The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections Page 1 of 11 the POLL BLUDGER
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The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections Page 1 of 11 THE POLL BLUDGER REFLECTIONS ON THE Tuesday, February 1, 2005 MIRACLE OF DEMOCRACY AT WORK LABOR IN DECENT POLL SHOCKER IN THE GREATEST NATION ON EARTH The Sunday Times has turned in a handy poll showing Labor ahead in Geraldton and Mindarie but heading for a drubbing in Swan Hills, although a collective sample of 450 suggests the results should be treated with caution. Unusually the report provides two-party preferred figures without distribution of the undecided - had this been done the results would have looked a little something like this: The Poll Bludger deserves your money. Visa, MasterCard and American Express all gratefully ALP LIB UND ALP LIB accepted. Geraldton 49 41 9 54 46 Mindarie 44 37 18 54 46 Swan Hills 52 32 15 39 61 WESTERN AUSTRALIAN ELECTION 2005 The results runs counter to the prevailing wisdom in that Labor Legislative Assembly are ahead in regional Geraldton and behind in suburban Swan Hills. Earlier reports suggested that the Liberals had been Seat-by-seat guide to the 57 disappointed by recent polling in the latter electorate, while no Western Australian lower house less an authority than Paul Murray reckons psephologists should electorates for the election to be classify Geraldton as being held by an imaginary Liberal member held on 26 February 2005 and not by Labor's all-too-real Shane Hill. Legislative Council DARK SIDE OF THE MOONER Guide to the election for the six- region, 34-member upper house Former West Australian editor and current Perth talk radio king Paul "Mooner" Murray has stirred up a psephological pshitstorm with the following remarks in his regular Saturday column for his old paper: Australian Capital Territory Election 2004 Over the next few weeks, you will be bombarded by endless streams of so-called information about what are Guide to the election for the three- electorate 17 -member Australian seen by the media as marginal seats. Much of it will be Capital Territory Legislative rubbish, because the media rely solely on one source of Assembly held on October 16, information to determine the swinging seats. That source 2004 is Antony Green, the competent psephologist employed by our state-owned national broadcaster (sometimes called the ABC - PB). Even the WA Electoral Commission uses his pendulum of swinging seats as its published guide. The FEDERAL ELECTION problem is that the Green pendulum will not help you 2004 make sense of what is likely to happen in the election ... his swings are calculated on the two-party preferred results of Comprehensive coverage of the the 2001 election. That takes no account of the peculiar federal election held on October 9, flow of preferences in that election which will not be 2004 http://www.pollbludger.com/ 1/02/2005 The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections Page 2 of 11 House of Representatives reproduced in this one .... And that's what makes the pendulum worthless. Entry point for the Poll Bludger's election guide individually Murray is certainly laying it on with a trowel with his contention covering all 150 House of Representatives seats. The above that the two-party preferred measure is "worthless", which link leads to a full federal suggests that voters are idiotic automatons with no intellectual pendulum linking to the individual capacity to grasp the importance of their relative ordering of entries, which are arranged on six Labor and Coalition candidates - surely only true south of the pages as follows: river. But newspaper editors and talkback hosts do develop different ways of expressing themselves from academics and New South Wales Victoria election wonks. Stripped of its provocativeness, Murray's Queensland contention that the primary vote figures from the 2001 election Western Australia will be a more useful guide than two-party preferred is worth South Australia examining. Constructing an alternative pendulum based on the Tasmania and the Territories difference between the parties' post-redistribution primary vote from 2001 is easily done, since two-party preferred figures are The Senate not the only ones that Antony Green has calculated - they are however the obvious ones to use in ordering a table of the State -by -state guide to the half- electorates, since two-party preferred is the only measure that Senate election held on October 9, the outcome to take effect on July puts Labor seats on one side and Coalition seats on the other. 