tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40525939450545956752024-03-28T21:53:08.284+11:00Dr Kevin BonhamELECTORAL, POLLING AND POLITICAL ANALYSIS, COMMENT AND NEWS FROM THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CLARK.
IN MAY'S LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL ELECTIONS, VOTE ONLY FOR CANDIDATES WHO WILL KILL SECTION 196 OF THE TASMANIAN ELECTORAL ACT WITH FIRE.Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.comBlogger962125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-69416081895991383532024-03-24T12:05:00.025+11:002024-03-28T21:40:12.930+11:00Tasmania Embraces Chaos: 2024 Election Tallyboard And Summary<div><b>TASMANIA 2024: Liberal Minority Government Expected (Subject to will of the parliament)</b></div><div><b>Labor appears to be not seeking to form government </b></div><div><b>Rebecca White expected to resign leadership, Dean Winter and Josh Willie may contest</b></div><b><div><b><br /></b></div>EXPECTED WINS</b> (Some not completely confirmed) LIB 15 ALP 10 GRN 5 JLN 2 IND 2<div><div><b>IN DOUBT</b> JLN 1 vs Labor 3 Lyons, JLN better placed unless leakage within ticket is high</div><div><b>EXPECTED OUTCOME </b>15-10-5-3-2 or less likely 15-11-5-2-2</div><div><br /></div><div>Links to seat postcount pages <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-bass.html">Bass</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-braddon.html">Braddon</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-clark.html">Clark</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-franklin.html">Franklin</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmania-postcount-lyons.html">Lyons</a></div><div><br /></div><div>--</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Updates Monday</span></b></div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Rebecca White is expected to resign as Labor leader this afternoon with Dean Winter and Josh Willie likely to be candidates for leadership unless a unity deal is done. Willie is from the left side of the party which has had the numbers in the past, but is not that well known outside Clark; it will be interesting to see if we get a contest and how it plays out. I may have a separate article to cover the leadership contest if there is one. </span></span></h2><div>Update 12:30 White has indeed resigned as leader. </div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Updates Sunday: Labor Folds, Or Does It?</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>After writing this article I have seen a <a href="https://pro.twitter.com/i/decks/1471975375366328322">report from journalists</a> that "Labor declared last night’s election lost at a state administrative committee meeting today" (which would mean a leadership spill). Methinks the Parliament when elected should be making that decision not faceless faction hacks. There is no clear word from Rebecca White who has only conceded that it's "very unlikely" Labor can form government and at this stage has not resigned. While I liked her speech last night some in her party may not have! Rather unclear what's going on with this.</div><div><br /></div><div>White has now issued statements in which she said among other things:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"I think this result demonstrates that it’s very hard for Labor to win government and Jeremy Rockliff will be given the first opportunity under conventions to test his numbers and seek support from the parliament.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Ultimately it will be up to him to make it work."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>and </div><div><br /></div><div><i>"While there has been an overwhelming shift in votes away from the Liberal party they still hold the most seats in this election and convention will dictate that they will be asked by the Governor to form government."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Most seats is<b> not</b> a convention in Australian systems. The Premier will be reappointed if he asks to be but that applies whether or not he has the most seats and whether or not he can form a government, because it is his right to "meet the Parliament". Negotiations about the formation of government between parties are not normally a matter for the Governor; the parties conduct these on their own terms and the Governor is advised when the Premier/Prime Minister is in a position to do so. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>5:00 </b>I have just looked at the Labor state rules. The leadership falls vacant (16.4) "<i>Following every House of Assembly election where the Party does not form Government,</i>" The test is whether or not the party forms government; as that fact remains unknown for now there is no trigger for it to be assumed. Nor has anything said since the ABC's report (backed by another source) been consistent with the idea that Labor declared the election lost. So has there been a garbled communication with the media, is somebody up to no good, or did this meeting outcome actually happen? Clear as mud. Also of interest is 16.10 under which Labor cannot allow Ministers from other parties (but it does not exclude independents) and also "<i>the Parliamentary Labor Party shall not form a minority state government unless the Administrative Committee on behalf of the ALP membership has firstly been consulted</i>".</div><div><br /></div><div><b>7:00 </b>25 seat estimates for #politas on current numbers (Lib-ALP-Grn-JLN-Ind)</div><div><br /></div><div>Ba: 2-2-1-0-0</div><div>Br: 3-1-0-1-0</div><div>Cl: 1-2-1-0-1</div><div>Fr: 2-1-1-0-1</div><div>Ly: 2-2 last Grn, JLN or Lib</div><div><br /></div><div>Lib 10-11 ALP 8 Grn 3-4 JLN 1-2 IND 2 </div><div><br /></div><div><b>11:15 </b>Matthew Denholm in The Australian suggests the decision has in fact been taken to not seek to form government (16.10) but the leadership ballot will wait til all the votes are counted. Obviously, White cannot stay leader if Labor will not govern. </div></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Original Article</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>As the cries of "Four more years!" rang out on the tallyroom floor from the, for the moment, Liberal faithful, I only just resisted the urge to yell back "Don't you mean three?" The Liberal Party was given a majority in 2018 and lost it and went to an early election after it could not manage one of its own people. It won another one in 2021 and exactly the same thing happened but this time there were two of them! It asked again in 2024 and the voters would not be fooled the third time. It was right to ask because the Parliament had become illegitimate because of the Liberals' candidate selection and personnel management failures. But now a minority government of some kind is the very clear will of the voters and the idea that we should have voted otherwise, the idea that we could have voted otherwise, is laughable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hare-Clark doesn't have two-party preferred as such, but rough estimates can be derived. I may refine this later but this election between the major parties has been a draw, or nearly so. The 2PP equivalent will be somewhere near 50-50 (which would be an 8% swing), perhaps with Labor just slightly in front, but under compulsory preferences it would have been about 53.5-46.5 to Labor. I think a slight majority of voters wanted the Government gone, but enough of those of that view would have voted 1-7 and stopped that their ballot papers won't fully reflect that. If either major party can form government without betraying what it said on the campaign trail about how it would do so (and without any defections, that's looking at you there Lambie Network), then that will be a fair result.</div><div><br /></div><div>The major parties tried at this election to scare voters away from chaos, but both were themselves chaos that faked that its name was stability. The Liberals offered a campaign as disordered as a candidate lineup that ranged from MPs to the left of Malcolm Turnbull to people who belong in One Nation or Australian Christians and should never have been endorsed by a major party. The Liberal campaign was a hyperactive animal that thought that it would die if it did not throw three dead cats a week. But after leaving nothing on the table as it tried to prevent voters electing a hung parliament, it has come back with ... nothing. It started the election polling in the mid to high 30s and it finished there. At least there was some humour there but <i>what on earth was that</i>?</div><div><br /></div><div>In Labor's case there will be some relief. Facing disaster in the late uComms and Freshwater polls they have instead pulled up round the high end of the polling range (29% in Redbridge was their best poll of the year). But still with a double-digit swing against a ten year old government coming off a COVID-boosted 2021 result, they have gained almost nothing on their disaster-strewn 2021 campaign. Federal drag effects aside - a far too rarely mentioned elephant in the room - that isn't good.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moreover, to the extent it is "not bad", the result is stained by Labor's signage tactics at polling booths. The signs trying to scare voters off voting for other parties were at best feeble-minded, dishonest and immature, and their placement either was illegal in multiple ways or should be made so for the future in the first 100 days of parliament. What I saw last night of postal and prepoll impacts on the vote tallies (ie not much) casts doubt however on whether many voters were fooled. I may revise this later but my initial view on the most likely explanation for Labor outdoing most of its polling is either some degree of polling error or soft Labor voters taking the "independent" option in polls then voting Labor anyway. </div><div><br /></div><div>The ALP campaign did not radiate chaos in the same way that the Liberals' did, but it also did not project enough real keenness to govern. (My favourite symptom of this was a Labor webpage that purported to tell you how much you would save on your power bill, but insisted on harvesting your email address before you could have the answer). Labor tried to focus on core issues and the failings of government, but the attempt to display competence to fix them was marred by policy mistakes and not being able to match the Liberals' campaign energy (that said, I'm not sure anything could). Above all else there is still the problem that Tasmanian Labor is mortified of the wedge. I would say it struggles desperately to stand for things but that is wrong, too often it does not struggle for it does not try. Labor's stadium approach was such a mess that even though the Liberals' policy was a potential death knell for the project for anybody with a brain, the Liberals were still able to market themselves as the clearly pro-stadium party and keep stadium supporters onside. </div><div><br /></div><div>Rebecca White's speech was mostly an excellent reflection of both the Liberals' hubris and the new realities confronting Labor as the diversity of anti-Liberal opinion spreads out, but the party's challenge is that it has boxed itself in with its no-deals rhetoric on the campaign trail. It still seeks to flop into government on a no-strings-attached basis with the support of a crossbench that won more votes and as many or nearly as many seats as it did. This is not New South Wales 2023 where Labor fell two seats short of a majority after smashing the incumbent government, and was never going to be. If Labor gets lucky anyway here and can form a government without breaking its word, it's only because the government bit the hands that would feed it.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Greens have done their own thing this campaign and polled exactly what polling said they would. They are pretty well placed to pick up a bonus seat in Clark off the weakening of the key Independents there. If they get that, it has been a very good outcome for the party, and even four seats would be solid. For all that 13.3% of the vote is a long way from 21.6% in 2010 and the fact that they even got that may have to do with the Liberals giving them oxygen via a silly logging policy that even the logging industry had very mixed opinions of. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Lambie Network vote at 6.7% may seem like a strong one, but it is in fact on the same level as the party polls in federal elections (just under its usual Senate vote and just above its 2022 Reps vote after adjusting for not running in Clark). There was probably a chance for JLN to do better here and they have underperformed their polling slightly. Ultimately the JLN campaign while well presented and more disciplined than 2018 lacked logic in a very critical regard. The party campaigned as a policy-free zone where voters should vote for quasi-independent candidates because they had been picked by Jacqui Lambie. But if voters were meant to vote for its candidates, they should have been able to find out more about them, and information about what JLN candidates stood for was elusive. We now have a long wait to find out which JLN candidates have won and more importantly who they will be in the parliament. Will JLN stick together under this pressure or will it disintegrate as populist parties have often done?</div><div><br /></div><div>And now, the independents. For a starter, Tasmania has snubbed tealism. Much energy was devoted to trying to build up "community independents" to replicate the success of teals on the mainland, but in Tasmania a vote for Labor or the Greens or an independent one has already heard of can always be a useful vote and there is no reason to vote for unknown teal/left indies. Even indies with some local profile at councillor level in general failed, and Clare Glade-Wright getting just over 1000 votes after several months of effort shows this wasn't just about several of these campaigns being announced too late. Many - not all - of the late indie runs were pointless vanity campaigns that cluttered up the ballot and I hope there will be less of this in future.</div><div><br /></div><div>Voters have also snubbed defectors. John Tucker in particular seemed to have hopes of winning but Tucker and Lara Alexander have been sent packing with a few percent of the vote each. David O'Byrne's case was more of an ejection than a defection. As with so many other things Labor could not present a coherent position on O'Byrne. His <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/30/tasmanian-opposition-leader-stands-aside-over-reports-of-sexual-harassment-allegations">personal sins of the past</a> were bad enough to kick him out of the parliamentary party a decade and a half later but not bad enough to remove him from the party overall, leaving him in an "Independent Labor" netherworld that trivialised the case for his exile in the first place and meant voters decided all no biggie. His vote wasn't a vote for him as an independent, but would have come mostly from voters who still identified him with Labor and would be hoping for his reinclusion down the track. The number of O'Byrne signs adorning Labor fences alongside Labor's is a testament to that and a testament to an issue management failure that the party as a whole has yet to overcome.</div><div><br /></div><div>And while the Clark independent vote has remained high, the 3% swing against independents there despite their greater number and diversity suggests the seat is not on track to being Wilkified at state level. It shows up the 2021 result as having been partly by default at the expense of Labor's 2021 disaster in the seat, and also partly the higher prominence of Sue Hickey at the time. The switch of Josh Willie to the lower house has helped Labor to bounce back strongly. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">The way forward</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Unless the Premier can read both the election results and the minds of the potential JLN winners far better than I can, his victory claim on election night was reckless and basically a nice-guy kind of Trumpism. The paths to remaining in government go through the Greens who have a stated strong preference to work with Labor if they can, or the Lambie Network whose leader was furious at the Liberal campaign's domain name attacks, and claimed that her candidates were of like mind. At least some of the JLN winners could be sympathetic to the Liberals and might be more forgiving of the Government's campaign style if they get something in return, but it is also not yet sure that JLN by itself is enough or if they will also need one of the independents. For Labor it is possible they need both the Greens and JLN to govern, but if they beat JLN in Lyons or (a lot less likely) Bass then they get the alternative pathway of Greens + Johnston + O'Byrne. (Isn't this <i>fascinating</i>? The previous recent hung parliaments with the Greens holding sole balance of power were vanilla when compared to this one.)</div><div><br /></div><div>The number of seats and votes won by the major parties is as nothing to the Governor whose interest is the confidence of Parliament. Even if numbers line up against him, Premier Rockliff is entitled to be sworn back in to "meet the parliament" and make it vote him out. He does not need a positive expression of confidence and supply to continue (just an absence of a no-confidence vote), but without one the parliament would look much less stable. </div><div><br /></div><div>Meanwhile we have a most exciting Legislative Council election to look forward to in May with three vacancies on the same day (one Labor, one Liberal and one left independent). This will be a very important sequel for whoever the government is. </div><div><br /></div><div>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>PS: </b>I recommend <a href="https://www.tallyroom.com.au/55345#">Ben Raue's summary</a> of where the counts are at for those preferring a more graphical version!</div><div><br /></div></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-88943634172547491362024-03-24T04:14:00.012+11:002024-03-28T21:53:08.260+11:002024 Tasmanian Postcount: Lyons<div style="text-align: left;"><b>LYONS (2021 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor - At election 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 IND)<br />Notional 2021 7-Seat Result 4 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><b>SEATS WON:</b> 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>PARTY CONTEST: </b>ALP (Richard Goss or Ben Dudman) vs JLN (Andrew Jenner or Troy Pftizner). JLN appear better placed. <br /><b>CALLED WINNERS:</b> Rebecca White (ALP), Guy Barnett (Lib), Jane Howlett (Lib), Mark Shelton (Lib), Tabatha Badger (GRN)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>STRONGLY EXPECTED WINNERS:</b> Jen Butler (ALP)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>SEAT LOST: </b>John Tucker (IND)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(Links to other seat postcount pages <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-bass.html">Bass</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-braddon.html">Braddon</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-clark.html">Clark</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-franklin.html">Franklin</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/tasmania-embraces-chaos-2024-election.html">Summary</a>)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As I start this piece Lyons is 79.1% counted with the Latrobe polling place still to add on Sunday [EDIT: Latrobe is of course in Braddon so it appears this was an out of division booth that was intended to be counted separately but will now not be. The reason Lyons is lagging is that it has a much higher out-of-division vote than other seats.]. The Liberals are on 3.01 quotas, Labor have surged late in the night to 2.64, the Greens have 0.83, JLN 0.67, Shooters 0.38, John Tucker 0.26, Animal Justice 0.13 and why did the rest bother. I expected Lyons to be the hardest seat to follow on the night and it has been but not in the way I expected. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Liberals are three quotas and out (Jane Howlett transferring to the Lower House which will leave Prosser vacant) and John Tucker is just simply out (independents bombed miserably in Lyons) but the interest is in the final seat race between the Greens, Labor and Lambie Network. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">With 0.16 quota lead over JLN and 0.19 over Labor, the Greens definitely should be OK to beat at least one of those (they only need to beat one). The Shooters and Tucker preferences could be very unfriendly to the Greens but these will be distributed at a stage when there are still Liberals soaking up votes. The AJP preferences should help the Greens too. My feeling is the Greens win is callable now but I want to make sure when more awake just to be on the safe side.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Rebecca White has topped the poll again with 1.7 quotas in her own right; if last time is any guide Jen Butler will get a stack of that and get re-elected. In the race between a third Labor, JLN and the Greens, Labor is exposed to 9541 leakable votes, JLN 3441, Greens 3254. Labor's massively greater leakage risk suggests that JLN should be favourites on current votes unless their ticket is <i>much</i> leakier than Labor's - which could yet be the case - or unless they fall back in late counting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is a dingdong JLN battle between former Tory mayor Andrew Jenner and removalist Troy Pfitzner; both are known stadium sympathisers. As I start, Jenner leads by 43. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Thursday: </b>While we wait for the large out-of-electorate vote to be added in Lyons (which I expect to happen today), a note from Franklin scrutineering. In Franklin I found that roughly 18% of JLN votes were leaking from the ticket, which is larger than I would expect from Labor but not enough to change the fact that Labor are more exposed to leakage. I also suspect that in Lyons there will be a higher share of linear 1-3s in the Lambie ticket and therefore it's possible leakage could be a bit less. If JLN are still in front at the end of today's counting they seem to have a good chance. Shooters preferences were more helpful to them in the last Senate election than to Labor as well. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>6:10 </b>There has been a minor update in Lyons with no significant changes and a bigger one is coming soon.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>9:30 </b>The big update is in with the Liberals 3.00 Labor 2.61 Greens 0.87 JLN 0.67 Shooters 0.39 Tucker 0.25. Now the Greens have a combined 0.46 quota lead over Labor and JLN and what is going to happen here is that minor preferences will gradually push the Liberals over three quotas giving them a small surplus which will be distributed when the fourth Liberal tips any not already elected Liberals over quota; this surplus will most likely half exhaust. The total number of preferences outside the top four is 0.85Q and that includes AJP; I cannot see Labor and JLN both getting over the Greens on that. JLN moves further ahead of Labor. Jenner leads Pfitzner by 54.</div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-10561531172430080402024-03-24T03:45:00.021+11:002024-03-28T18:09:44.172+11:002024 Tasmanian Postcount: Franklin<div style="text-align: left;"><b>FRANKLIN (2021 Result 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green - At election 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 IND)<br />Notional 2021 7-Seat Result 3 Liberal 3 Labor 1 Green</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><b>SEATS WON:</b> 3 LIB* 2 ALP 1 IND 1 GRN (* 3rd Lib overwhelmingly likely)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>CALLED WINNERS:</b> Eric Abetz (Lib), Jacqui Petrusma (Lib), Dean Winter (ALP), Rosalie Woodruff (Grn), David O'Byrne (IND)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>EXPECTED WINNER: </b>Nic Street (Lib) expected to win over Gideon Cordover or Jade Darko (Greens)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>EXPECTED WINNER: </b>Meg Brown (ALP) expected to defeat Toby Thorpe (ALP)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>SEAT LOST: </b>Dean Young (Lib)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">((Links to other seat postcount pages <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-bass.html">Bass</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-braddon.html">Braddon</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-clark.html">Clark</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmania-postcount-lyons.html">Lyons</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/tasmania-embraces-chaos-2024-election.html">Summary</a>)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Warning: The Franklin count involves some complicated weirdness and this page has been rated Wonk Factor 4/5</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Franklin has reached a glorious 84.5% counted with no further counting to occur this weekend. The Liberals have 2.73 quotas, Labor 2.20, the Greens 1.55, JLN 0.39, David O'Byrne 0.72, AJP 0.12 and the rest is minor indies and Local Network. Rosalie Woodruff has topped the poll and is the only candidate with quota. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There is no doubt now that David O'Byrne has won as he is an independent and cannot leak votes (unlike the Liberals and Greens), and I suspect he will draw leakage from the Labor ticket as well. The remaining suspense at party level is whether there is any chance at all for the second Green to beat the Liberals and this appears to be highly unlikely. On current numbers the Liberals have an effective 1500 vote lead, but are more exposed to leakage with about 6400 potentially leaking votes vs 3800 for the Greens. I'd expect a higher share of the Greens' votes to leak than the Liberals, such that the differences in leakage rates between the two are probably only worth 200 votes. Animal Justice preferences will knock another few hundred off the lead but it's extremely difficult to see the Greens winning unless there is a large counting error in their favour. I am pretty much sure the result will be 3-2-1-1 but want to check it further when more awake.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On the Labor side Meg Brown (who until recently worked for O'Byrne, which could make things interesting!) has a healthy 648 vote lead over Toby Thorpe. Thorpe might benefit from preferences from Kaspar Deane on a "same side of the river" basis but the gap may not be easy to close. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Eric Abetz has as expected bolted in [edit: maybe not so fast, see below]. We have no figures on how many last place votes he got.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Tuesday: </b>A few things that need to be added to my very late night reading of the count from election night. Firstly, although the Greens endorsed a linear 1-7 ticket order with Kingborough Councillor Gideon Cordover at 2 and Clarence Councillor Jade Darko at 3, Rosalie Woodruff is currently only 692 votes over quota, and a lot of Greens voters will not follow the linear order. Jade Darko is currently around 205 votes ahead of Cordover making it seriously possible that Darko will stay above Cordover and be the second Green left in the run to the flag against the three Liberals. Secondly I have one report from scrutineers that Abetz is doing very poorly on preferences within the Liberal ticket and could be overtaken by Petrusma at least. This actually helps the Liberals within reason, they want their final three or at least last two to be as close together as possible and preferably all avoid crossing quota to ward off the Greens. Two Liberals crossing leaving one in the race is their worst outcome. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For the Greens to win the seat they need to run down whoever is the final Liberal from a starting deficit of maybe about .3 of quota. The available preferences are currently Labor .20 quotas (expect about half to exhaust), JLN .39 quotas (these should not exhaust as much because JLN ran only three candidates, but some will go to Labor then exhaust), centrish independents Glade-Wright and Mulder .20 quotas and left minor candidates who could be very helpful to the Greens (AJP, Local Network, minor independents) 0.23 quotas. These preferences will also for a long time be going to O'Byrne as well. An advantage for the Greens is that eventually all the Greens votes will pool with a single contender, but votes going into the Liberal ticket are splitting three ways (or maybe two if one of them hits quota, which seems unlikely). There is also a question in this one whether the Greens are over Labor or not to get their preferences, because the Greens start on about 0.55 ignoring leakage but the third Labor candidate could be on about .5 Q to .6 Q ignoring leakage. This could depend on whether Lambie Network preferences favour Labor compared to the Greens but I also suspect leakage to O'Byrne will be substantial and Labor's third candidate is likely to be cut before the Greens.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(There isn't a possibility of Labor winning three off the Greens preferences if ahead of them because the Green preferences going into the Labor ticket have to split two ways for that to occur and Labor is just too far behind especially with O'Byrne also soaking preferences.) </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Tuesday evening:</b> I have heard that: 1. the flow from Woodruff appears not strong enough to put Cordover over Darko, though other Green preferences might have an impact there 2. the flow from JLN to Greens is pretty good 3. the flow from Glade-Wright to Greens is excellent. I may have a go at this tomorrow.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Wednesday: </b>I am scutineering this count today. It takes a long time to see enough votes for a meaningful pattern to emerge but some things I am seeing are (i) the flow from other Liberals to Abetz is indeed weak but not disastrously weak (in fact it's the sort of weak that helps them) (ii) the Green votes both for Woodruff and minor candidates are quite leaky, there are some pretty wild votes in their piles in general (iii) flow from Woodruff to Cordover varies by booth; in some booths it is very strong to Cordover so it's still possible Cordover will overtake Darko. Understanding from other scrutineers is that Brown is doing well in the contest with Thorpe and should win.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>12 pm: </b> Very roughly so far I am seeing that the Liberal ticket split is about 20/40/40 Abetz-Petrusma-Street but my samples are very small and from smallish booths and I have no sample of Antolli yet. Current quotas by candidate in the ticket are Abetz .747 Petrusma .673 Street .535 others .775, so that would notionally mean Abetz .902 Petrusma .983 Street .845 (ignoring leakage and there is some), which would have Petrusma hitting quota at some stage on minor candidate preferences and two Liberals likely to sit short of quota for the Greens to try to catch. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b>Wednesday 2pm:</b> On what I'm seeing from other parties, the Labor preferences (that said I've sampled mainly Thorpe because with other Labor candidates you have to be quick to see which of Thorpe and Brown it goes to first and therefore whether it will go any further) are nearly half exhausting, with half the rest going to O'Byrne. Also the Lambie preferences are splatty and if anything probably going to the majors more than the Greens. Animal Justice are helping the Greens to about the extent expected but it's really hard to see how the Greens can make up enough especially since flow to Labor from other parties is just swelling the Labor surplus, half of which is going to the bin. Something I am seeing quite often is Lambie voters who are voting 1-3, then 4-7 for four candidates from another ticket then stopping; often with the Greens this means the vote is not hitting the right candidate. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Wednesday 4 pm: </b>my latest estimate for the Liberal ticket split is 21/36/43 based on a sample of over 200 preferences from various minor Liberals at sundry exotic locales. So that would mean Abetz .91 Petrusma .95 Street .868 which is better for the Liberals than my early sample. As for the Lambie prefs the hold rate within the ticket is about 83% (this has implications for Lyons). The flow differs by candidate, eg Hannan flows more to O'Byrne and the Greens than Callaghan. I don't think the Greens are making significant gains on the Liberal total here (they are on Glade-Wright, AJP etc but not the sort of huge gain that would be needed). </div><div><br /></div><div>Should also add here: O'Byrne is drawing preferences from everywhere, at percentages between low teens and low 20s off minor candidates, close to 20 off JLN and 25% off Labor bearing in mind most of the rest of Labor's exhaust. O'Byrne's own preferences won't be distributed but go mainly to the major parties with quite a weak break to Labor (probably less than 60-40 on a 2PP basis). </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Thursday: </b>On added out of division votes and so on the Liberals have come down a little to 2.72 quotas, Labor 2.19, Greens uop to 1.58 O'Byrne 0.71 but the changes are not enough if what I saw in scrutineering yesterday is representative. </div><div><br /></div></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-45985299165924673892024-03-24T03:19:00.010+11:002024-03-28T21:09:34.417+11:002024 Tasmanian Postcount: Clark<div style="text-align: left;"><b>CLARK (2021 Result 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 IND)<br />Notional 2021 7-Seat Result 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 2 IND</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br />SEATS WON: </b>2 ALP 2 Lib 2 Green 1 IND<br /><b>CALLED WINNERS: </b>Ella Haddad (ALP), Josh Willie (ALP), Kristie Johnston (IND), Vica Bayley (Grn), Simon Behrakis (Lib), Helen Burnet (Grn)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>EXPECTED WINNER: </b>Madeleine Ogilvie (Lib)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(Links to other seat postcount pages <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-bass.html">Bass</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-braddon.html">Braddon</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-franklin.html">Franklin</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmania-postcount-lyons.html">Lyons</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/tasmania-embraces-chaos-2024-election.html">Summary</a>)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Welcome to Clark which had <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2021/05/2021-tasmanian-postcount-clark.html">all the fun in 2021</a> and has thrown up something a little bit unexpected in 2024. The Independents haven't done quite as well as had been thought, and the seat that could have gone to Sue Hickey appears to have gone to the Greens or Labor instead. As I start, Clark is 79.3% counted. Still to come are the booths of Kingston, Kingston Beach, Sandfly and the Kingston prepoll. Labor has 2.49 quotas, Liberals 2.16, Greens 1.61, Johnston (IND) 0.63, Hickey (IND) 0.40, Lohberger (IND) 0.21, Elliot (IND) 0.15, AJP 0.14, SFF 0.11 and ... oh, why were all these people on my ballot paper. