Australia 2022 Election

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Gun to my head, I still say Morrison wins.

I doubt Labor would gain Cook even in a landslide.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Getting ahead a bit, but who are the likely leaders of the party that loses?

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Is there any party that considers the horrifying, totalitarian Australian lockdowns a grave mistake and actually promises no more lockdowns? This would be my issue 1, 2, 3 etc. in Australia.

No, because a large majority of citizens agreed with them, complied with them, and got vaccinated as soon as possible. You know, like you would expect from a country that hasn't become deranged to the point of self-destruction.

All this does is confirm my belief that Australians are dumb and easily influenced.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Ipsos with crosstabs -

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

There's talk about how low Labor's primary vote is. It is the case that it is in the mid 30s, but I would say that its effective primary vote is about 44% (its own primary vote plus 80-90% of Green preferences). Unless the Coalition can knock this down a few percent, then it needs something approaching the same preference flow amongst One Nation and Palmer primaries.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Wentworth is probably most similarly economically and culturally to an electorate like Wimbledon, professionals, wealthy people, socially liberal and elite. The likes of Islington in Australia still vote solidly for Labor; Granalyder, Sydney etc. Australia is probably more class polarised than England in urban metropolises, but voting patterns are largely the same.

The places comparable to Grayndler could be those London constituencies which had a big Green vote in 2015 (by some distance the Green Party's best general election in terms of votes). Holborn and St Pancreas springs to mind, not least because of whose seat it is.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

The other issue is that the Australian population is far more concentrated in state capitals than in other countries, Queensland aside. If the Liberals wrote off Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth they would mathematically be locked out of rule in those states.

Australia is one of the worlds most urbanised countries, that means that any competitive party has to be able to win over urban voters.

https://www.yapms.com/app/?t=Australia_house_of_representatives
I toyed with this, created a "Bogans and Miners Party" colored purple, gave it everything besides the insets, and ended up with only 48 seats, roughly 60% the amount needed for a majority.
And that's already including many districts located along the coast that are basically urban, and outer metropolitan.

Stuff like this is why I always get confused when people assume a GOP-style party would do well in Australia. The Coalition hold far more upper-class "liberal" electorates than Labor do Red Wall style ones. Even the likes of Newcastle are still largish cities....

There’s people who think the GOP would do well in Australia? They high? I’d say a 2020-2022 Romney is about as far right the coalition goes, with the most left wing coalition member being somewhere similar to a moderate Democrat. Long story short, the coalition would have a mix of moderate/ liberal GOP type senators and moderate Dems. Labour would definitely be your more extreme Dems in the US and greens would be something left of AOC. Your more conservative/ liked Republicans wouldn’t affiliate with liberals, they’d be more in line with fisher farmers or one nation as would most American Republicans

How party X from nation Y would do in nation Z is a dodgy game. It has to be taken into account that parties and politicians would generally adjust themselves to the circumstances of the nation they moved to. There's quite a few Coalition figures (Dutton springs to mind) who would fit comfortably into the GOP, but have to be somewhat more moderate at home. Similarly the GOP would probably be more moderate (just as it is in certain US states) if it started an Australian branch.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

In that latest Newspoll jaichind linked to, Labor is out from 53-47 last time to 54-46. Also has Labor leading 44-41 on best party to handle cost-of-living pressures, which might be the ball game.

Ipsos has Labor 57-43, out from 55-45 last time.

Reports the Coalition is losing ground in Queensland.

Looking very much like a Labor victory at this point.

Ipsos was actually, just about, closer to the result in 2019 than Newspoll. It had Labor ahead 51-49, whereas Newspoll was 51.5-48.5. On primaries it was by some distance the most accurate - it had Labor on 33% (which is what it got), and got the 2PP wrong due to overestimating the Green vote.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Let’s not get into Covid restrictions again.

Yeah, when we start to get into "list of nasties" labels inclusive of Trudeau and Ardern, I'm left thinking of the kind of person whom, if ranked choice balloting existed in Canada, would put PPC first...

Given the context and the amazingly low death tolls in our countries (the point of restrictions and why 2022 is different), that sounds like a 'list of heroes' to me. I think the more interesting verdicts on Covid responses will be the elections of state governments that actually made the decisions. It should cause the pro-Covid crowd to go nuts if Dan Andrews wins comfortably later this year. He's not on my list of heroes though because he could have been more competent in 2020 and stopped the outbreak (and therefore the lockdown) earlier.

The leaders seen to have done badly in other countries would have likely done a lot better if they had been in countries with strong and enforceable internal borders and/or geographically isolated. Similarly the leaders of the latter kind of countries would have done worse in the former kind. Nothing to do with Ardern, Morrison et al having some inate skill at this kind of thing.

And it's completely possible to see this even if you take a hard-line view on Covid, so I'm not trying to start a spat about justifications.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

I can happily announce that I have been employed as the official campaign "desperate times call for desperate measures" spokesperson for the Liberal Party. Believe me, it's very well paid. My first assignment is to post the following:



Have I earned my keep yet?

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

For overseas readers - ABC Australia is currently streaming a pre-election discussion show on YouTube, which presumably means that they will also stream their election night coverage tomorrow night.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Newspoll is 53-47, in line with others.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

That Morrison's personal approvals have fallen during this campaign suggests to me that the polls are accurate (and if not, inaccurate in the other direction although they aren't that dire either). Suspect we are probably looking at the wrong seats for gains and swings though, a lot of the regional QLD and NSW LNP results last time were ridiculous and unlikely to be sustained. 

I'm surprised they've fallen. He's such a likeable and humble guy.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Election live stream link.

ABC's election results page is also quite essential, although it doesn't seem to be up yet.

Other streams:

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Some unsurprisingly eccentric results on the early figures. Most notable might be Whitlam, which has the Liberals on 64.2% 2PP on 0.1%.

Although also huge swings to the Liberals in Braddon, Blair and Banks...

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Party popular vote percentages overall with almost 5% in are 38 Coalition, 28 Labor, 11 Green, 7 One Nation, 5 UAP and 12 others. Obviously there is some country bias, but the percentages for the parties besides the two majors aren't that out of line with the polls. Which is perhaps concerning for the ALP.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Labor are ahead in Menzies. Would be a funny gain given the name of the seat.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

Morrison deserved to lose given his authoritarian COVID policies

Australians would, and in fact do, say that his pandemic management was among one of the better aspects of his term. If this was a referendum on covid ScoMo would have won, because Australians crave death less intensely than Americans. But it was a referendum on not only covid but many other things and perhaps more than anything the direction of the country,  The Liberal Party failed to advocate or lead with a cohesive and inspiring vision for the future and so they very understandably lost.

Donald Trump would have 'managed' (whatever that may mean) Covid much better as Australian Prime Minister than he did as US President, simply because Australia has far more easily closable internal and external borders than the United States has. For those same reasons, it's no credit to Morrison than his 'management' of Covid was 'good'. Morrison and Ardern were geographically lucky with Covid; it had nothing to do with them having some impressive viral repression skillset.

[Property Representative of the Harold Holt Swimming Centre]

More like 8% (perhaps 9% this time) as there’s still a stubborn ≈20% of Greens voters preferencing the Liberals over Labor.

Who are these people ? Very old voters who don't see the green party as to the left of Labour

Mostly they are people who aren't very political or don't fit into neat categories that people who follow politics obsessively like to create. It's like these clowns in the UK who go on about "Progressive Alliances" whilst not being aware that all "progressive" parties have some amount of voters who are not only not progressive but quite reactionary.