Category: Western Australian Politics

Western Australian election minus two weeks

Highlights, such as they are, of another uneventful week on the WA election trail.

Two weeks out from election day, there is still not a great deal to report – which I guess is instructive in and of itself, a low-key campaigning presumably being advantageous to the party with the giant majority.

• Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times reports Liberal leader Libby Mettam has promised to reverse the government’s upper house reforms and reinstate the old rurally weighted system of three metropolitan and three non-metropolitan regions returning six members each, arguing that “the mining and pastoral, agricultural and south-west regions are the backbone of the West Australian economy where the wealth of the state is generated”. While this will undoubtedly be popular in regional areas, implementing it will require the concurrence of an upper house elected under the new system, which is likely to provide representation for a number of small parties who would not have won seats under the old system, together with natural opponents in Labor and the Greens.

• The Liberal candidate for Kimberley, Darren Spackman, “resigned” this week at the direction of Libby Mettam, though the closure of nominations means he will remain identified as the Liberal candidate on ballot papers. Spackman made headlines earlier in the week over a Facebook post from 2022 in which he described a break-in at his Kununurra hotel as a “welcome to country”. Mettam at first went no further than characterising this as a poor choice of words, but then gave Spackman his marching orders when he subsequently asserted that “ten years ago I would have said hang the c…s”. This was despite the overall thrust of his comments being that his position had softened over time, as he had come to see that young offenders were in “survival mode”. Presumably Mettam had the salty language in mind when she said “these are not the values of the Liberal Party”, having not deemed the post itself a sacking offence.

• Joe Spagnolo in today’s Sunday Times reports Labor has “written off Nedlands, Carine and Churchlands, and expect to lose Warren-Blackwood and Kalamunda” – the latter being the one surprise of the list, since Labor won it in 2017 and hold a post-redistribution margin of 15.1%. Labor is also “nervous about losing seats like Kingsley, Scarborough, South Perth, Albany, Geraldton and Kalgoorlie”, which again sounds unremarkable with one exception, that being Kingsley, which was likewise won in 2017 and has a margin of 16.9%.

• A leaders’ debate will be conducted tomorrow evening by 7News, but at state level especially, these almost invariably go unnoticed by the public at large. Some manner of verdict will be reached by a selected audience of seven traditional Labor supporters, seven traditional Liberal supporters and seven who are undecided.

Western Australian election minus three weeks

The publication of candidates provides something to talk about after an uneventful first week of the campaign.

Ballot paper draws have been conducted for the Western Australian election and candidates published on the Electoral Commission website, though they will not be in a format I can make use of until later today (UPDATE: Now updated). I will then incorporate full candidate lists into my election guide. Antony Green crunches some numbers on his blog and finds nominations slightly down on 2021 for the lower house and dramatically down for the upper house, reflecting the abolition of the former system of six regions and the group voting tickets that encouraged preference harvesting.

There are twelve registered parties, each with an upper house ticket, and Antony Green has been able to surmise that the ten independent candidates include five grouped on to a ticket and another five in the ungrouped column. The formerly is presumably the grouping that brings together three cross-benchers incumbents who have broken with their original parties: Louise Kingston, formerly of the Nationals; Sophia Moermond of Legalise Cannabis; and the member formerly known as Ben Dawkins, who ran for Labor in 2021 but has been an independent since filling a mid-term vacancy, except when he had a spell with One Nation. Dawkins has changed his name to Austin Trump, allowing him to trade under the name “Aussie Trump”. There was a period when this grouping seemed to have split, Kingston promoting her wares through an “Independents for WA” website while Moermond and Dawkins-Trump made common cause as Vote Independent WA. Evidently the rift has healed though, with the former website now offline and Kingston back on the original site.

The names on the registered parties list are all familiar, with one conspicuous exception: Stop Pedophiles! Protect kiddies!, which is how the Democratic Labor Party has chosen to brand itself following federally inspired laws prohibiting minor parties from having Labor or Liberal in their names. The West Australian reports the other upper house cross-bencher, Wilson Tucker, was in talks to run with the Democratic Labour Party when it was still called that, but broke ranks when he learned of the new name and will now retire from politics. Tucker was famously elected to a Mining and Pastoral region seat for the Daylight Saving Party in 2021 off 98 first preference votes and a tight network of preference harvesting. Tucker became an independent when the party was deregistered in February 2023. Shooters Fishers and Farmers seem to have chosen to be identified on ballot papers, rather unwisely in my view, as SFFPWA.

