Tasmanian election minus eight days

Another poll from Tasmania suggesting the Liberals are set to retain government without recovering their majority.

With just over a week to go, the only new item of polling to emerge for the Tasmanian state election over the past week has been a uComms poll for the Australia Institute. The results are distinctly poor for Labor, who are credited with just 23.0% of the vote (compared with 28.2% in 2021) and broadly in line with other polling in having the Liberals on 37.1% (48.7%). The Greens are 13.7% (12.4%), with the major parties’ losses mostly absorbed by the Jacqui Lambie Network (who are only running in four of the five divisions) on 8.5%, a generic independent category on 12.8% and “others” on 5.0%. The poll was conducted early last week, on Monday and Tuesday, from a sample of 1174.

For a good deal more on the Tasmanian election, you can listen below to a discussion earliest this week between myself and Ben Raue of The Tally Room on the latter’s podcast. Notably with respect to the poll numbers just described, subjects canvassed include the tendency for generic independent categories to catch voters who drift back to the established parties upon discovering that none of the specific independents in their electorates catch their interest.

Tasmanian election minus three weeks

The closure of nominations reveals a bigger field of candidates chasing a bigger number of seats, including a proliferation of independents.

The closure of nominations last Thursday revealed 167 candidates, up from 105 in 2021, likely reflecting the increased number of seats up for grabs. With that milestone (not to mention the Dunkley by-election) accounted for, I will now set to work on bringing my state election guide up to speed. The candidates are evenly spread across the five divisions, with 36 running in Lyons, 35 in Clark, 33 in Braddon, 32 in Bass and 31 in Franklin. There are two notable late-declaring independents in Lyons: Central Highlands mayor Loueen Triffitt, whose daughter Angela Triffitt is running in Clark, and Jenny Branch-Allen, a former Glenorchy alderman who polled a third of the vote as an independent in the Legislative Council seat of Derwent in 2009. Kingborough deputy mayor Clare Glade-Wright is among the independents in Franklin.

The Mercury reported on Thursday that a private poll with results broken out for each division suggested 14 seats for the Liberals, 11 for Labor, four for the Greens, two for the Jacqui Lambie Network and four independents. However, the only detail provided was that it was a phone poll with a sample of 4000 – nothing on the pollster, the client or the field work dates. For what it’s worth, results were given for Bass of Liberal 37%, Labor 28%, JLN 15% and Greens 13%; for Braddon of Liberal 45%, Labor 26%, JLN 15% and Greens 5%; for Clark of Liberal 26%, independents 25%, Labor 24% and Greens 16%; for Franklin of Liberal 33%, Labor 24%, Greens 20%, JLN 8% and independents 8%; and for Lyons of Labor 35%, Liberal 34%, Greens 12%, JLN 8% and independents 10%.

UPDATE (5/3/24): RedBridge Group has a poll conducted February 16 to 28 from a sample of 753 which has Liberal on 33%, Labor on 29%, Greens on 14%, the Jacqui Lambie Network on 10% and all others on 14%, which it uses to estimate a result of 12 seats for the Liberals, 11 for Labor, six for the Greens, three for JLN and three for others. The linked report features extensive breakdowns by region, gender, age, education and so on.

EMRS: Liberal 39, Labor 26, Greens 12, JLN 9 in Tasmania

A poll conducted shortly after the Tasmanian election was called finds the Jacqui Lambie Network well placed to win seats and the Liberals unlikely to recover their majority.

The quarterly Tasmanian state voting intention poll from EMRS has made a well-timed arrival, showing the Liberals steady since November on 39% (as compared with 48.7% at the 2021 election), Labor down three to 26% (28.2% at the last election) and the Greens steady at 12% (12.4% at the last election). The Jacqui Lambie Network was included as a response option for the first time and recorded 9%, a substantially more modest result than the 20% recorded over New Year by YouGov, though in this case the option was not provided for respondents in Clark, where the party is not fielding candidates. Its inclusion presumably has something to do with a three-point drop in independents to 14%.

