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Apologies for messy page June 7 Robert Kennedy Junior and the 'stolen' election My hard drive has died: temporary arrangements plus my incompetence have produced this post - above the page heading. Still! Better than nothing. You may have heard reference to the Bobby Kennedy Jnr Rolling Stone article on the 2004 Presidential Election. I've read it, and while I'm no expert it appears to detail a mix of really frightful Republican tactics and lots of more minor infringements; the latter perhaps dilute the thrust of the piece. I asked Rick Hasen, a US electoral law expert who was out here a couple of years ago, his thoughts; they were that he "doesn't think there's much to the RFK jnr piece". Rick referred me to this and this, which I haven't fully read yet. Charley Richardson at Crikey also had this link. Like many, I'd heard bits and pieces about funny business over the 19 months since the election, but am too ignorant to really know. However, what is beyond doubt is how dreadful the American electoral system is: highly decentralised, with elected partisans presiding over intimate details of registration and voting. It is truly at the lower end of international practice in 'democratic' countries.

May 31 Nat-Lib merger Sounds like madness. The ALP is currently in opposition, so we know by heart its constituency tensions: blue collar, socially conservative versus inner city 'progressives'.  But the Conservative side has always had its own contradictions: (put just as glibly) urban economic liberals against rural economic conservatives. Having two parties gives built-in flexibility and allows a pretence of independence by the junior partner. It lets them mop up the support of people who, rationally, might prefer Labor's policies to the Libs'.

On the Queensland optional preferential voting problem, I thought the Coalition had agreed at the last election: no three-cornered contests. No three-corners, no leaking or exhausting preferences.

Two parties allows the conservative side have its cake and eat it, and they'd be bonkers to change that. 

May 30 2006 Newspoll: 52 to 48

In the Oz. 

We regret to inform that the Government's post budget bounce has once again been postponed. Please check again in a fortnight; we apologise for any inconvenience.

May 29 2006 John, Peter and the Feral Abacus The other day I suggested reasons the Government might stand a better chance of winning the next election with Costello as leader than with Howard. Here now is is the other side: what might be the big risk with Costello PM.

Regular readers will know one of the things I bang on about is that when it comes to elections there are things a government can do and things an opposition can, and an opposition who forgets this ... well, see the Latham experience.

For example, governments can often run scare campaigns against oppositions, but putting boot on other foot is nigh on impossible, because people know the government is 'safe'.  However, Costello PM may be an exception.

One thing about Howard, and it's the opposite of the popular 'conviction politician!' template, is that punters reckon he knows how far he can go. They might suspect that deep down he's itching to rip Medicare to smithereens, but knows it's not a realistic option. His economic instincts are as dry as the Nullarbor, but he is pragmatic enough to accept half measures.

But Costello? He's often appeared impatient with Howard's political timidity, and is on the record that unfair dismissal laws shouldn't exist full stop, and in general has not appeared sympathetic to people who, say (particularly outside the capitals, where many marginal seats are) aren't necessarily sharing in the boom.

As Costello would only have been in in the job about a year at the next election, the idea that he's just biding his time until he wins in his own right, so he can then leave his mark on the country - deregulate everything that's not nailed down, sell everything that is, show Howard up as the wimpy reformer he is, and with a government controlled Senate!  - might be a potent one.

A scare campaign that he would stuff the economy up obviously would have no hope, but a Return of the Feral Abacus? That might have legs. There must be some great quotes from over the years.

May 25 Malcolm, Bennelong and the Boy from Oz To my knowledge, two Australians called Jackman currently live in the USA. One is a board-treader and movie-star, pictured at left. The other (no relation as far as I know) is Simon Jackman at Stanford University in California.

The future of the PM's seat of Bennelong is commented on from time to time: it's rather marginal and upcoming NSW redistribution may either make it moreso or chop it altogether. 

Simon comments on Malcolm Mackerras's crikey contribution the other day. 

Here on Malcolm's earlier ruminations.

Here Antony Green on same.

Personally, I see a prime ministerial scampering from the leadership before the election, and a retirement from Bennelong at it, making redistribution outcome moot.

May 23 'It needs a 4 in front of it': a load of preference cobblers

Peter Hartcher repeated a fashionable mantra in SMH yesterday: 

"[T]he important number for Labor is its share of the primary vote. A reading below 40 per cent means that it is in an unwinnable position, like the 37.6 per cent that Mark Latham delivered at the last election."

Dead wrong. The important number is the two party preferred vote - it absolutely must begin with a '5' - and that depends, in the first instance, not just on Labor's primary, but the difference between it and the Coalition's. The problem with the last election, and why the ALP went backwards, was that Latham's was low, and Howard's was nine points higher.

In the second instance it depends on preferences, and as long as the Green vote is healthy, Labor will get lots of those.

