Saturday, August 21, 2010 - Australian Federal Election

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A hung parliament is certainly a possibility.

Any thoughts on how Bennelong will go?

Narrow Lib gain. I guess a lot of Bennelong voters just wanted rid of Howard in '07.

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Gillard makes "Yes We Will" the mantra at the launch. How original.

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A hung parliament is certainly a possibility.

A hung parliament, the first Green MP and an ousted prime minister during the prior term.

Britain did it better.

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Australia have an American-way of counting the votes, right?

Yup, none of that "And the number of votes cast was as follows..." we have, it's all "__% reporting."

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Australia have an American-way of counting the votes, right?

It counts them in the normal way, yes. It's Britain that's... unusual... which sucks from the pov of election geekery

I think our tradition of the town hall count and stuff is pretty cool, except we can't do amazing maps like other countries do.

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There's a "mega-poll" coming out tomorrow, apparently.

It's out now:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2010/08/17/nielsen-marginals-mega-poll/

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Gillard is in favor of Australia becoming a Republic when the Queen dies:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10997630

Freedom fighter!

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We should do a prediction contest. But which divisions?

Any electorates, currently, with less than a 10% majority?

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We should do a prediction contest. But which divisions?

Any electorates, currently, with less than a 10% majority?

There are 48 of those (10% majority being defined as it is in Britain!), and that would still exclude a couple of high profile races here and there. You want to predict about 50 seats? If you all do, there's no problem, obviously.

I don't really mind. It was just a random suggestion. I think about 10-20 would do since only a handful of seats will probably change hands in the end.

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Newspoll: 50/50.
Galaxy: ALP 52

The polls are swinging back to the Coalition. This is gonna be very close.

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There might be a Nielsen poll out tomorrow.

This is really is going to be nervewracking...

This really could be one of those "stealing defeat from the jaws of victory" moments...

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Morgan phone poll has it at 51-49 to Labor on primaries of 42 38 13 to the Coalition.

State breakdowns show a hung parliament with Labor one seat short.

Surely Gillard's lead on prefered Prime Minister implies that the ALP will sweep undecideds, right?

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Also, Poll Bludger reports that Coalition sources are saying that late deciders in QLD are falling too Labor...

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Where is the best place for Yanks to watch?

If not live than just updates?

What time would coverage start for us?

http://www.skynews.com.au/ - Sky stream
http://www.livestation.com/account/streams/1918595-abc_australia_livestream_not_247 - There might be an ABC stream here.

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The Sky stream is worse than useless, at least for me.

I don't think they've started it up yet. It's only for their election programme.

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What time does coverage start, British time?

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Any progress on a live stream? ABC has one, but it's Australia only. I tried one of the IP clocking things that usually works for US sites like NBC, but it didn't work. The Sky feed's a bit choppy for me.

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I think ABC might be opening theirs up later so ex-pats can watch. Not sure when and - anyway - I might be wrong.

Ah, a bit of Tweet searching confirms it:

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http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/media/s2982431.htm

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I think ABC might be opening theirs up later so ex-pats can watch. Not sure when and - anyway - I might be wrong.

ABC's website says Saturday evening they will stream globally in the evening, but I haven't seen anything live yet on their site.

Probably their election results programme, which I think starts at 6pm Australian time, 9am UK, and 4am EST.

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hahahaha. what an awfully carried out poll.

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It became a close race. When Labor had a lopsided lead, no one paid attention to Tony Abbott because his winning was an impossibility. As a consequence, people focused on how unhappy they were with Labor, with how Rudd was ousted, with aspects the campaign, etc. When Abbott actually becoming Prime Minister became a real prospect, Labor had a message and went over to the offensive, and it looks like a number of voters recoiled at the prospect. Now whether that is enough of them is an open question, and I am interested mainly because I suspect Obama's reelection campaign in 2012 may largely mirror Gillard's.

That sounds like the Swedish election. The opposition leading quite a bit because people mostly focus on being unhappy with the incubent goverment, but as the election draws closer people starts to realise that don't actually want the awful leader of the opposition as PM, and even though they're not completely happy  with the goverment the other alternative is even worse, and thus making the race a tie.

Its the general pattern of a lot of elections. Built-up resentment tends to bubble up early in campaigns, with the opposition being a convenient outlet. Its at that critical point when the opposition begins to pull ahead that everyone begins to look at them as a potential government rather than an opposition. And a lot of them fail that test. See Stephen Harper in 2004, Mockas in Columbia, and I would argue, even Kerry in the US. Of course if they pass that test you get something resembling the 1980 Presidential race.

Happened in the UK too I guess, only not so strongly and we ended up with a hung parliament with the opposition as the only viable government. 6-12 months earlier, everyone expected them to walk it and end up with majority of 50-80.