Australian Federal Election- July 2, 2016

[morgieb]

In other news: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-cory-bernardi-forms-conservative-political-movement/news-story/2645ac0c469cf40c3b69b78924fcb70d

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Please let this be true. Please.

[morgieb]

The view from my perspective for the remaining seats in doubt:

Capricornia - Labor ahead by 902 votes on ordinary votes with a Special Hospital Team booth missing. Traditionally the Liberals do very well on postal votes here, but they're only leading them 54/46 off about 2000. Will be very tight unless future postals are very bad (possible). Too close to call.

Cowan - Labor ahead by 986 votes on ordinary votes with a Special Hospital Team booth missing. Unlike Capricornia though there isn't such a big trend towards the Liberals on the postcount. So far the Liberals are leading 55/45 off about 2250 formal postal votes. Labor should win it barring a huge surprise on future postals or absentees.

Flynn - Labor ahead by 2058 votes on ordinary votes with all booths in, so on paper you think Labor should hold. However, the seat has a huge bias towards the Liberals on the postcount, and this election is proving no exception - the LNP are ahead 64/36 off about 3500 formal postal votes. Will probably swing LNP barring a big recovery by Labor on the postcount, and history suggests that is unlikely.

Forde - Labor ahead by a threadbare 24 votes on ordinary votes with all booths in, so it seems likely that the margin will be overturned on the postcount. And off about 2500 postal votes the LNP are leading 56/44. Will be hard to overturn the margin for Labor, but if they can ebb the bleeding on postals a traditional Labor advantage in absentee votes (most of them tend to be cast in the north of the electorate, which is far more Labor leaning than the rural conservative south) it could be salvagable.

Gilmore - Liberal ahead by 353 votes on ordinary votes with 7 Special Hospital Team booths left outstanding, so that seems hard to overturn given the general Liberal bias in a postcount. So far off over 4000 votes the Liberals are winning postals by 58/42. Barring something very weird happening this will stay Liberal.

Herbert - Labor ahead by 941 votes on ordinary votes with all booths in. Seems secure enough but postal votes have ran 57/43 LNP off over 2000 of them. It's possible that this trend might deteriorate as the count goes on, and it could be cancelled out by a good absentee or provisional performance by Labor. But in any case this does not look like the formality it did a couple of days ago. Like Capricornia, this is too close to call.

Hindmarsh - Labor ahead by 629 votes on ordinary votes with 2 booths outstanding. Off nearly 6000 postal votes the Liberals are leading 54/46. As it stands I'd rather be in Labor's camp here, but a change in how the postal votes are swinging or less absentee votes than usual (in this electorate there are traditionally quite a lot of absentee votes which means that the postcount doesn't swing all that hard to the Liberals in contrast to other electorates) could change that. Labor ahead but an upset wouldn't surprise me.

Melbourne Ports - the wildcard. Looks safe Labor on paper, but they only lead the Greens by 1251 votes off ordinary votes on first preferences, and it's possible that margin will be chased down with left-leaning preferences, of which Melbourne Ports have a few. If the Greens do overtake them then the seat is a lottery - on paper you'd expect Labor preferences to get the Greens over the top (it did in Prahran in the 2014 state election) -  but Melbourne Ports has a high Jewish population that is anti-Greens but has a personal vote for Danby which makes the potential for Liberal leakage higher and possibly giving them the seat. However postals have been pretty anti-Greens so far - off about 1500 postal votes they're only polling about 12% to Labor's 28%, so it may not be interesting when the 3CC vote is determined. All things considered, Labor have to be favourites to hold this.

So the current totals are 72-65-5. Adding Gilmore to the Coalition and Melbourne Ports to Labor gives 73-66-5. Adding Cowan to Labor gives 73-67-5. Adding Flynn and Forde to the Coalition and Hindmarsh to Labor gives 75-68-5. So the result probably comes down to Capricornia and Herbert. So while Turnbull will likely form government, it remains to be seen whether it's a majority or a minority government.