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Johnston as an independent is too far ahead for Hickey to catch her, especially as Lohberger's voters are more likely to be sympathetic to Johnston. Also because she cannot leak votes she will most likely beat both Labor and the Greens. The question is can Labor beat the Greens. At the moment it looks like probably not. Both Labor and the Greens have similar leakage exposure, but the votes still to add should be significantly better for the Greens as Labor polled dismally in the Kingston prepoll last time. The Greens will also be assisted by preferences from Animal Justice and probably from Lohberger. So I don't currently see any reason why Labor stops Helen Burnet from going to state parliament but it is close enough that this will need to be looked at further. If Burnet wins this will trigger a recount for her Hobart Council seat (which should go to Bec Taylor, Gemma Kitsos or perhaps Nathan Volf) and Hobart will elect a new Deputy Mayor around the table. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On the Liberal side Madeleine Ogilvie is almost a thousand votes ahead of Marcus Vermey but it's worth checking if the remaining votes bring this down to something where Vermey could still be competitive on preferences. Ogilvie might catch Simon Behrakis but I don't believe that both Ogilvie and Vermey can do that.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Amusingly it has again happened in Clark that nobody has quota, with Ella Haddad topping the poll. This will make for a reasonably quick distribution at least to start with!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Sue Hickey is unlikely to get preferences from Lohberger voters, which might have otherwise been a path for her to stay in the race by getting ahead of Labor then attempting to beat Burnet on Labor preferences. (There may be some crossover in support but they are diametrically opposed on Save UTAS which is likely to be part of the reason for Lohberger doing much better than most local councillors who ran in this one.) It tends to happen anyway that a lot of Labor minor candidate preferences exhaust so at the moment it doesn't look realistic that Hickey could beat both Labor and the Greens. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Sunday: </b>The Greens have benefited from the added votes climbing to 1.63 quotas compared to Labor's 2.46. Ogilvie's lead over Vermey has now gone over 1000, it would be very unusual for that to be closed. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Monday:</b> I have done some geographic analysis of Ben Lohberger's votes; they are very focused around the University of Tasmania Sandy Bay campus and surrounding suburbs suggesting that his vote came to a large degree from the Save UTAS movement (as high as 10.7% at Sandy Bay booth). It is possible there will still be substantial flow from him to Hickey based on them being adjacent on the ballot paper but it looks like a lot of his support was single issue voters. In the northern suburbs as expected he's on 0-2%. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Thursday:</b> With extra out of division votes added the Liberals are now 2.18 quotas, Labor 2.44, Greens 1.66, Johnston 0.62, Hickey 0.39. Labor are clearly too far back to catch the Greens here as there are not enough helpful preferences. Hickey also won't catch them with independent votes splitting between multiple independents and major parties exhausting so I am seeing no realistic doubt that the Greens have won two seats in Clark. </div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-24947843015439318942024-03-24T02:38:00.010+11:002024-03-28T18:00:34.087+11:002024 Tasmanian Postcount: Braddon<div style="text-align: left;"><b>BRADDON (2021 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor)<br />Notional 2021 7-seat result 4 Liberal 2 Labor 1 IND or 5-2</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br />SEATS WON </b>3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 JLN<br /><b>CALLED WINNERS </b>Jeremy Rockliff (Lib), Felix Ellis (Lib), Anita Dow (ALP), Shane Broad (ALP)<br /><b>EXPECTED WINNER: </b>Roger Jaensch (Lib)<br /><b>PARTY BATTLE: </b>Giovanna Simpson (Lib) leading and likely to beat Craig Garland (IND) or Darren Briggs (GRN) - complicated, see below</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>CANDIDATE BATTLE: </b>Miriam Beswick (JLN) vs James Redgrave (JLN)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Caution: The Braddon count involves a complicated if seemingly unlikely scenario, this postcount is rated Wonk Factor 4/5</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">(Links to other seat postcount pages <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-bass.html">Bass</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-clark.html">Clark</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-franklin.html">Franklin</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmania-postcount-lyons.html">Lyons</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/tasmania-embraces-chaos-2024-election.html">Summary</a>)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Welcome to Braddon where as expected the swing is not so bad as in Bass but it is still in double digits and as a result the Rockliff government is still not yet completely home and hosed in its quest to bank a four-seat slate. It seems the Liberals should win easily but it is not as clearcut as it looks, for more read on ...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Braddon has a whopping 86.9% counted with only remaining postals, provisionals and absent votes to come. So what we're seeing in the primary count is pretty much it! The Liberals have 3.66 quotas, Labor 1.99, Lambie Network 0.91, Greens 0.50, Shooters 0.23, Craig Garland 0.41, AJP 0.10 and other independents 0.19 (mostly Peter Freshney). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Jeremy Rockliff has 2.21 quotas. If 2021 is any guide his surplus will flow strongly to Roger Jaensch and guarantee Jaensch's election, but as Jaensch's primary vote is again quite low I am holding off calling that one until that occurs or I see scrutineering reports. Giovanna Simpson has a clear lead as the fourth Liberal but the challenge for the Liberals is that they are a long way short of a fourth quota and can drop back further on leakage. Rockliff had a miserly leak rate of 4.5% in 2021 but a repeat of that would drop 0.055 quotas out of the Liberals' lead over Garland straightaway. They also have .36 Q in minor candidate votes that will leak at about 8-9%, so another 0.03 Q gone, meaning that their real lead over Garland is more like 0.17 than the notional 0.254 quotas. And that's not counting anything from that leakage that Garland gets himself, so say 0.16.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">An important question for Garland is whether he can get over the Greens and get their preferences. He is currently 811 votes behind the Greens, but 2020 votes in the Green camp is in minor candidate votes which based on 2021 experience will leak at about 13%. That closes the gap down to about 500 (0.06 Q) assuming Garland gets some. Unfortunately there were few exclusions of other parties based on which we could guess how Garland might go on their preferences in past elections. The total preference pool for Garland to catch the Greens off is only about 0.52Q, but given that Freshney is a fellow independent perhaps there might be some IND to IND flow. It's definitely not easy for Garland to get over the Greens but he might do it. If he does, in 2021 he got close to a third of Green preferences to very low numbers for each of the remaining Liberals in that count. That sort of flow repeated would erase most of the 0.16 Q gap suggested above - but it may depend on whether the other Liberals get across the line allowing any Green-Liberal votes to pool with Simpson. There is also the matter of Shooters preferences - in 2021 Garland did well on these compared to individual Liberals but there were a lot of Liberals in the count.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">If Garland doesn't get over the Greens, could he put the Greens' Darren Briggs in with a show? I think this is unlikely as I'd assume the Garland to Greens flow will be weaker than Greens to Garland. At a first look it seems Garland is struggling to quite get over the Greens but this needs to be looked at carefully when more awake! Something also to bear in mind is that around this stage of the count the second JLN candidate will be excluded. If either Garland or the Greens goes out before that happens, then that's a problem for the other one because preferences will flow to the two JLN candidates. That's especially a problem for the Greens because Garland voters will quite often preference JLN (the other way around not so much). Finally (and see comments) there's a reservation about whether the Greens to Garland flow is likely to be as strong as in past elections. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On the JLN side Miriam Beswick is a surprising leader over James Redgrave but not by much. Craig Cutts - who appeared to be the notional lead candidate - will almost certainly be cut out and his votes may favour Redgrave for gender voting reasons, but one to keep an eye on especially to see how the candidates do on leakage. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Thursday: </b>After addition of out of division and telephone votes the main change is the Greens are up to 0.52 quotas (making it more difficult for Garland to get over them.) It should be noted here that the Liberals are way more susceptible to leakage than the Greens having 13859 votes that can leak compared to 2195. The leak rate on Liberal votes in this division tends to be very small as noted above, so I don't think there's much doubt that the Liberals are ahead of the Greens in a way that makes it hard for the Greens to catch up unless they do especially well on the Garland preferences (they will probably do spectacularly badly off Shooters). Another thing important here is what is the Liberal spread like between Jaensch, Ellis and Simpson (or Mead) off the Rockliff surplus as if the Liberals can manage to keep two candidates from going over quota then that will most likely make it impossible for anyone else to catch them. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-11995993886808744112024-03-24T01:42:00.005+11:002024-03-28T17:52:17.386+11:002024 Tasmanian Postcount: Bass<div style="text-align: left;"><b>BASS (2021 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor - when election called 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 IND)</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Notional 2021 7-Seat Result 4 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>SEATS WON</b> 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN* (* appears overwhelmingly likely)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>CALLED WINNERS:</b> Michael Ferguson (Lib), Rob Fairs (Lib), Michelle O'Byrne (ALP), Janie Finlay (ALP), Cecily Rosol (Green)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>WITHIN-PARTY CONTEST:</b> Rebekah Pentland leads Angela Armstrong for expected JLN seat</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>WITHIN-PARTY CONTEST</b>: For final Liberal seat, Simon Wood leading Julie Sladden and others</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>SEAT LOST:</b> Lara Alexander (IND)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">(Links to other seat postcount pages <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-braddon.html">Braddon</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-clark.html">Clark</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-postcount-franklin.html">Franklin</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmania-postcount-lyons.html">Lyons</a> <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/tasmania-embraces-chaos-2024-election.html">Summary</a>)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">--</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This year I will do my postcount threads in alphabetical order but some may get more effort at the start than others! A late-night update in Bass sees the Liberals with 3.04 quotas, Labor 2.40, Greens 0.95, JLN 0.65, Shooters 0.18, Animal Justice 0.12. The independents are collectively on 0.66 quotas but none of them has any vote to speak of and Greg (Tubby) Quinn is the only one who can hold his head up high, outpolling much more fancied indies who have flopped (though Lara Alexander has just overtaken him). The count is at 81.9% (it will finish somewhere around 90 probably) and George Town and Scottsdale prepolls are not added yet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Liberal vote in Bass has been trashed by an enormous swing currently running at over 20%, but when you start from a base of 60, how bad can it be? Michael Ferguson has topped the poll with 1.44 quotas in his own right. Rob Fairs has a little less than half of that. Ferguson will be the only candidate elected with quota and his surplus will provide boosts to the remaining Liberal candidates. From then on it will be a long series of exclusions from the bottom up, with occasional surpluses. Michelle O'Byrne and Janie Finlay will be over quota pretty quickly in that process, and Rob Fairs and Cecily Rosol later. This leaves two battles. The first is between JLN and Labor for the last seat at party level and the second is a battle for the third Liberal position.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I think JLN are safe for the final party seat now but I am keeping an eye on it in case they do badly on remaining absents or prepolls (they have been fine on prepolls and postals so far). They are actually no more exposed to leakage than Labor who currently have 2885 votes from minor candidates that could leak (assuming Geoff Lyons remains their third candidate) vs 2764 votes for JLN (and with a live JLN lead of 1887 there would have to be a huge amount of leakage from their ticket for it to matter anyway). Rebekah Pentland leads Angela Armstrong for the expected JLN seat by 430 votes. Armstrong does have a degree of profile so I will keep an eye on this one but Pentland's lead is substantial for the time being. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On the Liberal side, current vote totals are Wood 1753 Sladden 1579 Quaile 1355 Gatenby 1375 Trethewie 1065. At present Ferguson's surplus is worth 3390, but I would expect several hundred at least of that to go to Fairs. It would seem difficult for either Quaile or Gatenby to beat both Wood and Sladden from where they are. The breakdown of Ferguson's surplus here will be interesting as Ferguson and Sladden have strong connections through the right-wing Christian vote, and Sladden might do well on Ferguson's surplus for that reason. Another possible source of help for Sladden would be the preferences of Lara Alexander. So it will be interesting to see if Wood can do well enough off either Ferguson or the other Liberals to keep Sladden from overtaking him. Updates to follow. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Sunday:</b> The count has advanced to 85.4%, the majors are up .01 Q each and the Greens down .02 but nothing remotely significant. Wood leads Sladden by 161. Pentland leads Armstrong by 382.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Thursday:</b> After the addition of postals and out of divisions there are negligible changes to the primary totals. Wood leads Sladden by 182. Pentland leads Armstrong by 372.</div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-14381132382876092382024-03-24T00:06:00.011+11:002024-03-24T01:29:08.812+11:002024 Tasmanian Election: Late Night Live<p>This is the late night live blog that fills the void between me finishing my Mercury coverage and unrolling all the seat pages. It will be used for quick updates over the next hour or so. </p><p>(Updates scrolling to top - refresh now and then)</p><p>1:30 Bass is final for night and I nearly have my page for it done.</p><p>12:54 An update in Franklin where the Liberals and O'Byrne have moved further ahead of the Greens.</p><p>12:48 Finally action in Bass where a first tranche of postals has done very little to the picture and improved JLN's chances but we need to see what the big prepolls do there. </p><p><b>12:30 </b>An update is through in Clark and Labor have almost matched the Greens total - this is going to be an interesting one! Note that Helen Burnet has a high personal vote and a high profile and might do well off independent preferences. </p><p><b>12:25</b> The count in Bass appears to be stuck or have stopped with no web updates since around 10 pm. A small update in Lyons with Labor just in front of JLN on notional quotas. The Greens have dropped back a little but only need to beat one of these two. </p><p><b>12:10 A note on count progress: </b>Provisionally the TEC will finish tomorrow whatever it doesn't get done tonight as concerns prepolls and early postal batches. After tomorrow it does not expect to post new figures until Thursday, and then it will be working Easter Monday prior to the start of the preference distribution the day after. </p><p>-----------------------------------------------------</p><p><b>12:05 A summary of the current situation: </b>The Liberals have 13 seats and appear likely to win a fourth in Braddon and third in Franklin, but both of these depend on postals and prepolls going their way as is often the case. I am not seeing any path for them above 15.</p><p>Labor has not done as badly as some feared. They appear to have 10 seats with a reasonable chance of picking up a third in Lyons and a chance in Clark, though the Greens are ahead in Clark for now. They also have a ghost of a chance in Bass but the Liberals are almost certainly to be the largest party.</p><p>The Greens seem to have had a pretty good election but will be hanging on to see what happens with the outstanding postals and prepolls. I can't see any risk to them in Bass, they are looking very good in Lyons at present but need to see if they can hold their position, and they are leading in the race with Labor for the last seat in Clark but that one has a long way to go.</p><p>The Jacqui Lambie Network has underperformed the polls a little but not terribly. They appear to have won in Braddon and are probably winning in Bass but might be at risk from Labor there with more counting. The disappointing seat for them is Lyons where they've dropped back into a race with Labor and look shaky.</p><p>Only two independents appear to be winning, Kristie Johnston in Clark and David O'Byrne in Franklin. Generally the independent vote has fallen short of expectations, especially in the north. </p><p>Jeremy Rockliff claimed victory tonight but it is too soon as we need to see what the parliament looks like and what his paths to 18 seats are. </p><p><br /></p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-52192979922434550322024-03-23T11:44:00.017+11:002024-03-23T18:22:26.955+11:00Tasmanian Election Day 2024<p>Live link to Mercury coverage here: <a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/news/politics/tasmanian-state-election-blog-with-political-expert-kevin-bonham/live-coverage/62c78a2ed4172adcfe9aa5ad77236ab9">https://www.themercury.com.au/news/politics/tasmanian-state-election-blog-with-political-expert-kevin-bonham/live-coverage/62c78a2ed4172adcfe9aa5ad77236ab9</a></p><p><br /></p><p>----------------</p><p>Well we're here again, wherever here is. What a weird ride this has been.</p><p>Tonight the Rockliff Liberal government chases history, for never in Tasmania has a government won four majorities at elections in a row. Four governments including the current one have won three*. If the polls are right, history is unlikely to be caught. One piece of history will be made today with the restoration of the house to 35 MPs. </p><p>Tonight I will be doing live coverage for The Mercury. The link will be edited in to this article when available. It may be paywalled but there is usually a cheap introductory subscription for non-subscribers. My live blog for the Mercury will probably start somewhere around 6:30 and go until not later than 11; it may be wound down late at night as I do interviews and if I need to file an article. I will be based at the tally room. I ask media outside of the Mercury not to contact me by phone or email between 5:30 and about 11 tonight; once I have finished the live coverage I should be available quickly for other interviews (feel free to say hi in the tally room when I don't look too busy to arrange). Scrutineers are very welcome to send me news and figures by phone or email. </p><p><b>There may be a "late night live" thread.</b> My plan, energy permitting, is to post postcount threads overnight (between 1-4 am) for all five Assembly electorates. I will be home tomorrow and available for interviews but <b>no calls or texts before 9 am except if booked tonight. </b>Also no interviews between <b>3-5 pm. </b> </p><p>My <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">main guide page</a> is here with links to individual electorate guides and effective voting advice. For those seeking voting advice, I recommend to <b>number all the boxes</b> or at the least to number every candidate who you think is OK or better. This may make your vote more powerful and it cannot harm your preferred candidates. If you vote 1-7 for a party and stop, your vote can play no role in determining which other parties are successful. Check that you have not doubled or skipped any numbers, especially not between 1 and 5. Do not use ticks or crosses.</p><p>Concerning the result I have issued an <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/2024-tasmanian-polling-aggregate.html">aggregate of all the published polling</a>, but am again not making anything that should be considered a prediction. If the polls are right and voting intention has not changed in the last fortnight then the parliament might be something, very roughly, like 15 Liberal 10 Labor 4 Green 3 JLN 3 IND. However none of the polls is less than two weeks old which is one reason for caution, another is the lack of information about the way in which the Independent vote splits up between different candidates. The Greens are sometimes overrepresented in polling, the Lambie Network's vote has sometimes collapsed under pressure, and Labor polled worse late in the campaign compared to early on. My article goes into more depth about why things different from the polls could happen, or not.</p><p>It is possible we will know even tonight who will be the next government, but it is also possible we will have a long wait for the final numbers and then negotiations after that. <b> I will not be updating this site much or at all between Easter Friday and Easter Monday because of a field trip</b> (there probably won't be much happening then anyway). </p><p><b>A few things about the counting tonight and in following days:</b></p><p>1. The <a href="https://app4.vision6.com.au/em/message/email/view.php?id=1470591&a=58639&k=QtJofg9GsoLMV80_dkmf5t1irgIScBg_vXvB-66duA8">TEC advice </a>is that they aim to count all the booth votes, all prepolls and almost all so far received postals tonight. I would expect some prepolls might not be completed tonight and might be held over. There looks to have been some increase in the overall prepoll vote, perhaps a substantial one depending on yesterday's returns.</p><p>2. Keep in mind that raw quota totals are not always a reliable predictor. A party with a slightly higher quota total will sometimes lose to a party or candidate with a slightly lower total. Factors to consider here are: leakage as party candidates are excluded, the way candidate vote shares are spread within a party and of course preferences, which may have more impact than usual this year. Especially, independents often stand better than a quota total indicates because an independent cannot leak votes to other parties but can only receive leakage from them. In 2010 Andrew Wilkie in Denison, starting on 0.5 quotas, almost beat the Liberals who started on 1.79.</p><p>3. In recent elections it has been usual for all the seats to be known at party level by the end of election night except for a couple, with a few more undecided at candidate level. This year because of the messiness of the contests and the number of seats I'm expecting there will be more vagueness and more seats for which we will need to come back after Easter to see how the preference cutups go.</p><p>4. The Hare-Clark system is often blamed for the time it takes to count Tasmanian elections. In fact the major cause of the delay is the 10 day waiting period for postal votes to arrive, with the preference distribution probably taking 4-5 working days. </p><p>5. The informal vote may look very high on the night but can go down a bit as votes are checked and postals added, so we will only have a vague idea tonight. It will be interesting to see if it goes up much or not.</p><p>6. Turnout is never known on the night and always looks low on the night. <b>Journalists: do not comment on turnout until all the primary votes are counted in 10 days' time.</b></p><p>7. Early booths are very unrepresentative. In past elections we have often seen high votes in the first few booths for: Liberals in rural booths in Bass and Lyons, Craig Garland and Felix Ellis in Braddon, Greens and left-wing candidates in Clark (especially Fern Tree booth) and Franklin (Bruny Island booths). </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Not-A-Poll</span></b></p><p>I have been running Not-A-Polls in the sidebar to get a feeling for how readers think the election will go. I have not had time to do any fancy metrics on these and the averages aren't quite adding to 35 but the voters seem to have on average picked about 15 Liberal 12 Labor 4 Green 2 JLN/other 3 IND. At one stage a few days in Labor took the lead on the overall outcome vote, but it has been declining since. For instance in yesterday's voting it was 18-10 for Liberals. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Voting Day Shenanigans</span></b></p><p>There have been widespread reports of Labor signs at polling booths, containing attacks on the Liberals and scare campaigns against voting Green and independent. The latter are laughably misleading as the evidence they cite for the idea that independents will back the Liberal Party is a Jeremy Rockliff press statement from 20 May 2023 in which he announced that defectors John Tucker and Lara Alexander had agreed to support his government for the time being. That that did not go smoothly is why we are here. In short, dishonest stupol-level tactics (completely hypocritical from a party that could keep the Liberals in power itself by refusing to do deals), but the question is, are these signs legal?</p><p>In terms of electoral law it is illegal to erect a poster anywhere on polling day (S 198) and it is illegal to campaign for votes within 100 metres of a polling place (S 177). However the TEC interpretation of S 177 based on "legal advice" is that it does not apply to signs standing within this distance before polling day at that particular polling place. So if the signs were really put up at the proverbial five minutes to midnight, they may not be in breach of the Act in these regards. I am unaware of the basis for the TEC's interpretation but it could be that s 177 refers to a campaigning act conducted while the booth is open and that if the Act had been intended to apply to a sign remaining up within a radius, then the Act could have said so. There is still the question of whether they were posted with permission of the landowners of the polling booths (I would expect probably not, raising potential trespass offences and whatever you get for dumping toxic waste on somebody else's land) but that is not an Electoral Act matter. </p><p>This is attracting coverage and I may add more comments. As of 2:20 pm voting day, all reports I have seen relate to public schools; some signs have been removed, reportedly by the TEC at at least one booth. Labor has also complained that election signs erected "late last night" at booths were being "stolen". </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Ticks and Crosses</span></b></p><p>I have had two reports today of TEC staff telling voters to "tick" seven boxes. The correct instruction should be to number at least seven, or to simply tell the voter to read the instructions. Using only ticks or crosses results in an invalid vote. Please report all such cases to me, preferably with the name of the booth.</p><p>-----------------</p><p>Again I hope everyone enjoys the coverage tonight, even if some of you don't enjoy the result! </p><p>--</p><p>* Ogilvie-Cosgrove-Cosgrove (ALP) 1937-41-46, Reece-Neilson-Lowe (ALP) 1972-76-79, Bacon-Bacon-Lennon (ALP) 1998-2002-2006, Hodgman-Hodgman-Gutwein (Lib) 2014-18-21</p><p><br /></p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-8657374855621653432024-03-21T23:54:00.016+11:002024-03-23T07:42:01.328+11:002024 Tasmanian Polling Aggregate<div><b>Aggregate of all polls (not a prediction) Lib 36.9ALP 25.3 Green 13.2 JLN 9 IND 12.7 other 3</b></div><div><b>Seat estimate for this aggregate 15-10-4-3-3.</b></div><div><b>--</b></div><div><br /></div>This article is part of my Tasmania 2024 state polling coverage. Click here for links to my main guide page which <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">includes links to seat guides and effective voting advice</a>. <div>--</div><div><br /></div><div>An attempt at aggregating the 2024 Tasmanian polls has been long-coming amid a very distracting and busy campaign, but for what it's worth here goes. For the second election running I have doubts about the value of this exercise, but for entirely different reasons. In 2021 there was very little polling and the only campaign poll to be publicly released appeared to (and did) have large house effects, which I determined using EMRS as a benchmark. <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2021/04/2021-tasmanian-state-election-polling.html">Despite me talking them down</a>, both my house-effects aggregate and my no-house-effects aggregate somehow worked, with the former nailing the seat estimate and the latter recording voting share misses of 0.5% or below on all four lines. I don't expect to be that lucky this time, however I hope the journey of how I <i>try</i> to come up with a what the polls are saying number will make some sense.</div><div><br /></div><div>If any more public polls are released <b>before 8 am Saturday</b> a fresh aggregate will be included in the article covering that poll, or in this one.</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Which polls to use</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>I believe in only using public polling data for headline numbers for aggregation, because without knowing the pollster who did a mystery poll it is impossible to benchmark it. Also neither of the mystery polls has been released in enough detail to compile a full set of primary votes. So I am excluding mystery polls from the primary vote figures, but I will use them for the seat distributions, because they have large seat sample sizes that can be compared to overall averages. </div><div><br /></div><div>My practice in Tasmania has been to use previous EMRS polls and not just the most recent, the paucity of polling data meaning even polling that is half a year old is worth putting some weight on so long as it is not too much and nothing much seems to have happened in the meantime. For all polls I need to take into account both the freshness of the poll and also what I think of the poll's track record, both in the state and nationwide. </div><div><br /></div><div>To this extent, EMRS is known to have the strongest track record in Tasmanian polling since Newspoll (so far!) ceased polling in 2014. Of the others, YouGov and Redbridge have no track record on Tasmanian voting intention, while the 2021 uComms poll was a failure. On the other hand, in recency terms uComms>Redbridge>>YouGov. </div><div><br /></div><div>After multiplying out some weightings for age and some weightings for quality and slightly downweighting polls with fewer than 900 respondents, I came up with the following base weightings:</div><div><br /></div><div><b>.05 EMRS August</b></div><div><b>.09 EMRS November</b></div><div><b>.11 YouGov January</b></div><div><b>.35 EMRS February</b></div><div><b>.20 Redbridge February</b></div><div><b>.20 uComms March</b></div><div><br /></div><div>However these numbers require a lot of massaging. Only the EMRS and Redbridge polls have JLN excluded from Clark but with a full IND/Other option; YouGov restricted the IND/Other option to specific independents, presumably inflating the JLN vote among others. I adjusted the YouGov poll by adding what I thought was the minimum reasonable tally for independents/others beside those named, estimated by seat, which came to 7%, and then took that total off the non-government parties on the basis of the strong general polarisation in attitudes between voters supporting the government and those not. I also had to adjust the early EMRS polls for the absence of JLN, which I did by proportionally allocating them at the same level as the EMRS February poll. I'm not impressed with what anyone has done with separating IND and Others so I've just assinged Others a blanket 3% deducted from IND. </div><div><br /></div><div>After all this the headline aggregated estimate I came up with for a non-house-effects model was <b>Liberal 36.5 Labor 26.4 Green 13.1 JLN 9.4 IND 11.6 others 3.0</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Assigning seat effects</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>The next step is assigning seat effects. Here the sources are:</div><div><br /></div><div>* the EMRS seat breakdowns. I have used the aggregation based adjusted model for the last three that I <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/emrs-liberals-have-big-lead-but-still.html">previously published a model based off</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>* two mystery polls, to the extent usable</div><div><br /></div><div>* the YouGov seat samples (but at a very low weighting as they are tiny and old).