Tasmanian election minus one day

On the eve of the Tasmanian election, another poll suggesting the Liberals will emerge as comfortably the biggest party in a hung parliament.

On the eve of the Tasmanian state election, the print edition of The Mercury (no report online that I can see) reports polling conducted a fortnight ago for an undisclosed private client by Freshwater Strategy points to a seats result of Liberal 15, Labor nine, Greens four, Jacqui Lambie Network three and independents four. The poll reached 800 respondents in each of the five electorates, with the report relating results in Lyons of Liberal 38%, Labor 23%, Greens 13% and JLN and independents 11% each; in Bass of Liberal 40%, Labor 26%, Greens 10% and JLN 10%; in Braddon of Liberal 49%, Labor 15%, JLN 13% and independents 10%; in Clark of Liberal 26%, Labor 21%, Greens 20% and independents 28%; and in Franklin of Liberal 33%, Labor 27%, Greens 13% and independents 17%. The independent results would seem to bode well for John Tucker in Lyons and David O’Byrne in Franklin, and for two independents to be elected in Clark inclusive of incumbent Kristie Johnston.

For a good deal more on Tasmanian state election polling, see Kevin Bonham. I am presently in my usual election eve scramble to get my live results facility in place, which if all goes well will offer results by party down to booth level (which in 2021 at least were unique to this site) in both tabular and mapped form.

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.

105 comments on “Tasmanian election minus one day”

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  3. Just realised this was the first Tasmanian election I’ve been involved in since 2002. We moved to Brisbane in 2006 and just missed that election. Inner city Brisbane campaigns are certainly different. Being this close to the HC system for the first time in 2 decades has been an eye opener.

    It seems better on the surface for the voters and their representation, but it creates perverse campaigns that are more candidate focused than party focused. It rewards candidates who campaign in areas the party already polls well in, as that candidate tries to harvest party loyal voters away from other candidates in the same party, rather than focusing on expanding a party’s voter base in swing voters areas.

    KPIs that change behaviours in business is an area I focus on in my work. This one is a doozy as it impact the democratic outcomes for citizens. Maybe a bit over blown by me but still might make a difference in electoral outcomes.

  6. AI is being used by both parties and candidates a first for Australia I assume.

    No poll done in last week by pollsters not good enough.

  7. PP, only the Shooters said they used AI, as a spelling and grammar checker, then had to put a sentence at the end of their press release stating it hadn’t been written by AI. And there in lies the rub, the punters won’t trust anything if it has the slightest whiff of AI. So I’d expect everyone is using it but no one is talking about it.

    It wouldn’t be the dumbest thing in the world to input all of the opposite party’s media releases and then ask AI to come up with counter arguments. But it does make for some lazy political minds. Just like any tool humans invent, it’ll have benefits but it’ll mean that people will not keep that part of their brain as sharp as it used to be.

  8. Mundo at 8.55 am

    Where are you projecting the last two Labor seats to come from? Has to be in Clark, Franklin or Lyons.

    For Dr Bonham’s estimates based on the very limited polling see: https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/

    Most likely would be Franklin, probably as a result of D. O’Byrne mistaking his desires for reality.

    If the JLN vote has been greatly overstated in Lyons and Tucker flops, then Lib and Labor get last two.

    For Clark, where does the Green surplus largely go? It would need to go very strongly to Labor, and one of the independent hopefuls would have to flop, for Labor to get even close to a third seat.

  9. No polling since 8th March? Surely that’s a breach of the Geneva convention! No chance of detecting a late swing in any direction.

    For election junkies it’s gonna be a ripsnorter.

    For everyone else it is ho hum!

  10. Dr Doolittle: I agree with you that the best possible chance for Labor to win 12 seats is by getting 3 in each of Franklin and Lyons, with Bass the next best possibility. There’s no realistic hope in Braddon and just about none in Clark, unless Johnston unexpectedly blows up (something I’d personally be happy to see, but I doubt is going to happen). And, even if Johnston did go badly, I reckon Helen Burnett of the Greens might finish ahead of Labor for that particular seat.

