Victorian election minus one week

Campaign chatter continues to point to a weaker result for Labor than published polling has thus far indicated, as the Victorian Electoral Commission increasingly finds itself drawn into the political fray.

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.

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.

566 comments on “Victorian election minus one week”

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  6. Guy trying to extract himself from another scandal:

    Victoria8 minutes ago
    Guy says Liberal candidate won’t sit in party room if elected

    Matthew Guy says Renee Heath will not sit in the Liberal partyroom after more details emerged about her controversial religious links.
    (Hun)

  7. “she occupies the TOP position on the Party’s How to Vote Card”

    But she is now not in the Party

    What an abject mess the so called Liberal party are

    So how did she get the top position and automatic election to the Parliament?

    And this individual is not the only one

    Perhaps they could bring Doyle back

  8. Well, my respect for Matthew Guy may have just risen somewhat. Except it hasn’t, because it’s been patently obvious to literally everyone who the Heath family and their church are for months, and Guy was just hoping no one noticed.

    The Liberal party takeover by fundamentalists is old news. All that’s happened is people have cottoned on and he’s now backpedalling…

    Full disclosure, I’m originally from Gippsland, and I’ve known the Heaths for well over 25 years.
    Back when I first met Brian Heath in the late 90s, he was a relatively smalltime preacher running his congregation in an old shopfront in the Safeway carpark in Sale – a town which has quite a crop of random ultra-conservative independent congregations, exclusive brethren etc, plus some farmhouse bible groups that I don’t think even have a name but do have a history of going to prison for sex scandals etc. Heath’s empire has grown significantly since then, and being a small town, everyone there is well aware of what goes on…

  9. Good God we need a YouGov Newspoll — even a Resolve Monitor — right now. The feelpinion is running rampant.
    And I really don’t think anyone who matters in Labor is confiding in The Australian of all outlets.

  10. Guy’s rush to try and separate himself from Heath demonstrates he knows how badly this plays for the Liberals. I mean he hasn’t yet rushed to separate himself from his cooker Mulgrave candidate or his lieutenants going on about vote rigging, so it tells you something about how far beyond the pale he knows this will be for voters.

    Can’t see his attempt to distance WORKING, but…

  11. I don’t have a sub but from William’s summary of it that John Ferguson piece covers every possible base from Liberal landslide (19 seats?!) to a repeat — or worse — of 2018: “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’.”

  12. Frankly the churning of talking points and supposed “trouble” for Labor with no clear information actually pointing to said trouble is reminding me a lot of the federal election. And we all know how that turned out.

  13. Toby Esterhase says:
    Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 12:44 pm

    I don’t have a sub but from William’s summary of it that John Ferguson piece covers every possible base from Liberal landslide (19 seats?!) to a repeat — or worse — of 2018: “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’.”
    ____________________________
    There is a lot of uncertainty about the election because both major parties are not popular. It could end up anywhere.

  16. Interesting: This from the Herald Sun’s Shannon Deery

    ‘We don’t have a lot of women to offer. A lot of our young women will leave . . . get bullied out’

    The Victorian Liberal Party has won just one election in the past 23 years and been through seven leadership changes. So, what are its problems?

    Pretty good list of the issues to my eyes

    https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/we-dont-have-a-lot-of-women-to-offer-a-lot-of-our-young-women-will-leave-get-bullied-out/news-story/64c33fe090623f26475652839aee56ae

  17. The uncertainty is also because the swing is not expected to be uniform. When it happened in WA against the Liberals (both state and federal) the entire state swung. Did not matter who the previous occupant of the seat was, the price of the home in the area, rural or urban, incumbent or not, it all swung. And when you look at the federal two party preferred, it produced a lot less Liberal seats than expected because many of those Liberal TPP seats were lost to the crossbench. Regardless of your personal opinion of how good or terrible Dan is, you have to acknowledge he has a lot of people voting specifically against ALP because of him. There are a lot of angry small business owners and they tend to be in certain seats that could well record nasty swings against the government. Many of these likely voted for the ALP in 2018, some of the swings in the federal election to the anti lockdown parties simply can’t be explained any other way, there wasn’t enough movement in the Coalition primary in these seats for it to be anything else. These swings can’t really be tracked in polls because a lot of people turning against the government don’t go to the opposition, and a lot of people who don’t trust the opposition won’t go to the government. A lot of people these days know what they don’t want and then figure out what they do want when they are at the polling booth.

