Oz Politics Blog

The post poll reporting includes some beauties: errors of fact and overly excited analyses.

The key Labor message has been the result is a kick in the pants for the government over interest rates. According to this analysis, the swings to Labor have been greatest in the seats with the largest mortgages. For example, Damien Murphy said this,

Voters living in so-called McMansion estates that are changing the demographics of south-western Sydney have given Labor more ammunition to attack the Federal Government over interest rates after the by-election in Werriwa on Saturday.

In suburbs such as Hinchinbrook, Cecil Hills and Prestons, where many are paying off mortgages of a least $550,000, the successful Labor candidate, Chris Hayes, attracted swings of up to 15 per cent, a substantial improvement on Mark Latham’s vote in October.

Mr Hayes said the by-election, in which Werriwa remained strongly Labor, had put an end to the drift away from traditional Labor-voting patterns. The ALP was taking heart from the McMansion votes, he said.

Glenn Milne and Andrew West made the same 15 per cent claims. At least Milne and West did not mention Prestons, where Labor went backwards on the primary vote. Excluding the 36 formal votes collected by the special hospital team, the largest swing to Labor in the primary vote for a booth was under ten per cent.

A number of journalists portrayed the weekend win as an 11 point two-party preferred swing to Labor. However, the provisional two candidate swing in this by-election cannot be compared with that for the 2004 election. Without an endorsed Liberal candidate in the by-election, this is not an analogous comparison. As Peter Hartcher said, ‘when there is no second party, “two-party” results become a meaningless measure.’

To be fair, the Coalition has been no less self serving in its analysis. Murphy’s piece includes this quote from the Prime Minister.

Mr Howard congratulated Mr Hayes but said the result was a below-average performance for an opposition in a by-election. He said oppositions had an average 6.5 per cent swing towards them in by-elections since 1949.

While Howard is technically right, his analysis confounds those by-elections where the punters get to send a message to the government of the day, and the one horse race by-elections like Werriwa. Also, the by-election result suggests a real vulnerability for Howard. If a 25 basis point increase in interest rates drives a two and a half percent strengthening in Labor’s primary vote (albeit in the context of a one horse race by-election), further interest rate increases could be diabolical for the Coalition. This is particularly so as opinion polls suggested around half the residents of Werriwa saw the recent rate increase as a broken 2004 election promise,

However, it was hubris to portray such vulnerability as the end for John Howard. Milne got beyond himself with this analysis.

… the swing to Labor was about 15 per cent. If even half of that was replicated in the mortgage-belt seats of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane that kept Howard in government on October 9, it would be a catastrophe for the Coalition. Howard and other leading government figures will, of course, argue that there was no Liberal candidate in Werriwa, so the big vote for Labor can in no way be seen as a reflection on the Coalition or its policies. Except the Liberals did effectively run a candidate in Werriwa. His name was James Young. He was once a staffer for former Howard government minister Jackie Kelly, who holds the adjoining seat of Lindsay. He publicly offered himself up for the Liberal vote, backed Howard repeatedly, displayed the Prime Minister’s photograph at polling stations and endorsed himself on his how-to-vote cards as the candidate standing for “your Liberal point of view”.

And yet he got just under 8 per cent of the vote. The only conclusion is that the Howard brand has suddenly gone bad among Liberal as well as Labor voters in Werriwa.

Not everyone agreed with Milne. Hartcher saw things more ambiguously.

Labor’s big, long-running problem is that the effects of 14 years of uninterrupted economic growth have recast much of Labor “heartland” as contestable territory.

David Burchell, a political analyst at the University of Western Sydney, said yesterday that “Werriwa was the seat that could have been the next domino to fall to the Coalition, and it remains so.”

Labor’s feeble victory means that the “blue circle” of Coalition seats that has started to encircle Sydney remains a real danger to Labor’s survival. So John Howard cannot take the Werriwa result as any kind of endorsement, but neither can Labor.

Another who got the spin right is the anonymous Labor source quoted by West.

One federal caucus member said the result should not have been such a surprise.

“I say the outcome was solid but hardly spectacular,” he said. “With interest rates up and no Liberal candidate, this result is really about the minimum we could have achieved. Anything less would have been terminal, I think, for Beazley.”

And another who got it right was Antony Green, quoted by Murphy.

The Herald election analyst Antony Green said it was difficult to read anything substantial into Labor’s improved showing because it was too little, and too far away from the next federal election.

“There were six by-elections in 1994 and none of them had any bearing on John Howard’s victory two years later,” he said.

In my view, the Werriwa by-election result was not unexpected. If there is any long term message, it is not a strong one. While it exposed Howard’s vulnerability to rising interest rates, it was no harbinger of a golden age for Labor under Kim Beazley.

One thing is certain, the reporting of the by-election shows that if you stare at the tea leaves long enough you will see what ever you want to see.

Ho hum. The votes from polling booths are almost counted. Although the AEC has not counted postal and pre-poll votes, it looks like Labor will win with an increased primary vote over Mark Latham’s in the 2004 election. No surprises there. My (pre-election) assessment was that it was at least even money that Hayes would do better than Latham. And as it is almost certain Hayes will get more than 50 per cent of the primary vote, there is no need to count preferences.

