I wasn’t intending to write another piece before the election but the final two polls, the largest of the campaign (the 1500 voter Newspoll and the 2000 voter Tas Poll) provide plenty of last-minute evidence that is worth discussing. Once again, I don’t think I’m as good a forecaster as I am at working out the final result from the actual primary votes, but hopefully my guess is as good as any out there.
Firstly I believe that Labor will win this election outright, although a hung parliament remains realistically possible. Specifically I think that 13-7-5 is the most likely distribution although it is even possible Labor could do better than that and it may not be any closer than last time. I note that the Centrebet odds continue to crash and are now down to $2.20 for a Labor majority from $2.70 only days ago and a ludicrous $8 at the start of betting. I would not be surprised to see Labor be favourites by the time betting closes.
Both the Newspoll and the Tas Poll show Labor leading the Liberals by more than a quota statewide despite the high Green vote. If this pattern continues all Labor needs to do to win outright is to not be clobbered by an unlucky unevenness in distribution of support.
Seat by seat, let’s start with the most interesting, Franklin. The TasPoll result (41.0-26.8-20.3) translates to 46.5-30.4-23.0 with undecideds and “others” (the figure for which is inflated) removed. The Mercury comments, based on these figures, that “the balance looks certain to change” in this seat and that Labor is struggling.
I’m not quite sure how someone can be certain to lose and struggling to win, but actually Labor is neither based on the TasPoll figures. The Greens will have a large excess in this seat, and when the Greens are all either elected or excluded, past elections show that around one-third of their remaining votes will exhaust while the remainder will split around 60-40 to the ALP.
Swing back to Labor
This would leave Labor with 49.0% to the Liberals’ 32.1 and put Labor ahead by 0.2%. It gets worse for the Liberals because while both sides will suffer some leakage from surpluses (both Paul Lennon and Will Hodgman should have quotas), even if Hodgman’s surplus is much smaller it is likely he will leak a greater proportion of it because the other Liberals lack great name recognition in the electorate.
Furthermore while Giddings and Wriedt will have large votes, the second Liberal (most likely Vanessa Goodwin) will need to build up from a small base on the preferences of other Liberals as they are excluded, and there will be significant leakage back to Labor’s ministers as this occurs, while the Labor candidates aside from Lennon, Giddings and Wriedt will not poll much.
Also if Giddings and Wriedt are very close together they may beat the second Liberal from notionally just behind. Add in the likely swing back to Labor from the “undecided” camp and Labor are favourites to hold Franklin if the TasPoll result is accurate. It is going to be very close and the Liberals could win it (a 400-vote sample is still not all that reliable), but my view now is that Labor are very slight favourites to hold this seat. A note of caution: I have travelled to several parts of Franklin in recent days and am surprised how few Paula Wriedt signs I have seen.
The TasPoll shows the final Braddon seat as a win to the Greens. I agree now that this is quite likely as they have been generally polling 14 and up in this seat and the TasPoll shows Labor well short of three quotas, albeit with a high undecided vote. The latter factor means this is by no means in the bag for the Greens — if Labor’s base support is a few points higher than the TasPoll shows then Labor could still save this seat.
The Labor surge is surprising
The TasPoll, like EMRS before it, shows Denison as an easy 3-1-1. Newspoll is more equivocal and gives no breakdowns but predicts “a tight battle between Labor and the Greens”. As I have outlined before a tight battle between Labor and the Greens on raw party quota figures in Denison will likely translate into a Labor win because of Hare-Clark system quirks, so it is likely Labor will win three in Denison.
The Labor surge in Bass is surprising. TasPoll shows them up by 15.1 points once undecideds and others are removed. Factor in Green preferences and it becomes 15.6, but in all likelihood that’s not enough. Labor beat the Liberals by 17.7 points last time and still didn’t win a third seat and will face exactly the same issue this time: the two Liberals (Napier and Gutwein) will be well up in the count while Labor leaks votes back as its third candidate builds.
Newspoll also comments on Labor being a threat in Bass, which suggests the TasPoll result reflects something real. 3-1-1 in Bass has become a realistic possibility but I still think it is unlikely. That it is even looking possible shows just how little traction the Opposition parties have achieved.
Lyons is a no-brainer
I recall that Peter Tucker flagged the possibility that Bass could get interesting if the six-into-five contest of five sitting members plus Michelle O’Byrne eventuated. That it is vaguely threatening to be interesting anyway, to my great surprise, makes me wonder whether Labor should have relinquished the services of Kathryn Hay so lightly.
Lyons is the new no-brainer, the only interest being whether any sitting member loses within their own party (and I’ve been reminded that Tim Cox also asked whether Rene Hidding might lose 2-3 weeks ago). It is astonishing how badly the Liberals have been polling in this seat, where in the days of Robin Gray they used to push five quotas under the seven-seat system.
Most of the blame for this has to go to their leader and I believe the Liberals have made an error in maintaining an unpopular and uncharismatic caretaker leader into this election, and another error in focussing too much attention on moralistic scare campaigns against the Greens.
I also believe that the Greens have made fairly serious errors in handling the hung parliament issue, and that both opposition parties have spent too much time chasing small-fry probity issues surrounding Paul Lennon when past experience (especially with Gray) shows that Tasmanian voters do not care or even expect their premiers to be a little rough around the edges. The Government’s key success and one reason it has recovered in the polls is that it has managed, with the aid of the old Rundle deal, to obscure the health issue to the point where only those directly affected have a clear view of who to blame. These things aside, it has been an uneventful and solid campaign with no major strokes of brilliance or blunders by anyone.
Kevin Bonham will reluctantly accept any credit for correct predictions in this piece. All incorrect predictions are hallucinations created by the powerful venom of the Myrmecia colonies of Betsey Island.