    Anything more than 10 seats for Labor relies on the polling being wrong about the strength of O’Byrne’s vote in Franklin and of the Green vote in Lyons and Bass. I reckon O’Byrne will be really difficult to beat: while everyone is a bit dismayed by what came out a couple of years back, he’s well-known, charming and, before his problems, was a highly effective local member who helped hundreds if not thousands of his constituents with their issues (including me on one occasion).

    How the Greens will go in Bass and Lyons will depend on whether their vote is closer to what they got in the last state election (9.1 per cent and 8.9 per cent respectively) or in the last Federal election (11.1 per cent and 11.43 per cent respectively). I reckon it will be somewhere in between: Woodruff is a more appealing leader than O’Connor IMO, but, as in 2021, the party has run an incredibly low-key campaign. So they’re going to be well in the mix for seats in Bass and Lyons, but no certainty.

  11. meher baba at 10.42 am

    Yes, Labor has an outside chance in Bass if the JLN vote is low there. In the Senate in 2022 in Bass the JLN vote was only 6.5%, less than the Greens at 9.5%, and less than a third of Labor at 21.7%. Also, the Hobart stadium fetish might play poorly in Bass, which could benefit Labor.

    Looking at Lyons, the JLN was slightly above the Greens in the Senate at 7.7% compared to 7.4%, but the profile of most JLN candidates is probably low. JLN has little chance in Franklin with a Senate vote of only 4.8%. The limited polls probably overstate the JLN support. They could get only a Braddon seat.

  14. Dr Bonham says he “will be based at the tally room”. A heritage-style election in Tassie, with tally room.

    Note: “The TEC advice is that they aim to count all the booth votes, all prepolls and almost all so far received postals tonight. I would expect some prepolls might not be completed tonight and might be held over. There looks to have been some increase in the overall prepoll vote, perhaps a substantial one depending on yesterday’s returns.”

  15. Dr Doolittle: ” A heritage-style election in Tassie, with tally room.”

    Yes. I went last time and it was enormous fun. All three party leaders (White, O’Connor and Gutwein) came and gave concession/victory speeches. We do get some things right in Tassie relative to the rest of the country.

  16. The Liberal Party needs to swamp the PrePoll Counting Centre in each electorate with huge numbers of Scrutineers.
    If the TEC is anything like ECQ, they will open multiple tables for sorting and counting, enough to disable Scrutineering by the Liberals. Remember, there could be as many as 35,000 votes counted there tonight, I’m presuming there will be just one PPV Counting Centre per Electorate.
    P.S. If you are a Liberal volunteer scrutineering at one of these PPC Centres, the RO won’t let you use the onsite toilets and if you leave to use offsite amenities, they won’t allow you to reenter.

  17. Dr B

    If you mean “Conviction Courage Compassion”, well I am certain that it predates AI.

    It’s old management training lingo. Sometimes “clarity” gets thrown in to the mix as well, or “commitment” is used instead of “conviction” (the use of “conviction” in this sense being less popular in Australian than in Amercian English, where we prefer to use the word to describe what a court does to miscreants).

  18. gympie: “The Liberal Party needs to swamp the PrePoll Counting Centre in each electorate with huge numbers of Scrutineers.
    If the TEC is anything like ECQ, they will open multiple tables for sorting and counting, enough to disable Scrutineering by the Liberals. Remember, there could be as many as 35,000 votes counted there tonight, I’m presuming there will be just one PPV Counting Centre per Electorate.
    P.S. If you are a Liberal volunteer scrutineering at one of these PPC Centres, the RO won’t let you use the onsite toilets and if you leave to use offsite amenities, they won’t allow you to reenter.”
    ——————————————————————

    Tasmanians simply don’t behave like this. I assume you are nostalgically recalling election night in some of the rotten boroughs of rural Queensland back in the Joh era.

  19. Excellent. Pre-election allegations of Trumpian electoral fraud garbage have made their way to Tasmania via Qld LNP supporting losers.

    For weeks the media (sans up to date polling, mind you) have told us the TAS liberals will romp home. Nonetheless redneck loons are already taking our insurance.

    Take that Maga garbage back to the US. We are better than that.

    Claims of rigged voting without a shred of evidence are extremely unhelpful.

