Miscellaneous horse race commentary and developments from the past two days of the campaign, much of it involving the Victorian Electoral Commission:
• The Herald Sun reports Liberal sources saying Daniel Andrews’ personal ratings have “tanked” over the past fortnight, with his disapproval rating at 51%. Forty-four per cent wanted a Labor win, but 38% of Labor voters said they would favour a minority government. It should be noted that any Liberal polling would be limited to its target seats. The report also says the Greens rate themselves “a strong chance to win Northcote and Pascoe Vale”, the latter of which would be a turn-up. Conversely, Labor has “become more optimistic about its chances in Melton”, which it fears losing to independent Ian Birchall.
• John Ferguson of The Australian says views within the Labor camp about the number of seats it stands to lose range from “as little as seven or eight” to “as many as nineteen”, with anything more than ten being sufficient to cost the government its majority. A “senior ALP figure” said it was “hard to see the Liberal Party winning more than nine or ten seats” and “they could also lose a few”.
• The Liberal Party has accused the Victorian Electoral Commission of “serious, deliberate and unprecedented” interference in the election after its referral of potential breaches of donation laws to the Independent Broad-based Commission Against Corruption. The issue relates to alleged attempts by Matthew Guy’s chief-of-staff, Mitch Catlin, to encourage a businessman to make donations to his private business, which prompted Catlin’s resignation in August. The VEC says it has not received satisfactory responses to its invitations to the principals to respond to questions, although Guy told journalists on Thursday he had not had “any direct contact” with the commission. Electoral commissioner Warwick Gately presumably had this statement in mind when he said yesterday that the VEC had “not received the full co-operation from those connected to its investigation … despite public statements to the contrary”.
• The Liberals have referred Labor and preference negotiator Glenn Druery to IBAC over the video published in the Herald Sun on Thursday in which Druery discussed preference deals during a video conference, with MPs David Southwick and Louise Staley accusing Labor of “vote-rigging” over its rather tenuous connections to Druery’s activities. Paul Sakkal of The Age reports that Michael Piastrino, who is running for the Liberals against Daniel Andrews in Mulgrave, conducted a press conference yesterday alongside member of the anti-lockdown Freedom Party in which he called for the election to be “postponed and for the state government to go into administration … given the election can no longer be deemed valid”.
• Teal independents have succeeded in having the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal overturn the Victorian Electoral Commission’s determination that voters were likely to be misled by how-to-vote cards showing only one box numbered, with accompanying wording advising voters to number the remaining boxes in order of preference. If voters had indeed been misled, the effect would have been the opposite of what was plainly intended.
• A Lonergan Research poll for the Victorian National Parks Association, concerned mostly with public attitudes to national parks and conservation reserves, has breakdowns of voting intention by upper house region if you stick with it until the end, although the field work period was October 28 to November 6.
If Jeff is so keen on running, I’m sure the current candidate for Narracan can be persuaded to let him have a run at it in 6 weeks time
Trent wrote,”goll – The Greens policy on the LC has firmly been to scrap GTV. They’ve probably been the most vocally opposed, especially after losing 4 seats in 2018 as a result of it.”
Clem Atlee: Which seats were these? Name them, which seats fell? Stop making crap up.
It is trivially easy to validate this statement. As they say : “Google it mate”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2018_Victorian_state_election_(Legislative_Council)
Trent is correct.
Jeff just look whats happening to our idiot mate Donald. Nick off and play golf or something.
Michael wrote, “another one. The Labor candidate for Richmond claims she is indigenous. Says just have to believe her. Andrews backs her 100%. Her family says there is no way she is indigenous, and unfortunately for Dan the family tends to know those facts very accurately. Another fake candidate.”
Yeah much worse than a filthy Tory saying, ” we won this continent fair and square.” You grub, you fraud, you disgrace of a human being!
https://www.themonthly.com.au/the-politics/rachel-withers/2022/11/21/implausible-deniability
@Clem: the 4 seats they lost were Southern Metro, Eastern Metro, Western Metro and Southeastern Metro.