This is the first election at which how-to-vote cards have been registered and published on the Electoral Commission website, a helpful practice from the perspective of the election analyst. For the upper house, Labor is recommending a second preference to the Greens, a third to Legalise Cannabis and a fourth to Animal Justice in city seats, but a second to Legalise Cannabis and third to the Greens in the country – prompting not unreasonable accusations from the Liberals that it is seeking to obscure its support for Animal Justice in areas sensitive to live sheep exports. The Liberals are recommending six numbers be marked, successively for the Nationals, Australian Christians, One Nation, Shooters and Libertarians. Labor are favouring the Liberals over the Nationals in three-cornered contests in Mid-West, Warren-Blackwood, Geraldton and Kalgoorlie. Neither side seems keen on independents: Labor has competitive contenders in Geraldton and Kalgoorlie behind both the Liberals and the Nationals, and the Liberals are favouring Labor incumbent Simone McGurk over teal independent Kate Hulett in Fremantle.

In other news, The Sunday Times reported this week that the Liberals are either managing expectations or taking a distinctly bearish view of proceedings, expecting to emerge from the election with between six and twelve seats. This suggests a swing of between 7% and 13%, as compared with the 14% indicated by the Newspoll last week. For Labor’s part, Dylan Caporn of The West Australian reports a source saying Albany will be “hard to win”, being “the only electorate in WA where the ban on live sheep exports is putting us at risk”.

Newspoll: 56-44 to Labor in Western Australia

The first poll of the Western Australian election campaign suggests a semi-respectable result for the Liberals, without leaving much doubt as to the likely result.

The Australian celebrates the issue of the writs for the March 8 Western Australian state election (which you can learn about in detail through the Poll Bludger election guide) with a fresh result from Newspoll. This suggests Labor is headed for what would normally be reckoned a handsome win, but with a swing at the high end of what polling over the last year or so has indicated.

Labor is credited with a 56-44 lead on two-party preferred, compared with the extraordinary 70-30 result in 2021, from primary votes of Labor 42% (59.9% in 2021), Liberal 32% (21.3%), Nationals 3% (4.0%), Greens 12% (6.9%) and One Nation 4% (1.3%). Roger Cook’s personal ratings, while no match for Mark McGowan’s, are very strong by normal standards, with approval at 55% and disapproval at 37%, while Liberal leader Libby Mettam records 39% approval and 41% disapproval. Cook leads Mettam 54-34 as preferred premier.

The poll was conducted last Wednesday to Tuesday from a sample of 1039.

Western Australian election guide

Introducing the Poll Bludger’s comprehensive guide to a Western Australian election that will be held on March 8, federal circumstances permitting.

The Poll Bludger kicks off what promises to be an action-packed year with a comprehensive guide to a Western Australian state election now 66 days away. As always, this features pages for each of the lower house electorates including historic background and displays of past results in map, table and chart form, a guide to an election for the Legislative Council to be conducted for the first time under a new system that abolishes the old model of six-member regions, and a general overview of the situation. A full accounting of the post-redistribution margins and party vote shares can be found here. If any of this seems of value, a reminder that the bi-monthly Poll Bludger donation drive is also under way.

Some recent election-related developments since I last weighed in on the subject, either new or hitherto unnoticed by me:

• Steve Catania has been confirmed as Labor’s candidate for Midland, to be vacated with the retirement of Michelle Roberts. Catania is a lawyer and former Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union organiser, the brother of Labor-turned-Nationals former MP Vince Catania, and the son of former Labor MP and Vincent mayor Nick Catania.

• Kyran O’Donnell, the Liberal member for Kalgoorlie from 2017 to 2021, announced in August he would run for the seat as an independent. O’Donnell is a former police officer and was elected to Kalgoorlie-Boulder City Council in October 2023. He was initially preselected for an unwinnable position on the Liberal Legislative Council ticket for the coming election.

• Three independents have emerged who can loosely be categorised at teals: Rachel Horncastle in Cottesloe, a general practitioner backed by the Cott Independent group; Lisa Thornton in Churchlands, a Stirling councillor backed by the Churchlands Independent; and Rosemarie de Vries in Nedlands, a Subiaco councillor. Another independent in a normally Liberal-held seat is former Global Lithium director Hayley Lawrance in South Perth, who disavows the teal label.

WA miscellany: state polls, federal polls, Labor candidates

Another poll showing Labor headed for a much reduced but still substantial majority in WA, and holding up relatively well there federally.

DemosAU brings us a poll of 948 respondents in Western Australia, conducted from October 30 to November 4, showing voting intention both federally and for a state election that will be held on March 8 unless a federal election clashes with it. On the latter count, the poll credits state Labor with a two-party lead of 56-44, suggesting a swing against it of 14% from the extraordinary result of 2021. The primary votes are Labor 41%, Liberal 34%, Nationals 4%, Greens 12% and others 9%, with Roger Cook leading Liberal leader Libby Mettam 42-29 as preferred premier.