  20. MB:

    Anyway, off to vote shortly. Most of you would have no idea what a surreal experience voting in a Tassie election is for someone who is not to the manner born (and I’m not, even after voting in half a dozen of the buggers). It’s all very quiet and serious. There are no signs, nobody handing out how to vote cards, just a few cake stalls. Quite unsettling.

    Sounds like bliss.

  21. Hold up, the other day’s “shock” new poll is two weeks old!? What is even the point of releasing it if it’s that out-of-date? And why on earth isn’t there an election eve poll, or at least one conducted during the final week? It boggles the mind.

  22. “And why on earth isn’t there an election eve poll, or at least one conducted during the final week? It boggles the mind”

    Obvious conclusion:
    It’s being stolen by the Usual Suspects.

  24. gympie at 1.27 pm

    “It’s being stolen by the Usual Suspects.”

    The alleged thiefs are a bit slow upstairs, and rather slow on the job. The use-by-date has been and went.

  27. Labor are trying to throw it to The Greens, that’s why they’re running White.
    I’d say they’ll go closer than they did using that formula at the BCC LM Election last Sat’dy.

  29. A lot of major party disenchantment out there but if this were 12-15 years ago the Greens would be soaking up most of the independent/JLN vote and be polling well into the 20’s%…perhaps on for 8 seats! The Greens have now been supplanted as the main protest party by ‘others’ in the field. Shame, really. Reasons being a) Shift to the far left esp. on social issues b) Leadership and lead candidates lack public marketing skills c) No attempt to shift the perception they are against every development or the resource economy in general d) Poor effort to come up with interesting alternative policy to get media coverage e) Social media is appalling; little effort goes into posts to capture a wider audience.

    15 10 3 2 5

  30. Steve Davis. I guess also blue collar vote goes to lambie and progressives to green? The lib primary vote is amazingly high given 10 years in gov and 2 years of disarray. Are labor tas a bit hopeless? Hoping for a labor lambie greens coalition, but figure it will be lib-conservative indies with lambie balance of power. I like the tassie voting system – I wish we had it nationally. Also how long before Otto Abetz Jr tries to be premier?

  34. Labor are trying to throw it to The Greens, that’s why they’re running White.

    And they’re doing it in cahoots with News Corp, which failed to commission a Newspoll as part of its effort to rig the election in favour of … is it Labor, or the Greens? — as part of a conspiracy that extends to the Electoral Commission? Can Gympie clarify that this is actually what he thinks, and if not, then what?

  36. Gympie at least adds the comedy element to Poll Bludger.
    It costs money to commission opinion polls, and presumably Newspoll didn’t want to shell out for a Tasmanian survey – I’m sure that’s all it is, there’s no great conspiracy going on here to undersell the likely Liberal vote today.
    I watched a bit of Rebecca White on the news today and yesterday – my impression of her is that she comes across as rather cold and artificial to me. I’ve no doubt she’s a hard worker and has good Labor principles, but as a salesperson she leaves a lot to be desired, maybe that’s a part of why Tasmanian Labor for the 3rd straight election in a row won’t do that well tonight, and perhaps the best they can do is somehow get into a coalition of sorts with the Greens and the Lambie Party to command a combined 18 seats out of 35.
    Dean Winter is the obvious next Tasmanian Labor leader, but I understand that the factions down there dislike him intensely.

  37. Sustainable Future: “I guess also blue collar vote goes to lambie and progressives to green? ”

    Certainly the Greens get a high proportion of the inner city/university-educated types: perhaps a bit more than on the mainland because the party down here is far more environmentalist and not as far to the left on other issues as are the mainland Greens.

    As for the “blue collar” vote, it really depends on what you mean by the term. As on the mainland, a lot of self-employed tradies now routinely vote Liberal, as do most of the forestry workers I’ve encountered (and Rockliff directly made a play for their vote during this campaign by promising to step up logging if he is re-elected). The declining numbers of workers who are still employed in manufacturing (and are covered by the AMWU), as well as those in retail (and are covered by the shoppies) and liquor and hospitality and a range of other areas (covered by United Voice) are probably still mainly Labor.