</div><div><br /></div><div>What I aimed to do with these was come up with estimated differences from the statewide totals for each state. Because some of the samples only include some parties and not others, the totals often ended up not adding up so there was the usual banging and clanging to get the polls to produce a balanced estimate. This is what came out:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhb3EAcRgm61O30F5oaeb5CliXS-AqZyqXfcN8NIuXw2tNVA_73N2Ru1fBdGhsZvc4jq-6lHfAn_noLHS19bfoACesp3ZQ3rQZ9uSryk0bI_seUfFSCEzlFv4bFnPekRsGx7yDnfSQldUlh2hs0xJ3276frSHHIqmR-ZwwnaHtSEy1pVceRHhLyF-T3J4xq" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="181" data-original-width="577" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhb3EAcRgm61O30F5oaeb5CliXS-AqZyqXfcN8NIuXw2tNVA_73N2Ru1fBdGhsZvc4jq-6lHfAn_noLHS19bfoACesp3ZQ3rQZ9uSryk0bI_seUfFSCEzlFv4bFnPekRsGx7yDnfSQldUlh2hs0xJ3276frSHHIqmR-ZwwnaHtSEy1pVceRHhLyF-T3J4xq" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div>Some of these may look and probably are wrong individually, but they are my read of "what the polls say". As applied to the primary vote figures, these then produce this:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOzjIA5zNuk0rMs-guas0gwICPMwOvWZ9G8lM7g9QM9n_LcDEMLArOEb-ZJgcYAUxJV5PoIT8GL1elaXrzuXEUlvZ7zRLPb4XUkjHdmMNyL8ImedfpnchtDVcEzlPv5Wt3r8qfFH4wAQDHfZZeXkuvFktTqqCVoyvaCqcpf3K1FEzlWnO6ixpsTh7mwfFB" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="609" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOzjIA5zNuk0rMs-guas0gwICPMwOvWZ9G8lM7g9QM9n_LcDEMLArOEb-ZJgcYAUxJV5PoIT8GL1elaXrzuXEUlvZ7zRLPb4XUkjHdmMNyL8ImedfpnchtDVcEzlPv5Wt3r8qfFH4wAQDHfZZeXkuvFktTqqCVoyvaCqcpf3K1FEzlWnO6ixpsTh7mwfFB=w330-h400" width="330" /></a></div></div><br /><br /></div><div>I should note that the IND vote in Braddon looks a tad low here, mainly as a result of issues with the first mystery poll. In this aggregate Bass, Clark and Franklin are all reasonably straightforward barring a weird split of the independent vote in Franklin. </div><div><br /></div><div>Three seats are in doubt in this aggregate. Firstly while it looks like the Liberals should win four in Braddon here, they are susceptible to leakage and there are a heap of preferences spraying about. In this scenario <i>if</i> Craig Garland gets nearly all the independent vote he can beat the fourth Liberal on preferences provided that there <i>is</i> a fourth Liberal; if one of the new Liberals manages after preferences to closely match one of the incumbents Jaensch or Ellis then he has no chance. It is interesting that I have here found a scenario where Garland might win on as little as 5% - don't expect to see this happen though. </div><div><br /></div><div>There are two seats in doubt in Lyons where for some reason the aggregate has the Liberals short of a safe three quotas. If Jane Howlett gets an incumbent-style vote alongside Guy Barnett and Mark Shelton then they get three comfortably but I have doubts about this occurring. If John Tucker gets a reasonable slab of the 0.9 quotas that has gone to independents here (likely an overestimate in reality in my view) he could knock over JLN and the Liberals even from behind. My suspicion is that the Liberals would start with a lead that JLN and Tucker would not both catch; Tucker could do well off Shooters preferences while JLN could gain off Labor's. Overall the most likely single scenario on this aggregate appears to be <b>15 Liberal 10 Labor 4 Green 3 JLN 3 IND. </b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">... but should we believe it?</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>I've added notes about some individual results in the aggregate that I have doubts about above, but how about the overall picture? Here are some reasons for caution about any aggregate of polling, or any one poll this election.</div><div><br /></div><div>Firstly <b>the data are old</b>. The most recent public polls with known dates are EMRS 15-21 Feb, Redbridge 16-28 Feb and uComms 4-5 March. This is different, for now, to the 2014 campaign with two major polls in field in the final nine days and 2018 with a last-week EMRS. Perhaps there will be more in the last 36 hours but if this is all then we have had weeks of campaign for things to change. Quite a lot has happened in that time in a particularly noisy and in some cases bumpy campaign. Often, campaigns have little effect, but it would be risky to assume that this one hasn't. My biggest concern here is that the Lambie vote declined through the 2018 campaign and may do so here again. The fact that Labor's worst two polls were the last two is also interesting.</div><div><br /></div><div>Secondly and linked to the above, there could have been <b>bandwagon effect</b>. There have been a few cases, most notably 2006 and 2018, when a government that showed no sign of winning a majority months out suddenly roared into life once it became apparent only it was in the race for one. In both cases there are other possible alternatives (both were infamous elections for "dark money" outside-actor campaigns, and both featured bad policy decisions by oppositons) but nonetheless it's always a risk in Tasmania. There are however cases like 1996 where bandwagon effect could in theory have saved a government majority but actually didn't, and also 2021 as a case where majority was in doubt but no bandwagon seems to have occurred. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thirdly, there may be <b>house effects</b>. But noting that last time my no-house-effects aggregate was actually closer than the house effects one, and noting various doubts about them, I am not sure that they are, and at this stage I have not put out a house-effects version. To go through the pollsters one by one here:</div><div><br /></div><div>* <b>EMRS</b> underestimated the Liberals at four elections straight by an average 1.8% through 2018, then had them 3.3% too high in 2021, but the 2021 poll was over two months before the election and wasn't really a "final poll". </div><div><br /></div><div>* <b>uComms</b> underestimated the Liberals by 7.4% in 2021 - which was predicted by my benchmarking off EMRS, which suggested uComms was under by 6.6%. But uComms has since switched from robopolling to an SMS/robopoll mix (I believe it's mostly SMS). Furthermore uComms' April 2023 poll (taken in the month before the Tucker and Alexander defections) matched the February 2023 EMRS as concerns the Liberal primary. (It had Labor and the Greens higher than EMRS and generic IND/others curiously low)</div><div><br /></div><div>* For <b>YouGov</b> and <b>Redbridge</b> there is no past Tasmanian form to judge them on, so it is hard to know what to make of them having the Liberal primary considerably lower than EMRS and uComms. </div><div><br /></div><div>Overall there seems some room above to think that there may be a lean against the Liberals in this polling. But (i) the evidence isn't conclusive (ii) overall the evidence doesn't point to them winning any more than 15 seats if these polls were accurate but for any house effects when taken. To get their primary well up into the 40s and start winning more, they would have to have actually increased their vote share.</div><div><br /></div><div>Overestimating the Green vote has been an issue in past polling, but seems less so recently with more polls moving away from live polling. In the aggregate the Greens seem to be reasonably solid in Bass because the majors are not threatening for extra seats and the independent vote is modest, while the Lyons seat is closer because of the extra competition. </div><div><br /></div><div>Finally <b>none of the polls have properly surveyed the independents.</b> YouGov listed only a single independent per seat and the other polls have offered just a generic independent option or a generic independent/other. There is no poll that simulates the ballot by offering named independents, but one might also say that if it does that it should name all the other candidates as well, which is impractical. (Hard to believe but EMRS used to actually poll named candidates once upon a time!) The concern here is not just the total vote, which the polls may have a good handle on, but that crucial information about the split between different independents in each seat is missing.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's a common problem in polling that canvassing "independent" on the ballot everywhere will normally overestimate the independent vote. The voter picks this option and then finds there are no independents running, or only an obscure one or one the voter doesn't like. But this election is different, if a voter is looking for an independent there is quite a good chance they can find one to match their philosophy in any electorate, and it's even possible it's one they've already heard of! Not only is it not clear that the independent vote is being overestimated here, but also it's possible some of the early polls <i>underestimated</i> it before the full range of indepednents running was known. It will be a fascinating thing to watch. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Strange new world?</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>The numbers in the polls - collectively - are quite remarkable. Supposedly something close to 40% of Tasmanians will not vote for a major party this election, up from 23% in 2021. It's something that's not surprising in the Senate, but we have never seen anything like at state level, where the personal votes of incumbents and the restricted party mix tend to keep the major party vote higher. There is always some scepticism about this sort of thing because of the history of polling bubbles for third parties bursting (eg SA-BEST in the 2018 South Australian election) but there are elections that have unusually high rates of non-major party voting where the polls get those rates more or less right (Queensland 2017) or even underestimate it (federal 2022). So maybe this will happen, but election night is going to be a mess if it occurs! Or maybe we will see something more mundane - or even more extreme? It is always risky to attempt to second guess the polls!</div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Update 22/3: Freshwater Fully Added</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>I expect to update this aggregate again today as another poll is apparently coming [EDIT: no, didn't happen], but the main change since the article was written was that mystery poll 2 has been confirmed as by reputable pollster Freshwater Strategy, a fortnight ago and some more details have been published. I have weighted the incomplete details I have of this poll at 30% and the rest of the aggregate at 70%. I have also modified the seat breakdowns accordingly.</div><div><br /></div><div>It should be noted that federally Freshwater is<i> slightly</i> (about 1%) more Coalition-friendly/Labor-unfriendly than most other pollsters, which is not to say that it is wrong. Including it in the aggregate may help balance out other polls that could lean the other way. </div><div><br /></div><div>The following is the revised aggregate:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgr2VZtwF6CyyjOpntq1EULAd4Qb9K0YdOxRxWLNfjjlO7etlSYPaJtgyv09F6PBKsTxW_LtAXyHKMOu8oZXyszOn5kQ_55X3t_xKbw7PnVlEFNgShaz87d4a6NDXy7z8dpiCascHBlyCNJdoFNW89845LiHbaPYb2xkNL8X5B4X71Qtd4R-xFxzudmcgH" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="609" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjgr2VZtwF6CyyjOpntq1EULAd4Qb9K0YdOxRxWLNfjjlO7etlSYPaJtgyv09F6PBKsTxW_LtAXyHKMOu8oZXyszOn5kQ_55X3t_xKbw7PnVlEFNgShaz87d4a6NDXy7z8dpiCascHBlyCNJdoFNW89845LiHbaPYb2xkNL8X5B4X71Qtd4R-xFxzudmcgH=w327-h400" width="327" /></a></div><br /></div><br />The seat outcome did not change. (NB Overnight I made a very minor change, which is to reduce JLN by 0.2% per seat for the expected higher impact of informal voting on their ticket.)</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Can a majority still occur?</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>A Liberal majority is still in theory possible. The polls could be somewhat wrong, there could be change in the last two weeks with no polls, and they could get lucky on the distribution. But to illustrate how hard it is, I added 8% to the above aggregate for them, taking 2% off each of ALP, Greens, JLN and IND, and they were still very marginal for seat 18 in Lyons. So Premier Rockliff's claim they are within "a whisker" of winning outright is not true according to the public polling.</div><div><br /></div><div>I believe that a Labor majority can be safely dismissed. </div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-79408001335903963712024-03-21T16:05:00.006+11:002024-03-22T17:09:35.087+11:00Tasmania 2024: Yet Another Mystery Poll<p>This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage. <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">Click here for link to main page</a> with links to effective voting advice and seat guides.</p><p>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p>UPDATE 22/3: The Mercury has revealed that this poll was by high-quality pollster Freshwater Strategy and taken about a fortnight ago, and the Fontcast has announced it was THA-commissioned, New details are also that the Greens are on 13 and Independents 11 in Lyons, the Greens are on 10 in Bass (apparently leaving about 13.7 for independents and others), independents are on 10 in Braddon (leaving about 13.8 for Greens and others) and 28 in Clark (Greens on 20), and in Franklin the Greens are on 13 and independents on 17. </p><p>--------------</p><p><b>Original article</b></p><p>After a reasonably polling-rich start to the 2024 Tasmanian campaign, little polling has been seen recently, with the youngest public poll 16 days out of the field as I write. This creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding whether anything has happened with voting intention in what has been a noisy and bumpy campaign. In particular, has the fact that the Liberals are ahead and are the only party that any poll has had within, say, 5% of a plausible majority result, caused any late bandwagon effect to their side? (I should note that bandwagons to a party capable of forming majority government don't always happen. The two elections where conspicuous bandwagons did occur were 2006 and 2018 but for both these elections other factors could be cited.)</p><p>Today Sky News has released some figures from a poll by an unnamed pollster and source and have said they have been asked not to name. As is too often the case Sky have failed to report on the polling dates. What we have is a purported seat breakdown probably by someone with not much of a clue about how Hare-Clark works (14-9-4-4-4) and primary votes for the majors and JLN only.</p><p>The primary votes reported are:</p><p><b>Bass Lib 40.28 ALP 25.87 JLN 10.2 (leaving 23.68)</b></p><p><b>Braddon Lib 49.24 ALP 14.65 JLN 12.28 (leaving 23.83)</b></p><p><b>Clark Lib 25.35 ALP 21.37 (leaving an enormous 53.28)</b></p><p><b>Franklin Lib 33.23 ALP 27.4 JLN 8 (leaving 31.39)</b></p><p><b>Lyons Lib 38.46 ALP 23.26 JLN 11.2 (leaving 27.18)</b></p><p>As an average this puts the Liberals on 37.3 per division, Labor 22.5, JLN 8.3, leaving 31.9 for Greens and others, though the statewide total for the Liberals would be slightly higher because of the smaller voter numbers in Clark. This is very similar to the recent <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/ucomms-labor-23-how-much-stock-should.html">uComms poll</a> - again with a 40% non-major party vote; can such things be true? There is no information on the treatment of undecided voters, who I've assumed are redistributed but that might not be the case.</p><p>An unusual aspect of the poll is the use of two decimal places. I have seen this before from some minor pollsters and am still trying to gather information regarding who does this most often. MediaReach, used by the Liberals in 2018, is one poll that has done this, but I believe there are others. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Seat Breakdown</span></b></p><p>It is most likely that whoever has interpreted this poll has come up with this (in the form Liberal-Labor-Greens-JLN-IND):</p><p><b>Bass 3-2-1-1-0</b></p><p><b>Braddon 4-1-0-1-1 </b></p><p><b>Clark 2-2-1-0-2</b></p><p><b>Franklin 2-2-1-1-1</b></p><p><b>Lyons 3-2-1-1-0</b></p><p><b>TOTAL 14-9-4-4-4</b></p><p>(That is not the only possibility; for instance one might have Franklin with two Greens and no independent and one of Bass or Lyons with an independent and no Green - but that seems less likely.)</p><p>However, if that is so, their Franklin interpretation is doubtful. The Liberals with 33.23% (2.66 quotas) would probably beat JLN (0.64 quotas). The reason for this is that the Liberals would be likely to spread their vote between at least their second and third candidates who would both stay ahead of the JLN lead candidate. The JLN ticket would suffer badly from leakage as their candidates were excluded with no obvious number 1 candidate, while the Liberals would only leak significantly off maybe one surplus and minor candidate exclusions. So I would think <b>15 Liberal and 3 JLN</b> is the more likely read on these numbers. There is not enough information to say whether the numbers for Greens or Independents have been correctly analysed. </p><p>As is often the case, despite having apparently sold them a seat short, Sky comes up with "<i>The Liberal Party is set to gain seats in Tasmania at the weekend but may need to rely on the Jacqui Lambie Network to form power</i>". Well, one would bloody well hope the Liberals would gain seats, given that they only currently hold 11 and the parliament is being enlarged by ten! But even on my reading of these numbers the Liberals would in fact be losing seat share, even from their depleted startline position of 11/25 (44%). Even 15/35 is slightly less than that.</p><p>The mystery poll chimes strongly with the narrative from Becher Townshend on the Fontcast last week, which had Labor's vote collapsing in the south and Labor at risk of only winning one in Braddon (a disaster previously not widely canvassed, though the number in this poll is so low it's very hard to credit). I am not sure whether we should treat these events as independent or whether this could be an old poll that was seen by Fontcast or their sources. </p><p>I have had a lot of trouble finding time to do a polling aggregate this election and the challenges of doing so are unusually fiendish (even worse than 2021 when there were hardly any polls). Nonetheless I am working on one and hope to have something tonight or overnight in a separate article. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Who would govern?</span></b></p><p>As for who would govern in this mess (if it happened), one would at first think the Liberals, but they have managed to insult almost everyone they might need to work with, and the crossbenchers might not be that forgiving if they're not getting any ministry or policy prizes. Labor would be presumably unable to govern without a major backtrack on their no-deals pledge, which would result in an illegitimate government that would probably be smashed after a single term. Aside from a quick second election, is there a fourth possibility, not a Coalition of Chaos but a whole <i>Cabinet</i> of it? Could a crossbench of eleven or twelve (if that really happened) seek to govern by themselves, appointing independents from the Upper House as extra Ministers? I find it hard to see because Labor would need to vote the Liberal government out without taking government itself, and why on earth would Labor do that? If the new government succeeded Labor would become superfluous, and if it failed they would be blamed for enabling it. But this is a reminder that if an incumbent Premier is defeated on a no-confidence motion the Governor must consider who is most likely to have the confidence of the Parliament going forwards. It is not necessarily the Opposition Leader. </p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-30467906490050235142024-03-17T15:03:00.017+11:002024-03-19T15:19:22.828+11:00There Aint No Stability Clause<p>This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage; <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">main page includes</a> a link to effective voting guide and candidate guides and other articles.</p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p>I feel somehow responsible, but it is probably coincidence. A few days ago I decided to put a bit of low-level Hung Parliament Club propaganda back in its box by explaining <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/why-i-dont-support-fixed-four-year.html">why I do not support four year fixed terms</a> for Tasmania. Among other things they infringe undesirably on the Premier's ability to seek a fresh mandate when the Parliament goes pearshaped. I explained at the bottom why I do not consider New Zealand style party hopping laws to be an alternative solution. Days later, along comes the government with a policy for ... <a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/news/2024/03/17/restoring-stability-certainty-and-integrity-tasmanian-parliament-new-stability">New Zealand style party hopping laws</a>. What hell is this? </p><p>For those who came in late, we are here in part because the former Gutwein Liberal Government preselected one Lara Alexander to run as a candidate for Bass in 2021. She wasn't seen in the campaign except for her campaign manager complaining that she was being muzzled. She got next to no votes but was later elected on a recount. It has subsequently transpired that Alexander is a very odd politician - in particular her talent for inscrutable and apparently self-contradictory comments about confidence in government. Had the Liberals allowed her to speak for herself before nominations closed this would probably have been obvious within minutes and they could have disendorsed her and picked somebody else. But they didn't. We are also here because - for some reason that has never been explained though I've <a href="https://www.edo.org.au/2022/05/16/legal-win-over-forest-clearing-plan-at-ansons-bay-tasmania/">wondered if it was anything to do with this</a> - the Government later decided to make a former TV presenter Primary Industries minister instead of a career farmer, and the latter started or continued accumulating grudges. </p><p>This is not the first time the Liberals have had unity problems - in the previous term Sue Hickey nabbed the Speakership against her party's nominee Rene Hidding and then voted against party policy on gender birth certificate reforms and mandatory sentencing. However Hickey remained a Liberal until she was disendorsed, precipitating the 2021 election.</p><p>Another party-hopping incident involved Madeleine Ogilvie, who lost her seat as a Labor MP in 2018, was later elected on a Labor recount, but chose to sit as an independent. (She later joined the Liberals and won the crucial final seat for them in the 2021 election.) So Tasmania has had four party-hops in the last two parliaments, five if you count David O'Byrne who left the parliamentary Labor Party ahead of a likely expulsion from the PLP on grounds unrelated to voting behaviour. </p><p>One might think from this that party-hopping was a common problem in Tasmania. But it's not. Ogilvie declining to sit as a Labor MP was the first lower house case of it since a short-lived and inconsequential defection by Geoff Davis in 1987, and before that the more significant Lowe/Willey defections in 1981. Also in that time while there were sporadic cases of MPs voting against their party on the floor on particular issues, there was no MP I recall doing it with any regularity until Hickey came along. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Proposal</span></b></p><p><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/news/2024/03/17/restoring-stability-certainty-and-integrity-tasmanian-parliament-new-stability">The Liberals' proposal</a> includes the following detail. They have attempted to avoid the problems I outlined in my fixed-terms article (that such laws are either toothless or give too much power to parties to expel their own MPs from the parliament) but my view is that this is impossible to define:</p><p><i>“Our proposed amendment will mean that if a person is elected as a member of one party, and then chooses to become an independent, or join another political party during the term of the Parliament, they will be required to forfeit their seat.</i></p><p><i>“We will consult closely with legal, Parliamentary and constitutional experts to ensure that this new Stability Clause, which may also require enabling amendments to other legislation including the Electoral Act, is drafted and implemented in a way which is practical, workable, and consistent with the principles of representative democracy.</i></p><p><i>“This includes giving consideration to removing from the Parliament MPs who may seek to “game” the Stability Clause by refusing to quit their party despite acting consistently contrary to that Party’s position; as well as providing safeguards to ensure that MPs are not ejected from their Party, and therefore the Parliament, without just cause. This could, for example, include the provision of a 75 per cent “super majority”."</i></p><p>The supermajority rule (similar to NZ where there is a two-thirds rule) would mean that only parties with party status (four MPs or more) would have access to the rule. </p><p>There is a saying that hard cases make bad law. While this proposal might seem like a sensible response to the defections of Tucker and Alexander, for which said MPs had absolutely no voter mandate, it creates bad outcomes when applied to past defections that <i>were</i> justified.</p><p>In 1979 Labor Premier Doug Lowe was elected with among the greatest personal mandates in Tasmanian electoral history. His government won 54.3% of the vote and 20 of the 35 seats, though one was lost in a subsequent by-election caused by spending cap infringements. Lowe himself recorded the highest percentage vote in Tasmanian history, albeit assisted by drawing on top of the ALP column in the pre-rotation days. Clearly Tasmanians voted for a Labor government with Lowe at its helm.</p><p>During the subsequent term Lowe lost the confidence of his party over his handling of the Franklin Dam dispute, with one flashpoint being Lowe's desire to include a formal "No Dams" option on a "referendum" (Tasmanian for plebiscite) called on the issue. Labor MPs insisted that this not be allowed thereby disenfranchising Tasmanians who were opposed to dams in the south-west. Soon after Lowe was removed as leader and replaced with Harry Holgate.</p><p>Lowe responded by quitting the party and moving to the crossbench with another Labor MP, Mary Willey, depriving the government of a majority. After a lengthy and widely detested prorogation that saw Holgate record approval ratings as low as 6%, the doomed government called an election. The people had their say and had an opportunity to return Labor <i>sans</i> Lowe if they wanted to. Instead, Robin Gray's Liberals were elected.</p><p>Under the current Liberals' proposal, Doug Lowe would not have been able to resign from his party without his seat becoming vacant. Tasmania could have been stuck with the Holgate Government for 18 months!</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Can they do this?</span></b></p><p>A widespread response to the proposal has been "that's unconstitutional". But in Tasmania the Constitution is the <a href="https://www.legislation.tas.gov.au/view/whole/html/inforce/current/act-1934-094">Constution Act</a> - it is what legislation passed by both Houses of Parliament makes it. Except where those powers are removed, Australian Parliaments have expulsion powers that are drawn from common law, but it is <a href="https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Pages/expulsion-of-members-of-the-nsw-parliament.aspx">very doubtful</a> whether the common law power would include expulsion for bucking party policy. There would have to be an amendment to the Constitution Act specifically (and any serious amendment to the Tasmanian Constitution is a <a href="https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UTasLawRw/2016/2.html">potential can of worms</a>). Whether there would be any way to invalidate such an amendment based on the federal constitution is outside my experience, and I will note any useful comments. It might depend on what exactly the amendment said; Prof Gabrielle Appeleby describes the matter as <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-19/experts-respond-to-tas-liberals-stability-clause/103599746?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=twitter">untested</a>.</p><p>My main concern here is whether the expulsion provision would be automatic based on a 75% majority of party MPs (which is way too much power for parties to exercise over minor internal dissents, effectively negating the voters' ability to shape their own parties) or whether there would be an additional test. If the latter, what on earth does "acting consistently contrary to that party’s position" mean? Would Sue Hickey prior to her quitting the party qualify? On the surface no, she only intermittently did so, albeit to a more significant degree than other occasional floor-crossers. In the current <a href="https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2018/0039/latest/DLM7478605.html">New Zealand legislation</a> the party must say that the expelled member is distorting and is likely to continue to distort proportionality, but there is no explicit test for whether that statement is true. (This also raises the prospect of a party that wanted to get rid of an MP elected with them trying to bait that MP with insuting motions so the party could honestly claim the MP was distorting proportionality.)</p><p>Because of the vagueness in the government's proposal, in my view voters are entitled to assume the worst. They are entitled to assume, until it is specifically ruled out by commitment to a specific provision, that the government could legislate to allow a party to define "acting consistently contrary" for themselves and to expel a member who was actually voting loyally but who the party for whatever reason did not like. </p><p>However if the legislation did provide an additional trigger then that opens up other problems - because either the trigger must be defined in terms of behaviour like voting on the floor (which will always be gameable by finding other ways to disrupt) or the trigger will be defined in terms that are justiciable. And we cannot have a court deciding whether an MP's rebellion is sufficiently severe for them to be booted, since that gives courts subjective power over political careers and is a breach of separation of powers.</p><p>The Government would need the consent of the Legislative Council to pass such laws. At present it and Labor have a combined majority, so in theory Labor might be wedged into going along, but this seems unlikely. It is also not clear if the majors will have a combined majority after May's elections.</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">What About David O'Byrne?</span></b></p><p>The O'Byrne situation is an important test case for two reasons. Firstly O'Byrne quit the Parliamentary Labor Party, before he could be pushed, but did not quit the broader Labor Party. Secondly there was no problem with his voting behaviour; rather, revelations of an incident from before his parliamentary career had made him unpalatable to the majority of the PLP. (Or perhaps been used as a pretext to declare him so).</p><p>Assuming the legislation was defined in terms of parliamentary parties and a 75% rule with no extra triggers, this would mean the Labor Party could simply have expelled O'Byrne from parliament without any obligation to provide him with natural justice concerning just how bad his pre-political conduct had been and whether it was seat-forfeit material. O'Byrne in this case admitted his behaviour "did not meet the standards I would expect of myself" but in theory expulsion could be weaponised against a candidate who had admitted nothing. Do we want the courts wading into internal party affairs, investigations and private lives to decide whether or not somebody can be expelled from parliament?</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">How to reduce party hopping</span></b></p><p>Given that party-hopping has been a non-thing for so long before the recent spate of it, here are some ways parties can reduce the risks instead of resorting to such desperate fixes:</p><p><b>1. Vet candidates properly </b></p><p><b>2. Don't preselect candidates who are flight risks</b> (religious extremism, grudges, weird Shoppie tendencies or membership of the Sky News ecosphere are all warning signs here)</p><p><b>3. Don't muzzle candidates before nominations close.</b> Give them some time to speak on the campaign trail so that unsuitables you might have missed will give themselves away in time to replace them</p><p><b>4. Listen to all your MPs and the voters and consider their skills.</b> The Liberals brought the Hickey situation on themselves by assuming a recent Lord Mayor with strong business experience would love to just be a backbencher, even though the same party in the past had put male outside talents straight into the ministry.</p><p><b>5. If all else fails, you can call an election.</b></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Problems Of Waka-Jumping Law</span></b></p><p>Guy Barnett has cited NZ's proportional representation system as a similar case to ours. But NZ's system is essentially a party-list system with a local representation component tacked on. That's because New Zealand tried to answer the question "how do you get proportional representation and local representation together in a single house?" without finding the correct answer, which is "a single house is dangerous and stupid." An MP's mandate in New Zealand derives from party preselection only; a loyal voter for a specific party has no say in which individual MPs will represent the party in the parliament. Beyond being also vaguely proportional, New Zealand's electoral system is a hodgepodge of crud compared to ours, and we should not be importing anything from it at all. (Also, while NZ attempts to secure proportionality nationwide, Tasmania's system is based on proportional representation of each electorate.)</p><p>Another notable difference is that some NZ MPs are elected directly to vacancies that are filled by by-elections. This means they have the opportunity to defend their waka-jumping at a by-election and retain their seat. Tasmania has no such recourse.</p><p>Waka-jumping law in New Zealand - a hobby horse of Winston Peters - started in 2001, expiring in 2005, and was reinstated in 2018. It has not gone smoothly. The 2001 version encountered issues when it came to how to deal with party formations changing, but more significantly its sole successful usage that actually got rid of an MP for good took 11 months. That's more time than the eternity Jeremy Rockliff took to call an election after the defections of Tucker and Alexander! Far from being a recipe for stability that would create an explosive situation: a loose-cannon independent fighting to delay or stave off expulsion, with an incentive to get as much oxygen as possible in the meantime. </p><p>The new waka-jumping law created <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/489284/why-has-the-waka-jumping-legislation-not-been-invoked-for-meka-whaitiri">a farce in 2023</a> when Meka Whaitiri quit Labour to sit as an independent but provided notice in a form sufficient for the Speaker to treat her as an independent for parliamentary purposes but not sufficient to constitute a resignation for waka-jumping law purposes.