Despite Labor going backwards on voting intention, Rebecca White is up three on preferred premier to 38%, with Jeremy Rockliff steady on 41%. The poll was conducted from February 15 to 21, starting a day after the election was called, by live interviewer phone polling from a sample of 1000.

Tasmanian election minus four weeks

New independent contenders continue to emerge ahead of the closure of nominations on Thursday.

The electoral roll closed last Wednesday with 80,126 on the roll in Bass, 83,875 in Braddon, 74,236 in Clark, 82,238 in Franklin and 87,722 in Lyons, an overall increase of 3.5% at the 2021 election. Looming milestones include the close of nominations on Thursday, the announcement of candidates on Friday and the opening of early voting next Monday.

Other news:

• Jeremy Rockliff has rejected the Australian Medical Association’s calls for the disendorsement of Bass candidate Julie Sladden, whom the ABC reports “repeatedly questioned the safety of COVID vaccines and described Tasmania as an ‘autocracy’ during the COVID period”. Sladden is a general practitioner and emergency medicine doctor who closed her practice in 2021 after refusing to be vaccinated.

• Two Hobart councillors, Louise Elliot and Ben Lohberger, will join a crowded field of independents in Clark, along with incumbent Kristie Johnston and former Liberal member Sue Hickey. Elliot ruled out running in the first week of the campaign, but now plans to run on landlords’ rights after the Liberals committed to policies including strengthening the right of tenants to own pets. Lohberger is a founding member of Save UTAS and says he will introduce legislation to stop it selling its Sandy Bay campus.

• Elsewhere, Latrobe mayor Peter Freshney will run as an independent in Braddon. Clarence mayor Brendan Blomeley, a Liberal factional conservative who ran unsuccessfully for Senate preselection and the party’s state presidency, floated the possibility of running as an independent in Franklin last week, but now says he will remain a member of the Liberal Party.

Tasmanian election minus five weeks

Multiple developments from the Tasmanian campaign, as prospective candidates caught on the hop by an early election scramble into place — and out of it.

There is now a semi-complete Poll Bludger guide to the Tasmanian election, featuring the usual extensive guides to each of the five electoral divisions, complete with displays of past election results in chart, table and booth map form, and an overview page that reviews the electoral terrain and a term’s worth of political developments in the state. The sections detailing the party candidates and their backgrounds will need updating after nominations close at the end of the month, with the parties presently scrambling to get their line-ups in place for an election called over a year ahead of time, and independents both entering and dropping out at a bewildering clip. Notably:

• Observers were surprised when Liberal advertising appeared for Franklin promoting the candidacy of former Police Minister Jacquie Petrusma, who resigned from parliament in July 2022 after a career going back to 2010. Petrusma is yet to be formally endorsed, but has confirmed that she is indeed seeking preselection, which will presumably be a formality. This compounds the challenge faced by the electorate’s two Liberal incumbents, Nic Street and Dean Young, who already had Eric Abetz to contend with.

• Jane Howlett, who has held the Legislative Council seat of Prosser for the Liberals since 2018, has announced she will run in Lyons. Prosser will be up for election in any case when the annual periodic elections are held in May, and there will be nothing to stop Howlett running again if she is unsuccessful in Lyons. Labor will likewise run a Legislative Council member, Josh Willie, in Clark, presumably having made the same calculation that familiar candidates will improve its chances overall.

• The number of former major party members running as independents has hit four, and nearly made it to five. Sue Hickey has announced she will seek a comeback in Clark, where she was elected as a Liberal in 2018 and was narrowly unsuccessful in a bid to retain the seat as an independent in 2021, having quit the party four days before the election was announced. Elise Archer also announced she would run in Clark on Wednesday but withdrew the following day, owing to a “health circumstance”. According to David Killick of The Mercury, “concerns were expressed for Ms Archer’s welfare after an appearance on ABC Radio on Thursday in which she did not sound like her normal self”.

