Australia - 7 September 2013

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What sort of time is that over here?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What sort of time is that over here?

You don't know what time it would be in the British Isles when it's 4 AM EDT? And this guy is constantly on an intellectually superiority kick...

Am I? Besides, I've never pretended to be anything other than vaguely scared of numbers.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, looks like a swing in the region of 2pts to 4pts, give or take the usual. Comparison is a good thing, so here bist the swings at government-changing elections:

2007 - 5.4
1996 - 5.1
1983 - 3.6
1975 - 7.4
1972 - 2.5
1949 - 5.1

So if the national polls are correct, this will be a fairly 'normal' government changing election, with a swing perhaps a little on the low side (but that's partly because the government is not defending a majority).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What sort of time is that over here?

9 am

Most excellent.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anyway, just looking at things from a very basic point of view: there are fourteen Labor seats with 2PP margins under 4%. So it seems reasonable to take a loss of around about fourteen seats as 'par', presuming the polls are correct.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What sort of time is that over here?

9 am

So I'll be sleeping while the early results come in...

Or you could wake up specially. Australian election nights are always fun, even if they don't go your way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Again, to give some indication of something... in 2007 the swing was 5.4%. Five seats had swings twice that or above (10.8%) and I think about a further five also had double digit swings. Against that, only five seats swung the wrong way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Is anyone else unable to fathom that, barring some kind of catastrophic polling failure, Tony Abbott is actually going to become Prime Minister of Australia shortly? This is surreal.

It's a bit strange, but no stranger than Howard becoming such in 1996. We then just got used to his presence, but the very idea would have been (was) laughable a few years earlier.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Looking at Smid's maps, it seems that Labor did about as well in the 2011 NSW election as the 2010 federal election there (!!!!), so it's possible.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The ALP will always be at a disadvantage then with its current faction system, they are constantly divided it seems

The Liberals have much the same problem, though it's less formalised. Watch this space.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Once again, I refer people to this list of swings at government-changing elections:

2007 - 5.4
1996 - 5.1
1983 - 3.6
1975 - 7.4
1972 - 2.5
1949 - 5.1

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, it wouldn't be abnormal at any rate.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Obviously we should always be extremely wary of poll internals (and I think I preach this message more than anyone else), but this is sufficiently interesting that... anyway, the state figures from the final Newspoll show a slightly (but not insignificantly) different pattern to the Received Wisdom of the campaign.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

To an extent everyone's predictions are like throwing darts at a poster of someone you hate, so don't worry about it

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Any good streaming election coverage sites people recommend?

ABC is normally available (because of all the ex-pats) and ABC has Antony Green.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thread unlocked. Use this thread to discuss the political aftermath of the election, etc, but not the results themselves - continue to do that in the results thread. Believe me, this sort of split makes sense...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think Shorten is the presumptive favourite, but there's a fairly long list of possibilities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

More of a contralto, I think.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Fatigue won't be the reason for the change of government in Tasmania.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Considering the bullsh!t that paper and its hired polling company trotted out during the election, why should we believe them now?