Today’s Daily Telegraph carries a Galaxy Research poll of 1000 voters in the marginal seats of Camden, Gosford, Kiama, Londonderry and Menai, which suggests Labor will "almost replicate its two-party preferred vote of 2003 with 58 per cent of the vote after preferences". Presumably the hard copy comes with a table breaking all this down; perhaps one of my NSW readers will be kind enough to send me a scan. The poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, and thus gives no indication how voters in these mostly commuter electorates might have reacted to Wednesday night’s transport chaos.
UPDATE: No table breakdown – I have been widely mocked by those more familiar with the Telegraph than myself for expecting such a thing.
The telegraph and to a lesser extent the SMH would like a change of government and this seems to color their coverage and predictions.
Re independaents besides those who already hold seats who all have
a good chance of victory again .I would be suprised if anyone else wins
as an independent. Eg Maitland on boundaries the Labor party has a 10% margin, & did not have any problems with the candidate. Mr Blackmore
was a former 2 term liberal member for Maitland. Why would people vote
for him ahead of the official liberal candidate?
I’ve been watching the goings on in NSW and it looks like a very impressive win for the ALP more out of spite for the Liberals than love for the ALP.
All this talk about Independents winning seats while quite common at State level always seems to not live up to expectations.
Without being in NSW, it would appear the Liberal campaign has been lacklustre and would be doing well win 4-8 seats, which based on the Governments performance should be achieved.
ALP to win easily maybe with the lost of just a handful of seats, at least the Federal Election should be closer
Why or why didn’t the Liberals attack Iemma on his record??? Labor is running a presidential campaign so why not attack the president?
Iemma was the Health Mnister for god’s sake – what happened to halving hospital waiting lists? What about the whistle-blower nurses? What about the tragic case of Vanessa Anderson at Royal North Shore Hospital who lost her life as a result of bungle after bungle?
As for Prue as leader hahahahaha! She may have potential, but she has no parliamentary experience. That is a good campaign ploy of hers to attract more votes. A potential leader people will be encouraged to vote for.
As for Debnam, and his team, he was always a puppet, and the people pulling his strings are incompetent idiots.
The Liberals are now in desperation mode. Consolidating what they have. Which is what they should have been doing last year instead of bumping off popular incumbents, suspending old men from the Party and trying to place more right-wing puppets into seats.
What I want to know is – who will accept the blame when it is all over????
Adam does not drink coffee (or chardonnay). Us old Anglo-bourgeois types prefer a nice cup of tea.
No doubt the variety picked by third world coolies on ex-colonial plantations!
Debnam’s current behaviour is either very amusing or quite disturbing: I have to wonder if the bloke is having a nervous breakdown on the campaign trail. In contrast, Iemma was looking very relaxed last night – he obviously saw the latest ALP private polling.
A note about Epping(my seat) – according to an item in today’s Daily Telegraph, the usually invisible Greg Smith was finally sighted the other day, sitting in a car for a hour as he watched intently the Labor candidate Nicole Campbell seated at a nearby table. Ms Campbell described the whole thing as rather weird.
Wow, so a potential stalker is running for the Liberal Party in the seat of Epping? LOL LOL LOL
I should hope so. Where else does tea come from?
The Speaker: Why is Debnam so bad? A few quick ones.
1. He is the leader of a faction ridden party
2. He came to office with the support and control of a shadowy and reportedly extreme right faction and with bad memories of how his predeccesor was dumped
3. He will form a coalition with a National Party rump led by a leader who is even more under the influence of the religious right than he is. The comment made about Stoner above must have been made by someone who has confused no profile with good profile
4. No costings
5. An admission to no overall transport policy
6. He may have other comprehensive policies but I read and listen a lot and I don’t know what they are with the following exceptions.
7. On the first day of office he will instruct the police commissioner to arrest 400 “middle eastern thugs” on “whatever charges the commissioner can think of”. If the commisssioner refuses to do so then he will be sacked.
8. 26,000 civil servants to be sacked. Now down to 20,000 to be removed by natural redundency. These civil servants are apparently high end administrators who do nothing and do not impact on front line services ( I could almost believe that, but of course these public servants have 80 – 100K friends and dependents – a large number of voters to piss off)
9. Support for JH’s industrial laws
A hung parliament due to independents? At present, with the possible exception of Sydney, all the independents have “natural coalition” seats. For a hung parliament Labor must loss seats. Which ones?
Newcastle -possibly but the 2 independents are Labor exs/supporters.
Maitland – Blackmore lost the seat as a Liberal and he I suspect his arrest for sexual assault has resulted in mud sticking
Lake Macquarie – No
Swansea- No
Any other suggestions?
You forgot Goulburn – no guarantee Pru Goward will win!
Just read the transcript of Peter Debnam’s interview on lateline. I cringed just reading it. Must have been a disaster. Dempster was no better. The wheels have obviously really fallen off.
