Western Australia election, 13th March 2021

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Happening this Saturday. If you're a big fan of hilarious blowout elections this might be one to look out for, with incumbent ALP Premier Mark McGowan boasting Kim Jong Un level ratings (he is a COVID TOUGH GUY and like all popular WA leaders ia taking advantage of a huge rally in commodity prices) and the Liberal leader desperately trying to save the furniture by basically going full green. Also in the mix are the Nationals, who are not the subordinate entity you find elsewhere in Australia, the Greens and One Nation. You also will be pleased to note that WA has not ditched the infamous group ticket voting system for its upper house, which means at least one random crazy will be elected: apparently this year "Health Australia" are the likeliest beneficiaries.

[Talleyrand]

Final Newspoll

TPP: ALP 66 (-2) LIB 34 (+2)

Primary: ALP 57 (-2) LIB 23 (0) GRN 9 (+1) ON 2 (-1) NAT 3 (+1) OTH 6 (+1)

[Coldstream]

Could we be looking at a New Brunswick 1987 style electoral wipeout?

[skbl17]

Could we be looking at a New Brunswick 1987 style electoral wipeout?

The scale will be similarly massive (there may only be a taxi's worth of opposition members left,) but there won't be a one-party Legislative Assembly as was the case in 1987 in New Brunswick.

A better Canadian example may be the 2007 Newfoundland and Labrador election.

[lilTommy]

Last poll above VS (2017 vote):

TPP: ALP 66% (55%, +11) LIB 34% (44%, -10)

Primary: ALP 57% (42%, +15) LIB 23% (31%, -8) GRN 9 (9%, nc) ON 2 (5%, -3) NAT 3 (5%, -2)

Bookies, but from the end of February

Labor - 49, Liberal - 6, National - 4

https://www.perthnow.com.au/politics/state-election-2021/state-election-2021-bookies-forecast-massive-labor-win-with-liberal-leader-zak-kirkup-tipped-to-fall-ng-b881803628z

[Coldstream]

Could we be looking at a New Brunswick 1987 style electoral wipeout?

The scale will be similarly massive (there may only be a taxi's worth of opposition members left,) but there won't be a one-party Legislative Assembly as was the case in 1987 in New Brunswick.

A better Canadian example may be the 2007 Newfoundland and Labrador election.

Pity - not that I’ve anything particularly against the WA Liberals, it’s just those wipeouts in contested elections are a good novelty for us political junkies.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Antony Green calls just 40 minutes after polls close with just 0.7% counted. That definitely beats the record set in NSW 2011 and Qld 2012 for earliest call.
Already shaping up like a massive landslide as the polls indicated.

[Intell]

10-20% swings seen in each electorate.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

Darling Range, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Nedlands and Riverton all look like they've flipped (though only Geraldton has enough in for the ABC computer to call it).
Labor is also running second in Roe for the first time since the seat was created in 1950, which is just incredible.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

F in chat for the WA Liberals
EDIT: Live coverage is here
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-13/wa-election-live-2021-wa-votes-follow-for-results/13245980

[AustralianSwingVoter]

There has been a 50% swing in Southern River over the last 8 years. It's gone from 67% Liberal to 82% Labor!!!

[Knives]

These results are insane, think about how strong the WA Libs were back in 2013. I've never seen anything like this.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

"An opposition that can fit into a motorbike with a sidecar"

[Cassius]

These results are insane, think about how strong the WA Libs were back in 2013. I've never seen anything like this.

Labour’s rout in Queensland in 2012 left them with only 7 seats, so I think percentage wise they occupied a smaller proportion of the legislature then. Still a catastrophic drubbing for the conservative parties in WA.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

These results are insane, think about how strong the WA Libs were back in 2013. I've never seen anything like this.

Labour’s rout in Queensland in 2012 left them with only 7 seats, so I think percentage wise they occupied a smaller proportion of the legislature then. Still a catastrophic drubbing for the conservative parties in WA.

Also the 2/25 result for the CLP in the Northern Territory in 2016.

[Talleyrand]

The WA ALP's 53/59 seats are a bigger proportion of the Assembly than either the Queensland LNP in 2012 (78/89) and Northern Territory Labor in 2016 (18/25). Definitely by far the biggest majority government in decades (at least).

In terms of vote share, this was an unprecedented landslide. The ALP won 58% of the primary vote and 69% of the 2PP, exceeding the 51% and 64% recorded by the NSW Coalition in 2011.

WA Labor has also won outright control of the upper house. Will they use this opportunity to end malapportionment?

[Хahar 🤔]

WA Labor has also won outright control of the upper house. Will they use this opportunity to end malapportionment?

I've been wondering this, too, and I haven't seen anything about it. For context, the reason that Labor did not abolish malapportionment for the lower house until 2005 is that historically it did not work particularly to the benefit of either side; the two parties had a roughly equal share of both metropolitan and non-metropolitan electorates. (This is notably unlike South Australia and Queensland, where malapportionment decidedly favored the right, and this probably has something to do with why Western Australia, uniquely among the states, has never experienced decades of single-party rule.)