</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Insert Here Majority Government</span></b></p><p>A particularly hopeless line was the Premier's claim that “This new Stability Clause makes it certain that if Tasmanians vote for a majority Rockliff Liberal Government this Saturday, they will get a majority Rockliff Liberal Government.” </p><p>Tasmanians voted for a majority Gutwein Liberal Government in 2021. They got a majority Gutwein Liberal Government too ... for eleven months and seven days! Then Peter Gutwein resigned. His own party now dishonours Gutwein's legacy by <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/liberal-agrees-tasmanians-are-ostriches.html">preselecting at least one candidate</a> who maintains that Tasmania at the time was an autocratic tyranny where the government was not in charge and the people were asleep. This is no isolated example; seven of the last twelve Tasmanian majority governments have had a mid-term change of Premier. </p><p>If this nonsense is passed, it will be easier not harder for the conservative flank of the party to remove Rockliff and replace him with Michael Ferguson or Eric Abetz. The reason for this is that there will be no disincentive to doing so no matter how horribly it is done, because Rockliff will not have any recourse. Lowe's behaviour in defecting to the crossbench fired a warning shot against spilling future Premiers, and no Tasmanian Premier has been openly removed by a party spill or even formally challenged for the leadership since (though some doubtless quit under pressure). But under the proposed Stability Clause if Rockliff was rolled and wanted to sit as an indie, doing so would trigger his expulsion, and his place would be filled by another Liberal on a recount.</p><p>This proposal therefore has the potential to greenlight a new phase of coup culture in the Tasmanian Parliament. It is also a potential gateway drug to fixed terms and the increased power they give to the more demanding crossbenchers in a hung parliament, since passing it would remove what I have advanced as the best argument for not having fixed terms in the first place. </p><p>Stability Clause? Hardly. It would make more sense to add Santa Claus to our Constitution Act than this.</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Update Monday: O'Byrne Enlisted</span></b></p><p>In another presser <a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/news/2024/03/18/david-obyrne-backs-parliamentary-stability">Guy Barnett</a> has sought to enlist David O'Byrne as a supporter of the concept underlying the party hopping ban based on O'Byrne's <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/unions-fund-exiled-independent-david-obyrne-despite-labor-scrambling-for-every-seat-in-tough-tasmanian-election/news-story/11fd936285b1dd0238fd4ffaaebe4f16?amp">comments in The Australian</a>. But all O'Byrne said was that if elected as an independent he would have a contract to vote independently (so presumably wouldn't be rejoining Labor in the parliamentary term). That didn't entail any support for the Liberals' proposal to enforce a ban on party-hopping, and indeed had the ban existed in the form stated by Barnett today, O'Byrne would have been expelled from Parliament in the aftermath of being kicked out of the PLP in August 2021. </p><p>O'Byrne's responsed to this with "<i>You really are desperate in these last few days aren’t you, stop making stuff up</i>" and after the Liberal social media account said "<i>Direct quote David</i>." he followed up with "<i>You have gone from being desperate to not very clever. You are deliberately confusing two very different principles. Give it a rest</i>".</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Also see</span></b></p><p><a href="https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/hobart-drive/hobart-drive/103579898">My interview with ABC</a> (at 1:04)</p><p><a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/KGW86/upload_binary/kgw863.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22library/prspub/KGW86%22">Politician Overboard (PDF): </a>2002-3 APH paper taking a dim view of party-hopping law proposals</p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-88072721114059041252024-03-16T19:16:00.036+11:002024-03-17T18:59:42.729+11:00Ipswich West and Inala Live<p><b>Ipswich West (ALP 14.4% - resignation of Jim Madden (ALP)</b></p><p> Labor loses seat with 2PP swing of around 18%</p><p><b>Inala (ALP 28.2% - resignation of Annastacia Palaszczuk (ALP)</b></p><p><b> </b>Labor retains with 2PP swing in low 20%s.</p><p><b>Comments scrolling to top - refresh every 15 mins or so during counting for new comments</b></p><p><b>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------</b></p><p><b>11:30 End of night wrap: </b>Although the ABC haven't called this seat yet for some reason, I want to make it clear there is no coming back for Labor in Ipswich West and why I called it hours ago. They are currently over 1300 behind on 2PP counted votes, but adding in primary votes yet to be added that jumps out to over 1500, and it will probably be more (or at least not substantially less) after preferences. And then, apart from the pretty standard Yamanto booth that has not reported yet (assuming it will do so) there are only about 3000 postals to come and there would have to be a swing to Labor on them, which there will not be (though they may not swing nearly as badly as the booths). There is nothing in the booth counts to suggest any errors either. [UPDATE 12:00 Many postals have now been added and have been similar to the booth swing.]</p><p>I expected both of these to go over the historic swing averages (in the case of Inala as adjusted for a Premier retirement) but they have done so by close to 10%. They are reminiscent of the famous Stafford and Redcliffe beltings suffered by the Newman government on the way to the enormous swing against it in 2015. I am not expecting the Miles Labor government to suffer anything like so large a swing at this year's election but I have for a long time been expecting Labor to lose in October and to probably do so decisively (but it might yet be close). This is simply what is to be expected given that it will be a nearly ten year old government that is the same party as the party in power federally. </p><p>Aside from the LNP, tonight's other winner is Legalise Cannabis who have again done very well in a by-election, including beating One Nation in a seat where One Nation was finishing second at a general election as recently as 2017. </p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p><b>10:24 </b>As with IW the prepolls in Inala are worse than the booths so I'm no longer convinced the swing will drop off below about 22. </p><p><b>10:19 </b>The other big IW prepoll is in on the primary vote and it's got even worse for Labor there. </p><p><b>10:15 </b>Three Inala booths now in on 2PP and we could be looking at the biggest 2PP swing of the last 40 years in Queensland as the swing is running at 23% though I think it will go down a few points from there. </p><p><b>9:32 </b>The Inala count is terribly slow with still only one booth counted to 2PP perhaps because of the large number of candidates but I still expect the swing to come in around the very high teens, similar to Ipswich West. </p><p><b>9:04</b> Labor's share of Legalise Cannabis preferences in Ipswich West is continuing to drop back, now at only 57%. <b>Called.</b></p><p><b>8:47 </b>A big prepoll has come in in IW with an even worse primary swing result than the booths so far. </p><p><b>8:29</b> First Inala booth to 2PP had a 22.6% swing but the other booths are less bad on primary vote so so far this looks like dropping down. </p><p><b>8:17 </b>Three more booths in in 2PP and Labor are now in <b>very serious trouble.</b> What has happened so far is that there was one booth where Labor gained on preferences but it was atypical, in most booths they are not doing so no matter how well or badly the LNP are doing. </p><p><b>8:14 </b>A few booths in Inala - Labor will retain but the swing looks like it will land somewhere around mid to high teens so far.</p><p><b>7:58 </b>A 32% swing against Labor in the first Inala booth but a lot of it is spraying, only 14% to LNP so nothing to see there in terms of the seat being at risk. </p><p><b>7:53 </b>A weird one in Leichhardt booth, Legalise Cannabis 30.3%. </p><p><b>7:50 </b>The fourth IW booth in on 2PP, North Ipswich, was bad for Labor in that although it is a poor booth for the LNP, the preference flow for LNP was quite good. </p><p><b>7:43 </b>In the third IW booth in on 2PP, Raymonds Hill, the LNP share of preferences was only about 44%, compared to 59% in the earlier two. More of this will make the seat close. Still nothing in Inala.</p><p><b>7:30 </b>Sixth booth in in IW, Haigslea, was shocking for Labor (25.6%/-17.4%). However a couple more, North Ipswich and One Mile, were more benign. There's a definite trend that the swing is bigger so far in the little booths than the big ones and that will keep Labor in it. </p><p><b>7:23 </b>Pine Mountain the fifth IW booth in on primaries and that doesn't look flash for Labor either (20.5% to LNP, 13.6% against Labor) but Legalise Cannabis is getting big swings to it. We need to see more preference throws though to see if it tightens up once there is more information there. </p><p><b>7:15 </b>Two more booths in in Raymonds Hill and Rosewood. Here the primary swings are 17% to LNP and about 13% against Labor - that is not as bad as the earlier booths but not enough to put Labor out of trouble yet. The Pollbludger swing estimate is 17.4%, that may come down if those early small booths turn out to be unusual, and possibly Labor's preference share will improve. Another thing to note here is that One Nation appears to be joining the list of minor parties smoked by the dope party in a by-election; they are running last in a historically strong area.</p><p><b>6:55 </b>Off and running with some small booths in Ipswich West and they have primary vote swings into the low 20s which is an interesting start. The first booth in on 2PP is Marburg with a whopper 22.8% 2PP swing. (The 2020 Green candidate's name was Raven Wolf!)</p><p><b>Intro 6:15 (times in Qld time)</b></p><p>Welcome to some quick (or not quick if one of them is close) coverage of tonight's Queensland by-elections for Ipswich West and Inala. A Newspoll out this week suggested that a small bounce for the transition from Annastacia Palaszczuk to Steven Miles had faded if not then some, so it will be interesting to see just how big the swings will be. I'll be focusing on these tonight while not distracted by the looming Tasmanian state election; I'll leave the Brisbane Council coverage to others since I normally don't cover local election counts outside my home state.</p><p>One reason I have for covering these by-elections is to put up some notes on benchmarking the swings. It is actually very difficult to benchmark Queensland by-election swings from online material because results more than 40 years old are hard to find, and those since are all over the place in terms of usability. Often either the source election or the by-election finished as non-2PP contests, or preferences were not distributed at the by-election, or one major did not contest, or there is a demarcation issue surrounding which of the Liberals and/or Nationals should be treated as the 2PP candidate in the seat. (At one stage the Liberals were a crossbench party while the Nationals governed alone). </p><p>The best estimate I could come up with was an average of 7.7% 2PP swing to opposition in 9 usable government vacancy by-elections since 1984. I also found four usable opposition vacancy by-elections, with an average swing of 1.2% to the government (which said more about what a weird bunch of contests they were). Averages that merge these two types of by-elections are misleading and should be avoided.</p><p>The former average is blown out by a couple of monsters (17.1% and 19.2%) against the one-term Newman government on the way to it being dumped with a 14% 2PP swing; all these numbers were inflated by a few points by optional preferencing which no longer exists. There were also some sizeable swings against the Beattie/Bligh governments in their decline to electoral mere mortal status through the mid-2000s. (There were no by-elections in the 2009-12 term).</p><p>I am thinking that while the OPV factor may mean the historic averages are a bit excessive, Labor would be nonetheless doing well in the circumstances to pull up below 7.7% in Ipswich West. In Inala the loss of a Premier means the historic benchmark should be adjusted to well into double digits, so the 2PP swing has to get up to at least 15% before any attention should be paid to it.</p><p>There has been some interest in the Greens not running in Ipswich West (but they only got 6.5% there last time, why should they bother) and an amusing account in The Australian of minor union operatives trying to get Legalise Cannabis HTVs handed out to assist Labor. Relatively few Greens voters follow how-to-votes but the lack of a Greens attempt might in theory cost Labor most of a point, all else being equal.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-86710953606291996172024-03-14T09:41:00.002+11:002024-03-18T22:47:29.041+11:00Why I Don't Support Fixed Four Year Terms For TasmaniaThis is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage (link to <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">main page here</a> including link to effective voting advice), but is also a standalone article.<div><br /></div><div>-----------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div>The last two Tasmanian Parliaments have ended early. The 2018-2021 parliament ended ten months early after independent-minded Liberal Sue Hickey was disendorsed and quit the party, and then-Premier Peter Gutwein argued the loss of the Liberals' majority meant an election was desirable. The 2021-2024 parliament has ended thirteen and a half months early following trouble for the Rockliff Government with two backbenchers who moved to the crossbench in May 2022. Tasmania is the only state that has not moved to fixed-term elections, but there had not been a seriously early election before these two since 1998, and there is a widespread lack of understanding about the historic conventions under which the Governor considers requests for an early election. (A note that Tasmania's upper house does have fixed terms, but with elections on a rotating basis.)</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-governors-role-in-2021-tasmanian.html">I covered many</a> of the misconceptions about calling an early election in 2021, and 2024 has seen a lower-level repeat of many of the same incorrect claims. A Premier who holds the confidence of the House based on votes that have been cast on the floor - whether or not that looks likely to remain the case - is well entitled by precedent to be granted an early election in order to seek a fresh mandate based on newly arising issues or policies, because the workability of the Parliament is in question or for many other reasons. It is not even clear that a Premier who is well into their term needs much of a reason at all. The spurious idea that the Premier should test their support on the Parliament's floor before seeking an election has also been doing the rounds again - this confuses what happens at the start of a Parliament to the end. </div><div><br /></div><div>Together with this I'm starting to see a few calls to make early elections less likely by moving to fixed four year terms, a position that has been floated several times in the past, and I've been asked what I think about this. The Field Government introduced a fixed-terms Bill in 1990 but it never got past the second reading stage. In 1992 the then Groom Government passed a fixed-term Act for just their first term in office (it lapsed thereafter). In 2008 there was at one stage in principle agreement from Labor, Liberal and the Greens to move to fixed terms, but there was soon a change of Premier from Paul Lennon to David Bartlett and the then Labor government never introduced the foreshadowed legislation. (The Liberals introduced Bills in 2006 and 2008 and the Greens in 2005 and 2008). </div><div><br /></div><div>In my view, Tasmania should not move to fixed terms for the Assembly and the circumstances under which the last two elections were called - especially the most recent - show exactly why we should not.</div><div><br /></div><div>The advantages of fixed terms are obvious enough. The dates of elections are known years in advance, barring exceptional cases. This is good for business and investor planning and also good for those of us who work on elections and have to plan our lives around them. Fixed terms also mean that a Premier does not have the advantage of being able to call an election at an opportune time in the term (for instance while benefiting from a crisis, or while the Opposition is in disarray). And fixed terms mean that it's easier to manage the implementation of laws that require a leadup (like the government's electoral law amendments passed late last year), and also to manage the committee processes of Parliament. It's also easier for MPs to arrange their constituency affairs, and it reduces the potential for Governors to have to exercise discretion.</div><div><br /></div><div>Given these substantial advantages, why would I not support fixed terms for Tasmania? The main reason that I do not support them is that I am concerned that fixed terms would lumber Tasmania with parliaments that lack a mandate for what they are doing, because of defections. I think this matters far more than any of the advantages, because democracy is the ultimate value and the other factors are side-benefits. If a Parliament has ceased to reflect the last election and the Premier wishes to seek a new mandate, I say let the people decide. </div><div><br /></div><div>The situation that developed prior to the calling of the current election is a case in point. Ex-Liberal independents John Tucker and Lara Alexander had made explicit threats and very ambiguous comments, respectively, concerning whether the government would retain their confidence under certain circumstances. However, no no confidence motion had been passed, and Tucker's threats had been withdrawn (albeit following a meeting with disputed outcomes). The Liberal Party had been elected in majority with candidates running on a platform to which majority government was crucial. But because of the defections, the parliament had ceased to represent the will of the electors - those who voted for or gave critical preferences to John Tucker or Lara Alexander would mostly not have done so if they had known that these candidates would defect if elected. </div><div><br /></div><div>Supposing that Tasmania had had fixed term laws, what escape would have been possible from the charade of this parliament with its balance of power altered by defections? If the independents continued playing no-confidence chicken but never actually brought down the government, it would simply have to continue in a chamber that passed votes against the originally elected government's wishes - unless a Labor government took over. A Labor government would have been doubly illegitimate in terms of Labor having also run on a theme of avoiding minority government in 2021. </div><div><br /></div><div>To the extent that fixed term laws might have allowed an escape hatch (like the government voting no confidence in itself, or the parliament passing a law to allow an election anyway) it would have been a similar purpose-defeating farce to the UK Fixed Term Parliaments Act. Supposed five year fixed terms in the UK were avoided by a parliamentary vote after two years in 2017, and then by a new Bill passable by simple majority in 2019; the Act was later rescinded. </div><div><br /></div><div>Another important Tasmanian example was the 1956 defection of Carrol Bramich. At the time Tasmania had 30 seats and there was a requirement that in the case of a 15-15 result the party with the lower popular vote would provide the Speaker enabling the popular vote winner (in that case Labor) to govern. Bramich defected from Labor to the Liberals giving the Liberals a 16-14 majority in the parliament and a 15-14 floor majority. The Liberals passed a censure motion against the government. Premier Cosgrove was able to obtain a dissolution based on a Liberal government being not what voters had wanted at the previous election. Under any of the fixed-term parliament models I have seen the Bramich defection would have resulted in a Liberal government that the voters had not supported governing without any mandate for three and a half years of the government's then five-year term. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Tasmanian commentariat includes a fairly large groupthink-prone faction, mostly left-leaning, that I call Hung Parliament Club, which considers minority government to be both unproblematically good and perpetually likely. (In contrast, I think that past minority governments in Tasmania have had both good and bad points and that there is no simple overall answer to which form of government is best for the state.) Hung Parliament Club types hold that when a Premier who is having issues with the Parliament requests an early election, the Premier is trampling on the will of the Parliament which should be supreme. But the Parliament should only be supreme to the extent that it remains a reflection of the voice of the voters. An illegitimate balance of numbers created through defections is a rogue Parliament that has nothing to do with representative democracy in a system that in practice strongly features party endorsements and party-based policy campaigning. </div><div><br /></div><div>Whatever his reasons for doing it, Jeremy Rockliff's decision to put what was becoming a significantly rogue Parliament out of its misery so the voters could decide the Parliament's future was correct and good for democracy. If (as polling strongly suggests if anywhere near accurate) the voters now give neither major party a majority, that will be a genuine minority parliament that has been chosen by the people. It puzzles me that many of those who argue that "power sharing parliaments" are more democratic would go in to bat for the parliament of the last several months, which does not reflect the democratic will of the voters of 2021 that there be a majority Liberal government. (I add that in any other state that will of the voters would have resulted in a massive Liberal majority, and that there is no evidence that the lopsided 2021 result had anything to do with bandwagon effects.) </div><div><br /></div><div>Even if there had not been defections to the crossbench, an early election would still have had some merit in this very particular case. The Liberal Government's re-election campaign in 2021 was strongly centred around the image of one of Australia's most popular Premiers of all time and his government's responses to a public health emergency (and yes it was an emergency even if the same party now preselects at least one candidate who claims otherwise). Come 2024 the Premier is different and the issues mix is different, in particular the contentious Macquarie Point stadium proposal. I think it would have been reasonable for the Premier in this situation to seek a mandate for himself and his new policies.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's probably no accident that those who support fixed-term parliaments tend to support Greens or left/centre independents (and I say this as one who has voted for plenty of the latter and from time to time the former). The harder it is for a minority government to obtain a new election when it finds the parliament insufferable, the more power the crossbench has. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Other States Are Different</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yes, other states all have fixed terms - and it's a nuisance as well as an advantage sometimes because federal governments can have their options limited by the fixed timing of state elections, and close federal and state elections sometimes affect voter understanding and the informal voting rate. However, there are significant differences between Tasmania and the other states in terms of the strength of the arguments for fixed terms. While these differences were probably not that relevant to how the other states got fixed terms in the first place, I think they're very relevant to why Tasmania shouldn't have them. </div><div><br /></div><div>Firstly, all the other states have single-seat electoral systems and larger parliaments. While results where a single MP defecting could change the government do happen in other states, they are relatively rare. In contrast, there have been seven cases in the past 18 Tasmanian elections in which either the very formation of government or the support that the government relied upon, was determined by a single seat. (In 1996 for instance one more Liberal seat would have given Bruce Goodluck a share of the balance of power with the Greens.) There have been only a few governments in this time that could have survived a two-MP defection with their numbers and structure intact. </div><div><br /></div><div>Then, there are the different structures of the upper houses. In four states, state elections habitually coincide with upper house elections (for half the upper house in NSW and SA and the whole in Victoria and WA). In Queensland (and also in the Territories, although the ACT shares Tasmania's electoral system) there is no upper house. The advantage for incumbents in calling early elections at the right time in all these states would be much greater because far more control over each state's legislative process is at stake. In Tasmania, the calling of an early election has no effect on the upper house, so if a government does have to go at an opportune time and voters judge its decision to do so too kindly, there is still the upper chamber to review its efforts. And I also think the opportunistic-timing advantage argument is overrated anyway. Voters around the country quite often threw out governments that went early without any sensible reason. If a government goes early and is re-elected strongly in spite of voter suspicion of early elections, I say good luck to it. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Party-Hopping Laws Are Not The Answer</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>In response to my view that defections are a critical reason not to have fixed terms I am sometimes told that we should have fixed terms but ban defections via laws that entail that anyone who quits their party loses their seat. New Zealand's on and off waka-jumping laws are often cited as an example. I believe that party-hopping laws, depending on how they are written, would be either too useless or too dangerous in our system. The key issue for such laws is whether or not they permit a rebel MP who wishes to notionally remain within their party to be kicked out of the parliament if they are expelled from their party. If the answer is no, then there is nothing to stop a rebel MP from, for instance, claiming to be still a Liberal while continuing to vote against a Liberal government on legislation or even confidence and supply. If the answer is yes then parties develop supreme power over their own incumbents' careers, which is grossly inappropriate in a state where voters choose which candidates will represent the parties that they vote for. A party machine that did not like an individual MP who belonged to a party could expel them from the party, causing them to lose their seat, which the party would get back on a recount. </div><div><br /></div><div>--</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a separate debate regarding fixed terms for federal parliament that I may cover in a separate article should a serious proposal develop. There is currently more debate about four-year federal terms, to which I'm totally opposed if they result in eight-year Senate terms. I am also cautious about the proposal last rejected in 1988 (four-year unfixed terms with every election a double dissolution) though I think I'd be less so if the malapportionment of the Senate could ever be fixed. I completely reject the Prime Minister's claim that the defeat in 1988 was caused by "misinformation" (of course there was some as there always is, but there were weighty arguments against it too in terms of it being a power grab by the lower house that would alter the balance of our system.)</div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-59923273083910640942024-03-12T15:14:00.003+11:002024-03-17T20:52:28.291+11:00uComms: Labor Just 23: How Much Stock Should We Put In This?<div style="text-align: left;">This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage - <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">link to main page</a> including links to electorate guides and effective voting advice.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>uComms (Australia Institute) Liberal 37.1 Labor 23 Green 13.7 JLN 8.5 IND 12.8 others 5.0<br /></b><b>Seat estimate if poll was accurate Lib 14 ALP 10 Green 4 JLN 2-3 IND 4-5<br /></b><b>Poll should be treated with caution.</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Today saw the the release of the third Tasmanian campaign poll by an established and identified pollster, this one being a <a href="https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/polling-tasmanian-state-election-2024/">uComms for the left-wing Australia Institute</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From the outset I should note some usual cautions. uComms polls by automated phone polling (formerly all robopolling, lately a mix of SMS and voice robopolling). The poll employs very primitive weighting (age, gender and location only, with no attempt to weight by any indicator of political engagement such as education). At the 2021 election an Australia Institute uComms poll which I disputed at the time (<a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2021/04/whats-this-then-commissioned-poll.html">What's This Then? Commissioned Poll Claims Liberals In Trouble</a>) was hopelessly inaccurate, underestimating the Liberals by over 7% and overestimating Labor by nearly 4 and independents by nearly 5. There was never any attempt to explain why this poll got it so wrong. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Many of the other cautions listed in the 2021 article still apply, though these uComms polls are using forced choice on voting intention rather than the previous option of allowing a respondent to be undecided on the first attempt then forcing on the second. On the other hand, uComms just scored as close to a bullseye as seat polling gets with their poll of the Dunkley by-election. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">While this poll is more recent than the others going about (it was taken wholly on Mar 4-5 with a decent sample size of 1177) I would, for the above reasons, treat this poll with more caution than the <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/emrs-liberals-have-big-lead-but-still.html">fairly similar poll by EMRS</a>. And I suspect both polls could have the independent vote a bit high. On my first of two campaign visits to Bass this weekend, the independents had almost zero corflute presence.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">One more caution for this poll regards the Lambie Network. There is no indication in the poll whether JLN was on the readout everywhere, so I am taking it that they were. Based on Senate results from 2022, any poll that has JLN on the readout everywhere will overestimate their vote share by up to 14% of that share, which means the 8.5% of JLN could be really 7.3%, their weakest result this year. That said the overestimate could be less as a fair proportion of Clark voters may have been aware JLN aren't on the ballot in Clark. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But the really bad result in this poll, if this poll is anywhere near accurate, is Labor on just <b>23%</b>. This is lower than some numbers polled by the Greens in the 2010 election, and only barely higher than what the Greens in fact got. I don't believe Labor is doing that badly, but to be doing badly enough that that number can even appear in a poll is a worry enough. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In seat terms, using the EMRS breakdowns as a baseline, I get this poll at something like 14 Liberal, 10 Labor (some of those only just), 4 Green (outside chance of one or two more), 2-3 JLN and 4-5 independents (with a small chance of just 3). But as with the <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/redbridge-says-its-multi-party-mess-as.html">Redbridge poll</a> the combined major party vote is getting so low - it was 65 in EMRS, just 62 in Redbridge and now even lower at 60.1. Can such things be true, or are some of these polls getting too many engaged voters in their samples?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I am intending to prepare an aggregate of all the recent polls but I expect it to show something broadly similar to the EMRS poll. Polls continue to show the Liberals in a position to be easily the largest party and with multiple paths to retaining power among a mess of potential crossbenchers who in most cases have not indicated any clear preference. Even the Greens have given Labor a free hit with leader Rosalie Woodruff saying she couldn't rule out working with the Liberals. Labor has, however, to a large degree brought this on itself with its own disinterest in forming government via any kind of deal. If voters are looking for a prominent candidate who is committed to throwing out the Liberals and to doing whatever deals can be reasonably done to have them thrown out, that voter will struggle. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Choose Your Fighter!</span></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This poll also included some fun leadership polls with the following unusual question form:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"If there is a hung parliament where no one party has a majority, which senior Liberal parliamentarian</div><div>do you believe would negotiate with the crossbench most effectively?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Results are Jeremy Rockliff 39.4% Michael Ferguson 7.3% Eric Abetz 11.1% Don't know 42.3%. Individually, over half of voters for each of Labor, Greens, JLN and Others were in the don't know camp. The inclusion of Abetz is interesting as while he brings the gravitas of 28 years in the Senate he is not even a state parliamentarian at all yet. The fact that he beats Ferguson including among supporters of his own party is an embarrasing number for the latter. </div><div><br /></div><div>Then ditto for Labor, and results are Rebecca White 31.2% Anita Dow 7.6% Dean Winter 19.4% and the great negotiator Don't Know was again in the lead with 41.8%. This one is a bit odd too in that Dow has served as interim Leader and is now Deputy Leader but is not generally seen as a likely leadership option; perhaps Josh Willie would be the most likely third name to come up. Anyway given that this is a sort of preferred leader poll albeit wierdly worded, the fairly high number for Winter is a signal of some discontent among voters generally with White's leadership. This is as usual more so from voters who would not vote Labor as from those who would. </div><div><br /></div><div>A few more interesting snippets from the poll: those voters still voting Liberal overwhelmingly think Tasmania is heading in the right direction (75.1-9.5) but nobody else much does, and a plurality of Liberal voters think there will be a Liberal majority government (49.0%) compared to 4.2% of anybody else. (This is in a choice between Liberal majority, Labor majority and hung parliament).