Western Metro is more questionable whether GTV was to blame because the primary vote gap between the Greens and the elected candidate (Catherine Cummings) was only about 2% so they may have lost anyway.
But the other 3 they were clearly defeated by Druery candidates, as a result of Druery’s preference flows.
Especially in Southern Metro where a 13.46% primary vote (or around 0.87 quotas before preferences) was defeated by a 1.32% primary vote due to all of Druery’s clients putting Sustainable Australia at the top.
Anyway, the main question asked was which parties oppose GTV, and I said The Greens do, which is objectively true. The 4 seat part was only a side note as to one of the various reasons why they do.
Pi wrote, “It is trivially easy to validate this statement. As they say : “Google it mate” So this can be attribute purely to GV can it? Get lost! Bullshit!
Plenty of inferences have to be swallowed to accept that GV was solely to blame for Greens losing.
Question was which parties oppose GTV.
I said The Greens.
You say that’s bullshit.
I have never seen them support it, but I may be wrong. Correct me if I am, but I have only seen them argue against it for years.
I very innocently answered a question and you seem to have aggressively wanted to pick a fight with me for no reason, did I say something to offend you? If so, I apologise….
No this is what upsets me, Trent wrote, ” Question was which parties oppose GTV? You say that’s bullshit.” No, you said that the Greens lost 4 seats purely because of GV. That is what I labelled as bullshit. Get it right!
@clem attlee
“Plenty of inferences have to be swallowed to accept that GV was solely to blame for Greens losing.”
You’ve strung some words together without actually saying anything, what is your supposed ‘inferences’?
I never said “purely” because of GTV.
The point I was making was that one of the reasons the Greens oppose it is because THEY feel GTV was a reason they lost 4 seats (and that doesn’t mean “all 4” but it means the reason it ended up totalling 4).
When it comes to Southern and Eastern Metro, I agree when you look at the exclusions and who Druery supported. Southern Metro especially. There is no way Sustainable Australia win without the Druery alliance and same goes for Transport Matters in EM.
I already said that I don’t necessarily agree they lost Western Metro due to GTV because it was close anyway.
Anyway, let’s just agree that you misinterpreted my original post. As I already said, my comment about the 4 seats was only a “side note” about one of the reasons they oppose it.
And for the adults in the room, here’s a blog post by Ben Raue which explicitly demonstrates that the Greens lost 4 seats purely because of GVTs in 2018.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/50331
nathsays:
Monday, November 21, 2022 at 7:07 pm
C@tmomma says:
Monday, November 21, 2022 at 5:45 pm
And the Liberals believe this woman when she claims she is Indigenous.
________________
Straight out of Bolt’s playbook. What happened to our nice Victorian election thread?
Short answer: Nath the head slapper.
The Labor party has absolutely and totally failed the people of Victoria by not abolishing the undemocratic farce that is group voting tickets, as have the Coalition. GVTs are not just a quirk of Australian politics that gets funny-sounding people put in high places. This is a system that fails to represent the people at the most basic level – the principle that our representatives cannot represent us without our endorsement. Whether that be through a single-member majority system, a PR system, MMPRs, whatever. But group voting tickets fill the upper house with people that were, ultimately, not endorsed by the people of Victoria. Which is how you have folks like Catherine Cumming in parliament. It’s unconscionable morally and indefensible from an elections perspective. There is absolutely zero — zero — argument to preserve group voting tickets, and any Andrews supporter should be rightfully critical of his failure to get rid of it.
Even the government cmte itself decided that it needed to change, and then nothing happened for 3 years, because it’s much easier to have a flock of galahs on the crossbench than the Greens & the Shooters.
Thanks Emilius, that blog post by Ben is exactly what I was thinking of when I was posting too.
He also shares the same uncertainty about Western Metro, and says:
“Western Metropolitan – The Greens were leading the race for the fifth seat with 0.52 quotas, with Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party behind on 0.41 quotas, and the Hinch party went on to win. I’m not sure how this would have ended, as this vote was about as high as any of the small parties polled and went on to win a seat. I still think the Greens were more likely to win.”
