Senate Surprise: Abetz Demoted To Third

News has just come through that Tasmanian Liberal preselectors have released a ticket with Senator Jonathon Duniam first, Senator Wendy Askew second and Senator Eric Abetz third.  This comes as a surprise after recent Fontcast gossip that suggested Abetz and Duniam would fight out the top spot on the ballot with Askew to be placed third (gender issues notwithstanding).  Askew has only been a Senator for just over two years since being appointed to a casual vacancy.  

Previously Abetz had been on top of the Senate ballot four times in a row since being first appointed to the Senate on a casual vacancy.  Previous pretenders to the top position Guy Barnett and Richard Colbeck were demoted by preselectors to risky positions where they subsequently lost their seats.  (Barnett went into state politics where he has been successful, while Colbeck returned to the Senate after the disqualification of Stephen Parry and topped the 2019 ticket).  

On the ballot for the number 1 position, it has been reported Abetz polled 29 votes, Duniam 26 and Askew 12 but after preferences Duniam won 36-31 with a 10-2 split off Askew.  On the ballot for the second position Askew then won 35-32.  

This followed a period in which there was an unusual level of media interest in my past analysis of Abetz's possible influence on Tasmanian results and the propensity of the few voters who vote all the way to put Abetz last.  I understand that some supporters of Senator Duniam also drew attention to a recent pattern in the House of Representatives in which in 2010 and 2016 (Abetz years) the party won no Tasmanian seats while in 2013 and 2019 it won three and two seats respectively.   (It wasn't always thus, since in the Abetz year 2004 the Liberals won two seats that were both lost back in 2007.)

The fight for top place on the ticket was not a moderates-vs-conservatives fight; Senator Duniam also comes from the conservative side of the party (and is indeed a former Abetz staffer) though he has so far been much less controversial than Abetz.  Rather it represents generational renewal - Duniam is 38 and is Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries and Assistant Minister for Regional Tourism, while Abetz is 63 and has been out of the ministry since Tony Abbott was dumped as Prime Minister.  

What are Abetz's chances?

The Tasmanian 2021 or 2022 Senate contest is significant in that for the first time since the 2013 increase in minor party Senate voting, Jacqui Lambie will not be a candidate.  Her Network is seeking to run Senate candidates but it remains to be seen who they would be and if they would get much support.

The 2019 Tasmanian Senate primary votes were:

Liberal 2.20 quotas

Labor 2.14

Greens 0.88

Jacqui Lambie Network 0.62

One Nation 0.24

United Australia 0.18

Shooters 0.12

Animal Justice 0.09

HEMP 0.08

National 0.08

etc.

Note that Labor overtook the Liberals during the count and the actual finishing order was Liberal-Labor-Liberal-Green-Labor-Lambie-(these not elected)-One Nation-Labor-Liberal.

There was a (very unsuccessful) National ticket because Steve Martin had joined the Nationals after replacing Lambie when Lambie was disqualified under Section 44.  

If I imagine Lambie's ticket didn't run at all and redistribute their votes the leaders based on the 2019 results would look something like this (I have done this rather roughly)

Liberal 2.29 quotas

Labor 2.29 (see note)

Greens 0.93

One Nation 0.36

UAP 0.235

Shooters 0.155

HEMP .11

etc.

Note re Labor: the Labor figure is bolstered by preferences from Lambie to Lisa Singh who was a prominent below the line candidate from 4th on the Labor ticket after winning entirely on BTL votes in 2016.  

The thing here is that after the first five seats for 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green, nobody has very many votes.  So unless the Lambie Network manages to get a vote close to its 2019 vote, this opens up the sixth spot as a race between Liberals, Labor, potentially One Nation if their vote doesn't crash, JLN or any other fourth party that can muster decent support.  The major parties tend to outperform the minor parties on preferences so the Liberals could be in the mix even off their 2019 vote or slightly higher.  So the third seat is a maybe-maybe not proposition for the Liberals.  In a good year without Lambie on the ballot they should win it.  In a bad year, Labor or a minor party will.  (2019 was about an average year by the standards of recent decades in terms of the Tasmanian Reps 2PP, but would have been a slightly better than average year for the Coalition without the Jessica Whelan mishap in Lyons.)

Historically the Liberals have fairly often won three seats out of six in Tasmania.  This happened in 1990, 1996, 2001, 2004 and probably would have happened in 2013 had that election not used Group Ticket Voting.  Recent cases where they failed were mostly Harradine or Lambie years, except for 2007 and 2010.

The other avenues for Abetz to theoretically win the seat as a Liberal are:

1. He polls so high a below the line vote that he wins the second Liberal seat instead of Askew.

2. He polls a high below the line vote and this assists the party to win three by keeping Askew below quota thus allowing Abetz to run ahead of the party total.

Lisa Singh was unable to pull either of these off in 2019 and I don't think Abetz will be doing anything like it either.  The problem is that even with around 30% of Tasmanians voting below the line, the BTL candidate still receives very weak preference flows.  To achieve feat 1 a primary vote of somewhere around 10% would be needed.  Feat 2 might be achievable off slightly less than that, but not much less, because even if the top two start on, say, 1.8 quotas, the #2 candidate can still get dragged across the line by minor party preferences.  Maybe if no other party had much, 7% for the third candidate could be enough to make a difference.  Singh polled 5.7% in the 2019 half-Senate election.  My feeling is very much that Abetz's fate, assuming he contests (and that the result is not overturned for any unforseen reason) will be determined by his party's total vote.  

The "save Eric" factor may well attract some votes to the party (in the form of BTLs) that they would otherwise not get, as well as Liberal voters voting BTL for him to juggle their order.  But I don't think there will be all that many of the former.  

Update (11 May): In an interview today Senator Abetz claimed his dumping to third was overwhelmingly a case of ageism and sexism.  Abetz tried to claim his election in first position in the 2016 Senate race was evidence of his popularity and as an argument for that said that his below the line vote had caused him to be elected ahead of the top Labor candidate.  The facts on this are that the Labor above the line vote for Tasmania in the Senate race that year exceeded the Liberal above the line vote by one vote.  Abetz therefore needed to get just two more below the line votes than the Labor #1 to be elected first.  The Labor #1 was Anne Urquhart, one of Labor's famously low-profile Tasmanian Senators who only a tiny percentage of the population could name.  Of course Abetz did succeed in this task, but that's no evidence of popularity, since Urquhart's BTL vote was only 1.32% (14.6% of all Labor's Tasmanian BTLs.)  Abetz polled 2.57% BTL, but was outpolled on BTLs by Richard Colbeck in both 2016 (3.97%) when Colbeck's seat was on the line and 2019 (4.35%) when it wasn't.