    The problem for the opposition is many of these anti-Dan voters know that Matthew Guy is no better and thus even with big primary vote swings against the ALP, the Coalition is still absolutely helpless.

  18. I am a Melburnian. I like to think I have *some* feel for what it’s like on the ground. Indeed, I’ve got every state election since – and including – the Coalition’s ‘surprise’ win in 2010 right.
    Yes, both major parties are on the nose. But I just don’t see it having reached a point where the Coalition and Labor are level-pegging on the primary vote (let alone the Coalition having overtaken Labor).
    Until there’s another reputable poll (ie a YouGov Newspoll or a Resolve Monitor which doesn’t offer a generic ‘Independent’ everywhere) I’m sticking to my call that next Saturday will end up being something of a damp squib: ALP 55 or 56 – LNP 26 or 27 – OTH 7 or 8, the uncertainty being Hawthorn. That’s on a net basis, though. Going off the VEC’s post-redistribution margins:
    – ALP to lose Hastings, Nepean, Pakenham and Richmond; and
    – LNP to lose Mildura, Bayswater and Benambra.
    Which means ALP ‘wins’ Caulfield, Ripon and Morwell and LNP ‘wins’ Bass.

  19. laughtong says:
    Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 1:40 pm

    Interesting: This from the Herald Sun’s Shannon Deery

    ‘We don’t have a lot of women to offer. A lot of our young women will leave . . . get bullied out’
    ————————————
    This is a legacy of the Liberal Party moving away from its traditional base to a base made up of tradies but also it reflects that the Andrews Government is quite possibly the most pro-woman government in history to the point that it is actively supports and promotes woman that in earlier generations were Liberal Party woman.

  20. Toby Esterhase, learn to read, not skim. 19 seats Labor could lose. Eight or Nine is most Liberals could win. Rest of losses go to independents and Greens. Exactly what l have been carping(crapping) on about. I am not Nostradamus but compared to most here…………Respect others on this blog and don’t comment if you don’t read. Please.

  21. Justin, that just seems like wishcasting. The cookers are simply the same riseup proto-fascists of the last election. They tried the African gangs meme at the last election, and in this one, all they’ve done is raise the volume. Those same anti-dan people existed then. That same “but small business” mantra hasn’t even changed. It’s nothing more than re-prosecuting the last election, sprinkling it with a generous serving of crazy flakes, and hoping for a better outcome.

    The longer this campaign has gone on, the more the crazy of the conservatives has been ramped up. And all of this is done in the shadow of the federal election where that nuttery was roundly rejected in every state except Queensland. Which is why Dutton is in hiding. The religious fundamentalism of the conservatives is what’s on the nose ESPECIALLY in Victoria. You don’t dump a candidate one week before an election when things are going well.

    I can’t see this election being any different than the last except the liberals are even more disorganised.

  22. Jeremy,
    In what way was I showing disrespect? Get off your high horse. And get a life: you evidently spend far too much time here. (Now *that’s* disrespect.)
    I *don’t* respect your opinion. I think you’re a troll. I scroll past your comments because they’re so tediously predictable – I only read that one because you directly addressed me.

  23. Toby Esterhase says:
    Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 2:05 pm

    I am a Melburnian. I like to think I have *some* feel for what it’s like on the ground. Indeed, I’ve got every state election since – and including – the Coalition’s ‘surprise’ win in 2010 right
    ——————————-
    My feeling is that this will be similar to the 1996 or 1988 election.