But the primary vote for some of the other candidates was a little unexpected.

My tip for second place in the primary vote was James Young. He came second, but with around 8 per cent of the vote his performance was much poorer than I anticipated. In the 2004 election the Liberal candidate got 35.11 per cent. As the quasi-Liberal in the by-election, I thought Young would get at least half that. It is entirely possible that the final two-party preferred result (if it gets counted) may not have Young on the other side of the ledger as the AEC (and I) anticipated.

Another surprise (for me at least) was the Christian candidates. At the 2004 election there were no Christian candidates in Werriwa, although Tan ran in 2001 and got 2.46 per cent of the vote. This time they have managed more than eight per cent between them.

More surprising was the Pentecostal aligned Family First candidate, Sykes, appears to have whipped the mainstream protestant aligned Fred Nile Group candidate, Tan. In the 2004 Senate election for NSW, the Fred Nile Group beat Family First 2.38 per cent to 0.56 per cent in the seat of Werriwa. It looks like Sykes will get his money back but Tan will not. [Note: candidates who score more than 4 per cent of the primary vote get their $350 nomination deposit back and (if the 2004 rate has not yet been indexed) $1.94397 for every primary vote they receive.]

Crikey had tipped Deborah Locke to be the candidate to run through the middle of the pack. But with less than four per cent of the primary vote she is not going to get her money back. (I was actually a little surprised when Crikey anointed Locke, I considered her an unlikely outcome).

Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI) also benefited from the leaked Liberal vote (not to mention the donkey vote). Like the Christians, AAFI was absent in 2004. Janey Woodger contested Werriwa in 2001 and got 1.76 per cent of the vote. This time she should score more than four per cent, enough to get her money back.

Another who might get his money back (if postal and pre-poll votes go his way) with an initial count primary vote just under four per cent is Joe Bryant.

Even the One Nation candidate, Charles Doggett, has seen his primary vote increase by around one percentage point from a base of 2.36 per cent in 2004.

Last time donkey vote beneficiary, Sam Bargshoon, has suffered a reversal of fortune. His primary vote is down from almost five percent in 2004 to around one per cent in 2005. May be there is a donkey vote lesson here for AAFI. Bargshoon’s hospitalisation in the last week may also have been a factor.

But not everything was a surprise.

More predictable was the performance of the 19 year old Greens candidate, Ben Raue, who got under 6 per cent of the vote. In the 2004 election he got 3.13 per cent. At one point some were spruiking a 15 per cent primary vote for Raue. But Werriwa is traditional Labor. It is not the (small-l) liberal, middle-class Labor of Cunningham. And it is definitely not the latte-left Labor of inner-Sydney or inner-Melbourne.

Local radio comedian Mal Lees got a respectable two per cent of the primary vote. Not a bad performance for a joke candidature.

Ex-Labor, and now prospective Liberal, candidate 23 year-old Ned Mannoun should be happy with a vote of almost two per cent.

The Progressive Labour Party’s Pat McGookin scored just a touch under one per cent.

Mike Head from the Socialist Equality Party got much the same result as last year — less than one per cent.

Another who got much the same as last year was Robert Vogler (albeit last time he ran in Wentworth and last time he had the donkey vote position in that seat).

I think Mr Aussie-Stone has just chalked up his 17th Federal election loss and he did not even crack one per cent of the primary vote. Sometimes experience is not enough! No surprises there either.

Update: Others with post poll analysis include the Poll bludger, AusPolitics.Net and Andrew Bartlett.

A birdie sent me some more how-to-vote cards. The HTV cards I published previously are here.

These additional how-to-vote cards increasingly persuade me that Labor should get over the line. (Albeit, these cards and the ones I published earlier could change when it comes to polling day).

The Poll Bludger has a bit of a wrap on the Werriwa by-election. Like me, he thinks a Labor victory is almost a certainty (if there can be such a thing in politics).

If today’s Australian is anything to go by, Labor is on message about how difficult it will be to win Werriwa (which as we all know is a dog whistle for Labor voters not to toy with minor parties and independents).

The SMH and the Australian are running a painkiller-overdose-hospitalisation story about Werriwa candidate Samir Bargshoon:

A candidate for the federal seat of Werriwa has admitted he overdosed on a cocktail of painkillers and anti-depressants, spending Thursday night in hospital.

Sam Bargshoon, a self-confessed ALP branchstacker who ran independently against former Labor leader Mark Latham five months ago, said he was depressed over the Orange Grove affair and the stress it had created with his family.

The south-west Sydney businessman and lobbyist for the doomed Orange Grove factory outlet, will run in Saturday’s by-election.

Mr Bargshoon said he took six Panadeine Forte tablets, four valiums and two anti-depressants on Thursday night to relieve a headache.

“Last night I was feeling a bit down and very depressed … there’s just a lot of stress,” he said.

“I didn’t actually know what I was going to do. I remember just waking up in hospital.”

His two young daughters found Mr Bargshoon unconscious on the couch and called for help.