• The Greens have announced Hobart deputy lord mayor Helen Burnet, who has run for the party on a number of previous occasions, will be a candidate in Clark. The party will be hoping the new regime of seven-member electorates will put it in contention for a second seat in Clark, which Burnet came close to achieving even with only five seats on offer in 2010. The party’s sitting member in Clark is Vica Bayley, who filled a vacancy created in July 2023 when former leader Cassy O’Connor stepped aside ahead of her run for the Legislative Council seat of Hobart in May.

Tasmanian election announcement announced

Assuming no last minute change of heart, Tasmanians will go the polls for an early election expected to be called today for March 23.

Tasmania is headed for an early election for the second term in a row, with Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff announcing yesterday that he will visit the Governor today to seek an election anticipated for March 23. This follows a breakdown in relations with former Liberal MPs John Tucker and Lara Alexander, who reduced the government to minority status when they quit to sit as independents last May. Rockliff has spent the last week attempting to extract from them a commitment only to vote for government-backed motions and amendments in parliament, which would have rendered them independents in name only.

This unexpected development will leave parties scrambling over the coming weeks to get slates of candidate in place for an election that will enlarge parliament from 25 seats to 35. Each of the five electoral divisions (the same ones that apply in the state at federal elections) will now elect seven rather than five members under the state’s Hare-Clark variant of proportional representation, returning to the situation which prevailed before 1998.

The change lowers the quota for election from 16.7% to 12.5%, making life substantially easier for minor parties. A desire to reduce the footprint of the Greens was the principal motivation for the cut in parliamentary numbers in 1998, but the minor party environment has grown more complex since that time. Tucker and Alexander joined a cross bench which, together with two Greens members, included Clark MP Kristie Johnston, who in 2021 became the first independent to win election since 1986.

There is also the question of the Jacqui Lambie Network, which at last report planned to field candidates in every division except Clark, and which was credited with 20% support by a YouGov poll conducted over New Year. However, it must reckon with the disappointing precedent of its attempt to establish itself in state politics in 2018, when promising early polling evaporated during the campaign period and it emerged empty-handed.

I hope to have a preliminary version of an election guide up later today or tomorrow, to which further detail will be added as more candidates are confirmed. On that front, local observer Kevin Bonham is keeping a running tally of all confirmed starters on his site.

The road ahead: Dunkley, Inala and more

With dates set for a federal and a Queensland state by-election, a review of looming electoral events.

House of Representatives Speaker Milton Dick has announced the Dunkley by-election will be held on March 2, with nominations to close on February 8 and be decared the following day, and the Poll Bludger’s guide to the by-election is now up and running. It is the first of my guides to feature historical results charts for the primary vote as well as two-party preferred (among many other things), which I hope is of use to somebody because it involved a lot of work.

In a report on the by-election in The Age yesterday, David Crowe related that “this masthead reported last week that Labor officials privately believe the Coalition has the edge”. I am not clear if this refers to a report from Broede Carmody, saying only that the officials “expect a swing against them”, or one from Paul Sakkal saying “both parties are privately downplaying their chances”.

The other by-election on the way is in Queensland for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s safe Labor seat of Inala, which Premier Steven Miles has confirmed will be held simultaneously with the local government elections on March 16. Seemingly assured of Labor endorsement is Margie Nightingale, former teacher and policy adviser to Treasurer Cameron Dick, who has the support of the Right. Lydia Lynch of The Australian reports the Liberal National Party is “due to preselect its candidate within a fortnight” – I will hold off doing an election guide until then.

The council elections are of substantial interest in their own right, with Brisbane City Council in particular being both the most powerful and the most partisan local government jurisdiction in the country. The conservatives have been dominant since Campbell Newman became Lord Mayor in 2004. The current incumbent, Adrian Schrinner, won by 56.3-43.7 after preferences in 2020, a swing to Labor of 3.0% from 2016. His Labor opponent this time is Tracey Price, a lawyer and sewing shop owner.

