Is Dom, Is Good: NSW State Election (March 25)

[JimJamUK]

Premier Dominic Perrottet has publicly admitted out of the blue to dressing as a Nazi for a fancy dress party. He revealed this because retiring-against-his-will Transport Minister David “That Bald Idiot” Elliot has blackmailed him out of bitterness and fealty to Clubs NSW and the gambling industry. Oh yes, Labor is running to the right of the Coalition on Gambling addiction btw. Gotta love a small target/being bought off by the industry!

The Australian Labor Party strikes again. Never change.

[JimJamUK]

In hilarious news.

The disgruntled Bankstown MP screwed over by the redistribution has turned full heel and done a Latham. And she'll probably stay in parliament! She's been given the second spot on the PHON upper house ticket.

Running as the Pauline Hanson’s One Nation candidate in Bankstown was presumably off the cards given its chock full of Vietnamese refugees, Chinese migrants and Muslims?

[JimJamUK]

Running as the Pauline Hanson’s One Nation candidate in Bankstown was presumably off the cards given its chock full of Vietnamese refugees, Chinese migrants and (Lebanese) Muslims?

(the Chinese population is very low in this area)
Honestly she'd probably pick up a decent share. 10-20% maybe? The immigrants get very conservative in this area. 70% no to gay marriage! But running for the Upper House is the safe bet. Thanks to Latham's shenanigans she's guaranteed a seat one way or another.

It’s about 10% in Bankstown itself so not nothing, but take your point. Agree she’d get a decent share (ON did relatively well in working class non-Western migrant areas last year), but One Nation seems the sort of party that would have a hard ceiling below the vote share needed to win in that part of the world.

[JimJamUK]

Only real interesting thing to note with 6 days left. This campaign is astoundingly non-existant. Nobody cares and neither party wants anyone to care. Almost no advertising, shockingly few candidate posters, no big scandals, no tabloid fearmongering, no policies, no promises, no rallies.
It's not even a small target campaign, it's a (compulsory voting) apathy campaign. The Liberals have too much baggage to campaign on the good parts of their record, Labor is too sh**t scared of upsetting anyone thanks to lingering 2019 PTSD.

How do you think the bland/non-existent campaign from the major parties will affect the minor party/independent vote? Potentially too inoffensive to alienate people, or too low stakes to scare them into sticking with the major parties?

[JimJamUK]

Lismore - one of two Labor gains in 2019, this one will be interesting to watch. It's worth noting that Labor and the Greens were very close to each other to finish 2nd, and had the Greens finished 2nd the Nationals would've held on. Still, this seat looms likely as a big swinger away from the Nationals this time around. The one wildcard here is the floods in Lismore. On paper, natural disasters that have a major long-term impact on a community tends to favour incumbents (so that helps Saffin), but it's also possible that the floods might see voters tend towards parties that take a more aggressive line on climate change? I'll guess a Labor hold though.

It’s worth noting that Lismore is technically now notionally National. The small redistribution made it slightly safer for Labor in 2PP and they remain in 2nd on first preferences, but the area added was strong enough for the Greens that in the 3CP they actually leapfrog Labor into 2nd place on minor party preferences, and then go on to lose 48-52 to the Nationals. Whether it’s close enough that this change will make the difference in reality, who knows.

[JimJamUK]

Election after election the media breathlessly reports about an impending hung parliament yet the Australian voters have a knack for picking a winner. I think if Labor’s over 51% 2pp they’ll get a majority regardless of what uniform swing says.

What seats are you thinking will flip?

[JimJamUK]

Lismore called for Labor by the ABC. Massive swing to the Labor incumbent, in large part due to the floods last year.

[JimJamUK]

There’s a couple of winnable regional seats where Labor aren’t getting much of a swing, but there’s others where they’ve gotten a massive one, and Sydney is across the board good for Labor (except some of Labour’s safe Western Sydney seats, where a big swing would have been wasted anyways).

[JimJamUK]

Is the shocking turnaround turnaround due to voting pattern among certain demographics? (e.g. old people voting early for the Coalition)

Almost all the nail-biters seem to have been won by the losing party, just like in the 2022 federal election. Dreadful luck.

Hard to say. Labor are getting an above average swing on election day, about average on postals, but below average on pre-polls. Postals will have the oldest demographics and like pre-polls are largely a form of early voting so you would think they’d move in tandem, but tbf postals swung more at the federal election so maybe not. A big issue seems to be that the models outlets are producing seem to not have fully accounted for the increase in pre-polls and postals, which is a problem when they remain Liberal leaning. For example, if there was a 10% swing among all 3 voting methods, there would in total be a less than 10% swing due to the Labor leaning election day votes being a smaller proportion and the Liberal leaning pre-polls and postals being a larger proportion of the vote.

[JimJamUK]

Hang on, why are the counts for the last constituencies still stuck at 76% on media outlets? Esp. Ryde and Terrigal.

There’s still 1000s of postal votes to count, as well as absents/provisionals to count to 2PP. They will start doing this tomorrow.

[JimJamUK]

Final counting has been completed today with the Legislative Council distribution of preferences. Animal Justice's run of good luck the last 3 times has ended, the 7th Liberal hung on to claim the 21st seat.

In retrospect, people should not have assumed Animal Justice would get another great run of preferences. People vote for parties they know. Left wing voters being a lot more likely to preference meant they could do very well on preferences vs minor right wing parties, but this advantage was mostly counteracted this time by their opponent being the LNP which many more right wing voters have actually heard of and consequently preferenced.