Little change in post-budget Newspoll; Liberals win Tasmanian majority

AAP/Mick Tsikas

Adrian Beaumont, The University of MelbourneThis week’s Newspoll, conducted May 13-16 from a sample of 1,506, gave Labor a 51-49 lead, unchanged from the last Newspoll published three weeks ago. Primary votes were 41% Coalition (steady), 36% Labor (down two), 12% Greens (up two) and 2% One Nation (down one). Figures are from The Poll Bludger.

58% were satisfied with Scott Morrison’s performance (down one), and 38% were dissatisfied (up one), for a net approval of +20. Anthony Albanese’s net approval was down four points to -7, his worst ever net approval. Morrison led Albanese as better PM by 55-30 (56-30 three weeks ago).

Newspoll has asked three questions after every budget: whether the budget was good for the economy, good for you personally, and whether the opposition would have delivered a better budget. Results for this last question are yet to appear, and it would be disappointing if that question has been cancelled.

44% thought last Tuesday’s budget was good for the economy and 15% bad, for a net rating of +29. On personal finances, 19% thought it would be good and 19% bad, for a net zero rating. Voters have consistently been better disposed to budgets on the economy than the personal.

The Poll Bludger says this budget is the eighth best on personal finance and the sixth best on the economy since Newspoll started asking these questions, which I believe was in 1988. Analyst Kevin Bonham says this budget has the best net score on the economy since 2007’s +48. However, the Coalition under John Howard lost the 2007 election after that budget.

Most budgets have little impact on voting intentions, and this is confirmed by voting intentions remaining unchanged on two party preferred in this Newspoll. Exceptions were the very unpopular 1993 and 2014 budgets. After both those budgets, the government lost much support.

The drop in Labor’s support, and the rise for the Greens, is probably due to left-wing voters who are unhappy with Albanese. Morrison’s consistently big lead over Albanese as better PM likely encourages some voters to perceive Labor would do better if led by someone more left-wing than Albanese. I posted about the flaws in this logic in my last Newspoll report.

In an additional Newspoll question, 73% thought Australia’s borders should remain closed until at least mid-2022, or the pandemic is under control globally. Just 21% thought borders should open as soon as all Australians who want to be are vaccinated.

In last week’s Essential poll, taken before the budget, Morrison’s net approval surged to +26 from +17 in mid-April. With women, his net approval rose 17 points to +21; with men, it was up two points to +31. While there is still a gender gap, many women appear to have forgotten or forgiven the sexual misbehaviour in March.

Liberals win Tasmanian majority as sex-compromised Liberal wins, then resigns

At the May 1 Tasmanian election, the Liberals won 13 of the 25 lower house seats (steady since the 2018 election), Labor nine (down one), the Greens two (steady) and Independent Kristie Johnston won the last seat. Vote shares were 48.7% Liberal (down 1.5%), 28.2% Labor (down 4.5%), 12.4% Greens (up 2.1%) and 6.2% for independents.

In party terms, there were two electorates where the result appeared uncertain in my post-election article: Clark and Bass. With five seats per electorate, a quota is one-sixth of the vote, or 16.7%. In the Hare-Clark system, candidates compete against other candidates in the same party, as well as other parties’ candidates.

In Clark, there was some doubt on election night as to whether the Liberals would win a second seat. But former Labor MP Madeleine Ogilvie, who had sat as an independent in the last parliament, and joined the Liberals at this election, won the second Liberal seat in Clark.

Ogilvie was 342 votes or 0.03 quotas ahead of fellow Liberal Simon Behrakis at the second last count. At Behrakis’ exclusion, final standings were Ogilvie 0.95 quotas, Johnston 0.93 and Independent Sue Hickey 0.82. Ogilvie and Johnston were elected to the final two seats.

In Bass, Labor benefited from leakage of Premier Peter Gutwein’s surplus and preferences from other sources. Labor easily defeated the Greens and Liberals for the final seat for a three Liberal, two Labor result.

