Category: Western Australian Politics

Newspoll: 59-41 to Liberal-National in WA

The latest quarterly Newspoll of state voting intention in Western Australia (the only WA polling game in town now that The West Australian appears to have mothballed Westpoll) has delivered the Barnett government its strongest result yet: a 59-41 lead on two-party preferred from primary votes of 46 per cent for the Liberals (up four on the July-September poll), 4 per cent for the Nationals (down two), 29 per cent for Labor (steady) and 12 per cent for the Greens (down one). Colin Barnett has enjoyed a very healthy fillip on his personal ratings: up seven points on approval to 58 per cent and down seven on disapproval to 28 per cent, which I’m tempted to credit to CHOGM and its attendant photo opportunities. Eric Ripper can at least take solace in a four point drop in disapproval to 39 per cent, with his approval steady at 34 per cent, but Barnett’s already handsome lead as preferred premier has blown out further from 56-22 to 59-18. UPDATE: Tables, yet again, from GhostWhoVotes.

I also have a fair amount of material relating to next year’s election to unload which I’ve accumulated over the past few months. Much intelligence has emerged from a review of Labor preselection by Gary Adshead of The West Australian:

• An upper house seat in North Metropolitan is said to be there for the taking of former Wanneroo mayor Jon Kelly, “if he wants it”. Kelly is part of the “old Right” faction and enjoys the backing of its chieftain, Joe Bullock of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Union. He also has problematic associations with Brian Burke, which compelled him to withdraw as candidate for Cowan before the 2010 federal election. He also ran as an independent against Labor member Margaret Quick in Girrawheen in 2005 after a preselection dispute. There has also been talk that the North Metropolitan vacancy, to be created by the retirement of Ed Dermer, might also be of interest to Joe Bullock’s wife Helen, who presently holds an upper house seat in Agricultural region.

• Jon Kelly’s influence might also secure the preselection of Wanneroo councillor Brett Treby in Wanneroo, which Paul Miles holds for the Liberals with a margin of 0.7 per cent after unseating Labor’s Dianne Guise in 2008 with a swing of 6.9 per cent.

• Nollamara MP Janine Freeman is said to be considering proving her worth by recovering the neighbouring seat of Morley for Labor. Morley is a naturally Labor seat which has been made notionally so by the redistribution, turning Liberal member Ian Britza’s 0.9 per cent margin into a 0.8 per cent margin for Labor. Labor’s unexpected defeat in the seat was largely down to Alan Carpenter’s insistence that preselection go to Channel Seven journalist Reece Whitby at the expense of the sitting member, the late John D’Orazio, whose decision to run as an independent and direct preferences to the Liberals helped fuel a 10.8 per cent swing. Labor can be confident that D’Orazio’s supporters will revert to type when presented with a normal two-party contest.

• Reece Whitby is said to be still hopeful of a parliamentary career, and if thwarted in Morley might instead take a punt on Balcatta, assuming the incumbent John Kobelke chooses to retire.

• For their part, the Liberals are said to be “gaining confidence that with the right candidate, possibly a man called John Halligan, they could knock off (Margaret) Quirk in Girrawheen”, where the redistribution has cut Labor’s margin from 11.5 per cent to 6.7 per cent.

Elsewhere:

• Nicholas Perpitch of The Australian reports that Giz Watson, generally regarded as the most senior of the Greens’ complement of four upper house members, will move from her existing safe position in North Metropolitan region to take on the dicey prospect of South West in the hope her profile will gain the party an extra seat. Watson won a mid-December preselection vote against Paul Llewellyn, who held a seat in the region from 2005 but failed in his bid for re-election in 2008.

• It has been widely reported that Josh Byrne, a presenter on ABC Television’s Gardening Australia program, has spoken with the ALP about standing as its candidate for the state seat of Fremantle. Labor held the seat without interruption from 1934 until 2009, when Adele Carles won the seat for the Greens at a by-election which followed the retirement of Labor heavyweight Jim McGinty. Carles now sits as an independent after parting company with the Greens in circumstances which have most rating her an unlikely prospect for re-election.

