Australia’s general election is 24 November. The race has tightened during the campaign, according to the final Newspoll:
Coalition and Labor are now virtually equal on primary [i.e. first-preference] votes, with the Coalition on 43 per cent and Labor on 44 per cent.
The result is the government’s best performance in more than a year.
In the two party preferred stakes [i.e. after vote transfers] Labor is now just 4 points ahead of the Coalition, 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
ABC adds:
Today’s [yes, Saturday is already "today" in Australia] federal election will show whether Prime Minister John Howard’s strategy to fight the election on economic terms has paid off, or whether Australians will decide to go with the new leadership team of Labor and Kevin Rudd. [...]
The contest is not only tight in the 150 House of Representatives seats - there is also a dramatic battle for the Senate.
The Greens hope to pick up a seat in the ACT from the Liberals, which would immediately strip the Coalition’s Senate control.
This poll will also determine the future of the Australian Democrats.
I will shortly be off line till some time Sunday, my time. So I will leave this as an open thread for anyone following the results.
In addition to this thread, there have continued to be comments regarding the election in previous threads (including “The time has come”) on Australia and STV. See “propagation” on the right sidebar for the latest contributions.
As always, thanks to my readers in (or interested in) Australia for keeping us up to date.
Modeling tomorrow’s Australian federal election
This fascinating election is just around the corner. Not only have psephologists modeled how the aggregate “two-party†vote plays out in individual districts; the media actually pay attention! (If your average US newspaper paid attention to district-level margins and two-party votes, people would take presidential and congressional elections for the uninteresting, predictable “contests†they really are.)
Scion grafted by The Democratic Piece — 23 November 2007 @ 21:20
It’s Labor.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 24 November 2007 @ 09:42
What seems - anecdotally - to have swung the result, in some Sydney seats (as well as interest rates and more pro-employer industrial relations laws), was the husband of a retiring Liberal MP (abetted by the husband of the new Liberal candidate) in one Sydney seat, distributing a leaflet claiming be come from a (fictitious) Islamic federation thanking Labor for building a mosque, supporting the Bali bombers, etc. See http://tinyurl.com/2rrxnm. She claimed it was a “Chaser-style prank” (”The Chaser” being a sort of Australianised “The Onion” out of Michael Moore by Stephen Colbert), but it looked real enough to be potentially fraudulent and that seems to have annoyed a lot of undecided voters.
By coincidence, the 1996 federal election campaign, in the dying days of the last Labor government, also featured embarrassment over a forgery that backfired (see Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/3y3u7p on then ALP Treasurer, Ralph Willis:
“… Willis’s last act as Treasurer, a few days before the 1996 election, was to release (without consulting [ALP Prime Minister Paul] Keating), a letter purportedly written by the [Liberal] Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, which suggested that a Liberal [federal] government led by John Howard would cut grants to the states. Unfortunately for Willis, the letter was a forgery, allegedly foisted on Willis by Melbourne University Liberal Club students. This successful ruse impacted somewhat upon the last week of Labor’s campaign…”
- and contributed to the general “gang who couldn’t shoot straight” perception of Labor. Ironically how history repeats, the second time as farce.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 24 November 2007 @ 10:03
By the way, this result leaves Australia with “wall to wall” Labor govts - ie, not only federally but in all six States as well, and both mainland self-governing Territories. (The other self-governing Territory, Norfolk Island, is external and doesn’t have parties as such).
The last time all the constitutionally-entrenched levels of govt in Australia were under the same party was a brief period early in 1969, when the Liberals held a royal flush.
After John Howard’s defeat - he was Australia’s second-longest-serving PM - the highest-ranking elected Liberal office-holder in Australia is now Campbell Newman, Lord Mayor of Brisbane.
(To be fair, Brisbane city council is the, I think, sixth or seventh biggest govt entity in Australia - it’s larger than Tasmania, ACT and Northern Territory, and possibly also South Australia, in its population and budget. And it’s the largest botton-level local govt in the world: IOW, Brisbane region/ city isn’t further subdivided into elected govts for boroughs [unlike New York/ London] or arrondissements [unlike Paris]. In fact, Brisbane City Council wards contain more voters than districts for the Queensland State Assembly do. Before the mid-1970s, Brisbane’s State districts used to double as Council wards, but then the State National/ Country Party govt cut the number of wards to provoke a preselection brawl among the Labor caucus that then dominated the BCC. It worked, too!)
Seed planted by Tom Round — 24 November 2007 @ 11:12
It looked at one point - between 30 mins and 90 mins after counting began - that Labor might get something like 51-52% of the popular vote, but still lose (or draw) on seats, because the Coalition was better at targeting and defending its marginal electorates.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 24 November 2007 @ 19:17
In my local area, the Nationals had a candidate named Sue Page in one House of Representatives district, and this caused (me, at least) confusion because the other district in the area is named Page (after Dr Earle Page, I believe). This led to confusing headlines that use phrases like “PAGE ELECTION DOUBTS.†Neither of which is to be confused with Don Page, Member for Ballina – one of the State districts covering the same region – or with the Canberra suburb of Page, where I lived in 1998.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 27 November 2007 @ 02:19
Addendum: While indeed, as I said, “the highest-ranking elected *Liberal* office-holder in Australia is now Campbell Newman, Lord Mayor of Brisbane”, Cambo (son of two former federal MPs, a Senator and an MHR, both Tasmanians) is not the highest ranking *conservative* office-holder in Australia. The following newsbite recently reminded me that that honour lies elsewhere. I assume that a State Minister outranks a local Mayor in seniority, even though Brisbane has a bigger population and budget than South Australia…
“The sole conservative [now] holding parliamentary [scil. executive] office is ironically the Nationals’ Karlene Maywald in South Australia, and that is only because she has chosen to sit with the state Labor Government.”
Malcolm Colless, “Coalition should crush its extreme factional fiefdoms,”
The Australian (Tuesday 8 January 2008), p 12, URL: http://tinyurl.com/ypttuy.
Seed planted by Tom Round — 27 January 2008 @ 11:12