Which is the only 1 of the 4 I think is questionable.
I don’t think it can be denied that Druery’s chosen candidate in Southern Metro going from 0.08 quotas to winning on 0.95 quotas is a result of GTV.. or from 0.05 quotas in Eastern Metro.
Take a deep breath everyone!
For what it’s worth, I’m an active green and I assure you I am absolutely opposed to GVT. Proportional representation across the whole of the state in the upper house is the only way to go.
GVT is open to manipulation and results in an unrepresentative house.
Meanwhile the libs have to start sacking candidates. If heath can’t sit in the party room, how can Deeming, Dragan and co.? They might as well invite Bernie Finn to attend.
As for the indigenous identification debate; there are plenty of families that dispute it internally and sometimes externally. I know nothing of this woman’s situation but it is not uncommon for this argument to take place. I come across it professionally from time to time.
It is important to not weaponise it.
As for ‘labor last’ – it leaves the Libs open to the obvious criticisms they are copping. They have clearly preferenced some very nasty people.
Emilius
Especially galahs who know that if they stepped out of line all the time they would endanger the survival of their species!
Sports betting for elections
Is mixed. A party in a seat with 1.01 is almost certain to win ..to pay 10 or 30 suggests little likelihood of s win but a good return if
You make s good guess pick
What you consider to be near certain events eg win by guy or Andrews you will find they are 1.01 ..1.05 1.06
Etc 99% 95% 94% this is a close certainty ..so the betting odds fare reasonably well
Monday 21 November voted today 166,225 Postal votes In.37,500
Close of business today
Voted Total 984,179 Postal votes in in 47,253
I will say one thing for the libs. When they said, put Labor last they meant it. Even Nazis are no exception.
Grime
I think maybe the rough weather may keep the numbers under 1.9 million by Friday. Though Thursday and Friday are predicted to be better weather across Victoria so we might still get there.
With 7 out of 11 prepoll days over now and less than 1m votes still, I think the final number will be lower than expected.
Does early voting usually ramp up or slow down towards the end? I would think slow down because the eager beavers have already voted, and election day is so close towards the end (with far more polling places to choose from) anyway.
But I haven’t actually looked to see what the trend usually is. From my perspective I wouldn’t travel further to vote a few days early this week when I can vote just around the corner on Saturday. If I wanted to vote early it would have been last week.
Massola is copping a bunch of brickbats from online commenters, and deservedly so. Albo has been very busy in international negotiations in case Massola hasn’t noticed.
Then there’s Dutton who was specifically not invited to campaign with Guy.
@Trent, it generally ramps up towards the end, as most normal people in the community gradually realise that there is an even election on in the first place. The biggest surge comes in the final couple days from people who want to free up their weekends to anything but grab a democracy sausage. The first to vote are generally responsible for spreading word to those around them about which polling places are open and are most convenient. There are very few actual “eager beavers” outside of the comment sections of blogs like these. Other early-voters include “time-rich” individuals like retirees.
Antony Green has a good blog post where’s he tracking the daily pre-poll count and comparing it to last election’s daily count.
https://antonygreen.com.au/tracking-the-early-vote-for-the-2022-victorian-election/
Also early-voting numbers by division:
https://antonygreen.com.au/2022-victorian-election-early-voting-by-district/
I just read that too.
The PM has been in Indonesia, it’s been all over the news. Pretty good alibi for not being on the campaign trail in Victoria I would think…
“Emilius van der Lubben says:
Monday, November 21, 2022 at 8:25 pm
The Labor party has absolutely and totally failed the people of Victoria by not abolishing the undemocratic farce that is group voting tickets, as have the Coalition. GVTs are not just a quirk of Australian politics that gets funny-sounding people put in high places. This is a system that fails to represent the people at the most basic level – the principle that our representatives cannot represent us without our endorsement. Whether that be through a single-member majority system, a PR system, MMPRs, whatever. But group voting tickets fill the upper house with people that were, ultimately, not endorsed by the people of Victoria. Which is how you have folks like Catherine Cumming in parliament. It’s unconscionable morally and indefensible from an elections perspective. There is absolutely zero — zero — argument to preserve group voting tickets, and any Andrews supporter should be rightfully critical of his failure to get rid of it.”…
Do you feel better after the rant? Now, calm down and read:
a) How high do you think is the issue of “group voting tickets” in the priorities of the People of Victoria at this election?…. Answer: VERY, VERY low.
