Victorian election reading

Galaxy Research has created a buzz by showing a lower-than-expected Labor lead of 52-48 in its poll in today’s Herald-Sun. However, it comes on the same day as an ACNielsen poll in The Age showing a Labor lead of 56-44, in line with general expectations. A discussion on the upper house contest at Larvatus Prodeo brings my attention to this analysis by Russell Degnan from June last year, which seems to paint a rosier picture for Labor than my own assessment.

UPDATE (25/10/06): Newspoll says 54-46.

One month later

One month after my last post, and with emails starting to trickle in asking if I’m still in business, a quick update on my activities would seem to be in order. As you have probably guessed, I have spent much of this time working on my guide to the November 25 Victorian election, which will go live on November 1 regardless of what state it’s in. That will mark the beginning of the high-intensity Poll Bludger campaign coverage you have come to know and love. I will also be visiting my erstwhile home town of Melbourne from November 15 to view the latter stages of the campaign first hand.

Stuart by-election live

8.05pm. I suppose I should point out that Labor’s vote has fallen from 71.3 per cent at last year’s election, but that was a two-horse race. The two-party result is 68.7-31.3 (with Japanangka in second place), a remarkably modest swing of 2.6 per cent.

7.45pm. Wow, results – all at once. As expected, Karl Hampton has won easily. With all the booth results in, he is on 1123 votes for 58.2 per cent of the total. In second place is former Labor MP Gary Cartwright with 14.6 per cent. Of the two CLP candidates, Rex Granites Japanangka is outpolling Lloyd Spencer-Nelson 11.1 per cent to 7.8 per cent; of the independents, Anna Machado is on 7.1 per cent and the reluctant Peter Tjungarray Wilson on just 23 (1.2 per cent).

7.33pm. The NTEO seem to be dragging their heels.

1pm. Not sure how big an audience I’ll attract, but a half-hearted attempt at live-blogging the Stuart by-election count will begin at 6pm Northern Territory time. The count will not be a particularly exciting process, as the entirely remote electorate is served exclusively by mobile booths. Turnout at last year’s election was only 59 per cent (for a total of just 2535 votes) and will presumably be lower still this time. Discontent with the Martin goverment’s indigenous policies should theoretically make the election of interest, but by all accounts the issue will be decided by Labor’s organisational strength in Aboriginal communities. They have also chosen a good candidate – as well as being an indigenous adviser in the Office of Central Australia, Karl Hampton is the coach of the Central Australian Football League club the Pioneers. The CLP seems to have adopted a tactic of clogging the ballot paper with both official and unofficial candidates in the hope of at least embarrassing Labor by suppressing their primary vote. The official candidates are Rex Granites and Lloyd Spencer, described by the Northern Territory News as "Walpiri men with strong cultural links in different areas of the electorate". The independents include Anna de Sousa Machado, who was the CLP candidate at last year’s election; Gary Cartwright, the former Labor member for Victoria River (which became the new electorate of Daly in a redistribution that deprived him of his strongest areas) who is directing preferences to the CLP; and Peter Tjungarray Wilson, who told the ABC he "hates politics and is only running to support fellow candidate Anna Machado".

New South Wales redistribution: take two

The New South Wales boundaries have now been finalised as well. Geographically dramatic changes have been made to the large electorates in the west after the original proposal had Parkes occupying the entire north-western quarter of the state. It has now traded in more than two-thirds of its total area as originally proposed for the Wellington and Mid-West Regional shires to the east of Dubbo. The state’s north-western vastness will instead be divided between Calare and Farrer, the latter of which loses the Murrumbidgee shire to Riverina. All affected electorates are safe for the Coalition except independent MP Peter Andren’s seat of Calare, whose centre of gravity has moved still further from his home base of Orange.

Elsewhere, a small amount of rejigging has been done around the junction of Paterson, Newcastle and Hunter; changes have been made to the boundary between Parramatta and Reid after the original redistribution deprived the former of the Parramatta town centre; and various adjustments have been made affecting the boundaries of Wentworth, Kingsford-Smith and Sydney. The comments thread of the previous entry contains much productive discussion of the likely effect of these changes.

Not quite Wright/In like Flynn

The federal redistribution for Queensland has now been finalised. The most noteworthy amendment following the redistribution committee’s deliberations is that the new division will be called Flynn, in honour of Royal Flying Doctor Service pioneer Rev John Flynn, rather than the original proposal of Wright, in honour of poet Judith Wright (and not former Labor MP and convicted child sex offender Keith Wright, as locals had apparently assumed). There have also been the following amendments to the boundaries as originally proposed:

The augmented Commission acceded to three particular changes affecting the new division, Capricornia, Hinkler and Maranoa. First, the local government area of Mt Morgan was transferred from the Committee’s proposed new division to Capricornia; secondly, the local government area of Biggenden was transferred from the Committee’s proposed new division to Hinkler; and thirdly, the local government area of Wondai was transferred (in order to compensate for loss of enrolment in the new division by the first and second changes) from Maranoa to the new division.