    Tassie also has a sizeable group of the permanently unemployed (sometimes multi-generationally so) and these are usually particularly solid for Labor, although a proportion of them support Wilkie federally. And, while a lot of the educated middle class people vote for the Greens, there are plenty of Labor supporters among them too: and Liberals for that matter.

    The important new element in the electorate is the rapidly-growing population of newly-arrived migrants, particularly those from the sub-continent (with a big surge in the numbers of Nepalese people). It’s hard to know what these people will do, but I suspect they will be more inclined on average to vote for the major parties than for the Greens, JLN or other candidates: but that’s really only a guess.

  38. Democracy Sausage:

    It costs money to commission opinion polls, and presumably Newspoll didn’t want to shell out for a Tasmanian survey – I’m sure that’s all it is, there’s no great conspiracy going on here to undersell the likely Liberal vote today.

    I wonder if there’s also an element of not wanting to risk getting it wrong. If your latest poll is already weeks-old, any discrepancy between it and the actually election results can easily be explained by a late swing in whichever direction.

    Certainly, it’s a very frustrating decision by the polling companies, as it effectively renders their polls rather useless if you can’t reliably measure them against the election day result, but I doubt there’s anything sinister going on here, just laziness and stinginess and probably some mainland parochialism too.

  39. Democracy Sausage: “Dean Winter is the obvious next Tasmanian Labor leader, but I understand that the factions down there dislike him intensely.”

    It’s mainly the hard left faction that doesn’t like him: the people associated with the AMWU who also put paid to the federal career of Lisa Singh. The right wing Shoppies faction seems to quite like Winter, even though I don’t think he’s fundamentally one of them:

    I first encountered him when he was a young fella working for Julie Collins, who is officially part of the left, but who has always had good relations with many leading figures of the right. I think the part of the left that Collins is associated with is a sort of “soft left” to which Bec White, Carol Brown and perhaps even Lisa Singh also belong: but I’m not 100 per cent sure about that.

    Mostly Interested who, unlike me, appears to be a member of the ALP, can probably provide more info on this. I’ve had people try to explain it to me but my mind tends to switch off at a certain point.

  40. By the panic from the major parties the only prediction I think we can make is how large the cross bench willl be?

    An outcome I am enjoying the possibility of. It’s teaching the media how to comment. Less two horse race more who has biggest lead. Actually having serious interviews about what the policies of the parties and candidates are.

    The good news for the media it looks like weeks not days of speculative articles to be legitimately run for advertising dollars.

    Edit: (Sorry I mean long term not just this election regarding media coverage)

  41. It’s a 10 year old Government which really hasn’t done enough to be worthy of removal and Labor have not done enough to justify themselves being returned.

  42. A good analysis of the Tasmanian election and the likely victors in the 5 seats from Anthony Green on the ABC elections site.

  43. Asha says:
    Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 3:48 pm

    “Certainly, it’s a very frustrating decision by the polling companies”

    Having talked to someone who owns a polling company- political polling is basically a loss leader for the business. Someone has to pay for them. Who is going to make a profit on any State Polling?

  45. FUBAR:

    In that case, surely what would make a lot more sense is to cancel one of the earlier polls and instead spend those resources on an election-eve poll, which is typically much more important, not least because it’s the only real way of assessing whether a polling company is worth paying attention to.

    They were happy to spend money on a poll two weeks ago and hold off on releasing it until such a time where it is more-or-less useless. If they were always intended to put that one out days before the election, why not, you know, actually conduct the poll during that time as well.

  46. It should be noted that the Freshwater Strategy poll was for a private client that News Corp chose not to disclose, and the question of whether or when it was released would have been a matter for the client.

  48. “Can Gympie clarify that this is actually what he thinks, and if not, then what?”

    Close, but without the AEC/TEC involvement.
    Loose lips sink ships, when you see that Wiki page on the BCC LM Election and it still doesn’t show the Labor Candidate’s face and you know for a fact that Labor runs a slick 24/7/365 machine, then it’s a reasonable suspicion that something’s rotten in Denmark.
    As you may have heard said, Socialism is the Royal Road to Power for the Super Rich.

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