it’s reaching a tipping point now where it’s unlikely either major party will be able to obtain majority government in future.
so it looks like David elliott is headid foor the back bench after his ben fordim inspired out burst it turns out that people are sick to death of elliotts stuff ups not kean the liberals most effective minister surprized his sell out on colars did not stick
Pi @ Tuesday, June 14, 2022 at 12:59 am
“75% chance of win sorry if that wasn’t clear. But yeah, I think it is more likely they win than lose, by some margin.”
That sounds reasonable. Optional preferences will make the hill harder to climb.
Pi at 12.59
“75% chance of win sorry if that wasn’t clear. But yeah, I think it is more likely they win than lose, by some margin.”
I hope you mean ‘some margin’ in terms of their likelihood of winning, not them winning by ‘some margin.’
This is a govt barely clinging to power. If they win, they won’t win by ‘some margin.’
I also think Labor can use the ‘two Sydneys’ critique from pandemic lockdowns a few months ago across a range of govt policies.
This election is wide open, hence the cash splashing in this budget.
I have done no analysis to support this but I wonder if it is as much about religion and education level as wealth level? Seats like Cook are wealthy but full of what one friend referred to as “cashed up bogans” – Howards aspirational battlers. Hunter is full of them too. Whereas all the inner city electorates tend to be better educated, whether young and renting, or old and owning.
Also there still seems to be a basic maths problem with Mark Brier’s suggested counter strategy. This list of four target seats: “Hunter, Werriwa, McEwen and Gorton” does not go near to balancing the seats they lost. Counting Labor, Green and Teal losses, the Liberals lost 19 seats, not 4. Even the inner city losses alone come closer to ten seats than four, across the six capital cities. Winning those four seats won’t get them back into government.
Any way, I sincerely hope they spend the next ten years sorting it out.
On a board about the potential fate of the LNP, the number of times I’ve seen in this thread the repeated idea that Labor needs to be completely ineffective and not deal with inequality or its outcomes, that the class war with the rich punching down pain and sucking up wealth, a war they’ve been allowed to wage without opposition in decades, must continue unopposed, is very Australian MSM.
This kind of relentless economic cruelty over decades can have consequences, some would do well to beware the pitchforks of a real class war, given so many so richly deserve to be hoisted on their own petard.
Socrates at 9.28
Any way, I sincerely hope they spend the next ten years sorting it out.
__________
The Right’s Plan A: crap on in contradiction of reality.
The Right’s Plan B: double down on Plan A.
I neither know nor care how they sort it out and hope they take considerably more than ten years!
Socrates @ #95 Tuesday, June 14th, 2022 – 9:28 am
I have always thought of the seat of Cook as being the seat of Mitchel by the Sea. Same demographics, WASP religion predominates same Anglosphere outlook.
the NSW state election will likely follow the federal election path
Of a tired old and incompetent, corrupt lib/nats minority government been in government for a long time
Time for change
2023 Victor Dominello to be the new NSW Liberal party leader