And if you think a party can influence its own primary vote, but not the other side's, you're wrong. That, again, was Boofhead's problem; as I anticipated (with some emotion and metaphor-mixing) way back when he won the leadership: 

"several percent of voters will probably run a mile into the safe arms of John Howard. Labor's primary vote remains constant while its two party preferred one goes down."

Labor may well win with thirty-something in 2007 if the Coalition gets in the low 40s. But if the government gets the same primary vote as it did in 2004 - about 47 - then the ALP almost certainly can't prevail, even with a '4' in front of them.

May 22 Another poll goes the wrong way

After Newspoll last week moved towards Labor, and Morgan had Labor slightly ahead, the weekend's Nielsen (published on a Monday for the second month in a row) says 54 to 46.

We'll have to wait for a 'delayed budget bounce'.

May 19 2006 Leadership transition all in the timing

The evidence now strongly points to the existence of an agreement between Peter and John, that Rupert's aware of and couldn't help bragging about. Other recent developments, like Peter's improved mood this year, add weight to this hypothesis.

Timing consideration 1: a fair go for Brendan The rolling Private Kovco affair means my bet on Dr Nelson looks dreadful at this moment in time, so the longer between now and Howard's resignation the better.

Timing consideration 2: put Kim out of his misery Beazley has just about reached the point of no return, too insecure in his job to do it effectively, and is increasingly unlikely to be around this time next year. Under normal circumstances there would be no hurry in putting him out of his misery, but ....

It would do our country the world of good for Howard to be still there at the next election. While Beazley is still leading the ALP, a Prime Ministerial retirement can look dignified, 'in the interests of his party' etc because of the (incorrect) popular consensus that he would easily beat Bomber. But a change in Labor leadership before then, followed by the inevitable honeymoon, would make a PM resignation look like 'cutting and running'. 

So if, say, Rudd got the job, Howard might feel obliged to stay on, and would probably lose the election. A good result for the country. (And Peter Costello, because he would probably lose too.)

May 16 Newspoll doesn't follow script: 50 50

A rise is Labor support since the last survey. Here. 

May 15 2006 Costello or Howard? Who stands a better chance of winning the next election?

The odds are about 50-50 of Costello being better - or worse - than Howard. Sure, the Treasurer can be a goose, pulls funny faces and laughs at his own jokes, but more is forgiven of PMs than ministers. We just don't know because we can't anticipate how he'll look and behave in the PM's shoes and because those shoes aren't particularly big.

Forget the culture and history wars, Howard's battlers, conviction politicians and all the other commentators' fables; this government, and its leader, have survived ten years, despite little electoral connection, because of the economy.

The flipside, of course, is community misgivings about Labor's management capabilities. Costello has actually been more forceful and effective than the contained and droning Howard in thumping home - day in, day out - the message that Labor can't be trusted with the economy. In the government's early years, many Australians knew about the $10 billion 'Beazley black hole' because of Costello, and he still bangs away with Labor's $90 billion debt.

[See the arguments against Costello here.]. 

But surely it's time for another contender to remind us of his existence.

May 14 The ever-ending story, pt XLLXXX(iv)

From Insiders today, this column by Piers Ackerman, who often dines with the PM, on a possible retirement this year. Yes, all the second-guessing is soooo boring, but ...

It relates to thoughts below on Howard avoiding date with destiny.

May 12 My bets

You may recall I have a coupla hundred bucks says the PM leaves this term, which means (to give his successor time to settle in) this year. 

Mr Howard is about to depart on an overseas trip, leaving Costello to flog the budget, but what for? A last hurrah?

Malcolm Mackerras has called him our most psephologically literate PM ever. If he is, he'll know winning next year won't be as easy as everyone seems to think. A PM who loses an election receives an entirely different entry in the history books to one who bows and and lets his deputy carry the can. (If Keating had handed over to Beazley in, say, 1995, he'd be seen differently today. As would Bomber, having presided over a 1996 flogging.) 

That's why Howard would go.

May 9 Uni of WA elections database

Has been revamped. It is a wonderful, wonderful resource with a quite serious flaw: no two party preferred numbers. Academic Campbell Sharman, whose baby it is, once explained that he doesn't really believe in two party preferred. 

Compiling Australian electoral data without two party preferred is like making wine without grapes. Perhaps not that bad.

UWA elections here.

Good on you Robert/don't do it Jeff! Someone once said: that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but surely one diabolical electoral flogging per lifetime is enough for any human. Well done for stepping down, Robert Doyle, who after the November election will be springing out of bed in the mornings, counting his blessings, getting on with his new life.

Not so whichever poor fool who takes over the Liberal leadership next week and leads them to the second largest Victorian conservative loss ever. The self-actualising Jeff Kennett, we know, sees life as a never-ending adventure, so if this is something he'd like to experience he should go right ahead.

Update: Jeff deprives us of some entertainment.

May 3 My other hat

Things are hotting up over at Enrolling the People. See for example state payment for elections.