• Peter Kerr of the Financial Review reported in mid-October that the Nationals were “close to scoring a major political coup” by enlisting Michele Pucci, chairman of the federal government’s local Regional Development Australia advisory body, as its candidate for Kimberley. Pucci had been named by the current Labor member, Carol Martin, as her preferred successor her when she retires at the next election. The Financial Review report also quoted Sally Talbot, upper house member for South West region, denying speculation she might run for Labor. Martin held the seat with a 6.8 per cent margin at the 2008 election, with the Liberals polling 26.0 per cent and the Nationals 18.3 per cent.

• The ABC quotes “Liberal sources” saying Matt Birney, who held Kalgoorlie for the Liberals from 2001 until 2008 and led the party for a year after the February 2005 election, is considering returning to politics by running against independent Janet Woollard in the naturally conservative Perth seat of Alfred Cove.

• Andrew Crook of Crikey reports that Hannah Beazley, daughter of Kim and marketing manager at private girls school Penhros College, aspires to stand for Labor in Jandakot or Riverton, which were respectively lost by Labor at the last election to Joe Francis and Mike Nahan. Crook reports that Beazley is “factionally non-aligned but would be expected to secure support from both arms of the warring WA Labor party, especially if her father was to officially endorse her in campaign literature”.

• A fracas over the CFMEU’s attempt to reaffiliate with the state party two years after its colourful leadership figures Joe McDonald and Kevin Reynolds cut it loose has been referred by the party’s state executive to February’s state conference. The party’s administrative committee had earlier ruled the union had not submitted the required documentation to allow it representation on the state executive, which under the membership figures claimed by the CFMEU would amount to 13 delegates out of 216 for purposes of preselection votes. A Right source quoted by Andrew Crook in Crikey said this was motivated by a desire to thwart the resulting shift in the balance of power away from the Left (the CFMEU being of the “Centre”, but having strong historical and personal ties to the Brian Burke Right), which could potentially affect preselections in Fremantle, Bassendean and Cockburn. However, it does not seem to be in dispute that the administrative committee’s decision was backed by independent legal advice. Andrew Crook reports the union’s readmission is a formality: a Right source says that only United Voice (the artists formerly known as the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union) is opposed, but a Left source argues that a union which botched its paperwork in this fashion could normally expect a 15 per cent penalty on its delegate entitlement.

And furthermore:

• Legislation to fix election dates for the second Saturday in March completed its passage through parliament in early November.

• A flurry of speculation as to who might be Norman Moore’s ministerial and parliamentary successor has been scotched after he withdrew his nomination to assume the position of Agent-General to London. Mark Lewis, a Carnarvon-based public servant who was number three on the Liberal ticket in 2008, was mentioned in relation to his Mining and Pastoral upper house seat. The Kalgoorlie Miner reported figures in the mining industry wished for him to be succeeded as Mines and Petroleum Minister by Kalgoorlie MP John Bowler, a former Labor government minister who won his seat as an independent in 2008 and is now loosely affiliated with the Nationals.

Newspoll: 57-43 to Liberal-National in WA

The latest quarterly Newspoll of state voting intention for Western Australia shows no change on two-party preferred, with the Liberal-National (don’t call us the Coalition) government still holding a commanding 57-43 lead. Both parties are down a point on the primary vote, Labor to 29 per cent and Liberal to 42 per cent with the Nationals steady on 6 per cent. The Greens are up a point to 13 per cent. It’s interesting to compare these results with Newspoll’s quarterly federal result for Western Australia, which I believe covered an identical sample: it had the Coalition ahead 60-40 on two-party with 50 per cent of the primary vote, and Labor’s primary vote at just 24 per cent. Eric Ripper has made an interesting six point gain in the preferred premier race, although he’s still far behind with 22 per cent (up four) to Colin Barnett’s 56 per cent (down two). Counter-intuitively, both leaders’ personal ratings are little changed: Barnett is up a point on approval to 51 per cent and down two on disapproval to 35 per cent, while Ripper is respectively up one to 34 per cent and steady on 43 per cent. Numbers as usual from GhostWhoVotes.

Matters related thereto

Roy Morgan has spared the government a new set of poll results this week, presumably holding over last weekend’s face-to-face results for a combined two weeks’ result to be published next week. So here’s some stuff that has accumulated during my recent period of indolence:

• The federal parliament’s Joint Standing Committee of Electoral Matters brought down its report into the 2010 federal election a fortnight ago. One noteworthy innovation is a less pompous report title, “The 2010 Federal Election: Report on the conduct of the election and related matters” replacing the traditional formulation of “Report on the conduct of the (insert year) federal election and matters related thereto”. Antony Green summarises its recommendations here; now that my holidays are over I’ll shortly get around to reviewing it and will have more to say after I’ve fully absorbed it.