Mount Morgan is a good Labor area just outside Rockhampton, so this amendment benefits Capricornia MP Kirsten Livermore at the expense of Labor’s chances in Flynn. Biggenden and Wondai are Nationals territory, so these amendments should cancel themselves out with respect to Flynn. Maranoa and the redrawn Hinkler are safe enough for the Nationals that the changes to them will not be significant. Based on the original proposal, Malcolm Mackerras calculated the margins at 3.8 per cent for Labor in Capricornia, 7.9 per cent for the Nationals in Wright/Flynn (a good 2 per cent higher than other estimates suggested), 8.8 per cent for the Nationals in Hinkler and 21.0 per cent for the Nationals in Maranoa.

Bits and pieces

• The only seat still in doubt in Queensland is Bundaberg, which looks likely to be won by Nationals candidate Jack Dempsey. Dempsey led 9,778 to 9,568 at the close of count on Saturday, but the ABC computer was pointing to a 0.3 per cent Labor win. This was based on comparison with results from 2004, when Labor did much better on the as-yet-uncounted declaration and pre-poll votes (55.3 per cent versus 36.7 per cent) than polling booth votes (50.4 per cent versus 41.4 per cent). However, that trend is being substantially reversed this time around. Most pre-poll and postal votes have now been counted (roughly two-thirds of the non-polling booth total, itself 16 per cent of the overall total), and Dempsey’s lead has widened to 11,161 to 10,821. Most of the remaining uncounted votes are absentee votes, of which about 5 per cent will be exhausting minor party votes. With similar figures this time, non-exhausting absentee votes will need to break about 920-580 in Labor’s favour (roughly 70-30) if they are to win the seat. Very, very unlikely.

• Charles Richardson of Crikey has been good enough to invoke my words of wisdom while criticising the media for buying Labor’s late-campaign spin about worrying internal polling:

Governments worry obsessively about overconfidence – the twin dangers of (a) seeming arrogant, which puts voters off, and (b) looking invulnerable, which makes voters think they can safely punish them without risking an opposition victory. So when they seem to be getting too far ahead, out comes the famous "private polling" to play down their chances. The media obediently went along. Having spent the previous week reporting the collapse of Coalition support, they started to have second thoughts. As William Bowe, the Poll Bludger, put it on Friday, "momentum is building behind the idea, if not the reality, of a late Coalition revival". But there was never any real evidence for it. The final polls from both Newspoll and Galaxy picked the result almost exactly, while the punters who swung Centrebet’s odds back towards the Coalition in the last week all lost their money.

However, if Glenn Milne in The Australian is to be believed, the Liberals in particular did enjoy a late-campaign recovery that spared them from being reduced to one seat, maybe even less. This of course could be yet another example of journalists receiving selective intelligence designed to serve the ends of those providing it, and should perhaps be viewed in the context of Liberal leadership ructions. It should be noted that Milne is commonly faulted for serving the ends of particular elements in the Liberal Party, intentionally or otherwise.

• Across the border to the west, the by-election for the Northern Territory seat of Stuart will be held the Saturday after next. Labor’s candidate is Karl Hampton, a ministerial officer to the retiring member, Health and Justice Minister Peter Toyne. The CLP is adopting its favoured tactic of running both white (Lloyd Spencer-Nelson) and Aboriginal (Rex Granites Japanangka) candidates (CORRECTION: thanks to Kerry Gardiner in comments for noting both candidates are in fact indigenous), which is calculated to boost its vote in remote communities (a circumstance born of the Territory’s practice of including candidate photos on ballot papers to assist illiterate voters). The party’s candidate at last year’s election, Anna de Sousa Machado, is running as an independent, as is Gary Cartwright, the Labor member for Victoria River (now called Daly) from 1990 to 1994. Rounding out the ballot paper is a third independent, Peter Tjungarray Wilson.

A chart for your enjoyment

It occurs to me that a chart like this is a good way to illustate Queensland’s long, strange electoral history since the onset of the Joh era. Results obtained from the Australian Government and Politics Database, product of the world’s finest political science department.

UPDATE: Why stop there. This chart goes back to 1926, late in the life of the Labor government that came to power in 1915; before that the various conservative groups are too hard to categorise. The Queensland People’s Party and United Australia Party are counted as Liberal.

Break it down

Earlier in the campaign, I had occasion to divide Queensland’s 89 seats into 12 regions in order to compare variations in population growth. I will now use the same regions to compare the size of the two-party swing for and against Labor, after omitting seats where independents or exceptional circumstances interrupted the normal two-party contest. The number in brackets after the name of each region is the number of seats in the sample; the two sets of figures are mean and standard deviation. I will add further commentary regarding the outliers in these samples shortly. UPDATE: See below.

