From Crikey
3 August 2007
Peter
Brent of Mumble
Elections writes:
House of
Representatives MPs are placing bets on the election with Sportingbet, or so we
are told in recent reporting. Specifically, they're backing themselves to win
their own seats.
Sportingbet doesn't offer odds in all the seats, just 25 marginal ones, and
according to a spokesman, a couple of members sitting in these are betting on
themselves -- to win.
Ok, it's an almost non-story. But it leads us to an interesting point: the value
local members put on themselves. They like to think they make a large difference
to the vote in their seats, but in the grand scheme, they don't matter much.
National and state-wide swings are much more important.
Richard Farmer noted in Crikey recently that Portlandbet, the only betting
outfit which offers odds on all seats, has the Coalition favoured in slightly
over half of them, while the overall outcome price favours Labor. This implies
either that Labor should not be the overall favourite, or the seats are on
average overstating the Coalition's chances.
Blind
Freddy aside, no-one could believe the first proposition, so the second one is
true: Coalition MPs are overvalued at the moment. Especially by themselves.
The thing about sitting members as a species is this: they overstate their own
electoral worth. If they get, at an election, a swing towards them, they believe
it was due to their own popularity, hard work and no-nonsense approach to
serving their electorate. A swing against is always the fault of the party and
leader.
In reality the effect of individual Members is puny compared with the overall
electoral tide.
Some MPs
like to boast they've consistently increased their margin while those around
them are shrinking theirs. They probably believe it too, but examination
generally doesn't bear this out.
Local MPs are never as hot as they think they are. They have only marginal
effect on their own seat outcomes. See, for example, the possible fates of John
Howard in Bennelong and Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth.
The way things look, those two MPs will lose their dough along with their seats
come the next election. And who do you think they'll be blaming - themselves or
the Prime Minister?
[Note:
the last par was ambiguously written. I was referring to the two betting MPs,
not Howard and Turnbull.] |