go to next posts

welcome to               Mumble Go to October 6 election result prediction

November 25 Marky Mark

People sometimes ask me why I'm so hard on Mr L. At least he's having a go, isn't he? The reason is simple: I'll go to my grave believing that Beazley would have won the 2004 election if he'd been leader. 

Now put yourself in my shoes: if you believed what I believed, and you really wanted a Labor win, wouldn't you be cross?

Strangely, Robert McClelland, the last man to jump into the Latham camp on December 2 2003 (if he'd stayed with Bomber, Caucus would have tied) no longer tells that story about how at the last minute he rang the footballer who told him to go with the new bloke.

November 22 Janine Haines ...

... died overnight.  She was easily the electorally most successful Democrats leader. At the 1990 election the party got over ten percent (I think; I don't have the figures on me). She also got pretty close to winning the Adelaide seat of Kingston from Labor's Gordon Bilney.

November 21 New Labor!

Latham has announced he intends to reach out to the upwardly mobile middle class, junking the old Labor template.  Pardon, wasn't that what the Ladder of Opportunity was all about? The whole idea of "the new face of Labor" Latham was that he spoke the values of 'middle Australia' and knew their fair dinkum aspirations.

On October 9 the Lad went down like a sack of potatoes, but he's resilient, dusted himself off and from now on is gonna really talk the language of middle Australia. And after the next election loss, he'll really really do it. And he's young, he's got a good three or four more heroic defeats in him.

Fact: there are two conditions required for a change of government. The first is that voters are sick of what's there, or at least believe it might be time for a change. Second, the alternative must be acceptable. The first condition was met for a 2004 election (and will be for the next), but the second wasn't, and never was going to be with ridgy didge Marky Mark running the show.

An opposition makes itself electable by doing three things: (1) occupying the broadly acceptable middle ground of Australian politics, (2) offering something that's different from the incumbent and (3) reassuring voters they are safe, and nobody's going to lose their four-wheel-drive.

In the Boofhead Manual, opposition consists of being a muscular, erratic imitation of what's already in place. So he gets the first right but blows the other two. That's why they can't win with him. It wasn't interest rates; whichever issue took hold, Latham was going to be too scary because people believe he'll do whatever he wants, without taking advice. He's indicated on innumerable occasions that knows best, he doesn't play by the rules. As Mr Kelly has been known to opine, Latham is a 'conviction politician!'. Unfortunately, conviction politicians! don't win from opposition.

Deadwood? Among the "blame anything but the leader" list of reasons for the ALP's loss is: the deadwood - already on the Labor backbench and being offered up as Labor candidates. By contrast, apparently, the Liberal Party backbench is an embarrassment of talent, with Australia's brightest making their way through that preselection process. The long-time backbench is similarly wise, experienced and savvy. Why, just look what drifted into the Speaker's chair last week.

November 20 Who said what to whom? - does anyone give a rats? Politics as usual, no? What Whitlam tried with Vince Gair in 1974. Most people would be surprised it's not legal; parties do it with their own all the time.

Western Australia: Labor in a canter

Mr Bludger's guide is up. At some stage I'll probably make a pendulum and link to him and Antony Green. Most expect the election sometime early next year.

Out of 57 Legislative Assembly seats, Labor has 32, which makes a majority of seven. There was a redistribution in the current term, but notional majority remains the the same. Labor's two party preferred at last election about 53 percent. A uniform swing of just 1.2 percent would see four seats fall to the Coalition and would end Labor's majority, which on paper makes things very tricky for Premier Gallop.

Most observers reckon the government's in trouble, it could go either way, with the Coalition possibly slightly favoured. I think not. I reckon Labor will win comfortably, with a similar or increased majority and a safety margin much better than 1.2 percent. (Then we'll start hearing about all the deadwood on the State Opposition's backbench.)

November 15 The two Poits

Independent Calare MP Peter Andren and I are the latest posters on the Democratic Audit. PA on parliamentary entitlements, PB on above-the-line voting/Family First senate spot.