Make that stateline
Strange that a party so opposed to Middle Eastern thugs should have eight candidates in Sydney with Middle Eastern surnames…
Oakshott country is really showing how far he is away from the Hunter Valley when commenting on Hunter Valley/ Central Coast seats.
Labor may indeed lose at least 2, and possibly 4 seats in the Hunter.
Newcastle to independent Lord Mayor Tate, who is certainly NOT ex-ALP or an ALP supporter.
Maitland to independent Blackmore who was popularly elected as Mayor AFTER his two scandals which amounted to nothing. No mud stuck.
Lake Macquarie to popularly elected independent Mayor Piper, who is no supporter of the ALP.
These are 3 seats which may fall, and a fourth is Swansea, which went independant in 1988 over the Swansea bridge, which is still not fixed, and which elected an independant Mayor after a 1993 sex scandal involving an ALP man who was later convicted of a child sex offence.
I agree Newcastle is possible/likely -btw Tait was being touted as the Labor candidate prior to McKay’s pre-selection.
Maitland still requires a 10% swing and Lake Macquarie is 11.5%, both have high profile independents but 10% swings are not common.
Swansea needs 17% and the only independent is Laurie Coughlan. The loss by Labor was in the Greiner landslide, when the Bridge was a major issue.
Adam, I am sure Debnam like Fred Nile draws a distinction between Christian and Muslim people of middle eastern appearance. Particularly as the religious right faction is alleged to have drawn on the Maronite community during its branch stacking. I still don’t know how he got away with the arbitary arrest policy.
I’d still like nominations for other seats that Labor will lose to independents, which given the likely poor performance of the coalition, will result in a hung parliament
When I suggested that these candidates were Maronites who were the fruit of Liberal branch-stacking, I was accused of “smearing” them. I assume Sarkis is a Maronite since the Sarkises are a well-known Lebanese political family (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Sarkis). I know nothing about the others.
The Four Corners research on it was pretty clear cut. The transcript is here; http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1688866.htm
Hi Adam, it has nothing to do with them being Maronite, and everything to do with assuming how they got to their position.
Racial profiling of political candidates is perhaps interesting statistically, but is more just an expression of Multicultural Sydney.
Eg. In the Last Election the Liberal party had Greek, Chinese, Maronite and other background candidates picked because of their merit. Things haven’t changed that much in many of those areas, except the commentary.
Can someone with more technical knowledge than me tell me what is wrong with the WA Liberal Party’s website and why I can’t access the “federal candidates” section? http://www.waliberals.net
A rough ethnic breakdown of the Liberal Party’s 73 declared Assembly candidates
* Anglo: 49 (one of whom, Mr Rohan, looks Indian in his photo)
* Greek: 2 (Peirides, Paxinos)
* Yugoslav: 1 (Bilic)
* assorted European names: 13 (Schmiegel, Majewski, Paag etc etc)
* Arab/Lebanese: 8 (three Mansours, Mannoun, Sarkis, El Khouri, Babakhan, Chedid)
* Italian: nil
* Maltese: nil
* Chinese: nil
* Vietnamese: nil
This is a representative selection of the population of Sydney/NSW? I don’t think so. Obviously the Lebanese, apparently led by the Mansour family, are getting a big look in.
oakeshott country (should we nickname you The OC?): Thanks.
Morris Mansour, the Liberal candidate in Lakemba is a regular Lib candidate. He was Lib candidate in Grayndler in 1996 (thanks to Adam’s website) and he contests every election for Ashfield council (unsuccessfully on at least the last 2 occasions).
His son, Phillip Mansour, is the Liberal candidate in Canterbury.
I agree with WSM about multicultural Sydney. Lakemba has 8.39% of population born in middle-east and Canterbury 4.47% born in middle-east.
The NSW Parliamentary Library produced a report showing “NSW State Electoral Districts Ranked by 2001 Census Characteristics”. The report uses the new electoral boundaries.
Warning the file is about 1mb in size.
http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications.nsf/0/a9a7e65a4767e41aca2571cc000a4c5a/$FILE/CommentaryFINAL&INDEX.pdf
Oakeshott country, an interesting appraisal of The Dead Man’s performance from a Labor partisan. What is your opinion of Morrie ? By the way, what will you call yourself when Rob (eventually) is no longer the member for Port Macquarie? Do you suppose, one day, your country might become the country of the Australian Labor Party?
Apologies to those whose comments were held up in moderation – Politically Correct at 10.37am, Brad at 4am, and anyone else I’ve missed.
The OC is a Labor partisan from Port up North?
Can you even buy the Newcastle Herald up there? – let alone watch the 3 local commercial tv stations? The independent candidates in the Hunter Valley are buying huge blocks of tv advertising time.
If the OC is a Labor refugee in Oakshott country, no wonder he would try this futile attempt @ defending ALP members in the Hunter Valley and Central Coast against popularly elected Independent Mayors and Councillors running as Independent State candidates.