Obviously that's not the case anymore. Automation and the resulting decline in non-metropolitan industrial jobs have hurt Labor outside the cities everywhere, but it seems to me that the effect is most visible in Western Australia, where the shift to fly-in fly-out employment has resulted in workers employed in resource extraction simply living in Perth, no matter where in the state they work. The rise of the Nationals on a regionalist platform has also contributed in making remote parts of the state very difficult for Labor; even at this election, the old Labor turncoat Vince Catania was the only National to lose his seat, while the other four remained unscathed. The Nationals are not, strictly speaking, in coalition with the Liberals, but they are still a right-wing party, and their growth means that those regions have become ever less fruitful Labor territory.

On the other hand, given that the Labor majority in the upper house exists thanks to regional Labor MLCs, it's quite possible that those legislators will be unwilling to abolish their own seats. Maybe Labor will just leave well enough alone; it's not as if the upper house will matter at all for the next four years.

[Meclazine for Israel]

WA Labor has also won outright control of the upper house. Will they use this opportunity to end malapportionment?

I've been wondering this, too, and I haven't seen anything about it. For context, the reason that Labor did not abolish malapportionment for the lower house until 2005 is that historically it did not work particularly to the benefit of either side; the two parties had a roughly equal share of both metropolitan and non-metropolitan electorates. (This is notably unlike South Australia and Queensland, where malapportionment decidedly favored the right, and this probably has something to do with why Western Australia, uniquely among the states, has never experienced decades of single-party rule.)

Obviously that's not the case anymore. Automation and the resulting decline in non-metropolitan industrial jobs have hurt Labor outside the cities everywhere, but it seems to me that the effect is most visible in Western Australia, where the shift to fly-in fly-out employment has resulted in workers employed in resource extraction simply living in Perth, no matter where in the state they work. The rise of the Nationals on a regionalist platform has also contributed in making remote parts of the state very difficult for Labor; even at this election, the old Labor turncoat Vince Catania was the only National to lose his seat, while the other four remained unscathed. The Nationals are not, strictly speaking, in coalition with the Liberals, but they are still a right-wing party, and their growth means that those regions have become ever less fruitful Labor territory.

On the other hand, given that the Labor majority in the upper house exists thanks to regional Labor MLCs, it's quite possible that those legislators will be unwilling to abolish their own seats. Maybe Labor will just leave well enough alone; it's not as if the upper house will matter at all for the next four years.

I never thought a guy in California would be teaching me about politics in my own state.

This result was all COVID related.

We have had virtually zero community spread of the virus and if Mark McGowan's policy on the border could be tighter he would do it.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Legalize Cannabis Party currently has two seats in the upper house - not that minor parties will be particularly empowered with an ALP majority in the upper house. The Greens are also showing a pretty rotten performance with only one seat, drawing with the Shooters and Fishers.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Mode upper house oddities:

- as previous recent mega Landslides have in unicameral states, it's quite remarkable to see Labor winning multiple mandates in most regions before anybody else. As far as i can see, Liberals only got a single mandate outright.

- daylight saving party came close to an Australian Sports Party result in the Mining and Pastoral region, being the final party to be eliminated despite being second last in raw results.

- Greens basically are in the worst of worlds for this voting system - no minor party solidarity but also not enough members per district to get a firm member. They essentially have to rely on Labor at least being able to be eliminated below them to ensure they can harvest some surplus votes, but that didn't help them.

[Хahar 🤔]

As an update, Vince Catania has in fact retained North West Central for the Nationals (much to the displeasure of all those invested emotionally in either the ALP or an aesthetically pleasing map), but out of nowhere Labor has picked up Warren-Blackwood in the southwestern edge of the state. This seat was last won by Labor in 1986 and it was thought to be a safe National seat on election night. Churchlands is still in doubt, but Labor has just taken the lead there and they'll keep it if the boxes reporting today are indicative of what's left. That would put the count at what was originally reported: Labor 53, National 4, Liberal 2.

[Vosem]

Per Kevin Bonham, the Daylight Savings Party winning a seat in Mining and Pastoral in spite of coming second-to-last actually looks very likely, and in the very unlikely event they don't win the preference snowball goes to Liberals for Climate (also a micro-party, but at least a micro-party on 1% rather than 0.1%).

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

"Liberals for Climate" is actually the party once known as "Flux", which is one of those goofy "what if everyone voted online for everything?!" outfits. They did that old trick of trying to get the sort of donkey voter who literally scans two lines of the ballot and sees something that looks like their favoured party, then votes for that. (Quite unfortunate timing to look like an ersatz liberal, given the wipeout).

[Хahar 🤔]

The name "Liberals for Climate" is also suggestive, almost certainly deliberately, of Liberals for Forests, a party of the 2000s that peaked in Western Australia with 1.4% of the state Senate vote in 2001. A Liberals for Forests member also represented a safe Liberal seat in Perth in the Legislative Assembly for a decade, but she did so as an independent.