  25. Toby Esterhase says:
    Saturday, November 19, 2022 at 2:16 pm

    Mexicanbeemer,
    Wasn’t 1988 the one where only one seat ended up changing hands?
    ————————
    Yes the ALP dropped Warrandyte and Mildura switched to the Liberals from the Nats.

    Cain held firm in the regions and in middle class parts of Melbourne and that’s why this election feels a bit like 88.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Victorian_state_election

  26. Mexicanbeemer,
    Yes, I too think Labor will do relatively well in the eastern suburbs and the regional centres. The outer south-eastern suburbs and the Mornington Peninsula are another matter entirely. As are the outer northern and western suburbs but it won’t matter because the margins are so big and the preferences will spray everywhere (as they did in May).
    The inner city is, of course, complicated by The Greens. They could do really well – or they could fall short, as they so often do. By contrast, I don’t think the teals will make much of an impact.

  27. Toby, how can Coalition lose Mildura. If you’ve already lost something, how do you lose it again?
    Pfffffffffft.
    Put some effort into your posts.
    The big unknown in this election is 18-24 year olds, extremely hard to poll and majority live Inner city(Footscray, Pascoe Vale etc etc). But we know most of em probably vote Green, some Teals though.

  28. Jeremy,
    I said I was going by the VEC’s post-redistribution margins: they put Mildura at 0.40% to the Nationals. Same reason I said ALP to lose Hastings and LIB to lose Bayswater. Why don’t you “learn to read, not skim”, eh? “Put some effort into your posts.”

  30. i actually wouldn’t be surprised (not predicting mid you) a WA style result

    Similarities:
    . Premier demonised by vested interests for successfully controlling Covid
    . Religious right capture of the Liberals
    . Poor quality Liberal leader

    Those predicting Labor losses have bought into the theory that everybody hates Dan becasue of the lockdowns and that affects their analysis.

    Will be most interested in the result becasue it may give us a good insight into if an how the political balance is shifting.

  31. The bet of the night will be the result in Mulgrave.
    I’ve taken the 5.50 on Cook.
    Dan will probably hang on, but the Cook odds were easily the best value of any contest.
    The lock up, ambulances, and a sense that Dan is too secretive and controlling will be important.
    But the issue that is resonating is the way the government was involved in destroying Cooks business.
    It really pisses people off because they feel it was all about politics. An election gives them a genuine way of punishing those responsible.
    Cook was treated with contempt. He was just another nuisance. And Dan was the man who made sure it happened.
    That’s why I was surprised at the generous odds, and had a crack.

  32. To all the bedwetters* who are screeching about Labor losing a motza of seats (Fifteen? Ninteen? Seriously??) – here’s the challenge: Name them. Go on, actually name the seats you think Labor will lose rather than just indulging in handwavium about ‘internal polling’ and ‘feels’.
    To get to a net loss of fifteen you are starting to talk about seats such as Werribee and Cranbourne and the like… so come on – put your chopper on the line and name those seats as in play…… other wise just stop tooting on your bedflute.
    Cos I got feels too, but I’m prepared to name names and I reckon about six ALP losses tops: Bayswater, Hawthorn, Ashwood, Northcote, Bass, Napean.
    (And that’s without any offsets- any of Caulfield, Sandringham, Hastings or Brighton could fall to Labor….)

    * BTW I’m more targeting this at the Neil Mitchells of the world rather than my esteemed comrades on this site. Well most of youse anyways.

  33. @Rex, “The cookers are very loud at present…

    https://twitter.com/SharnelleVella/status/1593807351542267905 ”

    —-

    Wow. Catherine Cummings literally making explicit death threats against elected politicians on the Flinders Street steps.