</div><div><br /></div><div>There were more questions in this poll yet to be released, including logging in "peace deal" forests, limiting rent increases to inflation, banning donations from gambling, property and salmon interests, a pony poll about having a real Integrity Commission, and a question about salmon farming that only the Australia Institute thinks is salient to voters. I may comment on these later as they appear. </div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-9819353797060873062024-03-05T00:00:00.006+11:002024-03-05T21:45:37.889+11:00Redbridge Says It's A Multi-Party Mess As Voters Flee Liberals<div style="text-align: left;"><b>This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage - <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">link to main page</a> including links to electorate guides and effective voting advice</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Redbridge Lib 33 ALP 29 Green 14 JLN 10 IND/Other 14<br /></b><b>My estimate 13-14 Liberal 10-12 ALP 4-5 Green 2-3 JLN 2-6 IND</b></div><p>The second Tasmanian campaign poll by an established and known pollster is out, with Victorian-centred outfit Redbridge releasing its <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/tas-libs-labor-sniffing-around-lambie-in-search-for-majority-20240304-p5f9q8">first ever public poll of Tasmanian voting intention</a>. The sample size is smallish (753 voters) and the sample is spread out over two weeks (Feb 14-28). </p><p>They have also released these combined breakdowns: Bass/Braddon/Lyons Liberal 35 Labor 27 Green 11 JLN 14 Other 14, Clark/Franklin Liberal 30 Labor 31 Greens 18 JLN 4 (ie 8 in Franklin as not running in Clark) Other 17</p><p>There is more to come on this poll, including one of the most amusing crosstabs you will ever see, but for now just a quick note on the voting intention numbers. The Redbridge numbers are significantly worse for the Liberals than both the <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/emrs-liberals-have-big-lead-but-still.html">EMRS public poll</a> and the <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/mystery-poll-why-are-we-still-playing.html">huge-sample mystery poll </a>of unknown veracity and quality, and very similar to the <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/01/lambiemania-what-should-we-make-of.html">YouGov poll from January</a>, except that they have treated the Lambie and IND/others votes more normally. (They've only listed parties in seats they are running in.)</p><p>Redbridge have released a seat estimate of 12 Liberal 11 Labor 6 Green 3 JLN 3 Independent based on modelling off mini-samples. I would expect off these state primaries (based on testing them against my model of the recent EMRS breakdowns) that the Greens would not do quite so well; six seats off 14% would be very lucky. I got estimates of 13-14 Liberal, 10-12 ALP, 4-5 Green, 2-3 JLN and 2-6 IND for these numbers. </p><p>A couple of notes regarding my estimates. Firstly JLN could be very vulnerable to leakage because they have not run clear lead candidates and some of their votes will be for people who know and like one of their candidates but not others. A single Independent starting 2% or even more behind a JLN ticket could very well run them down. JLN will also be at risk of losing votes to unintended informal voting, though I estimate the extra impact of that on them will be about 0.2% per seat. </p><p>Secondly it's often difficult to convert projected Independent/other votes to seats because the missing piece of the puzzle is how concentrated is that vote in one or two lead candidates. That's why I am often getting broad-range estimates like 2-6 Independent seats in my models.</p><p>If this poll were accurate, the Liberals would be the largest party but would need to work with either several independents or a mix of independents and JLN to govern, they could end up with their own <i>"coalition [sic] of chaos". </i>Labor would be unlikely to have a path to government that did not go through the Greens. It would be quite a fascinating parliament.</p><p>Redbridge is still a relatively new poll on the public polling scene, albeit one with decent results overall so far. Its findings are sometimes quirky. EMRS has a long and good track record here and a larger sample size. Nonetheless this is an interesting polling data point to add. </p><p>The AFR report refers to claimed internal Liberal polling, but that is in fact the EMRS public poll.</p><p>The AFR article also features more baffling Jacqui Lambie pronouncements (albeit some paraphrased) including that her candidates are 'all political cleanskins' (yeah right one was a Tory mayor in England) and 'have been forced to rule out making a play for the ministry within their first 12 months' (how?). We also get “But we have told them that we don’t do preference deals. We want voters to number all three boxes with Lambie candidates,” Er, nobody does preference deals in Hare-Clark and the voters have to number at least seven. (By the way this is not the first time JLN have contested, they also did in 2018). </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Full report</span></b></p><p><a href="https://redbridgegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Redbridge-Tasmanian-state-vote-intention-and-public-opinion-feb-2024.pdf">The full report is here.</a> The most hilarious crosstab (albeit based on only about 75 intending JLN voters is that 40% of intending Jacqui Lambie Network voters (more than any other party bar the Greens) say policies will be a major factor affecting their vote. JLN has been attracting much criticism for being just about a policy-free zone. </p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-70853066831493724492024-03-03T23:29:00.020+11:002024-03-19T16:59:26.370+11:00How To Best Use Your Vote In The 2024 Tasmanian Election<p><b>This piece is part of my Tasmanian 2024 election coverage - link to <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">main guide page</a> including links to my electorate guides and other articles. </b></p><p>This piece is written to explain to voters how to vote in the 2024 Tasmanian election so their vote will be most powerful. It is not written for those who just want to do the bare minimum - if you just want to vote as quickly as possible and don't care how effective your vote is then this guide is not for you. It is for those who care about voting as effectively as possible and are willing to put some time into understanding how to do so. </p><p>Please feel free to share or forward this guide or use points from it to educate confused voters. Just make sure you've understood those points first! I may edit in more sections later.</p><p><b><u>Please do not ask me what is the most effective way to vote for a specific party or candidate as opposed to in general terms.</u></b></p><p>Oh, and one other thing. Some people really agonise about their votes, spend many hours over them and get deeply worried about doing the wrong thing. Voting well is worth effort, but it's not worth <i>that</i>. The chance that your vote will actually change the outcome is low. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Effective Voting Matters!</span></b></p><p>I'll give a recent example of why effective voting matters. In 2021 the final seat in Clark finished with 10145 votes for Liberal Madeleine Ogilvie, 9970 votes for independent Kristie Johnston and 8716 votes for independent Sue Hickey. As there were no more candidates to exclude at this point Hickey finished sixth while Ogilvie and Johnston took the last two seats. Had the two independents had <b>1606</b> more votes in the right combination, Ogilvie would have lost instead, and the Liberals would not have won a majority. But during the count,<b> 2701</b> votes had been transferred from Labor and Green candidates to "exhaust". All these were voters who did not number any of Ogilvie, Johnston and Hickey. Many would have voted 1-5 for Labor and Green candidates (mostly Labor) and then stopped. There were enough votes that left the system because voters stopped numbering that the outcome could have been different.</p><p>That's not to say it <i>would</i> have been had everyone kept numbering - the voters would have had to somehow sense that Hickey needed preferences more than Johnston, or else the flow to the two independents would have had to be extremely strong (which wouldn't happen). But it is possible for voters who choose to stop numbering to cause the election of parties they would not want to win. And this year with the lower quota and the broader spread of voters, it's probably more of a risk than last time. </p><p>Some of these voters would have stopped because they didn't care about other candidates - but I suspect most really would have had a preference. Most of those stopping most likely stopped because they didn't realise they had the potential to do more with their vote, or because they couldn't be bothered. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">There Is No Above The Line / Below The Line</span></b></p><p>Tasmania does not have above the line party boxes in state elections. All voters vote for individual candidates and decide how many preferences (if any) to give beyond the required seven, and which parties or candidates if any to give their preferences to. There are no how to vote cards. Your most preferred party may recommend you put its candidates in a particular order but you don't have to follow that. While a lot of voters will vote 1-7 all for the same party, plenty of voters vote across party lines for a mix of different candidates. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Your Party Doesn't Direct Preferences</span></b></p><p>If you vote 1 to 7 for a party and stop, your party does not decide what your vote does next once all your party's candidates have either won or lost. At this point your vote plays no further role in the election. Your vote can only even potentially play a role between other parties if you make it do so. The same applies if you vote for seven candidates across party lines, or for seven independent-ish candidates. Your vote can only do the work you tell it to do. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">There Is No Party Ticket </span></b></p><p>Unlike the Senate, candidates do not appear in a specific order on the ballot; the parties appear in a specific order for each seat but the candidates within each party's column are rotated. There is therefore no number 1 Liberal or Labor candidate in each seat. The Greens put out recommended how to vote orders but these are only a recommendation and the voter can just as easily put the candidates in their own preferred order. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">You Cannot Waste Your Vote! (Sort-Of)</span></b></p><p>The idea that voting for minor parties or independents that won't get in or form government is a "wasted vote" is an evil and pervasive myth smuggled in from bad voting systems where it's actually true (like first past the post). Some major party supporters spread this myth, including in Hare-Clark, to try to scare voters off voting for anyone else. In Tasmanian elections if you vote for a candidate who is not elected, your vote flows at full value to the next on your list and so on. You can't waste your primary vote except by not casting a formal vote - but you can waste your preferencing power by stopping early. If your vote only numbers a limited number of candidates then once all those are excluded or elected, your vote might hit the exhaust pile and be a spectator for all the remaining choices. If the candidate you like the most is from a minor party or is an independent, ignore anyone who tells you voting for that person is a "wasted vote". They're wrong.</p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Make Sure Your Vote Counts - No Mistakes In First 7</b></span></p><p>A vote must include at least the numbers 1 through 7 without mistake because our politicians are not committed to protecting voters from losing their votes as a result of unintended errors. <b>Do not use ticks or crosses. </b> If you number six boxes and think you just can't find a seventh candidate and stop, your vote won't count at all. If you're one of those people who starts at the top then goes to the bottom to number all the boxes and works up, and you accidentally end up with two 6s, that will not count either. When you have finished your vote check carefully to make sure you have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 each <b>once and once only</b>. (Also check that you have not doubled or omitted any later numbers, but that's less critical, as if you have your vote will still count up to the point of the mistake.) If you make a mistake while voting at a booth you can ask for another ballot paper. </p><p>Voters for parties like Jacqui Lambie Network and Shooters Fishers and Farmers should be especially careful here. If you vote 1-3 for JLN and stop, your vote will not be counted. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Gold Standard - Number Every Box</span></b></p><p>The most effective way to vote is to <b>number every box</b>. That means that your vote has explained where you stand on every possible choice between two candidates and there is no way that your vote can ever leave the count while there are still choices to be made. </p><p>But doesn't this help candidates you dislike? This is a common myth about the system. By numbering all the way through, if you've numbered a candidate you dislike and your vote reaches them, it can only help beat candidates you dislike even more! The reason for this is that every candidate you put above the mildly disliked candidate must have already won or lost before your vote can get there. If your vote reaches that point then one of the candidates you dislike is going to win no matter what you do. You may as well make it the more bearable one and use your vote to speak for the lesser evil. </p><p>In terms of the primary election you can stop when you've numbered every box but one, and it makes no difference. But because of a weird quirk in the recount system, numbering every box could help your vote to have a say in a recount for your worst enemy's seat! </p><p>Numbering every box takes some preparation - it is best to plan your vote before you go to the booth, There are sometimes automatic tools to help with this and if I see any I'll link to them here. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">The Silver Standard - Number Everyone You Can Stand</span></b></p><p>If you don't want to number every box then a lower-effort alternative that is still better than numbering 1-7 and stopping is to number all the candidates/parties who you think are good or on balance OK and that you have some idea about. That at least means your vote will never leave the count while candidates or parties who you think are at least so-so are still fighting with the baddies. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">I Don't Care Who Wins But I Want Someone To Lose!</span></b></p><p>Then number all the boxes and put that party and/or person last. You may also find the strategic voting section interesting in this case. You can <b><u>never</u></b> help a candidate to win by putting them last.</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Minor Exceptions</span></b></p><p>An exception to the gold standard is if you reach a point where of the candidates you have not numbered, your response to any choice between them is that you absolutely do not care. If you get to that point, and you've numbered at least 7, it's safe to stop. (That said I would keep going and randomise my remaining preferences at this point, for potential recount reasons.)</p><p>Another one is if you slightly prefer one party to another but are so disappointed with the first party that you want to send it a message by not preferencing it, in the hope it fights harder for your preference next time. In that case you can also stop (if you've numbered at least 7 boxes), but in this case you should tell the first party that that's your view (anonymously if you prefer); otherwise they will have no idea you felt that way.</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Who Are These People?</span></b></p><p>Numbering every box is hard work - who are all these people? I write guides about elections and even I know nothing about lots of them! If you've never heard of a candidate and they're not running for a party that you like, I'd recommend putting them between the candidates you dislike slightly and those you're sure you cannot stand. Even if they're running for a party you like, it may be worth doing some research because sometimes parties preselect candidates they shouldn't. Ultimately it is up to the candidates to make themselves known to you. If they haven't done that, you are entitled to mark them down. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">What Is Group B, Group G and So On?</span></b></p><p>Some independent candidates have registered their own columns so they stand out on the ballot paper, while others are just listed in the ungrouped column on the far right. In this year's election both these kinds of candidates have the same status, it's just that some of them have lodged 100 signatures to stand out more. If a candidate is a party candidate you will see their party name. (Oh and if a group has "Network" in its name, it's still a party.) The group letter names for some independents just refer to their position on the ballot paper; the "Group H" independents in various electorates are not connected to each other just because they have the same group letter. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">How Does Your Vote Work? Why Your Number 1 Matters</span></b></p><p>This is not the place for a full account of how Hare-Clark voting works, there's <a href="https://www.tec.tas.gov.au/info/Publications/HareClark.html#">one here</a>. There's a common misconception that when you vote for seven candidates the order doesn't matter much because your vote will help them all. In fact, that's often not true and your vote only helps one candidate at a time, and helps them in the order you put them in. Who you vote 1 for can be very important. If your number 1 candidate is excluded then your vote flows on to the next candidate who is still fighting for a spot at that stage at full value. If your number 1 candidate is elected straightaway with over 12.5% of the vote in their own right, part of your vote's value is used on helping them to win, and part flows on to other candidates you have numbered. If your number 1 candidate doesn't win off the first ballot but never gets excluded, then all your vote's value goes to helping your number 1 candidate either eventually win or at least try to (if they finish eighth). For this reason it's not just who you choose as your first seven that matters, but also the order that you put them in.</p><p>That ends the main part of this article, and the rest is something specialised I threw in because ... people do ask. </p><p>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Special Sealed Section: Strategic Voting (Advanced Players Only!)</i></span></b></p><p><b>This section is an optional extra and is rated Wonk Factor 4/5. If you read it and are not sure you understood it, pretend you never read it and certainly don't try explaining it to anyone else! </b></p><p>Most voting systems are prone to tactical voting of some kind; indeed, in some it's necessary. Under the first-past-the-post system in the UK it is often necessary for voters to vote tactically for their second or third preference party to ensure their vote isn't "wasted". In the 2022 federal election, some left-wing voters voted 1 for teal independents because they were more likely to win from second than Labor or the Greens were. Our preferential systems are much fairer than first-past-the-post, of course, but there are still ways of voting that can make your vote less than optimally powerful, and ways to get around that if you want. </p><p>In this case I am not arguing that voters <i>should</i> vote tactically - I'm just explaining how they can do it if they want to. The ethical decision involved (since voting tactically effectively reduces the value of other voters' votes) is up to them. There's also a problem with tactical voting in that if everyone did it it would stop working and create bizarre outcomes. (But no one should let that alone stop them, because that will not actually happen. Immanuel Kant was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M-cmNdiFuI">wrong about everything</a>.)</p><p>The scope for tactical voting in Hare-Clark is mainly around quotas and the way the system lets votes get stuck. One simple principle of effective tactical voting for those who want to do it is to <b>not vote 1 for any candidate who you know or strongly suspect will be elected straightaway. </b></p><p>Suppose I am weighing up between these three candidates, whose surnames indicate their voting prospects: Morgan Megastar, Nico Nohoper and Lee Lineball. And I decide they are my equal favourites. Morgan always polls a bucketload of votes and will probably be elected in their own right, or at least will surely win. Lee might get in off the first count, on a good day, but I don't really know if they'll win at all, and Nico has run in 17 elections and got two deposits back but I like them anyway. Now in this situation I will vote 1 Nico 2 Lee 3 Morgan (and on and on to 35). </p><p>Why? Because I know Morgan doesn't need my #1 vote. If they get it and they're elected at the first count, the value of their excess votes is one vote greater, <i>but that vote won't all be mine</i>. A part of the value of my vote stays with them and the rest of it flows on to other candidates, but I've also slightly increased the value of all their other votes to make up the difference. And these could be votes cast by Hung Parliament Club op-ed writers or other witless philistines. I'd rather have my vote flow on at full value! Also, Morgan might not quite get quota on the first count, and in that case my vote never goes anywhere else, and I might be boosting whatever vote detritus <i>does </i>put them across the line (shudder!) There is even an extremely rare scenario here where by voting 1 for Morgan I could boost the votes of Lee's key opponents to the point that it actually harms Lee.</p><p>So I vote 1 for Nico Nohoper. A few counts in Nico will be excluded, again, by this stage Morgan is already over the line, or will be soon, and now my vote flows at full value to Lee who may need it. And if Lee eventually gets eliminated, it will flow on at full value to #4, and so on. I do this sort of thing a lot - among my top five or six candidates I will often put them in order from least promising to most, so that my vote will hang around a while and might even be able to flow on past those candidates at full value. But it takes a lot of knowledge of who is likely to poll well to pull it off. </p><p>One can get carried away with this idea and try to thread the needle in an order one <i>doesn't</i> support (eg candidates one dislikes above candidates one likes) to try to get one's vote still on the table at full value at #30 in Franklin trying to defeat You Know Who. I call this "<b>quota running</b>" and I really don't recommend it, as it's too easy to fail to predict something that happens in the count and wind up with your vote doing something that you don't want. Most likely your vote will never get that far anyway. </p><p>And there's another thing worth knowing here. Suppose I'm tossing up at some point between two similar candidates who I think will both be borderline contenders, but I really do not have a view between them. This could happen if I was a major party voter, but it could also be two leading indies. Now in this case I could go for the one I think will poll less well. Why? Because this increases the chance that both of them stay in the count and can both beat a single candidate from some other force (aka the <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2012/10/getting-gininderraed-another-for-hare.html">Ginninderra Effect</a>).</p><p>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Donations welcome!</span></b></p><p>If you find my coverage useful please consider donating to support the large amount of time I spend working on this site. Donations can be made by the Paypal button in the sidebar or email me via the address in my profile for my account details. Please only donate if you are sure you can afford to do so.</p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p><div><br /></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-30261650980082682292024-03-03T16:24:00.010+11:002024-03-17T20:51:58.399+11:00Making Seats "Marginal" At By-Elections Is Meaningless<p>Last night saw the Labor government get the good end of the stick in the <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/dunkley-by-election-live.html">Dunkley by-election</a>, easily retaining a seat that was precariously above the long-term average swing for government vacancy by-elections. It's no disaster for the Liberals who have got a modest swing with some mitigating factors but they (especially Jane Hume) were out in force last night spinning the outcome as a triumph. Together with the usual nonsense about first-term governments not in recent decades losing seats and governments not losing by-elections caused by deaths (both based on trivially small sample sizes) I heard a lot about how they had turned Dunkley marginal and they were coming for the seat.</p><p>Marginal seat status where a seat is retained is determined by general election results not by-elections (so Dunkley is no more a marginal seat than it was before), but this made me wonder, does getting a seat inside the marginal range at a by-election predict anything at all? I've found that such seats have historically almost always been retained by the government at the next election, although on average the election-to-election swing has been worse than the national average in such cases. The idea that the Liberals have put Dunkley in serious danger next time with a swing that is not even bog-average for a government vacancy by-election has no basis. </p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p>I've previously written about the impact of a <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2015/01/queensland-ashgrove-redcliffe-and-other.html">change of mid-term ownership caused by a by-election</a>. Where there is a change of party occupancy in the middle of the term, the new party's MP can build a personal vote at the expense of the previous party. It is also more likely in such cases that there is some lasting local issue driving the result, or that the government is losing anyway. </p><p>But when an opposition merely makes a seat closer but the governing party carries on, does that do anything? I looked through all previous federal by-elections I could find since 1910 that fit the script. (I do not use pre-1910 as the 2PP concept does not make sense with three main parties.) Here they all are:</p><p>Prev - previous election 2PP</p><p>GB Swing - swing at by-election</p><p>B/E - the 2PP of the by-election</p><p>Next - the 2PP for the government at the next election</p><p>BN Swing - swing from the by-election to the next election</p><p>GN Swing - swing between the two elections surrounding the by-election (adjusted for redistribution where required)</p><p>Nat Swing - the national 2PP swing at the next election</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1jqCMPT_wWV_RAE-B06G7ciBgTRgZdWVhLE4BMVQi_uBzwHCyMR8FhaLWPFOkjR109uMrr9VNYi8-OMBxvzV0Sj7_BWxiWK0bXayoYF2Q5EhROWHsDujU-i-MbcbhQMsAxinb4FpMxrn6KJBYXSxi9pa0lsBrgA-7yuXViKIaYwDCXpFQL9yaSr5B4OkU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="960" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1jqCMPT_wWV_RAE-B06G7ciBgTRgZdWVhLE4BMVQi_uBzwHCyMR8FhaLWPFOkjR109uMrr9VNYi8-OMBxvzV0Sj7_BWxiWK0bXayoYF2Q5EhROWHsDujU-i-MbcbhQMsAxinb4FpMxrn6KJBYXSxi9pa0lsBrgA-7yuXViKIaYwDCXpFQL9yaSr5B4OkU=w640-h272" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Overall, I found 13 by-elections since 1910 where the 2PP margin has moved from outside the marginal zone (56+ 2PP) into the marginal zone (50-56) without the seat falling. Asterisks are noted for Bennelong (recontesting incumbent), Grampians (incumbent defected to the proto-Country/Nationals Victorian Farmers Union between the by-election and the next election) and I'll come to Swan in a moment.<p></p><p>In every case except Swan and Grampians the government retained the seat at the next general election. In nine cases the seat went back outside the marginal zone. In all cases but four, the next election was less close than the by-election. </p><p>In every case bar the irregular Grampians example there was a swing against the government from the election before the by-election to the election after. However of the average 4.7% swing, about half (2.4%) was captured by the national uniform 2PP swing. So on average non-marginals with a marginal by-election result were deflated by a further 2.3%. This can be attributed partly to the loss of the sitting member's full personal vote (replaced with a part-term vote for a new sitting member), and probably also partly to such by-elections having tended to have slightly larger than average swings for a government vacancy in the first place (7.1%), but there may be something here beyond those two things. If there is, it is doubtful it applies to Dunkley where the by-election swing has been much lower. </p><p>(Incidentally here we see another issue with the Liberals' claims about what would happen if the swing was repeated at the federal election. By-election swings generally <i>aren't</i> repeated. The average swing against governments at government vacancy by-elections is about 6%, but the average 2PP swing against governments at elections is 2.3%).</p><p>Now to Swan 1940 - the only federal case since 1910 where a seat that moved into the marginal range fell at the next election! In this case there was a mid-term change of government on the floor of the House and so while the seat was retained by the UAP government at the by-election, by the time of the next election they were no longer the government. The national swing was such that by uniform swing the seat would have fallen anyway, and the new Prime Minister being Western Australian could well have been the icing on the cake. So, the exception that proves the rule.</p><p>Overall, there is no evidence that Oppositions that make seats marginal tend to make those seats competitive at the next general election - usually, in fact, the margin increases from the by-election. There is no case where such a seat fell when it would not have fallen anyway. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">What about seats that become more "marginal"?</span></b></p><p>Dunkley (6.3%) is closer to marginal status than any of the non-marginals I found above and looks set for a closer by-election finish than all bar maybe three of them. So for completeness I thought I'd look at cases where an already marginal seat became more "marginal" at a by-election. These are a rare beast - because the average swing for government vacancy by-elections is around 6%, a by-election called below that level is quite often simply lost, and governments tend to avoid calling them if they possibly can. So I only found six examples, two of them very old.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKVu3_rDM5-wOLSGC6ecfv1_zXzS17IzmRsHRy11ba75fQU-9TooB-boTzQKle6w6aK_gqSvR_vwNH9RMhi4ElRDU0ggfSB1kg07tEMd5MJKW3MHMj0d-cGOmR2qJxAoeAQ8m1uSCda5XzlpNvZuRTa6hY-_OxsIUd5tDgW1_VQQ_bNUNjvV7eZ5yl8sBF" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="206" data-original-width="960" height="138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiKVu3_rDM5-wOLSGC6ecfv1_zXzS17IzmRsHRy11ba75fQU-9TooB-boTzQKle6w6aK_gqSvR_vwNH9RMhi4ElRDU0ggfSB1kg07tEMd5MJKW3MHMj0d-cGOmR2qJxAoeAQ8m1uSCda5XzlpNvZuRTa6hY-_OxsIUd5tDgW1_VQQ_bNUNjvV7eZ5yl8sBF=w640-h138" width="640" /></a></div><br />In three of the cases where a government seat became more marginal at a by-election, the government actually lost that seat at the next election. But in the case of Bendigo 1915, the government changed from Labor to Nationalist and the national swing was such that the seat would have been lost anyway if one treats the 2PP swing as even meaningful. In the case of Werriwa 1912, there was an unfavourable redistribution and the new government MP decamped to safer pastures; that seat too would have fallen by uniform swing.<p></p><p>This leaves Flinders (1982) as the one and only case I've found where a government retained in a by-election with a marginal result (whatever the baseline), lost at the next election, but would have just held on by uniform swing. And this was a case with curious resonance with Dunkley. Frankston Mayor Rogan Ward was the Labor candidate but the unsatisfactory 2.3% swing against a reeling government on the retirement of 16-year incumbent Phillip Lynch was considered not good enough, and Ward was replaced for the 1983 election by Bob Chynoweth, who briefly dislodged Peter Reith. And again here in the general election there is a home state effect with Bob Hawke taking over as Prime Minister from Bill Hayden. </p><p><br /></p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-73902894258726098342024-03-02T17:55:00.047+11:002024-03-07T22:34:04.027+11:00Dunkley By-Election Live<div style="text-align: left;"><b>DUNKLEY (ALP, Vic 6.27%)</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Jodie Belyea (ALP) vs Nathan Conroy (Lib) and others<br />By-election caused by death of Peta Murphy (ALP)</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>CALLED 8:42 pm Labor retain</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">---------------</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Updates appear here, scrolling to the top. When counting is underway refresh every 10-15 mins for new comments. </b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Thursday: </b>Labor is now very close to winning the postal count and the 2PP is now 52.71; it is likely to finish between that number and 53. The Australian published an incorrect article today referring to a 10% drop in turnout; the count does not finish until all postals that can be admitted are received 13 days after polling day. The turnout is currently 83.5% and there should be about 1% or so to come; the turnout decline will be smaller than at least 16 of the last 20 by-elections, potentially 18. Media should not publish turnout doomery articles without consulting with the AEC or someone who has a clue. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Tuesday: </b>With vote totals unlikely to change by even 1% from here it's worth noting an outstanding performance by the uComms seat poll. I've been critical of poor results from this pollster recently (especially Tasmania 2021) but this one is remarkably good by seat poll standards especially. uComms' numbers with undecided redistributed are below with the actual current numbers in brackets:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div><b>ALP 40.1 (41.1)</b></div><div><b>Lib 39.3 (39.3)</b></div><div><b>Grn 8.2 (6.3)</b></div><div><b>LTN 1.6 (2.5)</b></div><div><b>Ind/Other 10.8 (10.8)</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>2PP 52 (52.6)</b></div><div><br /></div><div>n=626.