The federal component of the poll has Labor leading 52-48, a swing against it of 3% compared with 2022, from primary votes of Labor 34%, Coalition 38%, Greens 14%, One Nation 6% and others 8%. Anthony Albanese leads Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister by 40% to 33%. The linked reports for both polls feature breakdowns by gender, age, education, residential tenure and personal income.

Another federal voting intention poll from the state, by RedBridge Group, shows Labor travelling remarkably well with a two-party lead of 54.5-45.5. The poll is related in a report by Katina Curtis of The West Australian, whose Labor sources say the result is consistent with the party’s internal polling.

Further developments relating to the state election:

• Rhys Williams, who has served as the local mayor since 2017, has been confirmed as Labor’s new candidate for Mandurah after David Templeman, the member since 2001, announced his retirement in September. The Liberal Party’s initial nominee for the seat, James Hall, withdrew last month over social media posts from 2017 stating he was “proud to be white”.

• Michelle Roberts has announced she will retire at the election after a parliamentary career going back to 1994, all but the first two years of which have been spent as member for Midland. The West Australian reports her likely successor as Labor candidate is Stephen Catania, a former CFMEU lawyer now with Eureka Lawyers. Catania is the father of Nick Catania and brother of Vince Catania, both former MPs.

Freshwater Strategy: 55-45 to Labor in Western Australia

Multiple polls point to a win for Labor in Western Australia rather more on the scale of 2017 than 2021.

Hot on the heels of the Wolf & Smith national results on state voting intention, The West Australian had its own Freshwater Strategy poll on Monday which matched its headline figure on 55-45 in favour of the state Labor government, as compared with its unrepeatable 70-30 win at the 2021 election. The primary votes are Labor 39%, Liberal 32%, Nationals 6% and Greens 11%, with Roger Cook leading Libby Mettam 46-34 as preferred premier.

The accompanying reportage says Roger Cook has a plus seven net approval rating and that 37% “have either never heard of him or are unsure”, which presumably means he has 35% approval and 28% disapproval. This compares with plus four for Libby Mettam, minus two for the presumably little-known Nationals leader Shane Love, minus four for ambitious Liberal election candidate Basil Zempilas – and plus 41 for the departed Mark McGowan. The sample for the poll was 1045, with the field work period not identified.

UPDATE: The Freshwater Strategy website has the results, which show Libby Mettam at 21% approval and 17% disapproval (29% had never heard of her, compared with 10% for Roger Cook). The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday.

The voting intention results are little different from those of another Freshwater Strategy poll reported by The West Australian three weeks ago, commissioned in this case by the Liberal Party. Conducted in July from a sample of 1000, it had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%. The primary votes from the Wolf & Smith poll were Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%.

Recent-ish news relevant to the March 8 election:

• Labor determined the order of its Legislative Council ticket in mid-July, with Dylan Caporn of The West Australian helpfully listing all 22 candidates and their union and factional affiliations. With Labor on track for perhaps fourteen seats, nine of the 22 incumbents are in positions of greater or lesser comfort; another, Stephen Pratt, will run for the lower house seat of Jandakot; two (Sandra Carr and Dan Caddy) are on the cusp; and four in positions where they are unlikely to be returned. Four non-incumbents hold competitive or better positions, one being Nedlands MP Katrina Stratton at number ten. Andrew O’Donnell, a staffer for Balcatta MP David Michael, aligned with the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), is at nine; Lauren Cayoun, the party’s assistant state secretary, aligned with the Right faction Australian Workers Union, is at eleven; and Parwinder Kaur, biotechnician and associate professor at the University of Western Australia, aligned with the SDA, is at thirteen.

• One Nation’s sole incumbent, South West region MLC Ben Dawkins, has not won a position on his party’s Legislative Council ticket. Dawkins ran for Labor at the 2021 election, entered parliament as an independent when he filled Alannah MacTiernan’s vacancy on a countback in March 2023, and joined One Nation in February. The ticket will instead be headed by Rod Caddies, the head of the party’s state organisation, who told The West Australian he “would be the one responsible for who is on the ticket”. Caddies expressed the view that Dawkins had not “lived up to the professionalism of what I would expect”. Dawkins will nonetheless remain a member of the party, whose formal registration for the election was confirmed by the Western Australian Electoral Commission a fortnight ago.

• Aswath Chavittupara, whose daughter Aishwarya’s death while awaiting treatment at the Perth Children’s Hospital emergency department in April 2021 was a serious embarrassment for the government, will be the Liberal candidate for Morley, after earlier saying he would run as an independent. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Chavittupara won preselection ahead of Nirmal Singh, owner of a beauty services company.