• One of the majority report’s recommendations was that the federal government follow the example of New South Wales and Victoria in allowing government records such as drivers licences, vehicle registration and Year 12 school enrolments to be used to automatically update the electoral roll. However, this is opposed in the dissenting JSCEM report from the committee’s Coalition members, for reasons I do not find persuasive. Antony Green has reviewed the impact of such measures in New South Wales since their introduction last year, observing that only 12 per cent of the 70,000 people whose enrolments have been added or updated have taken the trouble to enrol the old-fashioned way for the federal electoral roll. His conclusion: “On the evidence so far, by the time of the next commonwealth election in the second half of 2013, there could be as many as 200,000 voters enrolled for NSW elections and eligible to vote at commonwealth elections who will be missing from the commonwealth roll or be enrolled at the wrong address.”

• Draft electoral redistribution boundaries have recently been published for both our nation’s territory parliaments. Antony Green surveys the results for the Northern Territory here and the Australian Capital Territory here. An ACT redistribution would normally be of minor interest, as the territory is only divided into three electorates for purposes of a regionally based system of proportional representation, but Antony asserts that in this case the changes are radical enough to be of substantial interest, and in particular to put at risk the fourth seat the Greens won at the 2008 election. For the Northern Territory, Antony has calculated new margins for each of the 25 seats, with the caveat that the enormous sitting member factors which result from pocket-sized electorates of 4000 to 5000 voters make party-based margins less reliable than usual.

• There has been much talk lately about the possibility of an incoming Coalition government calling an early double dissolution election should it meet Senate resistance from its efforts to abolish a carbon tax. Tony Abbott’s argument to those concerned about the resulting uncertainty and expense is that opposing its repeal in the Senate would be politically suicidal for a defeated Labor Party, a case pursued by Queensland legal academic James Allan in The Australian.

There was a fair bit of material I had been compiling on Western Australian matters to coincide with a looming quarterly state Newspoll, but I was caught on the hop when it was published a month earlier than I’d anticipated.

• Legislation to fix election dates for the second Saturday in every March has passed through the Legislative Council and currently awaits the rubber stamp of the lower house. The bill allows some flexibility: automatic postponement if clashing with a federal election or a week either side of Easter Saturday, or a later date under “exceptional circumstances” as agreed to by the Premier and Opposition Leader. Despite the federal election provision, the date could still cause problems for future federal governments wishing to avoid clashes federal and state campaigns, early March having been a traditionally popular time for elections (most recently in 1990, 1993 and 1996). The parliament may still be dissolved at any time up to four months prior to the scheduled election date, but any government that does so will be exposing itself to a separate Legislative Council election held on the usual day. Barring such exceptional circumstances, the next election will be held on Saturday, March 9. This will result in the current parliamentary term being the longest of any federal or state parliament in Australian history, a legacy of Labor Premier Alan Carpenter’s decision to disturb the normal electoral cycle by calling for September 6, 2008 an election that was not due until February or March of 2009.

• There have been widespread suggestions that former Channel Nine newsreader Dixie Marshall will run as the Liberal candidate for Churchlands at the next election. Marshall has recently taken up a position as the government’s chief media strategist, and her father Arthur Marshall was a Liberal member for the seats of Murray and Murray-Wellington from 1989 to 2005. Churchlands will be vacated by the retirement of independent Liz Constable, an ally of Premier Colin Barnett who has served as Education Minister in his government since its came to office. Ben Harvey of The West Australian (see below) says other names in the mix include “cricket legend Justin Langer, hospitality tsarina Kate Lamont, media personality Adrian Barich and Australian Hotels Association (WA) boss Bradley Woods”.

