The latest quarterly-or-so poll of Tasmanian state voting intention from EMRS records a two-point increase for the Liberals to 41%, with Labor up a point to 31% and the Greens steady on 13%. Preferred premier is all but unchanged with Jeremy Rockliff leading Labor’s Rebecca White by 47-35, out from 47-34. The poll was conducted August 8 to 11 from a sample of 1000.
As well as that, there is a fair bit of significant electoral news to report from the state:
• A well-rounded by-election looms for the eastern Hobart Legislative Council seat of Pembroke on September 10, candidates in ballot paper order being Deborah Brewer (Greens), Gregory Brown (Liberal), Carlo Di Falco (Shooters Fishers and Farmers), Luke Edmunds (Labor) and Hans Willink (Independent) (UPDATE: Kevin Bonham reminds us in comments that ballot paper order is Robson rotation, so this list is actually alphabetical order). The by-election follows the resignation of Jo Siejka, who gained the seat for Labor by an 8.6% margin at the periodic election in 2019.
• The recount to replace outgoing Liberal member Jacquie Petrusma in Franklin was won by Dean Young with 5808 of her preferences (51.1%) to 5281 for Bec Enders (46.5%) with the remainder going to non-Liberal candidates. Young is a Bellerive news agency owner who ran at the March 2021 election as a late substitute for Dean Ewington, was disendorsed early in the campaign after criticising the government’s COVID-19 restrictions on Facebook.
• Tasmanian’s Electoral Commissioner has published advice to the government on its plan to restore the state’s House of Assembly to 35 seats, from which it was reduced to 25 in 1998. It recommends a straightforward restoration of the old system in which five electoral divisions sharing the federal boundaries returned seven members each, rather than an alternative in which seven divisions would return five members each.
Can we please keep this thread for discussion of Tasmanian politics. The general discussion thread continues here.
Unusually close recount in Franklin. The count back system seems to work reasonable well.
Greens ‘poisoning the well’ for progressives in Tasmania.
Strategically, I dont know how Labor can insulate themselves from the Greens anti-Industrialisation stance.
Libs are going to have to ‘defeat themselves’ badly enough that voters will run the risk of Labor minority.
There is no ballot paper order for Legislative Council elections. The order given is alphabetical order. Ballots are Robson-rotated.
My preview here:
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2022/08/legislative-council-2022-pembroke-by.html
Also Dean Young was not the late substitute for Dean Ewington; James Walker (who did not contest the recount as he is focused on local government campaigning) was.
And Siejka gained Pembroke in the 2017 by-election caused by the resignation of the late Vanessa Goodwin, then retained it in 2019.
A difference between Tasmania and ACT recounts is the ACT ballots are published so one can in theory simulate the recount (though it is hard work without a custom-built program; the more complex cases take me 8 to 10 hours and if it was very very close it might take even longer). In Tasmania there are some ballots with known fates and some with unknown fates. In this case Enders had a solid lead on the ballots with known fates but got overtaken on those with unknown fates (which was mainly the Petrusma-Street and Petrusma-Walker votes). Probably the first time I have seen that happen where the known-fate sample was substantial.
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2022/08/legislative-council-voting-patterns.html
Legislative Council Voting Patterns 2018-22
… in which I kick Labor and Ruth Forrest out of the LegCo lefties cluster (while classifying them still as very slightly left of centre).