</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Tuesday: </b>Postals are doing next to nothing now, the 2PP is 52.63 and won't change much from there.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Sunday: </b>There has been a correction in Labor's favour in the Langwarrin booth, taking them up to 52.7. I have <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/03/making-seats-marginal-at-by-elections.html">written an article</a> regarding Liberal claims that making this seat "marginal" is meaningful. History says otherwise. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>10:36 Late night wrap: the loser is ... Advance! </b>The Carrum Downs PPVC just came in leaving Labor on 52.5, which after perhaps 11,000 remaining postals might make it down to 52 though I would suspect not. This is a good night for Labor; they've retained a very loseable seat with a swing below the average swing for government vacancies (which is around 6% since Federation). But for the Coalition it isn't terrible. The biggest losers here are Advance, who spent heavily on Willie Horton tactics to zero visible effect. They thereby proved that credit given to their inane behaviour for the Voice result was spurious; the Yes23 campaign defeated itself. There is a question mark over whether the Liberals have established outer suburbia as a path to victory (if they can't win Dunkley in a by-election, why should they win it in a general?) though the answer may be different outside Victoria. Labor are right that it is great for them that their primary vote is intact; the final preference flows will be of interest as they do appear underwhelming. Overall, this is another one of those by-elections like Fadden where one side should be clearly the happier but we can pretty much go back to sleep. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">10:05 Looking at the minors, the Greens result is bad, aside from votes lost to VicSoc and maybe Democrats (though losing votes to a barely living fossil party is inexcusable anyway) I think they've also bled to Animal Justice, Labor and perhaps even Liberals, and partly a result of not announcing a candidate til the last minute perhaps. Animal Justice have done quite well with a 1% swing. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">9:27 For what it's worth the Carrum Downs PPVC hasn't done anything much either.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">8:51 Jane Hume has referred to the fact that no by-election caused by a government death has been lost since 1966. There have only been five in that time until now. Three were on margins above 10%, the others being the famous Aston 2001 by-election on John Howard's road back to victory, and a weird one in McPherson 1981 which had had a huge swing to Labor at the previous election. Sussan Ley has added to the copium with nonsense about first-term by-election average swings - first-term by-elections are usually in opposition seats not government. Also, a seat does not become marginal because of a close by-election. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">8:48 One thing to see here is that the preference flow to Labor is quite weak. This is partly the poor result by the Greens but it will be interesting to see the flows. Their primary vote has held up well. This is a good result for Labor, the remaining suspense is whether it is OK for the Liberals or bad (my cutoff is 53-47). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">8:42 Called. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">8:40 Dunkley prepoll is in and the swing is not enough there either. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">8:20 The first prepoll has arrived and it is Mt Eliza and there is not enough for the Liberals there. The first lot of postals are also in and the swing there is 5.9% but the swing on early postals is often stronger than on later-received postals. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">8:11 Before this by-election I set 53% to Labor as the threshhold for the Liberal result to be deemed bad. At the moment we're wobbling around that level but have to see what happens later. It isn't looking like the Liberal result will be better than OK at any rate. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">7:56 There continues to be some ebb and flow and we will have to wait for prepolls and postals to be sure Labor has won this, though they remain well ahead for now. Some things are being made of the Greens' indifferent result but they will be dropping some votes to Vic Socialists and Democrats. The idea that Greens are generally bad in by-elections has <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/08/do-greens-do-badly-at-by-elections-when.html">not much in it</a>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">7:45 Brief dinner break - now things have closed up and there are better booths for Liberals appearing, with the Pollbludger projection down to 52. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">7:20 Now nine booths in and only one of them is strong enough for Liberals so far.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">7:16 Another Mt Eliza booth in and the big thing to see here isn't the majors, it's the Greens being clobbered.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">7:12 Seaford North, nothing to see here either, a small primary swing that won't amount to much on 2PP. Overall four out of five booths have been fine for Labor - if things are vaguely close we do need to keep an eye on postals/prepolls to see if they have a different swing. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">7:06<b> </b>Very variable swings so far - Mt Eliza Central in. This was the best Liberal booth in 2022 and they've got nothing here, possibly a swing away after preferences. However this booth could be affected by the prepoll location. I'd be a bit cautious re drawing too much from the Mt Eliza booths yet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">6:59 The 2PP swing in Mt Eliza North came in at 10% to Liberals, so no evidence of weakened flow for Labor in that one. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">6:56 Two more in, a big swing in Frankston Heights East on primaries (but I think not quite enough on estimated 2PP) but nothing much in Carrum Downs. The idea that Conroy is unpopular in Frankston might be struggling. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">6:47 First booth in, Mt Eliza North. A big swing to the Coalition, 13% on primary and 6% away from Labor, though the right-wing candidates aren't getting a lot. My 2PP estimate is about the same as the ABC's, about 11%. Single booths can be unreliable as we saw in Aston.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">6:45 Tony Barry on ABC has said that scrutineers say the ALP primary is up but the Liberal primary is up substantially - that doesn't really suggest anything out of the ordinary to me if so. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">6:30 No figures as yet. </div><div style="text-align: left;">----------------</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Introduction (5:55 pm)</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Welcome to my live and postcount coverage of the Dunkley by-election, a much anticipated test for how the Albanese government is travelling on its own outer-suburban turf. <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/01/2024-dunkley-by-election.html">My preview post is here</a>; it has had little attention in recent weeks as the Tasmanian election hots up but I have just added a few morsels concerning some of the expectation spin from the major parties. Overall, history suggests that on average chances should be close to evenly balanced here, and a rotten ballot draw for Labor is one dampener on subjective factors in its favour, especially the claimed Victorian Dutton factor.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In the final week the government has had a wobble in national polling and has dropped 0.9% in my aggregate to <b>51.5-48.5</b>, though 0.4 points out of that is caused by the assumption that Resolve still has a large house effect in Labor's favour. This week's Resolve was very similar to other polls, so based on past history my aggregate treated it as a great poll for the Coalition. There could be a bigger wobble if it loses this one.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That said, expectations don't suggest it will lose - the major parties are setting boundaries with Labor claiming that a win by 50% plus one vote is a good result while the Coalition claims holding Labor to 53% will be good (I do not agree with the latter, anything over 53 for Labor would in my view be a recognisably bad result for the blue team). It has been notable that in the last weeks the campaign seems to have gone off the track of cost of living to a red-meat attempt on immigration by Advance, which probably wants to strengthen its hand as a player by claiming credit if the result goes the Liberals' way. The Liberals have increasingly bought into this as well.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://antonygreen.com.au/dunkley-by-election-tracking-the-early-vote/">As noted by Antony Green</a>, the Dunkley prepoll turnout has held up very well at almost the same level as 2022, contrary to earlier by-elections. Postals are also holding up well with 21983 issued (typically about 14% will not make it back). The on the day turnout will determine whether the turnout holds up well by by-election standards. As usual there will be people on social media whinging about the turnout but the final turnout is not known for about two weeks, and turnout should be a complete non-issue in this result.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are two major prepolls Carrum Downs 12957 votes taken and Frankston 12468 taken (both similar to 2022) and a more interesting moderate sized one Mt Eliza with 4503 taken. Mt Eliza replaces the Mornington prepoll which was outside the electorate. It is in a very Liberal voting area and could be a very strongly Liberal prepoll booth - something to keep an eye out for tonight as a Liberal margin of over 1000 votes could occur in this prepoll if the race is at all close. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A notable change in the field is the absence of UAP and One Nation - this should boost the Coalition primary and possibly also the primaries of Darren Bergwerf (IND) and the Libertarians. However I expect this to be counterbalanced by a weaker preference flow from the more left-leaning field of minor candidates. It will be an interesting test of Green preference flows given some of the recent respondent-preference polling. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-19495590760002401772024-03-01T12:33:00.008+11:002024-03-03T17:19:20.022+11:00Mystery Poll: Why Are We Still Playing This Game?<p>(This is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage. For main page with links to all other pages <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">go here</a>.)</p><p>Today's Mercury carried a front-page report of a "phone poll" of Tasmania with a massive sample size of 4000 voters. Unfortunately the newspaper report did not state who the poll was done by or for, making it impossible to immediately assess how useful it was. I have been told (officially unconfirmed) that it is for the Tasmanian Hospitality Association and do not yet know the pollster, though the large sample size is most often seen with automated polls like uComms. (I should also add that Community Engagement was reported in the field by some people early in the campaign, but the issues questions I was told about were different.)</p><p>Anyway, at the risk of sounding like a broken record or even more like a polling analyst with severe frustration management issues, it should be required by law for all media reports of polling to state the pollster and the commissioning source. (Or if not known, all details should be published as this often makes the poll easy to identify). Media frequently express frustration with governments that are not being transparent. They must lead the way by reporting basic polling details better and refusing to allow sources to supply polls on the condition that the pollster should not be named. This is especially so when they run Your Right To Know campaigns. As for sources who try to prevent media from publishing the details of polls they supply, <i>those</i> should be classified as "juvenile career criminals". </p><p>For what it's worth, this looks like neutral polling by someone who actually wants to know the answer, and not a loaded poll released for political purposes. That doesn't mean it's necessarily good in quality terms, but it's worth checking out especially if we get clearer details.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p>What we have so far is:</p><p><b>- sample size 4000, conducted in first week of campaign</b></p><p><b>- Bass Lib 37 ALP 28 Green 13 JLN 15</b></p><p><b>- Braddon Lib 45 ALP 26 Green 5 JLN 15 </b></p><p><b>- Clark Lib 26 ALP 24 IND 25 Green 16</b></p><p><b>- Franklin Lib 33 ALP 24 Green 20 JLN 8 IND 8</b></p><p><b>- Lyons Lib 34 ALP 35 Green 12 JLN 8 IND 10</b></p><p>These results respectively sum to 93, 91, 91, 93 and 99. In the case of Bass and Braddon I would assume that there is an IND option or an IND and an IND/other option that has not been included, but that does not explain what has happened with Clark and Franklin and why they are significantly short of 100 while Lyons (where there is likely to be more Shooters support) is not. A common issue with some polls is whether undecided voters are included in the primary vote numbers or not.</p><p>A few things are notable here: the JLN vote is higher in this poll in Bass than Lyons, contrary to the federal pattern and the (albeit very small) EMRS subsample. The Independent vote in Franklin is very low. The Labor vote in Lyons is surprisingly high - there are some comments about suggesting Labor could do well in Lyons and win three seats there, but a lot of those I hear are based around White's leadership. She was also leader in 2018 and 2021 so she's already in the baseline. (I understand the 35 is not an error.)</p><p>Anyway taking what we have on face value:</p><p>* Bass would be 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN</p><p>* Braddon would be probably 4 Liberal 2 Labor 1 JLN or perhaps 3-2-1 and an independent (but the latter would need a large share of what is left, which is unlikely)</p><p>* Clark would be 2 Labor 2 Liberal 1 Green 2 Independent. On those numbers even if the second independent, say Hickey was on 6% because of a scattered independent vote, she would still win. </p><p>* Franklin would be 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green with the final seat between the second Green, JLN and presumably David O'Byrne - there is a scenario here where whichever of JLN or the leading independent goes out first could help the other pass the Greens on preferences.</p><p>* Lyons would probably be 3 Liberal 3 Labor 1 Green as the Independent vote would not be all Tucker and he would probably be too far behind (and ditto JLN).</p><p>So my estimate on what we have of this poll 15 Liberal, 11 Labor, 4 Green, 2 JLN, 2 IND and a mess for the last in Franklin. <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/emrs-liberals-have-big-lead-but-still.html">A broadly similar picture to EMRS.</a> </p><p>It should be noted that polling from the first week of the campaign predates many of the notable Independent announcements, which are likely to have affected voting intention in some areas. </p><p>More comments if I get more details on this poll. </p>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-43772359333350717132024-02-28T12:35:00.018+11:002024-03-03T17:19:47.365+11:00EMRS: Liberals Have Big Lead But Still Well Short Of 50<div style="text-align: left;">This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage - <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">link to main article page</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>EMRS Liberal 39 Labor 26 (-3) Greens 12 JLN 9 IND 14 others 1 <br /></b><b>Liberals would clearly be largest party</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Seat estimate if poll is correct Lib 15-16 ALP 10 Grn 2-3 </b><b> JLN 2-3 </b><b>IND 3-5</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Just one poll - there will be others!</b></div><p><b>Advance Comments</b></p><p>A quarterly poll by Tasmania's most experienced state pollster EMRS, which has a rather good track record, has just dropped. It shows a complex scenario that is also, if correct, a sorry one for Labor. This poll will have the Liberals happy in that it has them as the only party within reach of a majority while Labor are bleeding votes to independents and JLN. It follows a <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/01/lambiemania-what-should-we-make-of.html">YouGov poll </a>that differed mainly in having the Liberals in the low 30s and a much higher Lambie vote. The poll suggests that <i>if</i> there is a hung parliament, it will be one where Labor will only be able to govern deeply in minority with multiple partners, while the Liberals may have simpler paths to government if anyone will help them. </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p><br /></p><p>Often I can eyeball a statewide EMRS poll and have an immediately good idea of the rough seat breakdown, but this one is particularly complex because the "Independent" vote needs to be assigned subjectively pending more detailed data (which may be coming in a few days). The poll was taken from 15-21 Feb so the last week of campaigning is not included. </p><p>This is only one poll and others' mileage may vary but it continues the term-long trend of Labor being unable to break through the 30% mark, and suggests state Labor could be suffering from "federal drag" (the impact of being in government federally on a state election). This is Labor's worst primary vote since polling the same in December 2021 while Peter Gutwein was still Premier and prior to the reopening of the state's borders. Prior to the 2020-2021 COVID moat phase, they were last polling this badly in November 2015. </p><p>The point of the title of this piece isn't that the Government needs 50% to win outright (they didn't get that last time) but that they probably need to be close to that mark. Jim Bacon won outright in 1998 with 44.8% but would not have done so in the 35-seat system. This year 45% might be enough if the Government can get there, but 39 most likely isn't.</p><p><b>Subjective seat model</b></p><p>I have done a model that attempts to translate what this poll would mean if these numbers, or the nearest reasonable numbers, happened at an election. This is based on a uniform swing model initially to which I have made various tweaks:</p><p>* setting the Others vote at about 3% because Shooters, Animal Justice and the Local Network political party must be good for more than 1% between them (difference deducted from Independent)</p><p>* using the Senate as a basis for JLN (edit: model has been adjusted slightly as JLN were not on the readout in Clark)</p><p>* adjusting Bass and Braddon for the Liberals by 2% each way for the change of Premier. </p><p>* adjusting Labor up in Clark for a less chaotic campaign and the addition of Josh Willie, and Liberals down for loss of Elise Archer and perhaps some vote bleed to Louise Elliot</p><p>* minor campaign based adjustments of the Greens based on candidate factors or disputes (Bass down, Clark down, Lyons up)</p><p>* a bunch of guesstimates of Independent votes based on who is running and my best guess of what they might get, and the YouGov poll (although its samples were tiny)</p><p>* put all the pieces in the box and bash them with a hammer til the lid shuts (crude manual equivalent of reweighting)</p><p>This is what came out as a possible estimate. I have the most doubts about Franklin (size of O'Byrne vote), Braddon (one IND needs to get the bulk of the IND vote to win, which means Garland does well and Freshney gets not much or vice versa) but really everything is very rubbery here. The overall point is that what goes up must come down; if my estimates have a party too low somewhere it will probably be too high somewhere else and the number of seats won will be about the same. For instance will JLN and independents really eat into the Liberal vote enough in Braddon that they have a lower primary there than Bass? It seems unlikely but that's what I got.</p><p>Overall it's really more about the indicative totals than the specific breakdowns. I will refine this very rough model if EMRS releases sufficiently fine scale electorate detail. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtW6rFEnwPxR9YHAwltoj4Xf4Dls0vnlh8S_L_q09M8wIPUO-TLDK6-kBc_ZKPEeEHcXkIAstAuYguWwDSR3wjxfUF_KWswnv1ca2fg5IjVkor63G90B8pofBVRkjc-VbIZYz6PM_N3S0jp3_WTBKbg2vCqG8mtYSCA_mi0v3H7KQhn376P9CuJ8V8-DDG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="708" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtW6rFEnwPxR9YHAwltoj4Xf4Dls0vnlh8S_L_q09M8wIPUO-TLDK6-kBc_ZKPEeEHcXkIAstAuYguWwDSR3wjxfUF_KWswnv1ca2fg5IjVkor63G90B8pofBVRkjc-VbIZYz6PM_N3S0jp3_WTBKbg2vCqG8mtYSCA_mi0v3H7KQhn376P9CuJ8V8-DDG=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><br /></div>My indicative breakdowns <b>if this poll is accurate</b> then are:<p></p><p><b>Liberal 15-16</b></p><p><b>Labor 10</b></p><p><b>Green 2-3</b></p><p><b>JLN 2-3</b></p><p><b>IND 3-5<br /></b></p><p><b>others 0</b></p><p>If my breakdown is a little bit off Labor could get an 11th seat in Lyons, but not realistically more. Likewise the breakdown would not have to be that far out for the Greens to get four. </p><p>So this poll as suspected would leave Labor only able to govern via a rainbow alliance that would have to include the Greens and that would need to throw the Liberals out on the floor of the parliament because the Liberals would surely request to meet the Parliament in such a case. It's more likely on these numbers that even if Labor entertained this prospect, there would be some crossbenchers willing to support a Liberal minority government because it involved fewer moving pieces and they could get more bang for their support. That said, if the past few years have shown us anything about the likely crossbench, it is that we should not underestimate the Liberals' ability to drive away those they'll need to work with. </p><p>Again, this is just one poll, albeit from a pollster with a good track record that has frequently shown it can get within a few points even when its poll is not the freshest come election day. Voting intention can change fast here (this especially applies to JLN who crashed as time went on in the 2018 campaign, but also to the major party balance.)</p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Leaderships</span></b></p><p>It is again surprising that Rebecca White continues to poll so well on Better Premier (now trailing only 38-41) when that indicator normally favours incumbents. A lot of her support as Better Premier, however, will be coming from Greens voters, many of whose votes will not flow back to Labor even if the Greens are excluded in certain seats, because of semi-optional preferencing. </p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">EMRS Breakdowns</span></b></p><p>EMRS have also issued electorate by electorate breakdowns (bear in mind these are based on very small samples of around 200 per division). The most surprising aspect of this sample is the Green vote is higher in Bass than anyone else; no sane person should believe this (small samples are very volatile). This is what I get as the seat breakdown off EMRS's samples:</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiwK0swKtGDe7OgaQ2mTmC30buAq03qB7DuDQaCyqRbptbA8HyAajP29lbeCLzdZwrKL-rSWmsaYRjlbPY1JTtowkmwqN7jCmtXHci8LOIaoPzudrXREAk930iSxaMtxmocsBQef6wCTxuOZ4OnCGOn3zxttWvzSpg0XIcJLcx0ezuEAkd_t9348PWQ7EgI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="609" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiwK0swKtGDe7OgaQ2mTmC30buAq03qB7DuDQaCyqRbptbA8HyAajP29lbeCLzdZwrKL-rSWmsaYRjlbPY1JTtowkmwqN7jCmtXHci8LOIaoPzudrXREAk930iSxaMtxmocsBQef6wCTxuOZ4OnCGOn3zxttWvzSpg0XIcJLcx0ezuEAkd_t9348PWQ7EgI=w549-h640" width="549" /></a></div><br /> Later I may attempt an aggregate using the previous EMRS samples as well (this gets a bit tricky with assigning JLN). For now I get 15-16 Liberal, 9-10 ALP, 4 Green, 2-3 JLN, 2-4 IND. <div><br /></div><div>And another one ...</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a model based off the last three EMRS poll breakdowns scaled to the current poll, but I have set Others uniformly at 3 (possibly too high in the case of Franklin which has no Shooters candidates). This creates some rough edges in the case of JLN but it comes out something like this:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOWFzyIM5GlVOgO15aGtiOMAM6FHn3QGfbtsXL_sWgXCO3Zz15yUGHPSrlfHzs6RLDxPhB9uUGK8Ijmm7oGttvrMdya6fdj0S0-hDtgpmvMmEx5IU5Q5WuuVjpLLBTJDn26qOHH6HfxyKhEKurQIsxuunOWJYZkJOljsmwxtCeuhvWTY782-g_VgfIc8if" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="710" data-original-width="609" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhOWFzyIM5GlVOgO15aGtiOMAM6FHn3QGfbtsXL_sWgXCO3Zz15yUGHPSrlfHzs6RLDxPhB9uUGK8Ijmm7oGttvrMdya6fdj0S0-hDtgpmvMmEx5IU5Q5WuuVjpLLBTJDn26qOHH6HfxyKhEKurQIsxuunOWJYZkJOljsmwxtCeuhvWTY782-g_VgfIc8if=w549-h640" width="549" /></a></div><br /> 14-16 Liberal, 10 ALP, 3-4 Green, 2-3 JLN and 2-6 independents. <p></p></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-9087950118398231002024-02-25T08:05:00.022+11:002024-03-03T17:20:03.132+11:00Liberal Agrees Tasmanians Are Ostriches<div><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="text-align: left;">(This is a special article for my Tasmania 2024 election coverage; <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">click here for link to main page</a> with links to other articles)</i></div></i></div><div><br /></div><div>--</div><div><br />It's been widely expected that when Tasmania's supposed AFL team name is unveiled days out from the election (hmmm) the name will be the Devils, Warner Bros' outrageous trademark nonsense based on their cartoons about <i>our</i> animal notwithstanding. Just in case "Devils" isn't available, I've been scratching my head for an alternative, and I've found one. We can follow the lead of Liberal Bass candidate Julie Sladden and we can call our team the <b>Tassie Ostriches</b>! Here is a jumper mockup.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCiVGORNngQzcq__FlddYa8jQIRD-CAxQpRdmxfnU4wrcfTWmZPjYNtL87V0vdrS4F4ypcIW0jQbhCCJYm8lbbNloMpdrjBlzgkI1El3R1lTKzZPE4LFKf8LBFfD6h2la_mbkz7CnRO2xjDLx5TNKmgi-zCSOKejzc2pdfqN90pK3WTj-5gdjWDLBRTj4k" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="365" data-original-width="301" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjCiVGORNngQzcq__FlddYa8jQIRD-CAxQpRdmxfnU4wrcfTWmZPjYNtL87V0vdrS4F4ypcIW0jQbhCCJYm8lbbNloMpdrjBlzgkI1El3R1lTKzZPE4LFKf8LBFfD6h2la_mbkz7CnRO2xjDLx5TNKmgi-zCSOKejzc2pdfqN90pK3WTj-5gdjWDLBRTj4k" width="198" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Background</span></b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>I have been commenting on Twitter, and in <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide-bass.html">my Bass guide</a> as the Premier continues to defend a candidate who:</div><div><br /></div><div>* <a href="https://dailydeclaration.org.au/2022/09/30/my-government-turned-me-into-an-anti-vaxxer/">believes</a> that our COVID response, vaccines clearly included, was "not healthcare", was "not saving lives" and "never was". </div><div><br /></div><div>* believes (same article) that COVID vaccines are too dangerous and do not work, but <a href="https://www.scienceandfreedom.org/articles/all-of-a-sudden-ivermectin-is-safe-again/">also that </a> Ivermectin does. ("They can't all be wrong")</div><div><br /></div><div>*has <a href="https://www.examiner.com.au/story/7763011/tasmanian-public-health-act-gives-too-much-control-to-one-bureaucrat/">said</a> Tasmania's pandemic response was an "autocracy" and that when Premier Gutwein won the last election with a huge personal vote, he wasn't actually "in charge". </div><div><br /></div><div>* has been working, this year, for Russell Broadbent, who believes much of the same and has defected from the Liberals to the crossbench. </div><div><br /></div><div>* on Twitter follows Cory Bernardi, David Limbrick, Louise Elliot and the <a href="https://twitter.com/kevinbonham/status/1760514828928770085">dunce of the Senate Ralph Babet</a> but no individual Liberal MPs. I will cut her some slack here for such follows perhaps being for professional reasons, but even so ...</div><div><br /></div><div>* has in recent months, apparently approvingly, liked tweets (not all on COVID issues) not by mainstream Liberals but by Malcolm Roberts (PHON), Julian Fidge (Libertarian), Topher Field (Libertarian), Elliot (ex-Lib), Broadbent (Lib defector), Antic (Lib), Rennick (LNP disendorsed), Hanson (PHON), Deeming (Ind Lib) and Craig Kelly (UAP) and has even liked a tweet by The Real Rukshan cheering Tucker Carlson's suck-up interview of Putin. </div><div><br /></div><div>* in no way other than Liberal endorsement appears to me to resemble a remotely mainstream Liberal and who in general (including views on other social issues) seems a much better fit for UAP, Libertarians, One Nation, Aus Christians or "freedom parties", none of those being registered in Tassie. (This said, her local Council Facebook page seems positive and harmless, and I've seen no reason to doubt that she's a good Councillor). </div><div><br /></div><div>* is so much a part of the right-wing alternative media culture-war sphere as a writer and show guest that she has been twice interviewed on the same episode of a radio show as Simeon Boikov (whose other views I am not saying she shares, but this shows the sort of audience that she is reaching)</div><div><br /></div><div>* is involved (at least as a writer for its website) with the <a href="https://canberradeclaration.org.au/join-us/read-declaration/">Canberra Declaration</a> movement which proposes ripping up all anti-discrimination and similar laws that limit "religious freedom and freedom of speech", which casts vague but obvious aspersions against same-sex marriage and which flatly opposes abortion from conception. (She is also a former member of Australian Christians). </div><div><br /></div><div>This candidate's selection has been <a href="https://www.ama.com.au/articles/liberal-partys-anti-vaccine-doctor-selection-misstep">condemned by the AMA Tasmania</a> and still Jeremy Rockliff will not budge!</div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">So what's this about ostriches?</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>On Friday night I came across an October 23 episode of <a href="https://rumble.com/v3r3avm-tonight-we-are-joined-by-dr-julie-sladden..html">"freedom movement" video Cafe Locked Out</a>, featuring Dr Sladden, the host Michael Gray Griffith, and Dr Paul Oosterhuis (an anaesthetist of similar views who was suspended in September 2021 over social media posts, was reinstated by the NSW Supreme Court in May 2022, but has now retired from the field.) </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfhBRkpFdhZbml-nGoINNN12_0RenXe74ko-wQ8K-oZLld3S8OQRpfIS71p3PTez8hQwtXfHDKywp9JD4R8p0VDN4msHUF7oVtBj6ftrHrwHrAFyRDonCPMD4zkP46JxLdvznqmxCvhvup0re2TNZTECDsUuy99r4pJM4c_-b3d142jC3RzN4QhQCe09ob" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1315" data-original-width="1888" height="446" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfhBRkpFdhZbml-nGoINNN12_0RenXe74ko-wQ8K-oZLld3S8OQRpfIS71p3PTez8hQwtXfHDKywp9JD4R8p0VDN4msHUF7oVtBj6ftrHrwHrAFyRDonCPMD4zkP46JxLdvznqmxCvhvup0re2TNZTECDsUuy99r4pJM4c_-b3d142jC3RzN4QhQCe09ob=w640-h446" width="640" /></a></div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I have been cautious about using the term "cooker" to refer to people who object to COVID vaccines, mandates and lockdowns, as the term can carry overtones of class snobbery, especially when used too indiscriminately. But parts of this video are <i>gloriously</i> cooked, and if you haven't sampled the freedom movement before, you may find dipping in it eye-opening. This fringe even has its own songs, and they make Christian rock appear subtle and good. The video's awash with self-congratulations about how the freedom movement is on the path to victory (though there's a brief debate which this philosophy grad found amusing as to whether "God" has made this certain (Sladden) or would that would be an affront to "free will" (Griffith)). Griffith and Sladden reverently praise "Forests of the Fallen", a creepy form of <a href="https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/unauthorised-forrest-of-the-fallen-display-in-murray-bridge-removed-ahead-of-anzac-day/news-story/de23bf0c4b7a08d100d3cc5200859ecf">often unauthorised</a> protest installation where photos and stories of claimed COVID vaccine victims culled from the internet are posted on stakes in a park. </div><div><br /></div><div>But it's the Tasmania-related comments that are of most interest here. At 13:00 Sladden calls Tasmania's mandates response, as overseen by the government she is seeking to join, "quite draconian". At 26:40 Griffith asks Sladden how she managed to remain sane during the lockdowns, and said that he travelled to Tasmania and <b>"Tassie, no offence, was basically a community of ostriches, </b>I was driving down there, everyone's got their head in the sand, I just saw feather-dancers everywhere I went" (and then goes on to praise exceptions, including the illegal ones). Through all this Sladden laughs along, and nods her head, says "Yep". </div><div><br /></div><div>Sladden says <i>"I've always said, there's a special kind of person that lives down in Tasmania you know [..] you've got to want to be prepared to be about five years, 5-10 years behind the times," </i></div><div><br /></div><div>She goes on to talk about and praise anti-lockdown communities and rallies in Tasmania, dismissing Hobart as a "mini-Canberra" while referring to pockets elsewhere where people were "very awake". She refers to rallies in Launceston of "several thousand" (one thousand, at best, in the videos I've found so far). She describes most Tasmanian newspapers as "pretty closed" and at 30:50 returns to the ostrich theme:</div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>But yes, Tasmania's pretty special like that, we've pretty much got our heads in the sand, we like to get on with our own lives and not be too upset with what's sort of happening in the rest of the world"</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>She then goes on about how insular Tasmanians are and were even <u>before COVID</u>:</div><div><br /></div><div><i>"people, they just wanted to be safe in their island and, you know, just be able to get on with their lives and I think I didn't realise how entrenched that was until COVID arrived. Basically I've spent the last few years trying to wake people up"</i></div><div><br /></div><div>The cultishness of this aside, it's an insulting view of Tasmanians as people who don't want to know about the rest of the world, and it's extremely disrespectful of other views - if you don't agree with her on COVID, it can only be because you are asleep. The "sleepers" would include most of her fellow Liberal candidates.