Abbott and Costello

A few readers responded to the post below, suggesting I underestimate the cunning of Mr Abbott, and perhaps overstate the ambition of Mr Costello. The scenario of Abbott ruthlessly destabilising his former mentor (Howard) gets a mention. Hmm, maybe the next three years won't be dull after all.

November 11 Three Amigos - an Abbott Prime Ministership?

The man in the middle (above), who shares a name with a Hawke government minister, was one of many to bio the man at right this year. But it was also a bio of the chappy at left; he called them, I think, the finest politicians of their generation.

Mr Duffy is a self-declared conservative, and until Latham turned on them a couple of years ago (most spectacularly in parliament) Marky-Mark was rather fancied by Paddy McGuinness, IPA, CIS et al; he was "the only Labor guy with any sense". (In other words his ideas were rather similar to John Howard's.)

Anyway, with one half of Duffy's book trashed - at least in this political lifetime - can we save the other half? Will Tony Abbott make it as PM? I'm no statistician, but rough calculations say he has a good chance. Below is what I reckon is the most probable series of events. Most of these occurrences are dependent on the previous ones, and by no means do I claim this total scenario is more likely to happen than not, but we could perhaps say it is the most likely specific scenario. It goes like this:

• John Howard resigns from politics and makes way for Peter Costello in, say, 2005

• After a shaky start, Costello settles in and looks ok

• Labor Caucus finally gets around to cutting down the rotting carcass of  Latham (having wisely left him in place to deplete, for the good of the party, what political capital he had remaining)

• A few callow Labor members want to install a Costello lookalike, because, you know, Costello gets high approval ratings, looks comfortable in the job and obviously represents middle Australia and so on, but sanity prevails this time and they choose someone electable

• Labor wins the next election, and Peter Costello becomes Opposition Leader

• There's an early election (say after 18 months), a double dissolution, because the Coalition and Family First control the Senate

• Labor wins the election, and Costello, having had enough, bows out

• Tony Abbott becomes opposition leader.

• Abbott wins either the following election or the one after that. He is now PM

Actually, there are two other variations whose chances combined might about equal the above scenario, and in which the Mad Monk misses out.

1.  Howard stays on as Prime Minister

•  Labor still installs a winning leader, and Howard therefore presides over the next election loss himself. Costello becomes opposition leader, BUT ...this changes everything

• The 'hard right, divisive, conservative' Howard agenda is seen as totally repudiated by the electorate. Paul Kelly, for example, explains that Australians are unideological, they're not interested in conservative social issues -  unlike Americans in this respect. They believe in 'a fair go'.

• This greatly lessens Abbott's chances of leadership after Costello loses that Double Dissolution, because he's a relic of that divisive past. Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull battle it out, and Nelson brings out that ear-ring, discovers a progressive conservatism, and becomes opposition leader and eventually PM

The second sad scenario for Abbott:

• Marky Mark refuses to go quietly, causes havoc, perhaps splitting the party, and the Coalition wins the next election and the one after.

• Costello becomes PM and wins an election or two, before handing over to another somewhat 'progressive' type. Abbott again finds his time out.

But all in all Abbott's moons stand a fair chance of lining up. (Costello's probably won't, apart from the fag-end of the Howard years.)

November 9 2004 Alan and me

There are two journalists I occasionally annoy with unsolicited emails - Alan Ramsey and Shaun Carney. Not that often, a couple of times a year maybe. (Ok, 3 or 4.) Unca Alan gave an amusing account on Saturday of Peter Botsman, including his early and correct anticipation of a Latham loss.

I dug up a couple of my own missives to Alan. First, the day after Caucus elected Boofhead last year, was a tad emotional.

December 3 2003:

"Dear Alan,  

That'll teach you to wish too hard. Just watch him deliver low primary AND two party preferred votes. Latham will be a total disaster, and political historians may well see this as the turning point, like the Labor split in the 50s. After the inevitable landslide loss (much worse than Crean would have delivered) what then?