1, 2005 The following table ranks electorates by order of primary vote Federal Election Calendar majority, cutting out at the 10 per cent mark, with Labor majority seats on the left and Coalition (literally speaking since Preserved for historical interest, the several of these seats had both Liberal and Nationals candidates) Poll Bludger's guide to the pros on the right. Which of the two tables will prove more useful will and cons of the various potential be easily verifiable once the results are in. The seats are colour- dates for the federal election coded according to who actually holds them on the notional post-redistribution two-party measure, with the difference between the major parties' primary vote listed in the inner column and the total non-major party vote in the outer - the QUEENSLAND higher the latter figure, the more dangerous it is to draw ELECTION 2004 conclusions from either the primary or two-party result (also note the pendulum at Mumble, which is padded out with various Complete seat-by-seat guide to the Queensland election held on other figures in recognition of what both Brent and Murray February 7, 2004 recognise as an unusual result from 2001). Alannah MacTiernan's seat of Armadale, which is being factored into the Liberals' best-case scenarios, is listed with its notional two-party margin of 6.6 per cent because the Liberals did not field a William Bowe, the earthly candidate in 2001. conduit for the all-seeing, all-knowing force known to 22.4 0.4 KALGOORLIE humans as the Poll 22.4 0.4 MINDARIE Bludger, can be contacted 23.8 1.2 RIVERTON ALBANY 1.4 35.4 here. Comments, 23.8 2.5 JOONDALUP MURRAY 1.9 29.7 corrections and extra 24.2 2.6 WANNEROO BUNBURY 4.5 24.7 information on candidates 25.1 3.0 COLLIE-WELL. DARLING RANGE 5.1 32.4 and local electorate matters 26.9 6.4 KIMBERLEY SWAN HILLS 6.0 32.8 will be gratefully received. - 6.6 ARMADALE KINGSLEY 7.2 24.4 14.2 8.2 BALLAJURA GERALDTON 8.5 38.3 22.8 9.6 N.W. COASTAL SERP.-JARRAH. 9.2 24.6 ARCHIVES http://www.pollbludger.com/ 1/02/2005 The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections Page 3 of 11 January 2005 It may thus be inferred that under a first-past-the-post system (assuming such a system would not have prompted voters to December 2004 have behaved differently), Labor would have fallen one seat November 2004 short of a majority. It's also interesting to note that the one seat October 2004 they would have picked up at the Coalition's expense would September 2004 have been Kalgoorlie, held by Liberal leadership hopeful Matt August 2004 Birney. July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 Saturday, January 29, 2005 March 2004 February 2004 HIGHLIGHTS OF WEEK ONE January 2004 It has traditionally been the conservative side of politics that has been associated with fiscal prudence, but the Western Australian election campaign demonstrates how easily that worm can turn PSEPHOLOGY AND under the right political circumstances. The Coalition ended POLITICS week one by securing the endorsement of the Nursing Federation with a promise to deliver on its claim for $50 million of funding Mumble to improve working conditions, a move which has earned comparisons with the Prime Minister's late-campaign promise Peter Brent offers the internet's that no Tasmanian forestry jobs would be lost from old-growth closest relation to my own humble logging bans. This overlooks the important distinction that John effort, with a somewhat lesser interest in state politics than the Howard trumped Labor with a policy that was massively less Poll Bludger. His site features expensive than their own, which included an $800 million fund valuable psephological insights to compensate the timber industry that signally failed to achieve illustrated with lots of tables and its political ends. fun interactive pendulums. The state Coalition by contrast has calculated that it has the ABC Elections political capital to make the more extravagant promises due to the credibility deficit Labor incurred by breaking its 2001 The ABC's federal election page, featuring Antony Green's general campaign pledge not to increase taxes or charges. It has election overview plus his detailed accordingly indulged in some conspicuous displays of targeted and endlessly useful guides for pork barrelling, such as its promise to "cut in" a section of the each electorate. Mitchell Freeway extension through the marginal seat of Joondalup regardless of the cost. Labor now finds itself with the Andrew Leigh backing of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in criticising the Coalition's largesse. The threat for the Coalition is that the Australian National University currency of election promises may have been so debased that a academic Andrew Leigh tracks the Treasurer warning of a $44 million "black hole" might receive a standing of the parties on the betting markets, which he argues more credulous audience than a Liberal leader in a Santa Claus are superior to opinion polls at outfit. predicting election outcomes. Let's see what else is in the papers: Adam Carr's Electoral Archive • A steady flow of newspaper headlines about the collapse of building contractor Devaugh is continuing to imperil Labor's An insanely comprehensive already precarious hold on the crucial seat of Albany.