• The Liberal candidate for Bicton will be Christopher Dowson, a former policy officer at the Department of Premier and Cabinet and current postdoctoral fellow at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Dowson won preselection ahead of Bill Koul, owner of an engineering consultancy and an unsuccessful candidate for the federal Tangney preselection.

Polls: Resolve Strategic, RedBridge/Accent MRP poll, Wolf & Smith federal and state (open thread)

One regular and two irregular polls, one projecting a Labor minority government, the other offering a rare read on state voting intention across the land.

A lot going on in the world of polling:

Resolve Strategic

Nine Newspapers has the regular monthly Resolve Strategic poll, which has Labor on 28% (down one), the Coalition on 37% (steady), the Greens on 13% (steady) and One Nation on 6% (steady). My estimate of two-party preferred from these results is 50-50, based on preference flows from the 2022 election. Anthony Albanese holds a 35-34 lead as preferred prime minister, after trailing 36-35 last time. Albanese’s combined very good and good rating is up one to 35%, with poor and very poor at up two 53%, while Peter Dutton is respectively steady at 41% and up four to 42%. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1614.

Accent Research/RedBridge Group MRP poll

Accent Research and RedBridge Group have published their second multi-level regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll, in what looks like being a regular quarterly series. This aims for a detailed projected election result by surveying a large national sample, in this case of 5976 surveyed from July 10 to August 27, and using demographic modelling to produce results for each electorate. The full report isn’t in the public domain as far as I can tell but it’s been covered on the ABC’s Insiders and in the Financial Review. UPDATE: Full report here.

The results are not encouraging for Labor: where the previous exercise rated Labor a strong chance of retaining majority government, with a floor of 73 seats and a further nine nine too close to call, they are now down to 64 with 14 too close to call, with the Coalition up from 53 to 59. The median prediction from a range of potential outcomes is that Labor will hold 69 seats, the Coalition 68, the Greens three and others ten. This is based on primary vote projections in line with the recent trend of national polling, with Labor on 32%, the Coalition on 38% and the Greens on 12%.

Five seats are rated as Coalition gains that weren’t last time, Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons and Aston having moved from too-close-to-call and Paterson going from Labor retain to Coalition gain without passing go. Bruce, Dobell, Hunter, Casey, Tangney, McEwen and Bennelong go from Labor retain to too-close-to-call, while Coalition-held Deakin and Moore are no longer on their endangered list. However, the traffic is not all one way, with Casey in Victoria and Forde in Queensland going from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call. So far as the underlying model is concerned, it is presumably not a coincidence that both seats are on the metropolitan fringes.

The results show a mixed picture for the teals, who are reckoned to have gone backwards in the city, such that Curtin goes from too-close-to-call to Coalition retain and Goldstein goes from teal retain to Liberal gain, but forwards in the country, shifting Wannon from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call while maintaining Cowper as a teal gain. For the Greens, Ryan goes from retained to too-close-to-call while Brisbane does the opposite, with Melbourne and Griffith remaining Greens retains.

Whereas the last assessment was based on 2022 election boundaries, the latest one makes use of the redistribution proposals for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Respectively, this takes the teal seat of North Sydney out of contention and moves Hughes from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call; costs Labor Higgins and moves Chisholm from Labor retain to too-close-to-call; and introduces Bullwinkel to the too-close-to-call column.

My routine caveat with MRP is that it handles major parties better than independents and minors, perhaps especially with what by MRP standards is fairly modest sample (a similar exercise before the last election involving some of the same personnel had a sample of 18,923). I am particularly dubious about its projection of a blowout Labor win against the Greens in Wills. There also seems reason to doubt its precision in relation to a demographic wild card like Lingiari.

Wolf & Smith federal and state polling

Also just out is an expansive national poll from a new outfit called Wolf & Smith, a “strategic campaign agency based in Sydney” that appears to involve Jim Reed, principal of Resolve Strategic and alumnus of Liberal Party pollsters Crosby Textor. The poll was conducted from August 6 to 29 through an online panel from a vast sample of 10,239, and includes results federally and for each state government. The federal poll has Labor leading 51-49, from primary votes of Labor 29%, Coalition 36%, Greens 13% and One Nation 6%. At state level:

• The poll joins RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic in recording weak numbers for the Minns government in New South Wales, showing a 50-50 result on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 32%, Coalition 38% and Greens 12%, from a sample of 2047.