A sad day.

Regards,

PB "

Mr Ramsey was friendly enough in his reply, but obviously didn't agree.

Then on May 14 2004

Dear Alan,

It is my melancholy duty to inform you that the Lad from Werriwa is going down, whenever the election is held. He will lose by more than either of Beazley's efforts .... 

Alan didn't go for that either, but suggested we email after the election. I haven't had the courage yet.

Louise Dodson 

In SMH. This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put: (1) pretending that the election of a Family First Senator in Victoria, with less than two percent of the vote (the unsuccessful Greens got nearly nine percent; even the poor old Democrats got more than Family First), represents anything other than very clever preference manipulation, and (2) concluding that Labor lost the election because they were too left-wing. The whole idea of Latham was that he was the most conservative Howard-lite clone that Labor Caucus could find. He was going to beat Howard at his own game. Now it turns out he was a raving lefty? Is not the lesson that the ALP needs to present a different product? And middle Australian as moralistic mini-me Yankee God-lovers? Puh-lease.

November 6 US election: the party of Lincoln?

Some unkind person has disparagingly compared American demographics today with pre Civil War. This sort of thing really isn't called for.

Stun Watch 

The Oz's Matt Price joins the Village of the Stunned. Those who have already described Bush's re-election result as 'stunning' include colleague Greg Sheridan (twice) and a Daily Telegraph editorial writer (see below). Maybe a News Ltd thing.

In Electoral College votes Tuesday was the second closest Presidential election result since 1916, popular vote-wise the second closest since 1960. (2000 tops both categories.)

Most US presidents get a big re-election swing, much larger than Dubya's. Or they're tossed out. The former include Clinton, Reagan, Nixon and Eisenhower; the latter Papa Bush and Carter.

Dinky Di Lingo

Crikey's psephologist, Charlie Richardson, in yesterday's newsletter, put the US result in clear Aussie electoral vernacular we can all understand - two party preferred votes and uniform swings. Reproduced in full here, but perhaps the key points:

• Bush went from 49.7 (in 2000) to 51.6% of the two party preferred vote. Like, say, Paul Keating in 1993 and John Howard in 2001, the incumbent, having won last time with a vote minority, needed a decent swing to stay in, which he got, but it produced little in the way of seats.

• Bush's new margin (the uniform swing required by the Dems to win next time) is 1.3 percent.

These things are not, of course, 100% applicable to first past the post - not to mention different sized (and weighted) electorates - but still a handy way to look at it.

I would add:

That 1.3 percent is the margin in the big fat swing state of Ohio (20 electoral votes). Had Kerry won that he would be the next Prez. The Democrats actually got a half a percent 'swing' there, but it was 1.3 percent short. Still in uniform terms, had they achieved that 1.3, they also have scooped up New Mexico and Iowa, worth a further 12 between them, and the result would have been 284 to 254 in Kerry's favour (instead of 286 to 252 for Bush) with Bush still winning the popular vote.

November 5 US election

Another Aussie commentator "stunned" at the result. Most people thought Bush would win, but they're amazed it happened anyway, or perhaps that he actually won the popular vote as well.

Conspiracy Theory This man is the US Ambassador to Australia, probably responsible for some of the peculiarly Australian Bush-furphies, like Dubya breaking a century old Democrat rule in Texas when he took the Governorship in 1995. (It was only four years.) I suspect he's behind 'the first President to get a majority of the popular vote since 1988!', and 'recipient of the most votes at any US Presidential election!' lines.

Journalists phone him for a comment, he delivers his lines and they're statements of fact (ie unattributed) the next day. That's my theory anyway; the charming Texan plays them like violins.

Ok, neither of those two is strictly a furphy (Clinton got 49.2 in 1996), but can I state the bleedin obvious, that in a two horse race someone always gets over half the vote? And John Kerry also received more presidential votes than any previous presidential candidate (be they a winner or loser)?