The day before the election, Liberal Braddon candidate Adam Brooks was accused of impersonating to enter a sexual relationship using a fake driver’s license. Tasmania still requires early voters to complete a declaration that they cannot vote on election day, so most votes were cast on election day.

Brooks was still elected after a close race with two other Liberals in Braddon. With the final two seats to be filled, Jaensch finished on 0.934 quotas, Brooks 0.931 and Ellis 0.904, with Ellis missing out. Brooks had been 0.046 quotas ahead of Ellis after Liberal exclusions and surpluses, with his lead reduced by sources outside the Liberals.

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The Braddon result was finalised Thursday. On Friday, Brooks resigned his seat after Queensland police charged him with firearms offences. Brooks’ seat will definitely go to a Liberal on a countback (not a byelection), likely Ellis. The Liberals will be relieved at not requiring Brooks’ vote to maintain a majority.

In the upper house, the Liberals gained Windermere from a retiring conservative independent, while Labor held Derwent. In Windermere, the Liberals defeated Labor by 54.1-45.9, from primary votes of 37.8% Liberal, 27.0% Labor and 21.3% for an independent. In Derwent, Labor defeated the Liberals by 55.7-44.3, from primary votes of 49.1% Labor, 40.9% Liberal and 10.0% Animal Justice.

The Tasmanian upper house has 15 single-member electorates with two or three up for election every May for six-year terms. Current standings are five Labor, four Liberals, four left independents and two centre-right independents.

Poll gives Nationals 51-49 lead for Saturday’s Upper Hunter (NSW) byelection

A byelection will occur in the NSW Nationals-held state seat of Upper Hunter this Saturday. This seat has been Nationals-held since 1932, but at the 2019 NSW election, the Nationals had their lowest primary vote of 34.0%. Labor had 28.7%, the Shooters 22.0% and the Greens 4.8%.

Excluding exhausting preferences, the Nationals defeated Labor by 52.6-47.4, with 24.2% of total votes exhausting under NSW’s optional preferential system.

A YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph gave the Nationals a 51-49 lead over Labor in Upper Hunter based on respondent preferences. Primary votes were 25% Nationals, 23% Labor, 16% Shooters, 11% One Nation, 6% Greens and 10% combined for two independents. The poll was conducted May 11-13 from a sample of just 400.

Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Liberals’ victory in Tasmanian election is more status quo than ringing endorsement

AAP/Sarah Rhodes

Michael Lester, University of TasmaniaThe Tasmanian Liberal government has been returned for a record third term, vindicating premier Peter Gutwein’s decision to go to an election a year early.

However, rather than the big swings to the incumbent governments seen in recent elections in Queensland and Western Australia due to their management of the pandemic, the result in Tasmania maintained the status quo.

While benefiting from Gutwein’s high personal popularity due to his management of the pandemic, the Liberal vote fell slightly from 50.3% at the 2018 election to 48.8% at the close of counting late on Saturday night. However, Labor’s vote fell 4.5% to just 28%.

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The Liberals are poised to win 13 seats in the 25-seat House of Assembly, Labor nine, the Greens two and one independent.

Under Tasmania’s Hare Clark proportional electoral system, five members are returned from five seats. These are Bass in the state’s north, Braddon in the north-west, Clark and Franklin in the greater Hobart area and southern region, and Lyons, which sprawls across the state’s centre and east coast.

To win a seat, each candidate needs to win 16.6% of the formal vote but, based on the percentage of vote for each party group, it is clear the Liberals will win three seats in each of Bass, Braddon and Lyons, two seats in Franklin and most likely two seats in Clark.

Labor’s nine seats include two in Bass, Braddon, Franklin and Lyons but only one in the party’s former stronghold of Clark. The main reason for this is the loss of votes to two high-profile independents – Glenorchy City Council mayor Kristie Johnston and the former Liberal speaker Sue Hickey – one of whom is predicted to win a seat on preferences.

The Greens vote is up 2% to 12.3% statewide, securing the two seats they held in the previous parliament in Clark and Franklin, but not enough to win further seats.

