South Australian PARLIAMENT RESEARCH LIBRARY Results of the Federal election of 2007 applied to South Australian State seats by Jenni Newton-Farrelly Research Paper No 3 26 February 2008 © 2008 SOUTH AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT RESEARCH LIBRARY Not to be reproduced in part or whole without the written permission of, or acknowledgement to, the South Australian Parliament Research Library. This Research Paper has been prepared by the Research Service of the South Australian Parliament Research Library. While all care has been taken to ensure that the material is both accurate and clearly presented, the responsibility for any errors remains with the author. ISSN 0816-4282 2 Introduction At the Federal election of 24 November 2007, the ALP won the support of the majority of voters across Australia, won a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives and formed government. In South Australia, ALP candidates won 52.4% of the two party preferred vote, and won 6 of the State’s 11 House of Representatives seats. ALP sitting Members retained Port Adelaide, Hindmarsh and Adelaide, and ALP candidates won Kingston, Wakefield and Makin. Liberal sitting Members retained Boothby, Sturt, Mayo, Grey and Barker. This paper looks at the 2007 result, but within the geographic areas of the State House of Assembly seats. It also looks at the result of several previous State and Federal elections within those same boundaries, that is, within the current State seats. To do this, it draws on a resource which has been gradually built up by the Parliament Research Library, which is a database of the election results for each booth at each State and Federal election in South Australia since 1993. While Federal and State issues are different, the campaigns are different and the candidates are different, the voters are not. At each election, the same people queue at booths to register their choices. The following tables show how voters in each of the current State seats, have voted at the State and Federal elections since 1993. These figures summarise much larger time series tables which have been compiled within the Parliament Research Library and which are available through the Parliamentary Intranet. The original tables show the results at booth levels; this paper does not go to that level of detail but it does provide some commentary on the results. 1 Overview of the 2007 Federal election results in South Australia. At the Federal election of 24 November 2007 the ALP won the support of the majority of voters across South Australia. This was not unexpected as opinion polls throughout the year had been fairly uniformly predicting a win to Labor. What had been more difficult to anticipate was the level of support that the ALP would achieve and how this would translate into seats. It has been said for some years that in South Australia the ALP has been more popular at State elections, and the Liberal Party has been more popular at Federal elections. This is shown quite clearly in the following table, which summarises each party’s share of the vote (first preference votes and two party preferred votes) in South Australia at State and Federal elections since the State election of 1993.1 The series starts with the State Bank election of 1993 which was such an unusual election that it is debatable whether it should be included in the series at all, but it is probably as low a vote for the ALP as we will see and so it does provide a reference point. The next reference point is the 1996 Federal election which was a strong election for the Liberal Party; indeed it was the beginning of the Howard Liberal Government, and we might see that as another benchmark – in this case a high point for the Federal Liberal results. The third reference point in this series is the State election of 2006 which is a high point for the ALP, and finally of course the Federal election of 2007 which is the focus of this paper. Table 1: Parties’ share of the vote at State and Federal elections from 1993 to 2007. Election First preference votes Two party ALP LIB DEM Greens NAT Family Other ALL preferred result First parties IND ALP LIB (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) State 1993 30.4 52.8 9.1 0.3 1.1 1.9 4.5 39.1 60.9 Federal 1996 34.8 50.0 10.2 2.9 1.0 1.1 42.7 57.3 State 1997 35.2 40.4 16.4 0.2 1.7 1.7 4.3 48.5 51.5 Federal 1998 34.5 42.1 10.1 0.5 0.5 10.9 1.4 46.9 53.1 Federal 2001 33.7 45.9 10.5 3.6 5.2 1.0 45.9 54.1 State 2002 36.3 40.0 7.5 2.4 1.5 2.6 5.0 4.8 49.1 50.9 Federal 2004 36.8 47.4 1.9 5.4 1.0 4.3 1.2 2.0 45.6 54.4 State 2006 45.2 34.0 2.9 6.5 2.1 5.9 0.7 2.7 56.8 43.2 Federal 2007 43.2 41.7 1.5 7.0 1.3 4.1 0.6 0.7 52.4 47.6 SOURCE: official results from the State Electoral Office and the Australian Electoral Commission. Table 1 shows that at the Federal election of 2007 the level of support for the ALP, as measured by the two party preferred vote, was 52.4%, a swing of 6.8 percentage points across South Australia since the Federal election of 2004. That swing has 1 Time series tables for each State electorate are available on the Parliamentary Intranet under the Library’s headings, or on request from the Library. The series starts with the 1993 State election because that is the first election for which we have two party preferred counts for each booth. 2 been described as a “landslide” and it is certainly a very strong swing, but we should perhaps think of it as a catch-up result too, as the level of support for the ALP at the most recent State election was even stronger, at 56.8%. So the 2007 result was not a high point for the ALP vote in South Australia – indeed if voters had expressed themselves in exactly the same way when the most recent State election was held in 2006, the ALP would have won 27 seats, not 28, and Bright would have remained a Liberal seat. Adelaide The current State seat of Adelaide takes in North Adelaide as well as the CBD and sits entirely within the Federal electorate of Adelaide. While the seat as a whole has been marginal for many years, it covers areas which are traditionally strongly oriented towards the ALP (most of the CBD booths and the Prospect booths) as well as areas which are traditionally strongly oriented towards the Liberal Party (North Adelaide and Walkerville). The State seat of Adelaide fits entirely within the Federal seat of Adelaide. The area is represented in the State Parliament by the Member for Adelaide Dr Jane Lomax-Smith (ALP) who won the seat from the LIB Member in 2002, and in the Federal Parliament by the ALP Member for Adelaide Kate Ellis. Table 2: How the voters within the current State seat of Adelaide voted at State and Federal elections from 1993 to 2007. Two party Election First preference votes (booth votes only) preferred ALP LIB DEM Greens Family Other ALL result (booth + dec First parties IND votes) ALP LIB (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) State 1993 27.5 57.9 9.3 5.2 36.9 63.1 Federal 1996 34.7 50.7 8.4 3.1 1.3 1.8 43.6 56.4 State 1997 32.7 44.7 16.8 5.4 0.4 46.6 53.4 Federal 1998 33.8 47.1 10.1 3.7 4.8 0.5 44.3 55.7 Federal 2001 33.0 46.5 11.5 7.5 1.6 46.6 53.4 State 2002 40.4 43.1 5.4 5.2 1.5 4.1 0.3 50.4 49.6 Federal 2004 39.3 46.7 1.7 9.5 1.5 1.5 49.4 50.6 State 2006 48.0 33.8 2.7 9.3 2.7 2.2 1.4 60.2 39.8 Federal 2007 43.9 41.6 1.6 11.3 1.6 55.1 44.9 SOURCE: my calculations based on the official results of the State elections of 1993, 1997, 2002 and 2006 from the State Electoral Office, and official results from the Federal elections of 1996, 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007, from the Australian Electoral Commission. Within this State seat, the ALP first preference vote has generally been higher at State than at Federal elections although this was not the case in 1993 which was a dreadful result for the ALP across the State. In 1997 the ALP was recovering and it seems clear that in the seat of Adelaide that recovery was mediated by an increase in support for the Democrats. The relatively high level of support for the Democrats ten years ago came from voters who had previously voted for LIB candidates as well as from voters who had previously voted for ALP candidates, and perhaps the current (historically) high level of support for the Greens draws from both parties too, but one thing is apparent from these tables – when the Democrats were really 3 popular ten years ago they and the Greens won the first preference votes of nearly a quarter of the voters; today that support is halved.