The Liberal National Party’s dominance on council reached new heights with the elections of 2016 and 2020, both of which saw them win 19 out of 26 council wards, leaving five for Labor and one each for Greens and an independent. The Greens have high hopes of expanding their footprint after their federal breakthrough in 2022, to the extent of talking up the possibility of displacing Labor as the council opposition. Considerably more detail on the elections is available courtesy of Ben Raue at the Tally Room.

Also looming are Tasmania’s periodic Legislative Council elections, presumably to be held on May 4, which this year encompass two of the chamber’s fifteen seats: Prosser, covering rural territory immediately north of Hobart, and the self-explanatory seat of Hobart. These are of particular interest this year because former Greens leader Cassy O’Connor has abandoned her seat in the lower house to run for Hobart, which if successful will win the Greens its first ever seat in the chamber. The seat will be vacated with the retirement of Rob Valentine, who has held it as an independent since 2012. Prosser is held for the Liberals by Jane Howlett, one of the chamber’s four Liberal members, who won narrowly in 2018 and may struggle amid the government’s declining fortunes. Labor likewise holds four seats, the remaining seven being independents.

Twentieth birthday miscellany (open thread)

The Poll Bludger celebrates 20 years in the only way it knows how: with some poll results and a couple of preselection updates.

Today marks twenty years since the Poll Bludger launched itself on an unsuspecting blogosphere. You may perhaps find in this milestone occasion to reward the site with a birthday present, which will be gratefully received through the “become a supporter” button at the top of the site.

Polling news:

• YouGov has intruded on the long-held monopoly of EMRS by publishing a Tasmanian state poll. It points to the existence of a big market for the Jacqui Lambie Network, which is credited with 20% of the vote – enough in the estimation of YouGov’s “likely outcome” to win it seven seats and a decisive position in a lower house that will expand at the next election from 25 seats to 35. The Liberals duly have no chance of recording another majority, being credited with 31% of the vote and a projected eleven seats. Labor are on 27% and ten seats and the Greens 15% and six seats, with independent Kristie Johnston presumed headed for re-election in Clark. It should be noted that when the Jacqui Lambie Network last tried its hand at a state election, in 2018, strong early poll numbers withered during the campaign period and it emerged empty-handed. The poll also assumes it will run in all five divisions, whereas it was reported in November that it will not be running in Clark. The poll was conducted December 21 to January 4 from a sample of 850.

• The first federal poll of the year is from Roy Morgan, presumably returning to its weekly schedule after a four-week break over Christmas and New Year. The poll has the Coalition leading 51-49 on two-party preferred, the third Morgan poll of recent months to have the Coalition leading after two 50.5-49.5 results since October, reversing the result from the last poll in early December. Labor has taken a three-point hit on the primary vote, falling to 29%, with the Coalition up one to 39%, the Greens up one-and-a-half to 13% and One Nation up half to 5%. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Sunday from a sample of 1716.

Preselection news:

The Age reports Labor’s candidate for the looming Dunkley by-election is likely to be Jodie Belyea, manager of MEGT Foundation, which provides tertiary scholarships for disadvantaged women. Belyea has won the seemingly decisive support of the Socialist Left faction for a preselection that will be formally ratified by the party’s national executive over the coming weeks. The list of Liberal contenders has reportedly been reduced to Nathan Conroy, Donna Hope and Bec Buchanan, with David Burgess withdrawing from contention. The by-election is expected to be held in late February.

The West Australian reports on two prospective nominees for Liberal preselection in the Perth seat of Curtin, which was lost to teal independent Kate Chaney in 2022: Matt Moran, an Afghanistan veteran and former Ten Network reporter now employed in government relations at naval shipbuilder Luerssen Australia, and Tom White, who until recently was Uber’s chief executive for South Korea. It was earlier reported that there was a push in the party for Moran to challenge Ian Goodenough for preselection in Curtin’s northern neighbour, Moore, which is also of interest to Vince Connelly, former member for the abolished seat of Stirling.