• The Coalition leads 52-48 in Victoria from primary votes of Labor 28%, Coalition 40% and Greens 14%, from a sample of 2024, which is likewise broadly in line with recent results from RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic.

• The Liberal National Party leads 57-43 in Queensland from primary votes of Labor 24%, Coalition 42%, Greens 12%, One Nation 8% and Katter’s Australian Party 3%, from a sample of 1724, which lines up well with the most recent YouGov poll.

• Labor leads 55-45 in Western Australia from primary votes of Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%, from a sample of 878. Again, this sits well with the most recent other poll from the state, conducted for the Liberal Party by Freshwater Strategy in July from a sample of 1000 and published in The West Australian, which had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%.

• In the first poll result of any substance from the state since the March 2022 election, Labor leads 60-40 in South Australia from primary votes of Labor 41%, Liberal 28%, Greens 11% and One Nation 5%, from a sample of 856. The Liberal leadership change occurred in the first week of the poll’s three-week survey period.

• A Tasmanian sample of 786 finds both major parties down from the March election result, Liberal from 36.7% to 32% and Labor from 29.0% to 23%, with the Greens steady on 14% (13.9% at the election) and the Jacqui Lambie Network up from 6.7% to 11% – though most of the survey period predated the party’s recent implosion.

And the rest

• The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has results of polling conducted by YouGov in June concerning the US alliance and related matters of regional strategy, conducted in conjunction with polling in the US and Japan. Together with an Essential Research poll in July, it points to a softening in attitudes towards Donald Trump, with 26% now rating that Australia should withdraw from the alliance if he wins, down from 37% last year. However, 46% would be “very concerned about the state of US democracy. Twenty per cent of Australian respondents felt US handling of China was too aggressive, compared with only 9% in Japan and 10% in the US, and 40% agreed Australia should send military forces “to help the United States defend Taiwan … if China attacks”, down six from last year, with 32% disagreeing, up ten. Respondents in all three countries were asked if it were “a good idea for Australia to have nuclear-powered submarines”: 51% of Australians agreed while 19% disagreed, compared with 35% and 16% of Americans daring to venture an opinion one way or the other. The survey was conducted from June 17 to 25, from sample of a little over 1000 in each country.

• JWS Research has the results of its latest quarterly True Issues survey on issue salience. Cost of living remains by far the issue most frequently invoked as being among the “most important issues the Australian government should focus on”, despite a six-point drop since May. The survey also finds a net minus 22 rating for direction of the national economy, down two on May and the equal worst result going back to the series’ inception in 2013.

Western Australian election minus eight months

A small sample WA state poll offers limited but very good news for the Labor government. Also featured: 3500 words of minute detail on six months’ worth of preselections for next year’s election.

State polls from Western Australia these days are few and far between (and rarer still in South Australia, but that’s another story), so I consider it worth observing that The West Australian today reports on a small-sample private poll for the northern suburbs seat of Hillarys by Utting Research, whose principal is former Labor pollster John Utting – and beg the reader’s indulgence for the over-analysis to follow.

Keeping in mind its sample of 350 and error margin of over 5%, its result of 61-39 in favour of Labor suggests a swing to the Liberals of 8% – impressive in normal contexts, but not where the statewide result from the previous election was 70-30. As the report in The West Australian observes, a uniform swing of that size would bag the Liberals only four extra seats on top of their existing three (the two they won in 2021 and the third gained with North West Central MP Merome Beard’s defection from the Nationals, which will only be retained if she can defeat Nationals leader Shane Love in the new seat of Mid West). To this could presumably be added a Nationals gain from Labor in Warren-Blackwood, getting them to four if they win Mid West and three if they don’t. Barring losses to independents or minor parties, Labor would continue to reign supreme with 49 seats out of 59.

The poll nonetheless shows a dive in the Labor vote primary vote to 45%, compared with my own post-redistribution reckoning of 61.3% in 2021. However, none of this goes to the Liberals, who are at 27% as compared with 26.8%. The Greens are at 15%, after managing only 5.2% in 2021. Roger Cook is at 41% approval and 36% approval; the poll didn’t bother with Libby Mettam and skipped straight to Basil Zempilas, on 38% approval and 40% disapproval but with a remarkable 95% name recognition. The news was less happy for federal Labor – whereas 52% expressed approval of the Cook government and 37% disapproval, the result for the Albanese government was almost exactly reversed at 36% and 53%. The poll was conducted June 3 to 14 for the Home Builders Action Group.

Another benefit from the poll is in providing me with an opportunity to unload the gigantic volume of state preselection news I have accumulated since the last such post six month ago. To make things semi-digestible, seats are gathered below by upper house region for the metropolitan seats:

Continue reading “Western Australian election minus eight months”

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