Labor leader Rebecca White conceded defeat on Saturday night, congratulating Gutwein on winning the election and for his high personal vote after securing almost half the available votes in his electorate of Bass. This is among the highest individual votes in the modern era.

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As Tasmanians head to the polls, Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein hopes to cash in on COVID management

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Gutwein claimed victory but stopped short of declaring he had secured a majority, saying only it appeared “increasingly likely”.

The election outcome means a return to the one-seat majority his government held just prior to the election. He also made history by securing the Liberals a record third term in office in Tasmania.

While the balance of seats remains much the same, there will be a turnover of members with some new faces replacing former MPs.

In the government line-up, Hickey, who was ousted from the Liberal Party a few days before the election was called, looks likely to be replaced by former Labor MP turned independent Madeleine Ogilvie, who switched to the Liberals just days after Gutwein announced the election.

In Braddon, first-term MP Felix Ellis lifted his vote by 6.1% while scandal-prone former MP Adam Brooks has edged ahead of housing minister Roger Jaensch and may replace him in the Liberal team.

On the opposition benches, Kingborough Council mayor Dean Winter, who was the subject of a fierce factional battle to prevent him standing for Labor, will replace Labor frontbencher Alison Standen in Franklin.

In Bass, former Launceston mayor Janie Finlay is poised to replace Jennifer Houston in Labor’s line-up.

Tasmania also saw elections in two of the Legislative Council seats of Derwent in the state’s south and Windemere in the north. Labor MLC Craig Farrell defeated his Liberal rival, Derwent Valley mayor Ben Shaw. In Windemere, where the sitting independent retired, Liberal candidate and television presenter Nick Duigan is leading Labor’s Geoff Lyons and independent Will Smith. That seat will be decided by preferences.

It will be 10 days before the final distribution of preferences can commence in the House of Assembly election due to the need to wait until all postal votes are counted. But only in Clark is there potential for this process to affect the election result.

Either way, it is either a Liberal majority or a Liberal minority government.

Michael Lester, PhD candidate, University of Tasmania

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hodgman rides Tasmanians’ disdain for minority government to a second term in office

The Tasmanian election result was an emphatic win for Will Hodgman, but he lost a fair bit of skin along the way.
AAP/Julian Smith

Richard Eccleston, University of Tasmania

In an era of single-term governments and growing electoral volatility in Australia, the return of Will Hodgman’s Liberal government at Saturday’s Tasmanian election with more than 50% of the primary vote is significant – and will have national implications.

The Turnbull government will take comfort from a result that demonstrates voters – even in left-leaning Tasmania – are prepared to re-elect a competent Liberal government that has delivered strong economic and employment growth.

It was a strong result for the Liberals. However, the outcome was shaped as much by Tasmania’s distinctive political practices and local issues as it was by national trends.

Pokies, housing, hospitals, and – at the 11th hour – watering down gun laws might have been the specific issues that dominated the campaign, but the decisive factor was Tasmanians’ enduring apprehension about minority government.

The legacies of Labor-Green minority government of the early 1990s and between 2010 and 2014 cast a long shadow during the 2018 campaign. Both periods are associated with economic decline, rising unemployment, and budget cuts.

While there is little evidence to suggest minority government has been a cause of poor economic outcomes in Tasmania – it is more that these governments were unlucky and found themselves in charge after national downturns – the fact remains that Tasmanians have a strong preference for majority government.

Given this history, undecided Tasmanian voters tend to back the major party that’s most likely to form majority government. This was evident in both 2006 and 2014, and was always going to be a feature of the 2018 campaign given memories of the 2012-13 recession in Tasmania are still fresh in voters’ minds. And the Liberal government, which was elected in 2014, has delivered strong economic growth.

It is this bandwagon effect that helps explain why support for the government increased by ten points over the course of the campaign, rather than going to minor parties – as has been the case elsewhere.

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Liberals romp to emphatic victory in Tasmanian election

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What now for the Liberals?

