Questions for the Greens

3. Where have all the Green voters gone?

All the false triumphalism of the Greens ignores several key facts. In the 2002 Victorian State election the Greens polled 10.37% of the vote in the Upper House as you can see here.
http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Elections/WP_ResultsByParty_P_{9E13A4C7-C984-42CF-9B29-92F8B0831028}.htm

On Saturday they polled 8.65% in the Victorian Senate contest as you can see here.
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPreferencesByCandidate-12246-VIC.htm

Whilst postals and pre-poll are still to be counted, the Green vote in Victoria plunged from 314,697 in the 2002 Victorian state election to just 206,730.

However, if you assumed both polls had the same 3.034 million voters, the Green figure on Saturday in the Senate would have been 262,441, so they've actually lost 52,256 voters in two years which is a full house at Telstra Stadium in Melbourne's Docklands precinct.

When you look around the country there are similar stories to tell.

In the 2003 NSW state election the Greens received a very healthy 320,010 votes or 8.6 per cent of the total in the Legislative Council as you can see here.
http://www.seo.nsw.gov.au/files/2003%20LC%20Results%20pdf/SummaryFirstPrefs.pdf

This was well up on the 103,463 votes or 3 per cent in 1999 as you can see here.
http://www.seo.nsw.gov.au/past_results/state_gov_results/lc_results/lc_1999_group_totals.html

Whilst postals and pre-poll are still be counted, the Greens have so far scored 226,059 votes in the NSW Senate contest but that is only 7.12 per cent so if you had the same numbers voting as the NSW state election, Saturday's vote would have been 264,938 figures and the Greens have lost 55,070 voters in NSW, which would more than fill Sydney's second stadium, the SCG.

Then you have the remarkable plunge in the Tasmanian Green vote when you compare the state election in 2002 with what happened on Saturday.

Bass free-fell from 16.55% to 7.68%
Braddon more than halved from 11.98% to 5.29%
Dennison (the Greenest seat in the country) plunged from 24.5% to 13.96%
Franklin almost halved from 20.39% to 10.56%
Lyons slumped from 17.16% to 9.46%

It's time the watermelons shifted from the hard left, it seems.

Meanwhile, we missed a few House of Reps seats in which the Greens scored more than 10 per cent of the vote on Saturday so the full list is on the site here:
http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2004/10/11-0004.html

Crikey!

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If you bounce, tuffinlindsay@hotmail.com

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

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