Swinging By

The Heffron by-election came and went yesterday with a predictable Labor win.

I've written about the circumstances that lead up to the by-election here.

Suffice to say that, as expected, I didn't hear anyone complain about Keneally leaving early, which just goes to prove that a promise to stay and serve your local electorate no matter the state-wide result is a promise that no one is ever going to hold you to.

In the end, as discussed the post where I reviewed the candidate list, only 4 candidates nominated: Labor, Christian Democrats, Greens and Australian Democrats. In the 2011 election, there were an additional 2 (insignificant) independants as well as the Liberal candidate. In 2012, we were short those three but added an Australian Democrats candidate.

Given the likelihood of an easy Labor victory, the interesting part was going to be where the Liberal voters allocated their vote. All the state-wide polls since the election are very similar to the election result, so it is fair to assume that those that voted ALP or Green last time would vote the same way.

The only exception would be strictly progressive voters who voted Green or Labor last time and may now find a more comfortable fit with the Democrats.

It's unclear exactly how many voters there are who want to vote progressive but dislike the ALP (perhaps because they are a major party, or because of the union ties) but also don't want to vote Green (perhaps being put off by the focus on environmental issues).

This is the (an am sure growing) group that the Democrats would be perfect for - but whether the Democrats can ever rebuild and capture that group remains to be seen.

In any event, this was the result (not including postals, naturally):

Table from the ABC

38% of the voters would have had to vote differently to how they voted in 2011, and every candidate benefitted.

The first remarkable thing is the size of the vote for the Democrats. If the Democrats website is to be believed, in 2011 they ran in only 1 lower house seat, where they garnered just 1.4% of the primary vote. In the upper house, they didn't even manage 1%, which is less than the No Parking Meters Party.

So, where did that 10% come from? I'd say people like this:

It appears that this guy probably voted Green (however begrudgingly) but I suspect a large portion of that 10% were Liberal voters who could not contenance voting Green or Labor. That doesn't really make sense if you've read the Democrats platform, but there you go.

I also wonder how much of it was what I like to think of as the Liberal Democrats effect.

The Liberal Democrats are a party that drew 1.8% of the Senate vote. This is despite them being a fairly anonymous party with a platform that is libertarian and small-government. What I wonder is how many people, put off by the major, better known parties, liked the sound of a name that really told them nothing about the policies, but sounds like something they might like (progressive voters like the word Democrat, conservative voters are comforted by the word Liberal).

In other words, they may have scooped up voters who didn't like the sound of the other parties by having a name they liked.

That could be completely wrong, and we'll never really know what goes on in the mind of the "makes up his mind in the voting booth" voter. But it bears thought.

Other than the Democrats, the biggest rise was reserved for the Labor party.

Why? This tweet from Green upper house member John Kaye caught my eye last night:

He's right. Except when bickering over a few particularly divisive issues, there is hardly a vast chasm between the Liberals and Labor.

Most Liberal voters, when given the choice between Labor (in theory a centre-left party, although views differ) and the Greens (left - or loony left, if you prefer) will choose Labor.

There's no mystery about that. What remains to be seen is whether the Greens can start to capture a greater portion of the vote.

Many feel that Labor (both Federal and State) have drifted further and further to the right - becoming a centrist party. The Greens are not going to win Labor voters by outflanking them on the right - the only way they can take voters off Labor are going to be by winning the voters who are frustrated by Labor's apparent renunciation of left-values.

There's far more to say about that. Suffice to say, it's a pretty fair explanation of why the Greens didn't benefit more from the Liberals not running.

The next by-election with probably be Sydney if Clover Moore (as expected) is re-elected mayor and is forced to resign her state seat. With a prominent local member stepping aside it will be fascinating to see where her votes flow.

Stay tuned.

By the By

The by-election in Heffron is going to be held on 25 August.

I've already written about why the by-election is happening and what it all means here, so I won't repeat myself.

Suffice to say that, as expected, the Coalition has recognized that running a candidate is a no-win option, and are taking a pass.

Anthony Green has, as usual, put together an outstanding page on the by-election, which is thoroughly worth reading.

I just wanted to add a few thoughts.