[morgieb]

What is a "Special Hospital Team booth"?

Essentially, they are people that organise voting for people currently in hospitals that aren't necessarily in their electorate and can't get to a voting place.

At least that's what I think.

[morgieb]

One interesting factor that I noticed but haven't really seen discussed anywhere was just how much of a class element there was to this election.

Like usually there's a class element towards most elections, but the Liberals position with working-class voters (or aspirational middle with working-class roots, which is a bit more accurate) was helped by a more populist tinge from Abbott and Howard. Unlike those two though Turnbull never looked comfortable playing the populist and mostly played up his business image. This had the effect of appealing him towards middle-class Liberal-leaning voters, but whatever "Howard battlers" exist mostly voted Labor in this election.

Examples are rife in all states.

In New South Wales, in Western Sydney we saw a double digit swing in Macarthur (although there were other reasons here that I didn't explain), but we also saw swings of 7%+ in the Sydney electorates of Watson, Chifley, Blaxland and McMahon, which would usually be very safe Labor seats, but due to issues with the Labor brand in Sydney the margins here were very depressed. It appears that this election has seen the margins there normalise. You also saw similar swings in seats like Paterson, Hunter and Whitlam outside of Sydney, and also margins in Kingsford Smith and Parramatta also returned to their usual level. Even Greenway managed a reasonable swing to Labor despite the fact that it probably would've flipped in 2013 if it wasn't for Jaymes Diaz. The only real exception in NSW to this class swing rule is Werriwa, which largely broke even from 2013 levels - probably because of a dodgy Liberal preselection in Fowler in 2013 (the swing in Fowler was smaller than neighbouring seats, too), and also because the Liberals nominated a very strong candidate - I expect a large swing there in the next election (will probably be 2018/19 as a majority looks all but certain for the Liberals). It also looks like the swing was a bit subdued in Shortland and Cunningham as well - but in the former's case it was an open seat as well.

Liberal seats though? I already touched on Macarthur, and Lindsay (which everyone hyped about as a "Howard battler" seat) had its bellweather record broken in this election. But when you look at the North Shore, the traditional Liberal heartland, you see some below par results for Labor. While open seats masked this a bit, as well as PM's/former PM's losing some shine, most of them had lower swings than the seats south of Sydney Harbour. And Bradfield and Bennelong had swings towards the Liberals. As did Cook, which while in the south of the Sydney Metropolitan Area is more similar towards the North Shore than the rest of Sydney.

Also, it's interesting that there appeared to be some Chinese appeal for Turnbull. Bennelong, Reid and Banks all either had swings towards the Liberals or below-average swings towards Labor, and all have an area in the seat with a high Chinese population. Indeed Reid was before Pauline Hanson (when it was known as Lowe, redistributions has changed the nature of Reid dramatically, which used to be further west and a very safe Labor seat) a Liberal-leaning seat, but due to lack to Liberal appeal with Asians it became a Labor-leaning one. Thanks to waterfront developments and also Liberal improvement with ethnic voters, this has moved back to its roots.

I'll add some more evidence/discussion later on...

[morgieb]

In relation to the North Shore seats, it's been a slowly emerging trend that in many places the Greens are the second party. There are times when these seats swing, but since the stronger emergence of the Greens in the early/mid-2000s, Labor has been an afterthought. Those areas are as much anti-Labor, as they are pro-Liberal. There are times when they might not want to vote Liberal, but they certainly won't be voting Labor.

Plus, despite living in the area, Abbott was not considered part of their tribe and a lot of Liberal voters, who are socially moderate/liberal and more pro-business than anything else were always made very uncomfortable by his social crusader status.

Yep, very good points. My overarching point though was similar to your second point, Turnbull is a far better fit for pro-business style Liberals than Abbott ever was.

[morgieb]

It is really noteworthy how 'Coalition' Rural Australia is now.

Now? It's been conservative-leaning for years. That's what population decline does to you.

[morgieb]

Well it's bound to change

I suspect if it remains this close all the way through we'll see the vote thrown out.