b) If you are complaining about funny people being voted in in the upper house, some others seem to want even more funny people, because they want more “real Australians” to be in parliament, etc.
c) You do know that voters can vote below the line, do you? So, why aren’t you blaming the voters for not voting below the line?
d) “Whether that be through a single-member majority system”… Are you in favour of a first past the post system? If so, how “democratic” is that?
Trent @ #523 Monday, November 21st, 2022 – 9:02 pm
2022 State election early and postal vote statistics
Daily updates on postal and early votes for the 2022 State election. The early voting period runs from Monday 14 November to Friday 25 November.
Date Early votes Postal votes returned
Monday 14 November 115,065 0
Tuesday 15 November 154,827 0
Wednesday 16 November 131,631 0
Thursday 17 November 154,657 669
Friday 18 November 141,213 9,609
Saturday 19 November 120,502 15
Monday 21 November 166,225 37,500
Total 984,179 47,253
“Trent says:
Monday, November 21, 2022 at 9:20 pm
I just read that too.
The PM has been in Indonesia, it’s been all over the news. Pretty good alibi for not being on the campaign trail in Victoria I would think…”
I am waiting for somebody to suggest that PM Albo was in Indonesia to hide from the Victoria state election…. I need a good laugh… 🙂
Trent
The last week is usually the biggest by a fair margin. I expect that to be the case and am expecting more than one million over the five days.
It does dilute the ‘October Surprise’ effect of policies announced in the last week, or Black Swan events (which in Australia should surely be called White Swan events!) such as today’s death of a candidate and subsequent revelations.
that is what finn did wonder what happend to the poaster claming there would be a minority government
There must be at least 2 dozen people left in Victoria who not made up their minds yet.
@ Alpo
This is really a bad look. You can be a supporter of the ALP while acknowledging that GVTs are shithouse for democracy.
“a) How high do you think is the issue of “group voting tickets” in the priorities of the People of Victoria at this election?…. Answer: VERY, VERY low.”
What a surprise that deeply technical, hard to understand election mumbojumbo is not the top priority of Victorians at the moment. That doesn’t mean that this is something not to be reformed.
“b) If you are complaining about funny people being voted in in the upper house, some others seem to want even more funny people, because they want more “real Australians” to be in parliament, etc.”
This is not an argument in favour of or against group voting tickets but rather an interesting stanza of poetry.
“c) You do know that voters can vote below the line, do you? So, why aren’t you blaming the voters for not voting below the line?”
Less than 8% of Victorians vote below-the-line, because the Senate in Victoria and every other jurisdiction in Australia has scrapped GVTs, because they fundamentally subvert democracy. No other jurisdiction in Australia uses GVTs except the Victorian upper house. Most voters do not know that GVTs send their vote into a random pinball machine of social extremes where voting for Animal Justice means you get an antivaxxer or two elected. Many advocates and psephologists are mounting campaigns to get the below-the-line vote up, especially Antony Green.
“d) “Whether that be through a single-member majority system”… Are you in favour of a first past the post system? If so, how “democratic” is that?”
No. The word “majority” means >50%, first-past-the-post is a barbaric plurality-wins system. I was referring to single-member districts as in how the LC used to be comprised of single-member provinces. Obviously by far the best system would be how NSW elects its LC – in one big upper house district using non-GVT STV.
Alpo, it’s okay if you will only do what The Party wants. The parliamentary committee on electoral matters, led by the Labor government, came to the conclusion that the GVT system is broken and must be fixed. However they did nothing for the next two years about it unfortunately. Please don’t make this into a partisan thing, it doesn’t have to be. GVT is fundamentally f-ed no matter where you come from in politics.
GVTs are shithouse for democracy, absolutely.