</div><div><br /></div><div>Need I spell out the problems with running even the nicest of "freedom movement" candidates as a potential member of a Liberal Government? One, MPs who turn up in the right-wing culture war sphere are a known flight or expulsion risk, witness Bernardi, Broadbent, Craig Kelly, Elliot, Bernie Finn for starters. Running such a candidate while claiming to be able to restore stable government, after having a government become unworkable over defections, is just Groundhog Day without the happy ending. Two, as the most medically qualified MP in a government with constant reshuffles and resignations in this term, Sladden could in theory end up as Health Minister. In fairness, the odds on the double of her winning and them winning is probably pretty long but we have seen from Lara Alexander that any major party candidate, however badly they poll, can get elected on a recount, so who knows. </div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">They Don't Do That</span></b></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisNO7aL0i_44u8KMFW7J-gMDFFqV89JEe7B61UM0D2JNrKf35iuFAdXhqQIkbTbGc7pFJNexdc9yZ3RwHjyML3r4ykxh5qFutn3dRdDS8A2bzyy0UfEI8IgIyVte_Wn_4xBRR931t7mhLWaHJ-RrTjRbeZLewQHr9OFB5Xe1MPLZ_dqTPeaM6xd7FZ0X_-" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="799" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEisNO7aL0i_44u8KMFW7J-gMDFFqV89JEe7B61UM0D2JNrKf35iuFAdXhqQIkbTbGc7pFJNexdc9yZ3RwHjyML3r4ykxh5qFutn3dRdDS8A2bzyy0UfEI8IgIyVte_Wn_4xBRR931t7mhLWaHJ-RrTjRbeZLewQHr9OFB5Xe1MPLZ_dqTPeaM6xd7FZ0X_-=w400-h266" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>People say we do WHAT?</b> (<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/blieusong/7234085108"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">credit</span></a>)</td></tr></tbody></table></span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Now, <b>ostriches. </b> In defence of these fine birds I would like to point out that they do not in fact bury their heads in the sand and suffocate themselves in futile attempts to hide from danger. Only Premiers who are defending lousy preselections do that. An ostrich standing with its head near the ground could be feeding (with its head not visible from a distance), turning eggs, observing its environment or ingesting grit or pebbles for food-grinding. An ostrich lying on the ground may be hiding from a predator by pretending to be something else but its head does not go underground. </div><div><br /></div><div>The most common response from an ostrich to danger it can't dispose of is to run away as fast as I'll be running from the Liberals on my ballot paper if this candidate is still endorsed at close of nominations.</div></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-66839435347619558612024-02-17T00:22:00.058+11:002024-03-22T19:36:47.520+11:002024 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Lyons<p>This is the Lyons electorate guide for the 2021 Tasmanian State Election. (<a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">Link to main 2024 election preview page, including links to other electorates.</a>) If you find these guides useful, <b>donations are very welcome </b>(see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so. Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar. </p><b>Lyons (Currently 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 IND). </b><div><b>(2021 Election Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor)<br /></b><div><div>Most of the state</div><div>Rural, outer suburban and forested. </div><div>Lots of tiny dispersed towns that take many years for an MP to work</div></div><b><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">Candidates (36)</span></b><br /><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><div><i style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: underline;">Note to candidates: </i><i>As the number of candidates becomes large, continually changing link and bio details could consume a lot of my time. It's up to you to get your act together and have your candidacy advertised on a good website that I can find easily well ahead of the election. On emailed or Twitter request I may make one free website link change per candidate at my discretion; fees will be charged beyond that. Bio descriptions and other text will not be changed on request except to remove any material that is indisputably false. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Where a link is available, a candidate's name is used as a hyperlink. Emails from candidates who do not understand this will be ignored. </i></div><br /><div><div><b>The ballot order for Lyons is Greens, Labor, JLN, Tucker, Shooters, Liberal, AJP, Offord, ungrouped. Candidates within each column are rotated where there is more than one candidate.</b></div></div><div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Liberal</u></b></div><div><a href="https://www.guybarnett.com.au/"><b>Guy Barnett</b></a>, incumbent, Attorney-General, Justice, Health, Veterans Affairs, former Senator</div><div><b><a href="https://www.tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/mark-shelton">Mark Shelton</a></b>, incumbent, Speaker, former minister Police, Local Govt etc, former Meander Valley mayor</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/jane-howlett">Jane Howlett</a></b>, incumbent first-term MLC for Prosser, former Sports, Small Business etc minister, 2018 candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/gregory-brown">Gregory Brown</a></b>, recent candidate for Pembroke and Rumney, farmer, former bartender/licensee</div><div><b><a href="https://www.tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/stephanie-cameron">Stephanie Cameron</a>,</b> Deputy Mayor Meander Valley, farmer, deputy president of party</div><div><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/justin-derksen"><b>Justin Derksen</b></a>, advisor to Guy Barnett, background in building, Derwent Valley Councillor, 2021 candidate</div><div><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/richard-hallett"><b>Richard Hallett</b></a>, prominent Hollow Tree farmer, chair Southern Highlands Irrigation Scheme committee. </div><div><br /></div><div><i>A grant to a distillery headed by Justin Derksen's brother Tarrant Derksen has been a public controversy during this term. </i></div><div><i>(Meander Valley Mayor Wayne Johnston was announced as a candidate before the election was closed but withdrew)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Labor</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.com/people/rebecca-white/">Rebecca White</a></b>, incumbent, Labor leader since 2017 except for a few months in 2021</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.com/people/jen-butler/">Jen Butler</a></b>, incumbent, Shadow Minister Veterans, Building, Consumer Affairs etc</div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066400575622">Edwin Batt</a></b>, Mayor of Southern Midlands, 2021 candidate, farmer</div><div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/ben-dudman/">Ben Dudman</a></b>, Meander Valley Councillor, electorate officer for Brian Mitchell, </div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/casey-farrell/">Casey Farrell</a>, </b>CEO Enterprize Tasmania (business startups firm), also Neon Jungle (design/technology)</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/richard-goss">Richard Goss</a>, </b>"high school teacher with a mechanical and construction trade background", Northern Midlands councillor</div><div><u style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/carole-mcqueeney/">Carole McQueeney</a>, </u>Glamorgan-Spring Bay Councillor, registered nurse, company director, teacher etc (five degrees!)</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>(Derwent Valley Mayor Michelle Dracoulis was announced as a candidate before the election was called but withdrew)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Greens </u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/tabatha-badger">Tabatha Badger</a>, </b>past Wilderness Society convenor, Lake Pedder restoration campaigner<b>, </b>former minor Senate candidate</div><div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">Alistair Allan</a></b>, Antarctic and Marine Campaigner, Bob Brown Foundation</div><div><b>Mitch Houghton, </b>2021 Bass candidate when noted here as<b> </b>horticulture business owner/operator</div><div><b>Hannah Rubenach-Quinn, </b>former Break O'Day councillor, chaplain, disability support worker, 2014 state and 2016 federal candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">Craig Brown</a>, </b>retired GP</div><div><b>Glenn Millar, </b>Landcare group president and tour guide, also ran 2014-21</div><div><b>Gary Whisson, </b>ecologist, 2018 state and 2019 federal candidate</div></div><div><b><u><br /></u></b></div><div><b><u>Independents</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/JohnTuckerMPLyons/">John Tucker</a></b>, incumbent, defected from Liberals May 2023, farmer, former councillor</div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556019167652">Angela Offord</a>, </b>Launceston vet, has been involved with Voices for Tasmania</div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Jacqui Lambie Network</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/andrewjenner">Andrew Jenner</a></b>, former UK Tory mayor and magistrate (see below), self-employed in catering/leisure, 6th dan judo black belt </div><div><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/troypfitzner"><b>Troy Pfitzner</b>,</a> removalist (Little Green Truck), 2022 Lyons candidate for JLN</div><div><b><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/lesleypyecroft">Lesley Pyecroft</a>,</b> Army veteran, registered nurse (schools and LGH)</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Jenner's occupation is listed as "Retired Magistrate" but the term "magistrate" in the UK has a different meaning to Australia. A <a href="https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/who-are-the-judiciary/magistrates/#:~:text=Who%20are%20they%3F,of%20cases%20in%20our%20courts.">UK magistrate</a> is a voluntary position that does not require a law degree. </i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Shooters, Fishers and Farmers</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Carlo-Di-Falco-SFFP-Tas-Candidate-109629477106050/">Carlo di Falco</a> (lead) </b>target shooter, hunter, gun collector, frequent Shooters candidate</div><div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/PBiggSFF">Philip Bigg</a>, </b>hunter, tradesman, state party secretary, best beard of the election contender</div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/shootersandfisherspartytasmania/posts/pfbid02YQbwXMprCyGHZCpcDr6oDmEgkG3JLEFnLS9kbaNrCL8oZnnxSNiYxtTWKtSauBkal">Shane Broadby</a></b> trout fisherman and instructor, Nyrstar plant operator, 2018 candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/shootersandfisherspartytasmania/posts/pfbid02ekCp3YGF6jt7Mc7R3ARgaSrc5sisGL2YQ37sdfDGCaYtnfa3SZT2QCHBuHEbG11zl">Wayne Turale</a> </b>has been a: policeman, store owner, Rural Health co-ordinator, statewide outreach manager, fly fisherman etc, 2018 candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100078855546911">Ray Williams</a> </b>owns New Norfolk Mitre 10 and Williams Outdoors, former candidate for Libs (2002), SFF and Citizens Electoral Council</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Animal Justice Party</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://tas.animaljusticeparty.org/anna_gralton_for_lyons">Anna Gralton</a> </b>2022 Lyons candidate, customer care specialist, sociologist (PhD), gave me some entertainment compiling guide with description of husband as a "rescued animal"</div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Ungrouped Independents</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-branch-allen-938950119/?originalSubdomain=au">Jenny Branch-Allen</a></b>, former Glenorchy councillor, CEO Kidsafe Tasmania</div><div><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/fraser-miller/?originalSubdomain=au"><b>Fraser Millar</b></a>, Southern Midlands councillor, distillery owner, farmer, media platform entrepreneur</div><div><b>Andrew Roberts</b>, Property maintenance contractor</div><div><b><a href="https://centralhighlands.tas.gov.au/council/councillor-details/">Loueen (Lou) Triffitt</a>,</b> Mayor of Southern Highlands</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Andrew Roberts <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-20/gay-hate-election-flyer-surprises-gay-rights-leader/4898812">ran in the 2013 Senate race</a> as a "True Green" independent candidate and had <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160322210354/http://tasunited.org/news/advocates-urge-gay-hate-flyer-recipients-to-make-complaints/">38,000 anti-gay fliers</a> intercepted by Australia Post and not delivered. Also later ran for Family First and has signed a trans-exclusion pledge for "Women's Forum Australia". </i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Prospects for Lyons</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>I usually class Lyons as a "northern" seat because it is more similar to Bass and Braddon than Franklin and Clark, but it is less Liberal-leaning than the first two named. In 2021 the Liberals got 51.2%, Labor 32.5%, Greens 8.9% and Shooters 4.5%. In the 35-seat system (but coming off a 25-seat election) that would be 4-3-0 or 4-2-1. For previous elections Lyons would have gone 4-3-0 in 2018, 4-2-1 in 2014, 3-3-1 in 2010 and 2-4-1 in 2006.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Liberals have lost Tucker, but the replacement of Tucker with Howlett means they probably haven't lost anything in profile terms (he only polled 6.5% anyway). Nonetheless if there is more than a few points against them then winning four (Barnett, Shelton, and probably at least one of Cameron and Howlett) will get hard. That's not to say Howlett has a perfect form guide; she resigned from Cabinet in 2022 for <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-25/tasmanian-minister-jane-howlett-resigns/100860740">personal reasons</a> but was also under pressure over <a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/news/politics/peter-gutwein-reacts-to-affair-claims-of-jane-howlett-tasmania-jackjumpers-boss/news-story/3feb7b567fa14877cfeb6545afbb8bf3">conflict of interest allegations</a>, and despite numerous reshuffles since has not returned, with Labor asking if she is under investigation by the Integrity Commission. Most voters in Lyons are unlikely to care. Cameron performed well in the 2021 election. If Howlett is defeated she can most likely run for Prosser again in May. </div><div><br /></div><div>White will poll a massive vote again (in fact she polled exactly the same number of primary votes in 2018 and 2021) and Butler has had a second term to further build profile and did well off White's preferences last time. The recent history suggests Labor don't need a swing to be well in the mix for three, but the minor party / indies mix is stronger here than before too. Some of the arguments I've heard re Labor getting three here refer to White's leadership, but she was also leader in 2018 and 2021 so that's already in the baseline. If there are only two it will be interesting to see if any of Labor's new candidates (some have suggested Casey Farrell as a chance) can threaten Butler. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Greens were close to the 35-seat mark in the last two elections despite candidates who were problematic (2018) and virtually unknown (2021). Badger seems a way better candidate combining the party's environmental roots with a fresher image for the party, but she doesn't yet have the profile of the Greens' only two previous Lyons winners, Christine Milne (leader of a massive anti-pulpmill campaign) or Tim Morris (who had been Mayor of Derwent Valley). I doubt the Greens can get quota on primaries in Lyons but can they get enough to make the top seven and stay there? Will be interesting to see.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lyons could be the Lambie Network's best or second best prospect based on the federal result for Pfitzner, who polled 10.86% and finished third after preferences. This wasn't all about Brian Mitchell's social media embarrassments either as the Network was only 1% below him in the Senate. Pfitzner is a relatable working class candidate who debates well about basic issues and will have name recognition from the federal run. (Jenner has UK local government experience but wasn't elected to Clarence Council in 2022).</div><div><br /></div><div>Opinions vary about Tucker, the question being whether his high profile as a crossbench rebel can drag voters across the aisle or from other Liberal candidates, and whether there is the anger at the government in rural Lyons that there seems to be in parts of Bass. Not all his 6.5% from last time are going to vote for him again given his defection. Tucker's campaign so far looks well presented though it's short of online presence; I just hope there will be more ads <a href="https://www.facebook.com/abetzau/videos/2000316246650951">like this</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/JohnTuckerMPLyons/videos/356746239075929/">or this</a>. The Liberals running Howlett (and also Hallett and Brown, farmers) will help fight for Tucker's former votes but Howlett's first promise on the campaign trail should be<a href="https://www.facebook.com/reel/312885181740034"> no more shopping videos</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Outlook for Lyons (to be refined):</b> The messiest electorate. While my aggregate has 3-2-1-1-0 as the leader (JLN and Greens win) if Tucker can get a high enough vote he could defeat any of JLN, the Greens or apparently the third Liberal. Labor chances of three seem to have faded.</div></div></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-37761446707256353902024-02-16T14:05:00.028+11:002024-03-22T11:02:59.569+11:002024 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Franklin<p>This is the Franklin electorate guide for the 2024 Tasmanian State Election. (<a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">Link to main 2024 election preview page, including links to other electorates.</a>) If you find these guides useful, <b>donations are very welcome </b>(see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so. Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar. </p><b>Franklin (Currently 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 IND)</b><div><b>(Elected at last election 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green)<br /></b><div><div><div>Eastern shore Hobart (Clarence City), much of Kingborough, Huon Valley, D'Entrecasteaux Channel</div><div>Urban/outer urban/treechange/rural</div></div><div><br /></div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Candidates (31)</span></b><br /><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><i><b><u>Note to candidates:</u> </b>As the number of candidates becomes large, continually changing link and bio details could consume a lot of my time. It's up to you to get your act together and have your candidacy advertised on a good website that I can find easily well ahead of the election. On emailed or Twitter request I may make one free website link change per candidate at my discretion; fees will be charged beyond that. Bio descriptions and other text will not be changed on request except to remove any material that is indisputably false. </i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Where a link is available, a candidate's name is used as a hyperlink. Emails from candidates who do not understand this will be ignored. </i></div><br />I am not listing full portfolios for each MP, only the most notable positions. Candidates are listed incumbent-first by position/seniority and then alphabetically, except if stated otherwise. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>The ballot order for Franklin is Greens, Liberal, O'Byrne, JLN, AJP, Mulder, Labor, Glade-Wright, Local Network, ungrouped. Candidates within each column are rotated where there is more than one candidate.</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><b><u>Liberal</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/nic-street">Nic Street</a></b>, incumbent, Minister for Housing, Construction, Sport and Rec, Stadia (yep) etc</div><div><b><a href="https://www.tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/dean-young">Dean Young,</a></b> first-term incumbent elected on recount, backbencher, newsagent</div><div><b><a href="https://abetz.com.au/">Eric Abetz</a></b>, Liberal Senator for Tasmania 1994-2022, Senate Leader for Abbott Govt, famous uberconservative</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/aldo-antolli">Aldo Antolli</a>,</b> CEO Pathways Tasmania, Kingborough councillor, Huon candidate 2022</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/josh-garvin">Josh Garvin</a></b>, President Tas and Vice-President Aus Young Liberals, staffer for Madeleine Ogilvie</div><div><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/jock-mcgregor"><b>Jock McGregor</b></a> aka Michael McGregor, football operations manager Kingborough Tigers, former footballer and coach</div><div><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquie-petrusma-02660a249/?originalSubdomain=au">Jacquie Petrusma</a>, </b>MHA for this seat 2010-2022, minister in 3 Liberal govts, advisor to Premier </div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Antolli stated in a Kingborough Council meeting in late 2023 that he believed in climate change but was not a believer in "anthropogenic" climate change.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><b><u>Labor</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.deanwinter.net/">Dean Winter</a></b>, first-term incumbent, Shadow Minister Energy, Finance, Economic Development, Racing</div><div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/ebony-altimira/">Ebony Altimira</a>, </b>Business Transformation Lead at MyState, former President Tasmanian Rugby Union</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/simon-bailey/">Simon Bailey</a>, </b>Education Manager TasTAFE, AEU TAFE President, past teacher/tradie</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/meg-brown/">Meg Brown</a></b>, former Sorell Councillor, staffer for David O'Byrne, party branch president/treasurer</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/kaspar-deane/">Kaspar Deane</a>, </b>Kingborough Councillor, public school teacher</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/philip-pregnell/">Philip Pregnell</a>, </b>corrections supervisor, UWU Tas Prison Service delegate, past national Apex president</div></div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/toby-thorpe/">Toby Thorpe,</a> </b>Deputy Mayor Huon Valley, 2021 Tasmanian Young Australian of the Year, climate/renewables advocate, previous candidate</div><div><br /></div><div><u style="font-weight: bold;">Greens </u></div></div><div><b><a href="https://tasmps.greens.org.au/person/dr-rosalie-woodruff-mp">Rosalie Woodruff</a>, </b>Greens Leader, incumbent, epidemiologist (Ph.D.) (lead candidate)</div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/gideon-cordover">Gideon Cordover</a></b>, Kingborough Councillor, NIDA graduate, past candidate including Huon 2022</div><div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/jade-darko">Jade Darko</a>,</b><u> </u> Clarence Councillor, 2019-22 federal candidate, software engineer</div><div><b>Owen Fitzgerald, </b>organised climate school strikes in 2022</div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/jenny-cambers-smith">Jenny Cambers-Smith</a>, </b>Huon Valley Councillor, business and content writer, wildlife video filmer</div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">Lukas Mrosek</a>, </b>"professional background in building design"</div><div><b>Christine Campbell, </b>former Huon Councillor, "business woman, community volunteer and
academic"</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Independents With Own Groups</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.davidobyrne.net/">David O'Byrne</a></b>, incumbent, former prominent unionist, briefly Labor leader in 2021, disendorsed by party</div><div><b><a href="https://claregladewright.com.au/">Clare Glade-Wright</a></b>, Deputy Mayor of Kingborough, former eco-tourism operator</div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/muldernet/">Tony Mulder</a></b>, Independent Liberal MLC Rumney 2011-7, Clarence councillor, estranged from Liberals since 2018, serial upper house candidate</div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Jacqui Lambie Network</u></b></div><div><div><b><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/marshallcallaghan">Marshall Callaghan</a>, </b>child safety worker and former Defence social worker</div><div><b><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/chrishannan">Chris Hannan</a>, </b>relationship therapist and clinical supervisor, own business</div><div><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/conorhallahan" style="font-weight: bold;">Conor Hallahan</a><b>. </b>Engineering, procurement and construction manager for COVA large machinery firm</div></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><i>Surely the most poetic list of surnames a ticket has assembled since the days of federal Labor's "Four As." </i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Local Network</b></div><div><a href="https://www.localnetwork.au/martine_delaney"><b>Martine Delaney</b></a>, high-profile LGBTIQA+ advocate, Greens candidate Franklin 2016 federal</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Anna Spinaze was announced as a candidate but did not run</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Animal Justice Party</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://tas.animaljusticeparty.org/jehni_thomas-wurth_for_franklin">Jehni Thomas-Worth</a></b>, retired (librarian/information science), 2022 support Senate candidate</div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Ungrouped Independents</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://tamarcordover.com/">Tamar Cordover</a></b>, works in empowering rural women with disabilities</div><div><b><a href="https://twitter.com/BrunyBob">Bob Elliston</a></b>, retired, wildlife sanctuary owner, candidate in 1998, frequent Mercury letters author</div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b>David O'Byrne Deselection</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div>A significant change in Franklin that warrants its own guide section is the deselection of David O'Byrne, former Labor leader. O'Byrne was Labor MP for this seat 2010-2014, was defeated at the 2014 election, and was elected again in 2018 and 2021. In my view, "hard left" forces supporting O'Byrne were the biggest culprits for the faction-fights and incidents that marred the party's 2021 campaign. After the 2021 election Rebecca White resigned the leadership and endorsed O'Byrne, who defeated Shane Broad in a member/delegate ballot with nearly three-quarters of the vote. However O'Byrne's leadership lasted just weeks before he was brought down by a scandal involving unsolicited kissing of and text messages to a 22-year old union staffer working for him in 2007-8, before his parliamentary career. (O'Byrne said that he had thought this was consensual but was later caused to "reflect deeply on the nature of consent".) He was also accused of giving the staffer a performance warning after being asked to desist. </div><div><br /></div><div>An investigation found O'Byrne's behaviour to have been "inappropriate and wrong" but to have not breached party rules and no further action was taken by the broader party. O'Byrne says that the report (which is not public) found he had not engaged in harassment or victimisation as defined in party policy. The complainant <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-17/tasmania-former-labor-leader-david-obyrne-report/100382844">rejected the report's findings and processes</a> but O'Byrne's summary of what the report contains has not to my knowledge been challenged. </div><div><br /></div><div>O'Byrne resigned from the parliamentary party (which appeared set to otherwise expel him from caucus anyway) and for the rest of the term has sat as an "independent Labor" member, still a member of the broader party but recognised by the Parliament as an independent. During this time he has been an active representative on traditional Labor community issues, but his fate has distracted the party, with differing opinions even among the federal executive about whether to let him back. Finally and as a result of Rebecca White's firm stance against reselecting O'Byrne, the national executive endorsed a full ticket that omitted him. O'Byrne has now quit the Labor Party completely and is running as an independent. Any Labor member who assists him will be in breach of party rules and risks expulsion.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Government has attacked Labor for not endorsing O'Byrne, but would also have attacked them if they did endorse him, and rather potently so in the days of #metoo and the Commission of Inquiry. The real problem for Labor is that having allowed O'Byrne to remain in the broader party throughout, they have sent a message that it was all no big deal really, and created a big mystery as to why he has not been taken back. </div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Prospects for Franklin</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Franklin is a left-leaning seat at federal level where it has been Labor-held since 1993, but at state level the difference between it and the northern seats is less pronounced. Votes in Franklin in 2021 were Liberal 42.3%, Labor 33.2%, Greens 18.9%. Under the 35-seat system this would have been a 3-3-1 result. Results in previous elections would have been 3-3-1 in 2018 (close to 4-2-1), 4-2-1 in 2014, 3-2-2 in 2010 and 2-4-1 in 2006. </div><div><br /></div><div>At the last election Petrusma polled nearly 1.7 quotas for the new system in her own right. This will be down because of the competition from Abetz and perhaps her temporary retirement but the Liberal team looks strong if Petrusma is a serious candidate. Abetz is popular in parts of the electorate as witnessed by his high 2022 Senate below the line votes in parts of Kingborough (especially the southern parts of Kingston/Blackmans Bay) - an area which has an element of "bible belt" voting but which still voted Yes in the Voice referendum. Street has had his first full term as a Minister, his performance has been well regarded and he appeals to moderates. I think the Liberals' prospects of three here are good unless the wheels fall off but I don't see who they beat to get more. Although their ticket is strong in experience terms it suffers from a serious gender imbalance with only one woman out of seven. </div><div><br /></div><div>Labor has only one incumbent, Winter, who will get a lot of votes, but it will suffer from the loss of O'Byrne, who polled almost a quota in his own right last time. Some of O'Byrne's past votes will come back to other Labor candidates but it would be heroic to put Labor on three seats as the campaign starts; seems much more likely two. I suppose after Clark 2021 I shouldn't totally write off that O'Byrne leaving and new fourth party competition knocks Labor down to <i>one</i>, but that does seem very unlikely. Polling suggests most likely two and out. Assuming Labor win at least two, they get a new MP - young talents Kaspar Deane and Toby Thorpe are contenders here but I wouldn't write off some of the others either. All of Deane, Thorpe and Winter are from the western side of the disjunct electorate; Meg Brown is one whose profile is more on the eastern side. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Greens will win one, and their second candidate could ride high in the count for a while after Woodruff is elected. Their only pathway to two seems to be O'Byrne flopping. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's generally expected that O'Byrne will get a sympathy vote and romp in, with the Fontcast even joking about whether he could win two seats. The polling on independents for Franklin has been pretty spotty making O'Byrne's seat no guarantee but it would be brave to confidently predict failure. </div><div><br /></div><div>Unusually among medium-profile independents, Glade-Wright started running several months ago but she has lately been overshadowed by O'Byrne. Her council covers about a third of the voter base and she is a good fit for the inner eastern shore too. Views differ - some see her as a potential winner and others as not a significant contender. The arguments here are firstly Clark has very high indie voting and the virus could spread to Franklin, and secondly that community-independent style campaigning might work here as it has worked in the teal seats. I am wary of the latter because in Tasmania there is no strategic reason for a Labor or Greens voter to switch. Mulder also has profile but mostly in Clarence these days and it's a crowded field.</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, the Lambie Network tend to poll worse in Franklin than the northern seats but did get half a state quota in the Senate election. I'll be surprised if they get close in this field unless they have a really strong result statewide, but a glimmer of a chance has been seen in some polling breakdowns. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Outlook for Franklin (will revise later): </b>Other things could happen but the lead contender is 3-2-1-0-1 (O'Byrne). </div></div></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-50381099835165660582024-02-16T00:34:00.062+11:002024-03-23T00:12:13.567+11:002024 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Clark<p>This is the Clark electorate guide for the 2024 Tasmanian State Election. (<a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">Link to main 2024 election preview page, including links to other electorates.</a>) If you find these guides useful, <b>donations are very welcome </b>(see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so. Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar. </p><b>Clark (Currently 2 Liberal 1 Labor 1 Green 1 Independent)</b><div><div><div><div>Western shore Hobart, primarily Hobart City and Glenorchy City</div><div>Inner and outer urban</div></div><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">Candidates (35)</span></b><br /><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><i><b><u>Note to candidates:</u> </b>As the number of candidates becomes large, continually changing link and bio details could consume a lot of my time. It's up to you to get your act together and have your candidacy advertised on a good website that I can find easily well ahead of the election. On emailed request I may make one free website link change per candidate at my discretion; fees will be charged beyond that. Bio descriptions and other text will not be changed on request except to remove any material that is indisputably false. </i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Where a link is available, a candidate's name is used as a hyperlink. Emails from candidates who do not understand this will be ignored. </i></div><br /><div>I am not listing full portfolios for each MP, only the most notable positions. Candidates are listed incumbent-first by position/seniority and then alphabetically, except if stated otherwise. On ballot papers candidate names are rotated.