• Ben Harvey of The West Australian offers a further review of preselection rumours doing the rounds. This appeared in the paper’s gossip-style Inside Cover section, prompting Harvey to qualify: “If they turn out to be wrong, then please discount this column as light-hearted fluff. But if any of them are right, then remember what you are about to read is an example of world-class forensic journalism.” The most interesting suggestion contained is that Deirdre Willmott, former Chamber of Commerce and Industry director and current business manager for Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group who won preselection before the 2008 election to succeed Colin Barnett in Cottesloe but then had to hand it back to him when he secured the party leadership, might run in the naturally conservative seat of Alfred Cove against sitting independent Janet Woollard, whose nine electoral lives are probably due to run out. Another suggestion with quite a few ifs attached is that Labor state secretary Simon Mead might succeed Eric Ripper in Belmont should Ripper lose the leadership and decide to bow out of politics. Still more qualified is an assertion that Alannah MacTiernan might be parachuted back in to assume the party leadership and stave off electoral disaster, the plausibility of which is indicated by the fact that no seat is nominated as a vehicle for her return. Harvey’s suggestion that MacTiernan might succeed Lisa Scaffidi as lord mayor and Scaffidi take over the seat of Perth was subsequently given short shrift by Scaffidi herself, who has dealt similarly with other such suggestions in the past. The rumour on which I would put the least money is that Troy Buswell will face a preselection challenge in Vasse from his wife Margaret, the former having taken up residence with the Greens-turned-independent Fremantle MP Adele Carles.

Newspoll: 57-43 to Liberal-National in WA

The latest quarterly state Newspoll for WA has the two-party vote unchanged from last time, with the Liberal-National government leading 57-43. The primary votes are 43 per cent for the Liberals and 6 per cent for the Nationals, 30 per cent for Labor and 12 per cent for the Greens. Each of these measures have been a picture of stability over the past four polls: the Liberals’ run in that time has been 41, 42, 43 and 43, the Nationals’ has been 6, 7, 6 and 6, Labor’s 30, 29, 31 and 30, the Greens’ 14, 13, 13 and 12, and the two-party has been 57-43, 58-42, 57-43 and 57-43. However, Colin Barnett’s ratings have been slowly eroding, from 56 per cent satisfied an 35 per cent dissatisfied four surveys ago to 50 per cent and 37 per cent now (at his honeymoon peak in January-March 2009, it was 56 per cent and 23 per cent). Eric Ripper is up two to 33 per cent and down one to 43 per cent, returning him to where he was two surveys ago. However, Barnett’s lead as preferred premier has widened slightly, from 56-17 to 58-18.

State polling: WA, NSW, Victoria

Newspoll’s first quarter survey of 827 respondents in Western Australia shows the Coalition government maintaining its commanding position, even if it has failed to pick up any further in the wake of Labor’s leadership ructions in January. Labor’s primary vote has actually picked up two points from the record low of 29 per cent in the last quarter of last year, with the Coalition and the Greens steady on 49 per cent and 13 per cent respectively. The Coalition’s two-party lead has edged down from 58-42 to 57-43. Colin Barnett’s personal ratings are much as they were before: approval down a point to 54 per cent, disapproval down two to 33 per cent. Eric Ripper’s ratings have reached a new low following Ben Wyatt’s abortive leadership challenge, although his decline has in fact been quite modest: approval down two to 31 per cent, disapproval up one to 44 per cent. Ripper has actually managed to make ground on Colin Barnett as preferred premier, although the latter maintains an enormous lead of 56-17 compared with 60-16 last time. Full tables courtesy of GhostWhoVotes.

In other state polling news, Roy Morgan has conducted two micro-polls for New South Wales and Victoria which do little more than confirm the fairly obvious point that voters do not feel inclined to turn out brand new governments. The first thing to be noted is that the sample sizes of 345 and 273 entail huge margins of error of between 5 and 6 per cent. If the results still interest you, the New South Wales poll at least offers the novelty of a Coalition two-party vote with a seven in front of it (70.5-29.5) and a Labor primary vote in the teens (19 per cent). The Coalition primary vote is 56.5 per cent, with the Greens on 13 per cent. The Victorian poll has the Coalition leading 57-43 on two-party preferred from primary votes of 48 per cent for the Coalition, 31 per cent for Labor and 11.5 per cent for the Greens.