First of all, the candidates: (summaries from Anthony Green's page)

First of all, as a Public Defender, Hoenig immediately earns some respect (from me, at least). PD's are barristers who work for Legal Aid full-time (as opposed to most barristers who are briefed by solicitors and may or may not do some legal aid work).

PD's work defending people who are often seen as being the lowest of the low, and their work is usaully pretty thankless. They do that for, in the vast majority of cases, far less money than they could earn in private practice.

It's also worth noting that he has apparently been Mayor of Botany Bay for over 30 years, which must be some kind of record.

A pretty impressive sheet.

A serial candidate - not that that is likely to affect her vote. I suspect that CDP voters are, typically, voting more for the party than the candidate anyway.

Unlike the CDP candidate, Faruqi is not only a local, but ran for the Greens in this seat in 2011. But for the fact that Hoenig has an equally impressive "pedigree", one would expect that to give her a big advantage in a by-election, given the usual collection of opportunists that tend to nominate.

She is apparently well-known locally, and has quite the profile in the party.

I don't really have anything to add, other than that is a heck of a CV he's got there.

According to Anthony Green, the Greens need a swing of 16.2%. It's difficult to see where they could possibly find that, given the local pedigree that Hoenig has.

That's all assuming that Anthony Green's analysis of the preference flow is right. He has (quite reasonably) based it on the preference flow in Marrickville in 2011, which is a seat where the 2PP was LABvGRN. That's sensible, and all he really can do - but it is flawed because the further west you go in Heffron the "Greener" you get. The flow in the Southern and Eastern parts will not flow the same way.

Having said that, the other two candidates will not really figure, except for the Coalition voters who go with the CDP candidate rather than do the unthinkable and given Labor or the Greens a "1".

The fact that Labor have drawn the top spot will only further guarantee what should be an easy victory.

What will be more interesting will be the reaction to Kristina Keneally's husband Ben Keneally succeeding Hoenig as Botany Bay Mayor, and whether he starts positioning himself for a tilt at a seat in 2015.

Fly, Fly Away

Labor have been going on about promises a LOT recently.

 

 

 

And so they should. O'Farrell has done a lot of stuff he didn't say he would, and a lot of things he hinted or outright promised he wouldn't.

Luckily for Labor, it is a little hard to break promises when you're not in government. Most promises made during an election are made on a "When I'm Premier" basis.

The only promise I remember either side making on a "If we lose" basis was in relation to members staying on after the election.

The Coalition hammered Labor over whether Keneally and particularly Eric Roozendaal would stay on after the election. During the debate, Keneally committed that they both would:

Full story from the SMH

Late last night it was revealed that her promise would be broken.

Unfortunately for the Coalition, I don't think there is any hay that they can make out of this. Come next election, almost no one will remember or even care what someone who was premier four years before did.

With the promises and guarantees O'Farrell has broken to date, "broken promises" is probably a discussion he would rather avoid anyway.

What will be worth watching will be what happens in the by-election for the seat. Keneally is leaving the Lower House next week, so things will move swiftly.

After the Clarence by-election last year I took a close look and concluded that it gave every side something they could use, and really didn't prove much at all.

Heffron is in a very different situation.These were the numbers after last year's election:

From this helpful ABC website

The website reporting on the 2007 election still exists - it's not as pretty but the numbers are all there. Bear in mind that in 2007 Keneally hadn't yet become Premier, and had just finished her first term as MLA for Heffron.

There was a big swing against Keneally in 2011 - but the swing was almost identical to the swing for the state as a whole.

Will the Coalition be able to engineer another 7% before the by-election? It is difficult to imagine how.

The polling numbers are still very similar to the election result. True it is that the recognition of a local member who was also the Premier may have artificially inflated Keneally's vote - but that works both ways when you have a massively unpopular government being given the boot.

Given what has happened in the last few months (not least of all the changes to WorkCover), I'm expecting at least a small move back to Labor in the next NewsPoll.

To me, the seat doesn't look winnable for the Coalition. So this comment from the excellent @PrestonTowers seems pretty spot on:

Unlike in Clarence, it is difficult to see the Coalition winning the seat, and short of that it is difficult to imagine how they could spin the result a being a "win". Keneally may have broken her promise to stay, but how much are the Heffron residents going to punish the Labor candidate for that?

Not a lot, I'd suggest.