The final result was an emphatic win for Hodgman. But it is also fair to say he lost a bit of skin along the way, due to the Liberals’ big-budget, brutally effective advertising campaign seeming to have been funded by gaming interests.

The reality is that Tasmania remains deeply divided on pokies and the means the gaming industry uses to protect its interests.

Tasmanians voted for political and economic stability on Saturday, but an overwhelming majority support Labor’s policy of phasing pokies out of pubs and clubs over a five-year period.

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Removing pokies from Tasmania’s clubs and pubs would help gamblers without hurting the economy

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The pokies debate is far from over. Hodgman must commit to open and transparent government, and subject his gaming policies to full parliamentary scrutiny in an attempt to regain the electorate’s trust. Opposition parties also have a role to play, and must be willing to compromise to find some middle ground.

The election’s losers

The result wasn’t a disaster for Labor.

Rebecca White, after securing the Labor leadership only a year ago, performed strongly during the campaign and has consolidated her credentials as a future premier. That she will be leading a stronger opposition bolstered by handful of up-and-coming new MPs also bodes well for Labor’s future.

The real losers in the election were the Greens and Jacqui Lambie.

In contrast to their success in inner-Melbourne and Sydney, the Greens have been struggling in Tasmania in recent years. The explanation for their decline in their former heartland can be attributed to the legacies of the last government, the absence of a high-profile local environmental issue, and that Labor, under White, has championed many of their core progressive causes.

Lambie and her party could have been the wildcard of this election, but she has had a tough summer and will have to fight hard to salvage her political career. Had Lambie herself run as a candidate on Saturday, it’s likely she would have been elected – and could have held the balance of power in the lower house.

Strangely, given that personalities and name recognition are so important in Tasmanian elections, she ran a ticket of grassroots candidates under her Jacqui Lambie Network banner that, as expected, failed to secure any serious support.

Lessons for the future

As the dust settles, we can draw a few conclusions from the Tasmanian election result.

Above all else, Tasmanians are a pragmatic bunch and are prepared to reward a government that delivers political stability and good economic outcomes.

The campaign also highlighted the power of sectional interests – be they mining, gaming or other actors – in Australian politics. The collective health of our democracy depends on curbing the influence of these groups at both the state and federal level.

Given the distinctive dynamics of Tasmanian politics, not too much can be read into the swing away from minor and protest parties and back to the majors. Perhaps the real test of the national political mood will come in South Australia on Saturday week.

Richard Eccleston, Professor of Political Science; Director, Institute for the Study of Social Change, University of Tasmania

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Liberals romp to emphatic victory in Tasmanian election

The Hodgman government has been returned for a second term.
AAP/Julian Smith

Adrian Beaumont, University of Melbourne

With 84% of votes counted at Saturday’s Tasmanian election, the ABC is calling 13 of the 25 seats (a majority) for the Liberals, eight for Labor, and one Green, with three in doubt.

Labor is very likely to win the final seat in Braddon, while the final seat in Bass is a Labor/Greens contest, and the final seat in Franklin is a Liberal/Greens contest.

Vote shares were 50.5% Liberals (down just 0.8% since the 2014 landslide), 32.8% Labor (up 5.4%), 10.0% Greens (down 3.8%), and 3.2% Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) – which only contested three of the five electorates.

Tasmania uses the Hare Clark system for its lower house elections, with five five-member electorates. A quota is one-sixth of the vote, or 16.7%. For a vote to be formal, at least five candidates must be numbered. Unlike the federal Senate, there is no above-the-line party ticket box.

I will run through each electorate’s results from easiest to most complicated.

In Denison, Labor won 2.55 quotas, the Liberals 2.26, and the Greens 1.03. This is a clear two Labor, two Liberals, one Green result, unchanged from 2014.

In Lyons, the Liberals won 3.05 quotas, Labor 1.99, the Greens 0.38, and the JLN 0.32. This is a clear three Liberals, two Labor result, unchanged from 2014.