May 2 2006 Newspoll: 51 to 49

Plus lots of column-inch filling Labor leadership stuff.

Surveys no longer in sync

With the monthly Nielsen running last week, but fortnightly Newspoll postponing 'til this one, we've likely seen the end of once a month Super Tuesday poll days.

Paul, sole operators and 1993

Further to Paul Keating's advocacy of big tax cuts, here's a passage from George Megalogenis yesterday

"What's happened to the Labor Party since 1996?" Keating asks. "It has gone back to the old anvil. It's walked away from financial innovation, from the opening up of the economy and the whole meritocracy model of widening its own appeal to single traders, to sole operators of business, small business."

The former prime minister believes that deregulation created a new type of voter, the former blue-collar worker turned small businessman. But Labor vacated the field of economic reform and allowed this voter to move into the Liberal camp.

Let's apply a little logic, the most obvious point being that it must have been Paul himself who did the vacating - see the 1996 result.

As well, blue collar workers have been turning small businessman for decades, this is nothing new, and their becoming Liberal voters isn't new either. 

When did those spawned by Labor's 1980s and '90s deregulation appear? Reforms take several years to kick in, so this new constituency might have arrived in the early '90s, after the recession. Just in time for Keating's last hurrah, the anti-GST 1993 win. But if Keating thinks they provided the backbone of his 'sweetest victory' he is kidding himself. The 1993 Labor vote was significant for being 'battler'-heavy, it saw the return of Labor's 'base' which had eroded since 1984, but desertion from the 'middle'.

The 1993 election saw a 1.5 percent swing to Labor nationally, with 3 states going one way and 3 the other. NSW, helped by a less than popular state Liberal government, was in the pro-Labor camp, to the tune of 2.3 percent to register the ALP's highest two party preferred vote in the state since 1974. The biggest swings were in the low socio-economic western Sydney Labor heartland - eg Prospect and Watson registering 5.6 apiece. 

But the seats with large numbers of the type of voter Keating is talking about (others call them 'aspirational'), the outer south-west and western Hughes, Lindsay and Macarthur - upwardly mobile, high income, lots of tradesmen etc, but still Labor-held back then - were much more reticent. The first two went by only 0.5 and 0.4 percent respectively, while Macarthur swung by 1.3 percent to the Liberals. This, it transpired, was writing on the wall for 1996, when the trio went to the Libs by double digits.

Keating's only election win as PM was of course a blow against the economically liberal stuff he's advocating today. If Labor did create a new constituency, much of it went straight onto the Liberal side of the ledger and voted for John Hewson. The rest followed suit three years later.

But the most obvious point was that Labor did all that deregulatory stuff once in office. It had to get there first - a different task. I'm quite sure the 1983 Labor platform didn't include floating the dollar and abolishing exchange controls.

May 1  Mr Keating's memory

Former PM Paul Keating has, through the Oz's George Megalogenis (Saturday and today) urged the ALP to take massive tax-cuts to the next election. He had suggested the same to Latham & co in 2004 but the dills hadn't listened.

Promising big-ticket tax cuts from opposition has been tried before - remember John Howard in 1987 and John Hewson in 1993 - but the trouble is people ask where's the money gonna come from? It makes the opposition the issue and generates bountiful scare fodder (a) among those nominated for even modest spending cuts, and (b) in general attitudes to the opposition's fiscal abilities because of the inevitable umming and aahing. Howard (1987) and Hewson were skewered by Keating himself and the media in general, and both took the Coalition backwards seat-wise. Imagine the fun Peter Costello would have with such a policy.

Meanwhile, neither Bob Hawke nor Howard took massive tax cuts to the 1983 and 1996 elections. The past can be instructive. And the last time Keating had his way with the post-Keating party we got the Boofhead experiment.

Newspoll preferences

It seems Newspoll is sticking, state-wise, to the strategy of asking for second preferences and extrapolating from there, rather than calculating a notional two party preferred based on flows at last election, which it now does federally. It's possible that optional preferential voting, employed in NSW and Queensland, at which perhaps a half(?) of non-major party votes 'exhaust' (so not ending up with either side) makes the notional calculation even more desirable. But 52 to 48 looks reasonable from those primary numbers.

Malcolm's assessment Imre Salusinszky in Oz quotes Malcolm Mackerras on general electoral prospects: "I think there is one chance in three that Iemma will go, one chance in four that (John) Howard will go, one chance in five that (Queensland Premier Peter) Beattie will go and one chance in 50 that (Victorian Premier Steve) Bracks will go."

I reckon Mackerras favours the incumbents too much in all cases except Bracks. One in five for Beattie going down is especially long, as Queenslanders can swing savagely and unexpectedly - recall Wayne Goss's 1995 experience. OPV makes it all even less predictable.

Using Malcolm's terminology, my assessment of those respective odds are lower than his in all but the last. They are: two chances in five; two chances in three; two chances in five and one chance in 50.