Firstly, Maitland is not a 10% swing required to defeat the unknown ALP candidate, since ALP John Price is retiring. What was the margin in 1999 or 2003? 1 or 2%? Blackmore has demonstrated his capacity to win a popular contest again, as he did as Mayor.
In Newcastle, Independent Tate certainly played the media game of potential ALP bride, and this can’t hurt him, but in the end he refused to turn up at the church. “Kindergarten teacher” style ALP candidate Jodi McOC will be trounced by either Tate or dumped former ALP member, Independent Gaudry, with the support of resigned former ALP life members.
As for Swansea, if the OC had been reading the local media he would have seen the Swansea bridge is still a major issue. Can you imagine a bridge on the Pacific Highway collapsing? Read the disturbing reports from the RTA! Coughlan is an Independent Lake Macquarie City Councillor, elected first in his Ward, and has the support of former ALP branch members who hate the Swansea ALP candidate imposed on them.
And don’t forget the general public in Swansea, who are wary of the ALP after 3 of them have had child sex scandals as elected representatives, and more as rank and file members. ALP takes on a whole new meaning as Australian Legion of Paedophiles in Swansea and Lake Macquarie City. And the Catherine Hill Bay development gives new boundaries to the extremities of ALP arrogance.
Edward StJohn is a bogan twat if he thinks the ALP will hold all these seats.
Hi David,
I think Iemma was the only one who had a chance of getting Labor across the line. He had impeccable right wing credentials, had been quiet in the ministry and had no major black marks. The rumour is that the other likely contenders (Knowles and Scully) withdrew when polling showed they were unelectable. The claims of tired, corrupt and incompetent would have been indefensible with either of them.
When he was first elected I thought he was Unsworth without the pizzaz. However, I think he has grown into the job and is the type of premier to win a fourth election. He does humble (he has a lot to be humble about) and “I am listening” very well. If he is reelected it will be interesting to see how he developes as the memory of Carr fades.
My fearless predictions for Port Macquarie: Oakeshott to get more than 85% 2PP (Adam must know what the record is), Labor to get less than 5% (possibly to come 4th behind the greens). If Labor wins the federal election, Vaile will resign from Lyne, Oakeshott will stand and win. I used to think he would do this as a Liberal and thus be in line for minor office but he may do it as an independent. In the subsequent bye-election for Port Macquarie, Labor will not stand a candidate and some sort of contest or deal will be done in the coalition.
The demographics suggest this should be an eventual Labor seat but the party no longer has an infrastructure after tacitly supporting Oakeshott for years. Many sea changers come from a Labor background but they feel that the sniff of sea air separates them from the hoi-polloi and they vote conservative.
I don’t know any records for NSW elections, alas… don’t tempt me into new areas of obsession, please.
In *federal* elections, the largest two-candidate majority in a House of Represenantives contest was 44.0% (that is, 94.0% of the vote after preferences), polled by Albert Thompson (ALP, Port Adelaide) in 1954. He was opposed only by a Communist. The largest two-party majority in a House of Represenantives contest was 35.8%, polled by Josiah Thomas (ALP, Barrier NSW) in 1910. The largest two-party majority for a non-ALP candidate was 33.4%, polled by Henry Turner (Lib, Bradfield) in 1966.
Adam,
The Parramatta Liberal party is mainly made up of Anglo-Saxon Aussies (including myself). We pre-selected John Chedid because he was the best candidate, not because of any Lebanese branch stacking.
Wasn’t the largest federal margin Beasley for Labor in West Sydney in 1929 with 86.5%?
Quite right – very slack of me to miss that.
My spies tell me the Liberals have preselected Ken Aldred for Holt. They must be quite mad.
Care to elaborate for those of us not from Melbourne?
Which probably indicates that, despite its slender margin, the Liberal Party will not be making a serious play for Holt.
I notice that Aldred has previously been the member for Henty, Bruce and Deakin. So in the unlikely event that Aldred a) has his preselected ratified and b) wins the seat, he would equal Billy Hughes’s feat of holding four different federal seats. I presume that is the record.
Ben – Andy Landy has gone to town on Aldred. He was disendorsed prior to the 1996 election. So I think it’s likely that this preselection will be overturned.
Jason,
Price defeated Blackmore in 1999 by 1% 2PP
Price defeated Geoghegan in 2003 by 8.9% 2PP
The subsequent redistribution has taken the ALP notional margin to 9.8%.
I agree with you that this margin wont mean a lot with Blackmore running again and Price retiring, but the interest will be which of Blackmore or Geoghegan comes second, and the preference flows from the 3rd place candidate.
I think we’d better take a discussion of Aldred to the federal thread – people from NSW will start to get annoyed.
Hi Evan
I think Prue will win Goulburn. Funny story, I believe half the electorate got to see daughter Kate and the other half were cheesed off at missing out!
Are the people of Epping going to vote Greg Smith?