In Braddon, the Liberals won 3.38 quotas, Labor 1.64, the JLN 0.36, ungrouped candidates 0.26, and the Greens 0.20. Labor is well ahead of everyone else in the race for the last seat, and will benefit from Greens preferences. This will be a Labor gain from the Liberals.

In Bass, the Liberals won 3.53 quotas, Labor 1.59, the Greens 0.54, and the JLN 0.28. Labor is more exposed to within-ticket leakage than the Greens, but is likely to be helped by JLN preferences that do not exhaust.

There will be a crunch point where one candidate from the Liberals, Greens and Labor is left. If the Liberals are third at that point, their preferences probably exhaust. If either Labor or the Greens are third, their preferences should benefit the other left-wing candidate.

In Franklin, the Liberals won 2.91 quotas, Labor 2.07, the Greens 0.86, and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers 0.16. Premier Will Hodgman won 2.30 quotas, and some of his surplus will leak out of the Liberal ticket. However, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers ran just one candidate, so four further preferences were required for formal votes. These preferences are likely to assist the Liberals against the Greens.

Labor has gained a seat in Franklin at the expense of the loser of the Liberals/Greens contest.

I believe preferences will start to be distributed following the last day for receipt of postal votes, on March 13.

Why this result occurred

In December, an EMRS poll had the Liberals and Labor tied at 34%, the Greens on 17%, and the JLN on 8%. In the three months since that poll was taken, the Liberals went from a losing position to an emphatic victory – a bitterly disappointing outcome for Labor and the Greens.

EMRS does not usually provide favourable ratings for the leaders, but it did in its December poll. It found Labor leader Rebecca White at a net +40, and Hodgman at a net +13 rating.

There have been two recent state elections with first-term Coalition governments that won landslides at the preceding election, ending at least 14 years of continuous Labor government.

• At the Queensland 2015 election, the Liberal National Party under Campbell Newman was defeated; Newman was very unpopular.

• At the New South Wales 2015 election, the Coalition was comfortably re-elected; Premier Mike Baird was popular at the time.

Tasmania has now followed the NSW example. Labor was crushed in 2014 after 16 consecutive years in power, and the Liberals easily won Saturday’s election.

In Tasmania, White’s initial popularity may have inflated Labor’s position in the polls. However, people generally do not vote a certain way because they like the opposition leader; the premier’s performance is far more important. But popular opposition leaders can inflate their party’s vote until close to an election.

At the 2017 Western Australian election, which Labor won in a landslide, Opposition Leader Mark McGowan was popular, but Premier Colin Barnett was very unpopular. The perception of Barnett was probably far more important than that of McGowan.

The Tasmanian Liberals also benefited from anti-Greens sentiment. In the final week, ReachTEL gave the Liberals a 46-31 lead over Labor, and EMRS gave them a 46-34 lead. These polls may have pushed undecided voters into voting Liberal to ensure a majority government, and so they understated the Liberal vote.

It appears that, four years after one term of Labor/Greens minority government, Tasmanians do not want to return to the Greens holding the balance of power. In 2006, Labor easily won an election that was expected to be close because of the Greens factor.

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Tasmanian analyst Kevin Bonham has written about why Labor’s anti-pokies policy was not a major vote winner.

On Friday, the last day of campaigning, the Liberals were embarrassed when it was revealed they had a policy to relax gun laws that had been hidden from the public. There have been other recent cases where issues that would be expected to have a last-minute impact on an election have fizzled. If the Liberals defeat the Greens on Shooters, Fishers and Farmers preferences in Franklin, the net impact will be positive for the Liberals.

At the 2016 federal election, Tasmania was easily Labor’s best state. On Saturday, Labor had its worst result in a state election since the 2014 Tasmanian election – federal and state results do not necessarily agree. A Liberal state government will probably help federal Labor retain its four Tasmanian federal seats.

Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

As Tasmania looks likely to have minority government, the Greens must decide how to play their hand

Tasmanians Greens leader Cassy O’Connor (centre) on the hustings.
AAP/Rob Blakers

Narelle Miragliotta, Monash University

According to Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O’Connor, “minority government is government for grown-ups”, whereas “majority government is government for vested interests, corruption and corporate deals”.

The Greens’ pitch to voters at Saturday’s Tasmanian state election is not being couched in policy terms alone. It is also based on a vision of a more desirable governing context for Tasmania. But is minority government good for the Greens?

The likelihood of minority government

There is a high probability that the Greens will get their wish and a minority government will be returned at this election.

Tasmania elects its lower house using a form of proportional representation known as the Hare-Clark system, where parties are awarded seats roughly in accordance with their levels of support within the electorate. Unless a party can win an overall majority of votes, it will not attain the necessary majority of seats to form a government in its own right.

In recent decades, the two major parties have struggled to secure governing majorities. In the eight Tasmanian elections since 1989, majority governments have been elected on only five occasions.

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Tasmanian election likely to be close, while Labor continues to lead federally

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There is general agreement among commentators that a majority government at this election is far from certain. The Liberal Party attained 51.22% of the vote in 2014, and lead Labor in most polls. However, according to analysis by Ben Raue, the Liberals polled above 40% in just one of five polls held in the last year. If these figures are translated into actual votes, minority government is inevitable.

One might think that the possibility of minority government would render the major parties open to working with the Greens to form government. Yet the incumbent premier, Will Hodgman, has already declared that the Liberals “will govern alone or not at all”.

Likewise, Labor leader Rebecca White has also confirmed that her party “will not govern in minority”.

Much of this talk should be taken seriously but not literally. The major parties will be under pressure to negotiate an agreement of some description in the likely event of a hung parliament.

Any party that seeks to govern without the support of opposition forces will be perpetually at risk of defeat on the floor of the lower house. This reality is likely to weaken the resolve of even the most stubborn party leader – even more so once Governor Kate Warner makes the necessary entreaties.

However, it is not certain that the Greens will be the only parliamentary grouping in the mix to form a minority government. The most recent polling data (based on a MediaReach internal poll commissioned by the Liberal Party) has the Greens’ statewide primary vote at under 13%, which may not prove sufficient to secure the all-important “hinge seat” in each of the five multi-member electorates.

One of the particular challenges the Greens are confronting in 2018 is Labor’s capacity to outmanoeuvre them. As psephologist Kevin Bonham has observed, the Greens are being squeezed by the appeal of Labor’s “left-wing leader”.

Labor has also stolen the Greens’ thunder on the pokies issue, and its energy policy – complete with 120% renewable energy target – is likely to find favour with environmentally concerned voters.

Adding to the uncertainty is the prospect – albeit faint given recent polling – of the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) electing one, possibly two candidates. The JLN might make more attractive legislative partners for the major parties than the Greens.

Is minority government good for the Greens?

There is a deeper question that the Greens must ask: whether it is prudent for them to enter into any kind of formal arrangement with either major party.

There are advantages in the short term, such as policy concessions and even the possibility of executive office. But the longer-term consequences are far less clear.

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Tasmania the first test in an election-laden year

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The Tasmanian Greens suffered swings against them following the three previous occasions that they entered into some form of agreement to support a minority government: -3.9% in 1992, -2.1% in 1996, and -7.8% in 2014.

Though there were unique circumstances surrounding each of these agreements, it is unclear if the benefits outweigh the costs for the Greens. One international study concluded that participation in government “is not necessarily bad for Green parties”, which falls well short of a ringing endorsement.

If, following this election, the Greens are needed to form a stable government, then the party will have to think strategically about the terms on which it does so. Is participation in executive office a higher prize than consistency of electoral performance?

If the Greens value the former, then securing a formal agreement is the best way forward. But if they value the latter, then a “confidence-and-supply agreement” is their best option. This would allow the Greens to demand additional parliamentary resources and to shape the fate of legislation, without having to shoulder responsibility for government failures at a critical time in the party’s development.

Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.