    Just checked the Libs’ ticket for Western Metro, they have preferenced somebody threatening to assassinate the premier 10th out of 62 candidates…. ONLY behind themselves, UAP and DLP, and ahead of every other party.

    There’s proof right there. The Liberal Party are literally supporting people calling for assassinations….

  34. Toby, you confuse me. So Labor to win Morwell??? They already hold Morwell post redistribution. I no mind reader. What is it. Post distribution or not????
    Pffffffffft.
    From 2018 election results l see Greens picking up two to six seats off Labor. Independents picking up three to four seats off Labor and Coalition picking up five to eight off Labor. Labor gaining zip. That leaves Labor losses at eight to eighteen seats. Let’s call it thirteen. That’s forty two seats for Labor. MINORITY.

  35. You’re the one who can’t read Jeremy.

    Toby very clearly listed Morwell, Ripon and Caulfield separately as notional holds. It’s why he put “wins” in quotation marks instead of listing them as gains.

    Not spelled out clear enough for your brain to understand obviously, but everyone else got it.

    Also 13 losses for Labor puts them on 45 seats post-redistribution so it seems maths isn’t a strong point of yours either.

  37. Trent, l know you not really like me, however Catherine Cumming used to be a serial candidate in Footscray polling about 10%. Never claimed she was a doctor. She has corflutes up with vote Doctor Cumming. Do you know if she actually is a doctor??? And when did she become one???

  38. Jeremy,
    I said “Which means ALP ‘wins’ Caulfield, Ripon and Morwell and LNP ‘wins’ Bass.” Why don’t you “learn to read, not skim”, eh? “Put some effort into your posts.” Clearly, you are a troll: you wouldn’t be making such basic errors of reading comprehension that make you look stupid unless you just crave the attention.
    As for your prediction, bully for you. I don’t have to agree with it. And I have every right to say that it’s ludicrous.

  39. Toby, you confuse me. So Labor to win Morwell??? They already hold Morwell post redistribution. I no mind reader. What is it. Post distribution or not????

    There is nothing about this that would confuse a person of normal intelligence.

  40. Trent, Morwell already is notional Labor, agree thus I am confused. Mildura is notional Coalition. How can Labor win Morwell when it already holds it. Please explain to this layperson. Toby said Morwell would be a Labor win. Morwell already is notional Labor. You should learn to read also. Can Labor win something it already has notionally??? You Labor luvvies trying the old “smoke and mirrors” stuff. Let’s be accurate in our posts.

  42. I already explained it clearly, as did Toby.

    He very, very clearly listed Morwell among the notional holds.

    You’re either just trolling to be a serial pest or there’s no hope of you getting your head around it.

  47. Let me join the posters suggesting a result of little change next Saturday. For all the noise, there just isn’t much movement in published polls, the closest being a 2pp of 54-46, which, even if Labor cops some nasty swings, still means a comfortable win. I have long ago stopped giving one shred of credibility to the “sources” the media report about unpublished poling during an election campaign, regardless of who they are meant to be or what they say. As others have pointed out, all the noise during the last Victorian election, and for that matter the one before that, was that things were looking better for the Liberals than published polls suggested. At the last election, we were told that African gangs would cause big anti Labor swings in parts of Melbourne, it never happened. Instead, it turned out to be the exact opposite. While I would love to see a WA style result. Dan Andrews just doesn’t have the personal popularity of Mark McGowan. That said, with today’s Age story and tomorrow’s 60 minutes, extremism in the Liberal Party will dominate at least the next couple of days, and this could not come at a worse time for the Liberals. So for me a comfortable Labor win with little changing in terms of seats.

  48. Mildura’s kinda hopeless to find a new margin for, considering neither Cupper or the Nats ran in Ripon. Considering how small both margins are, might as well follow Antony and call it independent-held with a margin of 0%.

    (Hey William – the Lib and ALP figures seem to have been swapped in the Litchfield booth added from Ripon. That red 89 is kinda out of place.)

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