He was taken to Liverpool Hospital and was told by staff he would not be discharged until Monday, however he negotiated to be released on Friday.

Mr Bargshoon said his depression had also been caused by the Labor Party’s treatment of him over the Orange Grove affair.

The results for the Werriwa by-election should be available from the Australian Electoral Commission beginning at 6pm Saturday.

A kind correspondent sent me the how-to-vote cards for a few in that gang of 16. They are as follows:

If we assume that James Young will pick up the lion’s share of the Liberal vote from 2004, then the fact that he placed Labor’s Chris Hayes ahead of the Green’s Ben Raue on his how-to-vote card should be enough to ensure a Labor victory.

Update: The Socialist Equality Party is not providing how-to-vote cards. It is recommending people vote 1 for Mike Head, and it then advises voters to number every square from 2 to 16, but the party indicates no preference for how that is done.

Update #2: One of the candidates told me the how-to-vote cards from some candidates will differ for Saturday from the pre-poll cards currently being used. It has also been suggested to me that most of the independent candidates have decided to put Labor last on their how-to-vote cards for Saturday.

Today’s SMH outlines the potential problem for Labor in the Werriwa by-election.

With no official Liberal candidate running in the by-election, Labor’s Chris Hayes finds himself besieged by voters angry over state issues such as the police response to the riots, the M5 toll, lack of help for small business, and the inadequacy of roads and facilities in the new suburbs of the electorate. A host of off-beat challengers may spoil his succession to the seat that was once held by Gough Whitlam.

…

He is facing a line-up of 15 other candidates who include a DJ promising cheap beer, a former Labor branch-stacker who hates the party, and a 19-year-old economics student. But a preference-swapping campaign against Labor by the minor parties and independents could rob Mr Hayes of the seat if his primary vote falls below 50 per cent.

Newspapers thrive on this sort of speculation. As we all know, the small risk of novel change sells more papers than a steady-as-she-goes-more-of-the-same story. So it is worthwhile testing the proposition against facts.

We will begin by considering the primary vote for Labor in Werriwa in recent elections. This is set out in the table below.

From this table it appears possible that Labor’s primary vote for Werriwa could fall below the 50 per cent mark. This brings us to our next consideration. Let’s contemplate a few recent by-elections for Labor seats to test whether it is likely to fall, and if so, how far it might fall below the 50 percent mark.

Of note, these figures suggest that it is at least even money that the Labor primary vote increases in a by-election following a general election. In part, I suspect this was a consequence of the absence of a Coalition candidate in each of these by-elections. All other things being equal, it suggests that Hayes could well do better than Latham in 2004.

But Hayes doing better than Latham is not guaranteed. The 1996 Blaxland by-election has a number of parallels with the 2005 Werriwa by-election — a retiring Labor leader immediately after a Labor loss. Yet Keating’s primary vote in Blaxland in the 1996 general election was down more than ten percentage points on 1993; in contrast Latham’s 2004 vote was up a little over two points on 2001. This suggests that unlike the Blaxland by-election, there could be some room for Labor to move into negative territory in Werriwa in 2005.

Cunningham 2002 is the disaster scenario Labor fears in Werriwa 2005. In that by-election, Labor’s primary vote fell by more than 6 per cent. But there are a two critical differences between Cunningham and Werriwa.

First, Labor’s core primary vote is much higher in Werriwa. If, as in the Cunnigham scenario, it dropped six percentage points in Werriwa, it would still be over 46.5 per cent. For Labor to lose with a primary vote of 46.5 per cent, it would require a very tight preference deal, with every minor party and independent either putting an agreed candidate second or at least putting Labor last.

Here is where the rabble of 15 other candidates should play into Labor’s hands. Labor would only need to be ahead of the second-place-getter preference for 7 out of every one hundred voters that did not primary vote for Labor. In Cunningham, all of the candidates gave their preferences to the Greens ahead of Labor. Given there are candidates far to the left and far to the right of Labor in the Werriwa by-election, I find it hard to believe they would all agree a single candidate to second preference. On the day, I imagine there would be Green voters who would put Labor before (say) Janey Woodger from Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI) and the right of centre Joe Bryant. Similarly, I imagine there is a small number of right of centre voters who would put Labor before (say) the Greens and Mike Head’s Socialist Equality Party. This should be enough to see Labor over the line — even in this worst case scenario of a six percentage point slump.

Second, I suspect that Labor’s slippage (if any) would not exceed 3 percentage points, and a primary vote of 49 per cent would almost certainly see Hayes elected. The factors that drove the slippage in Cunningham do not appear to be present in Werriwa. There is not an alternative union supported candidate like Peter Wilson in Cunningham who would steal primary votes from the Labor candidate. Latham’s resignation was for understandable health reasons; it is unlikely to be perceived as self-indulgent like Stephen Martin’s, which led to the Cunningham by-election. And notwithstanding the efforts of Alan Ramsey, Chris Hayes’ preselection for Werriwa does not appear to be as on the nose as Sharon Bird’s was for the 2002 Cunningham by-election.

All in all, while it is technically possible that Labor’s Chris Hayes could lose Werriwa, the odds should favour Hayes for the win in next Saturday’s by-election.