Anyone who really thought another 'close' result, with just a few hundred votes in it in, was a likely outcome was having themselves on. Life - and statistical probability - aren't like that. (Our own hung parliament predictors who emerge before every election suffer the same delusion.)  A clear result one way or the other was always the great probability.

November 4 US election: Dubya wins

Bush wins about 51 to 48 percent, certainly a clear vote win but not the landslide that's become the hook. In raw numbers we keep hearing that "more people voted for Bush than for any previous presidential contender". Yes, and Kerry got the second most votes in history; population growth and a high-ish turnout tend to do that.

Bush got about 59.1 million votes, Kerry 55.4 million; previous voting data here.

In the electoral college it was very close again (274 to 252, 12 undecided); this time it was Kerry who almost won the election while losing the vote.

Stunning!

The Australian, no surprises, is most cock-a-hoop. Greg Sheridan twice finds the result 'stunning', here and in another [no link] piece. Given that he predicted a Bush win we can only guess why he is stunned.

As Sheridan points out, George W. Bush has actually won both the popular vote and the Electoral College this time - stunning, perhaps.

US Presidents aren't usually cut down after one term, but Bush has been so unimpressive that it looked highly possible. In the end he hung on. (His father lost mainly because of a world recession and H. Ross Perot.)

In Electoral College votes, Bush's victory is one of the closest in recent US history, second to 2000. And as Sheridan has been telling us for four years, that's all that counts, isn't it? We don't look at the popular vote for mandate, do we?

(Yes, cranky at doing my dough.)

Update: Simon Jackman from Stanford Uni says in a newsletter: "had 68,000 Bush voters in Ohio voted for Kerry instead (approx 1.2% of the OH turnout), Kerry would have won the presidency with 272 Electoral College votes, and something like 48% of the popular vote (and Bush would have lost with 51% of the popular vote)."

But 68,000 is a lot of votes. I wonder whether a smaller number spread over several smaller states would do the same thing. 

A reader writes:

November 2 Carr on the dive in NSW, says Newspoll

That's the cycle.

Disclosure: US election commentary

In January this year, before the Democratic primaries, I visited a betting website with a list of contenders with odds for the next US Presidency. It was topped by George W Bush (shortest odds) followed by Howard Dean, easily the favoured Democrat, then a stream of others. I chose one Democrat; not the one I thought would probably be their candidate (I thought Dean would), but the one who, if he did get the job, I figured had the best chance of beating Dubya. He was 33 to 1, so I fluttered a few dollars. See my bet slip here (numbers blurry; price is $34; wager $30; payout $1020); wish me luck if you want.

November 1 Malcolm back in the US

Malcolm Mackerras is in the Oz today repeating (with pretty much the same wording) his February prediction of a Kerry landslide. Wags can insert line about a Bush win now being beyond doubt - boom boom - here, but even if Malcolm's wrong (and I'm tentatively going for a Kerry win too) his point about a close electoral college outcome always being unlikely even if the popular vote is close - and the same applies to seats here in Australia - is always worth making.

Malcolm's reasoning (for making such a big call) probably goes like this. He obviously reckons Kerry is more likely to win than Bush. But predicting a 'close' result, as all the hung parliament/three seats in it! gooses did at our recent election, is wimpy and always unlikely to transpire. Might as well predict a 'landslide', especially if you don't define 'landslide; that can be done retrospectively. The problem of course is if he's wrong, and Bush wins (comfortably, again, is most likely) then he looks more wrong. But Malcolm is a risk-taker.

October 31 US Presidential election: 'this land' (again)

You might have seen this a couple of months ago and you might want to watch it again before its relevance expires in a couple of days. (It opens in a new window and takes a while to load. You can toggle back here while it does.)