There’s really no further discussion required about that.
With the high proportion of pre-poll voting I’m guessing there’ll be a lot of focus on how they affected the count in 2018. From memory the prepoll numbers were less outrageously strong for the ALP than votes cast on election day, meaning that an even more epic Danslide earlier in the evening taking out seats such as Brighton, Sandringham and Caulfield, settled back into a merely crushing Danslide.
Expat says:
Monday, November 21, 2022 at 9:53 pm
GVTs are shithouse for democracy, absolutely.
There’s really no further discussion required about that.
_________
It’s the regional set up that made it so problematic. I’d just like the whole state as an electorate with a low quota.
Pre-poll seems to have a lot of pensioners showing up for a quiet mid-week vote. So I would expect it to skew conservative.
Emilius van der Lubben says:
Monday, November 21, 2022 at 9:46 pm
——-
100% agree with you on the travesty of GVT, and without negating the generally positive record of the Andrews government, their failure to remove it is deeply disappointing and a black mark against it.
If you have spent any time at all on this site however, you will know that there are some ALP uber partisans who live in a black and white world, where everything that a Labor government does must necessarily be perfect and faultless and nothing that a Labor government does can ever be criticised- and any view to the contrary, however well informed or supported by evidence, soon attracts anger and abuse. It’s pointless and boring to engage with fanatics of any political persuasion.
I know, I probably shouldn’t have bitten. It just pained me to see it go unchecked.
@nath
Nah, the whole Viclotto system needs to get in the bin.
Whatever they do, if there is going to be preferences, they need to be voter-allocated to stop the current farce. (And that’s coming from me as a member of a minor party that has benefitted from GVT in the past).
But I would also be happy in theory with a single electorate covering the whole state, with some kind of proportional system and a minimum threshold.
The Victorian Liberal people have an incredibly high market share of “funny” candidates standing under their banner at this election. The broad, and getting broader church at work!
The Druery manipulation is neo- liberal capitalism at its finest.
Some elections are held using ‘random’ rotation of candidates names. Would this help prevent any perceived distortions ?
A good old military dictatorship perhaps?
(Who mentioned the word Dictator)
Hopefully whatever we get next Saturday is workable!
@goll
Robson-style semi-rotation is used in Tasmania, the problem is it makes how-to-vote cards confusing and unworkable. Some might see that as a bonus (I personally don’t)
It’s a good idea though
Also, GVT doesn’t care about ballot order, it unilaterally directs ATL preferences the way the party you voted for wants, meaning microparties pick one candidate per region and direct the full force of preferences to them, electing them, and creating weird preference proxy wars.
@nath
GVTs are a barbarous farce. Anyone who defends them is basically saying that we might as well fill a few spots in the Legislative Council by choosing people at random from the White Pages.
Toby
From memory in ancient Athens there was a government assembly chosen randomly (from adult male citizens – thus excluding women, slaves, foreigners)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
I may as well provide a poll.
Resolve
Lab 36 -2 53-6
LNP 36 +5. 47 +6
The Age says Andrews is on the verge of minority government.
As Alpo said:
November Opinion Polls for the Vic state election (2PP for the ALP)
Least Recent…………………………….Most recent
54% (Newspoll)…. 53.5% (RedBridge)….56% (Freshwater Strategies)…. 57% (Roy Morgan)
God, we do need a (real) poll.
Has there been any large state (ie not counting South Australia and Tasmania) election in the modern era that’s had so few?
@Expat: “Pre-poll seems to have a lot of pensioners showing up for a quiet mid-week vote. So I would expect it to skew conservative.”
I do remember looking at the Caulfield breakdown recently over at Tally Room and it was a huge difference:
Early Votes: 55% Liberal 2PP
Ordinary Votes: 57% Labor 2PP
Caulfield’s difference is usually exaggerated due to the Jewish vote but it’s definitely indicative of how early vs ordinary votes skew.
Postal & Absent were even more extreme there, with a 60% Labor 2PP for absents and a 70% Liberal 2PP for postals. Has to be one of thr biggest differences in any seat!