The polls also offer the first personal ratings for the new Labor Opposition Leaders, and while these might have a certain interest the sample sizes and don’t know ratings are such that there’s not really much for them to measure. In New South Wales, John Robertson has 18.5 per cent approval and 22.5 per cent disapproval, with 59 per cent can’t say. Barry O’Farrell has 54.5 per cent approval and 10 per cent disapproval with 33.5 per cent can’t say. O’Farrell’s lead as preferred premier is as big as it gets: 69.5 per cent to 7 per cent. In Victoria, Daniel Andrews has 25 per cent approval, 26.5 per cent disapproval and48.5 per cent can’t say. Ted Baillieu has an approval rating of 50.5 per cent and 23 per cent disapproval with 26.5 per cent can’t say, and leads as preferred premier 60 per cent to 14 per cent.

Newspoll: 58-42 to Liberal-National in WA

GhostWhoVotes brings results of the latest quarterly Newspoll of state voting intention in Western Australia, and it finds the state Labor Party joining its New South Wales and Queensland counterparts in the sub-30 primary vote club. From an already parlous position in July-September, Labor is down a point on both the primary vote, now at 29 per cent, and two-party preferred, with the Coalition now leading 58-42. Both leaders’ personal ratings are much as they’ve been all year: Colin Barnett is down a point on approval to 55 per cent and up three on disapproval to 35 per cent, Eric Ripper is down one on approval to 33 per cent and up one on disapproval to 43 per cent, and Barnett’s two-party lead has gone from 61-17 to 60-16. The sample for the poll was 839, for a margin of error of about 3.4 per cent.

Newspoll: 52-48 to Labor

After a fairly lengthy period where the phone pollsters marched in lock-step, GhostWhoVotes reports that Newspoll has broken away from the pack with a 52-48 lead for Labor. More to follow.

UPDATE: The Australian reports Julia Gillard’s lead as preferred prime minister is up from 49-34 to 54-31, but that “only 23 per cent of voters believe the government should go ahead with the NBN without meeting the Coalition demands for a full costing of the venture”.

UPDATE 2: Full tables here, as usual courtesy of GhostWhoVotes. Labor is up two points on the primary vote to 36 per cent, the Coalition down four to 39 per cent and the Greens up one to 14 per cent. Julia Gillard’s approval rating is up five to 46 per cent and her disapproval down four to 37 per cent, while Tony Abbott is down two on approval to 42 per cent and up three on disapproval to 45 per cent. Given the lack of corroboration elsewhere, the collective move in Labor’s favour should be treated with due caution (although their figures were probably a bit undercooked in the previous poll). On the National Broadband Network, 42 per cent support the Coalition’s demand for a cost-benefit analysis with the aforementioned 23 per cent opposed, while 19 per cent express wholesale opposition to the project “in its current form”.

Other matters:

• Peter Wellington, who has enjoyed enormous electoral success since winning the Sunshine Coast hinterland seat of Nicklin at the 1998 state election, says he will run in the corresponding federal seat of Fairfax if the Coalition’s “spoiler” tactics succeed in bringing on an early election. Fairfax has been held since 1990 by Alex Somlyay, a former Liberal and current Liberal National who has said he will not seek another term. Kate Dennehy of Fairfax reports speculation that James McGrath, a “former federal Liberal Party deputy director who reportedly had a falling out with its director”, might be interested in the LNP preselection.

• Phillip Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald has more on JWS Research focus group findings which were reported on in the context of the Victorian election by the Sunday Herald-Sun, this time in relation to federal politics. Labor is said to be suffering a perception that having dumped one leader they could very easily dump another, and that its minority government position has made it “too afraid to make a decision at the risk of offending someone”. While Gillard is “liked”, voters “do not think she is shaping up well as a leader”. However, Tony Abbott has problems of his own, with women finding him “a bit of a bully boy”.

• Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times reports speculation Alannah MacTiernan will run for lord mayor of Perth next year, after failing in her recent bid to move from state to federal politics. The story goes that MacTiernan is keen to again run federally for Canning, but “a three-year wait for another federal election was proving too much”. The report also says Labor was hoping the present lord mayor, Lisa Scaffidi, might make way for by running for the party at the next state election, but the ABC reports she “angrily rejected” suggestions she might do so.