Post election fantasies

One constant stand-out of the wash-ups of John Howard's four election wins is an increasing tendency of some journalists to ... free their imaginations on exactly which voters exactly were responsible. After the 2001 result we read various reports, not all of them by Dennis Shanahan, of (select one): oldies, youngies, men, women, migrants, working mothers, single mothers etc etc forming the backbone the victory. (This from a 51 to 49 result.)

It's early days with the 2004 result, but we should expect the same between now and Christmas.

Two favourites are 'battlers', and young people. We've dealt with the first furphy ad nauseam, but the appeal of the latter is obvious, a 'hip to be square' hook: young people today, unlike their chardonnay-soaked baby-booming parents, are savvy, non-ideological, favour common sense solutions, value freedom and are results-oriented. John Howard might be a bit of a dag, but he'll do them for PM.

It's rubbish. No voting patterns or decent survey data support it. Young people still predominantly vote left-of centre. Of course, if you compare voting habits of most categories of people today with that under Hawke-Keating governments, you'll find that more of them vote conservative and less vote Labor. That's simple mathematics; it's called having a different government.

Outer suburban four-wheel drivers 

Probably one group has substantially (ie more than anyone else) moved to the Coalition camp in the last decade: young families in outer suburbs with mortgages. At each of the last four (and maybe five) elections, they've increasingly favoured the Liberal Party relative to other voters. That is, if the swing is pro-Labor (1993 and 1998), they swing less, if the swing is pro-Coalition (1996, 2001, 2004) they swing more. Cumulatively, they've moved big time.

October 30 US Presidential election: my tentative tip

New York Times interactive map complements Malcolm's pendulum [PDF in new window].

At last count, about 75% of Planet Earth inhabitants wish John Kerry to win, a proportion not replicated in those with an actual vote in the thing. But I'm tipping the long-faced one to come through - though not with great confidence - on the vague idea that an increased turnout will favour both sides, but Kerry's extra voters will be better placed than Bush's, who are over-represented by Bible-types in Republican southern states. Plus Bush's dreadfulness is close to being an objective fact.

On the other hand, there's a lot of funny stuff going on, not just in Florida. 

Still, Kerry to win is my hunch.

Mr Ramsey in the Senate

Alan shuffles down Senate memory lane in the SMH. I don't think he likes it. But he's got the wrong end of the stick in implying that Labor governments have increased Senate numbers and then increased lower house ones because the constitution says they must. It's the other way round; they've increased the HoR but had to increase the Senate as well. A 1967 referendum supported by both federal parties (but not the state governments) to break that 'nexus' crashed badly.

He mentions the pre-1949 'winner take all' voting system. Now that was a shocker. (In Ben Chifley's last term Labor had 33 out of 36 senators.) I was going to include something on it in recent AFR senate piece, but didn't have space. The par would have gone something like this.

Stripped to essentials: before 1949 voters for the Senate were given a list of candidates, and ticked as many as there were seats to fill, and all ticks were counted equally. Provided the parties put up as many candidates as there were seats available, but no more, this usually meant the most popular party got about 100 percent of the spots. It was introduced before the two party system had evolved, and would kind of work if you didn't have parties. Preferences, introduced in 1919, didn't change things much.

Alan quotes Jack Lang railing against the Senate, but most of what he detested is embedded in the constitution, and so only alterable by constitutional referendum - which means unalterable. I wrote this last year.

October 28 Press club talk: here we go again

Liberal Director Brian Whatsis gave his election wrap to the National Press Club yesterday, complete with Liberal Party polling data, and because our fourth estate likes a good story it left its cynicism at home. Such a nice chap, divulging these secrets.

The eagle-eyed Dennis Shanahan notes, once again, that 'Battlers' in particular flocked to Howard! Dennis fantasises thus after every election, and was always going to again this time. If we ignore Mr Whatsis's polling, as we must, because it is surely rubbish, all available evidence points, in general terms, to mortgage belters  as the biggest anti-Latham swingers.