. MEAN SD
Sunshine Coast (4) -4.1 3.6
Gold Coast (8) 2.0 2.6
Northern Brisbane (7) -0.7 1.6
Urban Hinterland (3) 1.6 2.7
Southern Brisbane (13) -1.7 3.5
Central Coast (4) 0.7 4.1
Inner Brisbane (13) -1.9 2.4
Western Brisbane (6) -0.4 2.8
Cairns/Townsville (6) 4.6 2.6
Regional Towns (5) 1.1 3.5
Interior/North (5) 0.2 5.9
Weighted (7) 3.3 3.0

By the way, the regions are listed in order of their rate of population growth, a potentially interesting hangover from the last time I used the table.

Sunshine Coast. The mean figure here would be even more pronounced if you removed Pumicestone, which swung 0.5 per cent to Labor. That would leave Kawana (7.3 per cent), Maroochydore (6.5 per cent) and Caloundra (3.0 per cent). Independent-held Nicklin and Noosa have been excluded, although it’s notable the Nationals were up 6.9 per cent in Nicklin and Labor down 3.1 per cent.

Gold Coast. Most of the results here were roughly status quo compared with 2004, including Gaven, which swung 1.8 per cent where it needed to swing 5.0 per cent if the Nationals were to repeat their April by-election win. The exceptions were the big swings to Labor in Robina (6.5 per cent) and Burleigh (4.0 per cent).

Northern Brisbane. The wild talk about Kallangur amounted to nothing more than a 3.2 per cent swing; all other swings in this region were less than 2 per cent either side.

Urban Hinterland. Not much left of this after you remove Gympie and Nanango – Lockyer (2.8 per cent to Labor), Beaudesert (3.5 per cent to Labor) and Glass House (1.5 per cent to Liberal).

Southern Brisbane. There are two conspicuous outliers here: Chatsworth, where Michael Caltabiano still managed a 9.8 per cent swing compared with 2004, and Cleveland, which lived up to expectations with a swing of 8.0 per cent. Remove those two and you get a mean of -0.4 per cent and a standard deviation of 1.7 per cent. So in other words, an extremely stable picture with a small number of exceptions.

Central Coast. Gladstone and Maryborough are out because of independents, Whitsunday because its 11.0 per cent swing to the Nationals was an outlier born of one-off circumstances. That leaves an evenly mixed bag: Burnett (4.4 per cent to Nationals member Rob Messenger), Hervey Bay (0.8 per cent away from Labor member Andrew McNamara), Keppel (3.2 per cent swing to Labor member Paul Hoolihan) and Mirani (4.7 per cent swing against Nationals member Ted Malone).

Inner Brisbane. Ashgrove (6.7 per cent) and Brisbane Central (5.0 per cent) slightly boost the anti-Labor mean here. Interestingly, Peter Beattie’s margin in the latter has gone over two elections from 25.0 per cent to 14.6 per cent. Removing those two puts the mean at -1.2 and the standard deviation at 1.8.

Western Brisbane. A 4.6 per cent swing against Labor in Inala and a 3.6 per cent swing to them in Ipswich West (a slightly embarrassing outcome for retiring member Don Livingstone) cancel each other out and inflate the standard deviation; the other four seats hardly budged.

Cairns/Townsville. Uniformly excellent results for Labor, the outstanding figure being the 9.6 per cent swing in Thuringowa, partly explained by independents distorting the result in 2004. Removing that reduces the mean to 3.6 per cent and the standard deviation to 1.1. Other swings ranged from 2.2 per cent in supposedly vulnerable Mulgrave to 4.9 per cent in Mundingburra.

Regional Towns. By which I mean Toowoomba, Bundaberg, Mackay and Rockhampton. The only swing against Labor was the 5.0 per cent that has brought Bundaberg down to the wire; remove that and you’ve got a mean of 2.6 per cent and a standard deviation of 0.8.

Interior/North The figures here are not much use, as the results are a testament to the importance of candidates in these areas. First-termers Jason O’Brien (Labor for Cook) and Shane Knuth (Nationals for Charters Towers) picked up 7.6 per cent and 8.4 per cent swings, while the other seats hardly budged.

Weighted. By which I mean the seats that are allowed to have fewer voters than the others because they cover vast geographic areas. This covers eight seats, including Tablelands which is excluded because it is held by One Nation; of the remainder, Mount Isa is held by Labor and the others are held by the Nationals. There was a general swing to Labor throughout the area, only Darling Downs bucking the trend by going 1.8 per cent the other way. Hinchinbrook led the way with a 7.8 per cent swing to Labor, influenced by the retirement of sitting member Marc Rowell.