• Tasmania’s Legislative Council last week voted against a motion supporting an increase in the chamber’s numbers from 15 to 19. This follows an agreement between the Labor, Liberal and Greens leaders last month that the Legislative Assembly should revert to the 35-member seven-seat region model which prevailed until 1998, when Labor and the Liberals combined to support a 25-member five-seat model in the expectation that it would neuter the Greens. The ongoing rise in the latter’s electoral support gave lie to that, and the state returned to minority government with the election of one Greens member in each region at the election held in March – with the added sting of the major parties being deprived of the range of parliamentary talent that they would have enjoyed in the old days. However, Premier David Bartlett told Tim Cox on ABC Radio that it would be up to the Council to decide if it wanted to follow suit in reverting to its pre-1998 numbers. The motion was opposed by the chamber’s three Labor members, who were no doubt mindful that the proposed increase in lower house numbers was a hard enough sell as it was – although the solitary Liberal, Vanessa Goodwin, joined with four independents in support.

• Also in Tasmania, state Treasurer Michael Aird has announced he will be quitting his upper house seat of Derwent, to which he was re-elected for a six-year term at the periodical election in May 2009. This means an election for the seat will be held concurrently with the annual periodical upper house elections on the first Saturday in May, which next year will cover the seats of Launceston (previously known as Paterson), Murchison and Rumney, respectively held by independent Don Wing, independent Ruth Forrest and Labor’s Lin Thorp. The ABC reports talk Labor preselection might be contested by David Llewellyn, who lost his seat in Lyons to party rival Rebecca White. More surprisingly, Damien Brown of The Mercury reports former Premier Paul Lennon might fancy a tilt at the seat. The Liberals have confirmed they will field a candidate for the seat, which has traditionally been safe for Labor.

Armadale by-election live

# % Swing 2PP
Buti (ALP) 9927 57.9% 1.8% 71.0%
Van Burgel (CDP) 3525 20.6% 13.2% 29.0%
Tucak (IND) 1484 8.7%
Davies (GRN) 2200 12.8% 2.5%
Informal 960 5.3% -0.6%
Booths counted (out of 12): 12
Counted (% of enrolment): 74.4%
Turnout (% of 2008 vote): 92.0%

8.00pm. Special Institutions and Hospitals now added. Two-candidate preferred count now at 13,027, against 17,136 primary votes counted.

7.45pm. Grovelands now added.

7.42pm. Pardon me, there is still an ordinary polling booth outstanding: Grovelands Primary School.

7.37pm. 3933 two-party votes have now been added, but booth details are not available. Labor looking good for a higher two-party vote as well as primary vote. Comparing a two-party Labor-versus-Liberal result from 2008 with a Labor-versus-CDP result from today is of course not terribly meaningful, but the party should be able to persuade the media otherwise.

7.34pm. The last “proper” booth, Gwynne Park Primary School, has been added, as have 1311 pre-polls.

7.30pm. Armadale and Westfield Park primary schools added. Two booths outstanding include the negligible “Special Institutions, Hospitals & Remotes”. Still no two-party figures available.

7.25pm. Cecil Andrews Senior High School and Neerigen Brook Primary School added, again consistent with the overall picture.

7.21pm. Two more booths, Gwynne Park Primary School and Kelmscott Senior High School, fail to change the picture. Turnout not looking so bad, at least if my calculation is an accurate guide.

7.19pm. Whoops – I was looking at the result for the CDP, who are obviously scooping up homeless Liberals, rather than the Greens, who are performing rather modestly.

7.18pm. In fact, results looking very similar to the Willagee by-election.

7.16pm. Armadale-Kelmscott Senior Citizens Centre and Kingsley Primary School booths added. Labor still looking good to top their 2008 primary vote. The Greens are up just shy of 15 per cent.

7.13pm. If anyone noticed that alarming turnout figure, it was based on a miscalculation that has now been corrected.

7.10pm. Two booths in, Challis Primary School and St Mary in the Valley Anglican Church Hall in relatively marginal Kelmscott, and the Labor is holding up okay. The psychological hurdle for them is whether they can stay ahead of their 2008 primary vote.

7pm. After a slow start, 1188 postal votes have been added, and they show no indication of a boilover. My swing figures are based on booth matching, so with only postal votes available there is nothing showing there yet.

6pm. Welcome to live coverage of Western Australia’s Armdale by-election. First results should be in from about 6.30pm. Given the apparent certainty of a Labor win, the points of interest are how their primary vote bears up, and how much the AFL grand final and election fatigue will affect turnout.