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The ballot order for Clark is Labor, Liberal, AJP, Local Network, Johnston, Greens, Hickey, Shooters, Lohberger, Elliot, ungrouped. Candidates within each column are rotated where there is more than one candidate.</b></div><div><br /></div></div><div><div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Liberal</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/madeleine-ogilvie">Madeleine Ogilvie</a>,</b> incumbent, previously Labor then Independent MP, Minister Corrections, Workplace Safety, Science, Arts etc</div><div><b><a href="https://www.tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/simon-behrakis">Simon Behrakis</a></b>, first-term incumbent elected on recount, former Hobart Alderman and Abetz staffer, economist</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/mohammad-aldergham">Mohammad Aldergham</a></b>, Variety Tasmania CEO</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/emma-atterbury">Emma Atterbury</a></b>, personal development and tech startup consultant, podiatrist</div><div><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/jon-gourlay"><b>Jon Gourlay,</b></a> advisor to Michael Ferguson, company director in mining technology and luggage design</div><div><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/catherine-searle"><b>Catherine Searle</b></a>, office head for global engineering/project management firm Jacobs</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/marcus-vermey">Marcus Vermey</a></b>, owner of well-known butcher Vermey's Quality Meats, rowing coach</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Catherine Searle is prominent at Cornerstone Presbyterian, a church involved in controversy several years ago over its same-sex marriage views and confrontational street preaching. Searle has not been involved in any such incidents herself but is shown by Australian Christian Lobby as agreeing with all their candidate question proposals including ceasing government assistance to Dark Mofo.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><b><u>Labor</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.ellahaddad.com/contact">Ella Haddad</a></b>, incumbent, Shadow Attorney-General, Justice, Corrections, Housing etc</div><div><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/josh-willie/"><b>Josh Willie</b>,</a> Legislative Council incumbent for Elwick, Shadow Minister Education, Transport, Sport etc</div><div><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/stuart-benson/"><b>Stuart Benson, </b></a>Labor State Secretary since 2017</div><div><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/simon-davis/"><b>Simon Davis</b>,</a> hospitality worker, unionist </div><div><a href="https://cms.australianoftheyear.org.au/recipients/john-kamara"><b>John Kamara</b></a>, co-founder, Culturally Diverse Alliance Tas and African Communities Council Tas, 2023 Tas Australian of the Year</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/rebecca-prince/">Rebecca Prince</a></b>, Australian Public Service Service Delivery Leader, psychology student</div><div><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/susan-wallace/"><b>Susan Wallace</b></a>, communications specialist, former advisor to Senator Anne Urquhart </div><div><br /></div><div><i>(Hobart Councillor Ryan Posselt was seeking preselection but not selected)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Greens </u></b></div></div><div><i><u>(</u>Greens candidates are listed in endorsed ticket order)</i></div><div><b><a href="https://tasgreensmps.org/your-greens-mps/vica-bayley/">Vica Bayley</a></b>, incumbent elected on recount mid-term, former state campaign manager for Wilderness Society</div><div><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/helen-burnet"><b>Helen Burnet</b></a>, long-term Hobart Councillor and third-term Deputy Mayor, podiatrist</div><div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">Janet Shelley</a>, </b>Sustainability Director, Dpt Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, 2022 federal candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">Nathan Volf</a>, </b>Behavioural Science graduate, social worker, 2021 candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/trenton-hoare-ab377322a/?originalSubdomain=au">Trenton Hoare</a></b>, student, retail assistant Red Parka, board member Equality Tas</div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">James Zalotockyj</a>,</b> early childhood educator</div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">Peter Jones</a>, </b>former history teacher, prominent Quaker, Islamic Studies (PhD) peace and human rights activist </div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><u>Independents With Own Column</u></b></div><div><a href="https://kristiejohnston.com.au/"><b>Kristie Johnston</b></a>, first-term incumbent, former Glenorchy Mayor, criminologist/lawyer and hotelier</div></div><div><b><a href="https://www.louiseelliot.org/">Louise Elliot</a></b>, first-term Hobart councillor, president of landlord advocacy body, "gender critical" culture war figure, briefly in Liberals before quitting over pets in rentals policy </div><div><a href="https://www.benlohberger.com.au/"><b>Ben Lohberger</b></a>, first-term Hobart councillor, founding member Save UTAS, Hobart City Mission worker</div><div><a href="https://www.suehickey.com.au/"><b>Sue Hickey,</b></a> frequently floor-crossing Liberal Speaker 2018-21 (ran as Ind 2021), Deputy Mayor of Glenorchy, ex Hobart Lord Mayor</div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>(Elise Archer announced she was running but withdrew the day after following a media interview in which she appeared to be unwell.)</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>I could write a whole article re Elliot, if not a small book, but I don't think her chances are significant enough to do it right now. Of recent note she was suspended from Council following a Code of Conduct finding, which is now under appeal with the suspension part-stayed, but we're still not allowed by the bizarre Code system to know what the finding or its basis is. On 20 March it was announced that this decision had been set aside for want of procedural fairness and a new Panel would reconsider the matter. She is also currently pursuing an Anti-Discrimination complaint against the Council over alleged discrimination in venue hire. An Anti-Discrimination complaint against her over comments she made at Hobart's failed Posie Parker rally was recently withdrawn. </i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Shooters, Fishers and Farmers</u></b></div><div><u style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/adrian.pickin">Adrian Pickin,</a></u> Senior Regulations and Pricing Analyst at TasWater, practitioner of hunting using ferrets, 2023 Rumney candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=705625581729797&set=a.112297694395925">Lorraine Bennett</a>, </b>former recruitment consultant and HR manager, party secretary, frequent Shooters candidate</div><div><b><u><br /></u></b></div><div><b><u>Local Network</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.localnetwork.au/sam4clark">Sam Campbell </a>, </b>former state co-ordinator Tas branch AUWU, 2022 Hobart council candidate</div><div><u style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.localnetwork.au/frank4clark">Frank Formby</a>,</u> locum palliative care specialist, content producer</div><div><b><a href="https://www.localnetwork.au/david4clark">David Nunn</a>, </b>co-owner Fern Tree Tavern</div><div><b><a href="https://www.localnetwork.au/ranae4clark">Ranae Zollner</a>, </b>student</div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Animal Justice Party</u></b></div><div><a href="https://tas.animaljusticeparty.org/casey_davies_for_clark"><b>Casey Davies</b></a>, storeperson, 2022 federal paper candidate, student of Protected Area Planning<br /><br /></div><div><b><u>Ungrouped Independents</u></b></div><div><span style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.thereluctantpolitician.com/">John Forster</a></span> business analyst, serial candidate but not for a while</div><div><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-triffitt-7085621a1/?originalSubdomain=au">Angela Triffitt</a></b> cultural awareness and Indigenous community consultant</div><div><u style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://www.stefanvogel.com.au/?fbclid=IwAR2xgmkhh3fhwqWZqDVCmFOYK1GdeKPER8t8V9mCbmpG08jT4g_qFmDIimY">Stefan Vogel</a></u> glaciologist and Antarctic scientist, 2018 and 2022 Hobart Council candidate</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Vogel received a low-key Liberal endorsement in the 2018 Hobart Council election but is presumably no longer in the party. </i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">UTAS Move </span></b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>This is a significant campaign issue (at least as a source of campaign noise and incidents) in Clark, but unlikely to be a thing anywhere else. The University of Tasmania's plan to relocate into the city centre was a major issue at the 2022 Hobart Council elections, at which it was rejected about three to one in an "elector poll" of voters (see the issues section of my <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2022/09/hobart-city-council-elections-candidate.html">2022 Hobart guide</a> for a background to the issue). The University took a back step in response by withdrawing its redevelopment proposal for the Sandy Bay campus, but the issue is still about with several houses still having signs up from the 2022 campaign. </div><div><br /></div><div>Both major parties have been generally seen as supporting the move, but on 27 Feb the Liberals announced they would <a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/news/2024/02/27/majority-rockliff-liberal-government-will-keep-utas-sandy-bay">"keep the University of Tasmania in Sandy Bay"</a>. (The Liberal statement falsely claims Labor amended the Act in 1992 to allow the University to sell land; in fact the Liberals themselves created a new Act containing the provision in question that year. Labor did nothing in office in 1992 except lose an election on 1 Feb.) The Liberals' statement, however, says that "<i>The Liberal Party respects the right of the University to establish new facilities in the Hobart CBD, and elsewhere if they wish.</i>" This has resulted in Save UTAS calling the Liberal policy a scam because it enables a situation where the University facilities all relocate leaving only a rustbucket campus. </div><div><br /></div><div>The Greens have appeared split on the issue with the incumbent Hobart Council Greens having been supportive of the move but the parliamentary Greens opposed, meaning that diehard UTAS move opponents might support Vica Bayley but not Helen Burnet. (And diehard UTAS move supporters vice versa). In late February the Greens formally adopted a policy to oppose the move.</div><div><br /></div><div>Among the Clark independents, Ben Lohberger, Kristie Johnston and Louise Elliot all have form on opposing the move (Elise Archer was also likely to be an opponent if she ran). Elliot announced on 24 Feb that Save UTAS had decided not to endorse her on account of her transgender issues views. (This is always a risk with single-issue movements that draw widely across the spectrum). </div><div><br /></div><div>On 25 Feb the Save UTAS group's website was removed and their public Facebook page was set to private. This site does not suggest or know anything regarding the cause(s), only that the event occurred. The next day the pages were restored and the group, as long expected, endorsed Lohberger. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>Sue Hickey has<a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/news/hobart-south/airbnb-hike-on-cards-as-council-moves-to-tackle-housing-crisis/news-story/b7d22c2f2a45fda42fc6cdeb07fedb63"> worked for the university on supporting the move</a> and strongly supports it.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Prospects for Clark</span></b></div></div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b></div><div>Clark, which I often refer to jokingly as the "People's Republic of Clark", is Tasmania's most left-wing and idiosyncratic electorate. It falls into two halves - the Glenorchy part which was traditionally strongly Labor and the Hobart part which has historically had a high vote for Greens and other left-wing candidates, with a small Liberal enclave around Lower Sandy Bay. At federal level the seat was won by Andrew Wilkie (left IND) from third in a thriller in 2010. Wilkie has since made the seat his own and now gets primary votes of nearly 50%. </div><div><br /></div><div>The 2021 Clark campaign was most notable for the horrendous collapse of the Labor vote, Labor falling from 41.9% in 2018 to 22.1%. Causes of this cratering disaster included the departure of Scott Bacon, the defection of Madeleine Ogilvie leaving only one incumbent, the acrimonious disendorsement of Ben McGregor, obscure support candidates, competition from independents and a bewildered reception to Labor's pokies backflip in the inner city booths. 2021 was also notable for the strong showing from independents Kristie Johnston and Sue Hickey, with Johnston being the only winning independent in the history of the 25-seat system and Hickey coming close to costing the Liberals their majority in <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2021/05/2021-tasmanian-postcount-clark.html">one of the most watched postcounts on this site</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>The 2021 result (Liberal 31.8 Labor 22.1 Green 20.0 Johnston 11.0 Hickey 9.8 and a long tail of others) would have been <b>2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 2 Independents</b> under the 35-seat system. However, previously Labor tended to outpoll the Liberals in Clark, with exceptions being 1992 and 2014. Other recent elections convert to 3-3-1 in 2014 and 2018 and 2-3-2 in 2006 and 2010 (close to 2-4-1 in the former). Clark is a huge problem for both majors in their quest for majority, because if you only get two in Clark you need four fours or a five somewhere else.</div><div><br /></div><div>Three quotas is 37.5%, though a couple of points less would be enough for that. The Liberals need only a modest swing to get there but they have lost Elise Archer. Behrakis almost beat Ogilvie last time and should benefit from Archer's absence, though Ogilvie has had more time now to convince Liberals she's one of them. It's possible the Liberals could drop below two quotas (25%), even so with a likely fairly even vote split I'd expect them to survive. I have been wondering if Ogilvie could be at risk if the Liberals do only get two, though she does have plenty of campaign presence. Vermey seems a strong third candidate and could be a risk to the incumbents (or a third winner if the Liberals do exceptionallt well). </div><div><br /></div><div>I expect the Labor primary in Clark to grow because of the endorsement of Willie, a high-profile second-term MLC with a good support base in the Glenorchy area. I expect that he and Haddad will win easily with prospects they can rebuild Labor's base enough to be in the mix for a third. But a third seat for either major party most likely depends on the Greens and Independents being held to two between them.</div><div><br /></div><div>With the 35-seat system back the Greens should be pushing hard for two here but I've had early doubts about their shape to do so, and generally they are being outpolled by independents. They are running Bayley as a specified lead candidate when Clark is most suited to running two lead candidates and trying to split the vote between them evenly (this helps parties to win in Hare-Clark - for very wonky technical details <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2012/10/getting-gininderraed-another-for-hare.html">see here</a>). That said they are at least pushing Burnet as a second candidate, unlike in other seats. They're without O'Connor who tended to divide opinions but at least was very high-profile, while Bayley is less established and viewed somewhat coolly by Green voters as seen by his narrow countback victory against much less well known Bec Taylor. Their web presence has been disorganised in the early running (a drop-down link to Bayley was added six months after he elected it and the day after I noticed its absence here.) I also think Johnston who often votes with the Greens and targets some similar issues could eat into their support base. This said, Burnet has a history of often very strong performances for the Greens, including polling over 3000 votes in 2010, the highest ever for a Greens support candidate. Her councillor vote has waned in recent elections - perhaps partly on account of the UTAS move issue in 2022 - but she was still easily re-elected as Deputy that year. </div><div><br /></div><div>Johnston seems likely to be re-elected, but if independents only get one it's possible Hickey beats her. Johnston should have a higher profile from incumbency while Hickey has been out of the parliamentary spotlight since 2021. On the other hand Hickey has been active on Glenorchy Council, would as noted above have won last time, and has a strong ground game based on her experience in promotions. Other parties would want the Independent vote to be focused with Johnston to make it easier for them to beat Hickey. Glenorchy Council has not been everyone's cup of tea lately (pool closure, rates rises) but a lot of Hickey's 2021 support came from Hobart. </div><div><br /></div><div>Elliot is a high-profile independent but her views are widely disliked on the left and her profile is mostly in the very left wing Hobart section; she has made a significant effort but I doubt she will do more than knock some size of dent in the Liberal vote. There is some thought Lohberger is a smokie based on likely appeal to Wilkie voters and the Utas issue. However, his profile is not that high for a relatively short campaign centred around an issue only half of the seat cares about. Still both these are worth keeping an eye on.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Outlook for Clark (to be revised later):</b> The default scenario (2-2-1-0-2 with one Green and both Johnston and Hickey) is the lead suspect here. If one of the indies falls short that seat could be taken by a third Liberal or a second Green, with Labor looking less competitive for three than earlier in the campaign. </div></div></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4052593945054595675.post-17581402379795395282024-02-15T12:55:00.040+11:002024-03-22T10:58:17.819+11:002024 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Braddon<p> This is the Braddon electorate guide for the 2024 Tasmanian State Election. (<a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html">Link to main 2024 election preview page, including links to other electorates.</a>) If you find these guides useful, <b>donations are very welcome </b>(see sidebar), but please only donate in these difficult times if you can afford to do so. Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar. </p><b>Braddon (Currently 3 Liberal 2 Labor). </b><br /><div>North-west and western Tasmania including Devonport, Burnie and Ulverstone</div><div>Regional/rural/remote</div><b><span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">Candidates (33)</span></b><br /><b><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></b><i><b><u>Note to candidates:</u> </b>As the number of candidates becomes large, continually changing link and bio details could consume a lot of my time. It's up to you to get your act together and have your candidacy advertised on a good website that I can find easily well ahead of the election. On emailed or Twitter request I may make one free website link change per candidate at my discretion; fees will be charged beyond that. Bio descriptions and other text will not be changed on request except to remove any material that is indisputably false. </i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Where a link is available, a candidate's name is used as a hyperlink. Emails from candidates who do not understand this will be ignored. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>I am not listing full portfolios for each MP, only the most notable positions. Candidates are listed incumbent-first by position/seniority and then alphabetically, except if stated otherwise. </div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>The ballot order for Braddon is JLN, Labor, Liberal, Greens, AJP, Shooters, Garland, ungrouped. </b><b>Candidates within each column are rotated where there is more than one candidate.</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><b><u>Liberal (more to add on some)</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.jeremyrockliff.com.au/">Jeremy Rockliff</a></b>, incumbent, Premier since 2022, Minister State Develpment, Tourism, Mental Health etc</div><div><b><a href="http://www.rogerjaensch.com.au/">Roger Jaensch</a></b>, incumbent, Minister for Education, Children, Environment etc</div><div><b><a href="https://www.felixellis.com.au/">Felix Ellis</a></b>, incumbent, Minister for Police, Fire, Resources, Skills, Racing etc, ex-plumber</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/patrick-fabian">Patrick Fabian,</a> </b>English and Humanities teacher now at Leyland Christian School, not the actor of same name</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/sarina-laidler">Sarina Laidler</a></b>, King Island councillor, beef farmer, King Island development admin officer</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/vonette-mead">Vonette Mead</a>, </b>Deputy Mayor Latrobe Council, operations manager building + construction business</div><div><b><a href="https://tas.liberal.org.au/our-team/giovanna-simpson">Giovanna Simpson</a></b>, Deputy Mayor Burnie, youth worker, former owner modelling academy, Pres Burnie Harness Racing Club</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Sarina Laidler was in the news when she lost her council seat for missing three consecutive meetings without leave while caring for her dying husband. She was re-elected unopposed in a by-election.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Simpson was (<a href="https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/8454089/steve-kons-rules-out-running-in-next-state-election/">as of December</a>) secretary of the Jacqui Lambie Network board but JLN were unsuccessful in trying to convince her to run as a JLN candidate. </i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Tasmanian Times has sent Mead a <a href="https://tasmaniantimes.com/2024/02/questions-for-vonette-mead/">long list of questions</a> surrounding conflict of interest accusations, based on questions raised by a resident of Latrobe LGA.. I will note any reply if I see one. On the last day of the campaign this story <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-22/vonette-mead-deputy-mayor-alleged-conflict-of-interest/103616118">made the ABC</a>. </i></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b><u>Labor</u></b></div><div><b><a href="http://taslabor.com/people/anita-dow/">Anita Dow</a>,</b> incumbent, Deputy Leader, Shadow Minister Health, Mental Health, Ageing, former Burnie mayor</div><div><a href="http://taslabor.com/people/shane-broad/"><b>Shane Broad</b></a>, incumbent, Shadow Minister Resources and Trade, agricultural scientist (PhD)</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/amanda-diprose/">Amanda Diprose</a></b>, Central Coast councillor, 2021 candidate</div><div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/sam-facey/">Sam Facey</a>,</b> quality assessor at McCains Foods Smithton, AMWU delegate</div><div><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellekidd/?originalSubdomain=au">Danielle Kidd</a></b>, West North West Working (job hub) project manager, ex UTAS Cradle Coast, 2018 candidate</div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/adrian-luke/">Adrian Luke</a>,</b> director of DMS Energy (electrical/renewable energy)</div></div><div><b><a href="https://taslabor.org.au/people/chris-lynch/">Chris Lynch</a>, </b>Burnie councillor, Braddon 2022 federal candidate, sound engineer/musician, family based care</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Lynch was a controversial candidate in the federal election after a 1994 conviction for possessing amphetamines for sale was revealed.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><b><u>Greens</u></b></div></div><div><i>Green candidates are listed in party-supplied order</i></div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/DrBriggsforCentralCoastCouncil/?paipv=0&eav=AfY6KEUNFFGRhKvMwT6bvU80s1quHmPazaO17h4kKcXZRkYnOCvzcrVdTMMgafA4iF4&_rdr">Darren Briggs</a>, </b>emergency doctor, small tourist accommodation operator</div><div><div><b><a href="https://greens.org.au/tas/person/2024-state-election-candidates-list">Michael McLoughlin</a>, </b>"community services worker", party volunteer organiser, former union organiser</div><div><b>Petra Wilden </b>"environmental scientist"/teacher, 2022 Devonport Council candidate</div><div><b>Leeya Lovell , "</b>teacher assistant", visual artist</div><div><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanne-ward-65961b71/?originalSubdomain=au">Susanne Ward</a>, </b>Workforce Australia and Disability Employment Services consultant<b> </b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-morrow-2ba499123/?originalSubdomain=au">Erin Morrow</a>, </b>psychologist</div><div><b>Sarah Kersey, </b>"retired small business operator"</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><u>Independents With Own Column</u></b></div><div><b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/CraigGarlandIndependent/">Craig Garland</a></b>, charismatic fisherman, serial candidate, prominent Braddon 2018 federal by-election</div></div><div><br /></div><div><i>For longer Garland background see my <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2022/04/tasmanian-house-of-representatives.html">2022 federal guide</a>.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Jacqui Lambie Network</b></div><div><b><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/miriambeswick">Miriam Beswick</a>, </b>former director of laser tag business Big Big House, </div><div><b><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/craigcutts">Craig Cutts</a>, </b>former SAS medic (Counter Terrorism Squadron) and policeman, </div><div><b><a href="https://lambienetwork.com.au/pages/jamesredgrave">James Redgrave</a>, </b>military veteran, firefighter, private investigator, Tasmanian Times author.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Redgrave's persistent and at least at times robust questioning of Latrobe Council, which has continued in JLN colours (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzwHma6jkkE">10:40</a> in), has contributed to a council report entitled '<a href="https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/8046144/unusual-step-taken-to-wrangle-councils-difficult-customer/">Dealing with difficult customers options</a>' and an estimate of $14,000 in staff costs. See <a href="https://www.latrobe.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/1271721/Agenda-Open-Council-16-January-2023.pdf">more detail here</a> where Redgrave's name is mentioned 62 times including that he is acting on behalf of clients. Redgrave was also involved in a <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/8538755/jln-candidate-james-redgrave-involved-in-port-latta-crash-rescue/?cs=87">rescue incident </a>on the campaign trail.</i></div><div><br /></div><div><b><u>Shooters, Fishers and Farmers</u></b></div><div><div><a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61554798644879" style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: underline;">Dale Marshall </a>(lead candidate), Labrador breeder and pigeon racer, former merchant seaman, industrial hydraulics</div><div><span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration-line: underline;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064098333120">Brenton Jones</a>,</span> launch master and marine engineer, previous frequent Shooters candidate</div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><b style="text-decoration-line: underline;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Kim-Swanson-SFFP-Tas-Candidate-111955583538986/">Kim Swanson</a>, </b><span style="font-weight: 400;">degree in agriculture, former horse stud manager, boutique winery co-owner, previous candidate</span></div></div><div style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div><div><span><b><u>Animal Justice Party</u></b></span></div><div><span><b><a href="https://tas.animaljusticeparty.org/julia_king_braddon">Julia King</a>, </b>music teacher</span></div><div><span><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span><b>Ungrouped Independents</b></span></div><div><span><b><a href="https://www.gatty.online/">Gatty Burnett</a>, </b>former youth worker, social media conspiracy theorist, longer profile in <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2023/04/legislative-council-2023-murchison.html">Murchison 2023 guide</a></span></div><div><span><b><a href="https://www.warwyn.tas.gov.au/councillors/cr-andrea-courtney/">Andrea Courtney</a>,</b> Waratah-Wynyard councillor, mental health and hospital worker</span></div><div><span><b><a href="https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/8531661/latrobe-mayor-peter-freshney-in-independent-state-election-bid/">Peter Freshney</a></b>, Mayor of Latrobe, businessman in communications infrastructure</span></div><div><span><b><a href="https://www.westcoast.tas.gov.au/council/councillors/councillors/hamer,-liz">Liz Hamer</a>,</b> West Coast Councillor, Strahan farmer, ungrouped candidate 2018, 2021</span></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><span style="font-size: large;">Prospects for Braddon</span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Braddon is an electorate where resource development and employment issues have long been very significant, and the Green vote has lagged behind the rest of the state. It was once very socially conservative and has been a swing seat federally, but seems to be realigning towards the Liberal Party. Braddon gave the Voice referendum a big thumbs down with 72.2% voting No. Gavin Pearce held the seat easily at the 2022 election, with Labor criticised for preselecting Lynch on the basis of the above mentioned old drugs conviction. </div><div><br /></div><div>There was drama in the Braddon count in 2021 with former MP Adam Brooks recovering his seat narrowly at the expense of Felix Ellis, only to resign hours later after being charged with firearms offences. Ellis won the seat back on his recount. </div><div><br /></div><div>From time to time the electorate votes very strongly for a given party, so the seat produced the only 5/7 seat results in the previous 35-seat system (1972 Labor and 1992 Liberal) and in 2014 it produced the 25-seat system's only ever 4/5 seat haul for the Liberals. In 2021 the Liberals polled 57.2%, Labor 26.5%, Garland 6.1%, Greens 5.5% and Shooters 3.8%. This would have been either a 4-2-Garland result or 5-2, depending on candidate effects. </div><div><br /></div><div>The 2018 result would probably have been 5-2 (very close to 4-2 with one JLN), 2014 would have been 5-2 or 4-2 with one Palmer United, 2010 would have been 3-3 with one Green and 2006 when Labor won a majority would have been 3 Liberal 4 Labor. Interestingly if the state election repeats the 2022 House of Reps vote shares, the results would be 3 Liberal 2 Labor and <i>both</i> Lambie Network and Garland - but Garland does not poll as strongly when up against multiple-candidate state tickets. Garland's vote in this case stood up well despite <a href="https://www.themercury.com.au/news/politics/tassie-candidate-craig-garland-shares-bizarre-conspiracy-theories/news-story/ce7c39f6246527027a487f30c6b951a7">controversy over sharing conspiracy theories and links to fringe antivax elements</a>. As at mid-Feb 2024 I am not sensing that Garland is quite as active as in the past but if his vote holds up he is still a contender. In some scenarios I have found that Garland can win if he can poll as little as 5%, as he is likely to get preferences and leaks from everywhere. </div><div><br /></div><div>Peter Freshney was very popular in Latrobe at the last Council election, polling 36% of the Councillor vote despite not having to campaign for Mayor, so there is a foothold there if enough voters want independents but find Garland too niche or out there. While it was not ideal to be running from the ungrouped column, Garland polled a strong vote there last time. However I am doubting that Freshney's campaign is of sufficient scale to be successful. Latrobe has also seen <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/8468622/latrobe-mayor-peter-freshney-denies-toxic-workplace-culture/">a lot of turbulence</a> that is boiling over into the state election. </div><div><br /></div><div>Rockliff's elevation to Premier should boost the Liberals further and they have a reasonably strong ticket with Jaensch (who polled a low primary last time but did well on preferences), Ellis (who has become far more prominent in this term, albeit at times controversially, eg the now-dropped fire levy) and also two female Deputy Mayors (Simpson in particular seems a good candidate). But even so for the Liberals to win five they would have to have very little swing against them statewide and that seems ambitious on recent polling. A swing of around 9% would put them in the danger zone for dropping to 3. That seems less of a risk than in Bass. </div><div><br /></div><div>Braddon is the Lambie Network's home base and strongest division although Craig Cutts who appears to be their lead candidate is not a high-profile name (indeed James Redgrave is probably better known and reportedly more active) and the party may struggle with leakage as a result. In 2018 JLN only got 6% in Braddon, whereas in 2022 they got 12.3% in the Senate. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had been expecting Labor to retain two easily but a Freshwater sample with the party on a miserable 15% raised the question of whether the strength of Jeremy Rockliff and the Lambie Network could push Labor down to just one seat (Anita Dow) in Braddon with Shane Broad losing. I understand that there is other concern this could happen too. The Greens are an outside to remote chance and would probably have to get very fluky with the distribution of votes for other parties, especially as preference flows for them tend to be bad in the area. The protest vote in Braddon tends to be elsewhere. </div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Outlook for Braddon:</b> Aggregated polling estimate is 4-2-0-1-0 (JLN wins seat). However, Garland could take either the 4th Liberal or 2nd Labor seat. </div></div>Kevin Bonhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06845545257440242894noreply@blogger.com0