Legislative Council 2022: Huon

HUON (Vacant, 2020 margin ALP vs IND 7.31%)

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This is my second seat guide to the Tasmanian Legislative Council for this year.  My guide to Elwick is up and a guide to McIntyre has been added now that Tania Rattray has opponents.    

I hope to find time to update my voting patterns analysis for the Council before the election as well, though that may be difficult given that there is a federal election impending.

I will be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night, Saturday May 7.  

For several years the Liberal government has had a difficult upper house to deal with.  The current numbers are four Liberal, two mildly right of centre independents, four Labor, four left independents, and one ex-Labor vacancy.  The good news for the government is that unless Rattray somehow loses to someone to the left of her, this year is a free swing, and the pressure is on Labor.

Huon is a by-election.  The winner will serve the remainder of Bastian Seidel's six-year term and face the voters again in 2026.  

Legislative Council 2022: Elwick

ELWICK (2016 margin ALP vs IND 3.18% - pre-redistribution)

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Donations welcome!

If you find my coverage useful please consider donating to support the large amount of time I spend working on this site.  Donations can be made by the Paypal button in the sidebar or email me via the address in my profile for my account details.  Especially in these uncertain times, please only donate if you are sure you can afford to do so.

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Welcome to my coverage of the Tasmanian Legislative Council elections this year. My guide to Huon has been posted and this is the guide for Elwick.  McIntyre, where independent Tania Rattray is seeking a fourth term, will be added if she gets an opponent.  I hope to find time to update my voting patterns analysis for the Council before the election as well, though that may be difficult given that there is a federal election impending.

I will be doing live coverage of the Legislative Council elections on this site on election night.  Election night is currently expected to be Saturday May 7, though if that is the federal election date then the Legislative Council contests will be moved to another Saturday in May.  

For several years the Liberal government has had a difficult upper house to deal with.  The current numbers are four Liberal, two mildly right of centre independents, four Labor, four left independents, and one ex-Labor vacancy.  The good news for the government is that unless Rattray somehow loses to someone to the left of her, this year is a free swing, and the pressure is on Labor.

Not-A-Poll Reset Time: Marshall Defeated

Following the emphatic defeat of the Marshall Liberal government in South Australia it is time to again reset the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll.

These were the previous round's results.

Steven Marshall was a distant but substantial second in the round in which he was eliminated, so the Not-A-Poll is now batting 0/2 in terms of the plurality picking the next to depart.    

Scott Morrison led very strongly out of the blocks in this round.  Through much of February Marshall was getting around 40% of votes, which jumped to over 80% immediately following the release of the late February SA Newspoll.  This continued through the campaign but Morrison had too many votes in the can already to be caught.  Whatever the result of the next round, it will suprise me greatly if Morrison does not top the next round as well; indeed I expect he will get an outright majority.  (Weirdly on SA election day there were still five votes for Morrison and one for McGowan.)

Steven Marshall's defeat has resulted in an unusual piece of political trivia.  His is the first Australian state, territory or federal government to leave office since the previous South Australian election that brought him to office in 2018.  For one jurisdiction to see two changes in government without any other jurisdiction seeing one in between is actually very unusual.  There was a case of sorts in the ACT with the relatively short-lived Kaine Liberal Government in 1989-1991.  However even that is debatable because Trevor Kaine came to office after the fall of the Follett Labor Government on the floor of the house on 5 Dec 1989.  The Russell Cooper led dregs of the Joh era had lost the Queensland election on 2 Dec 1989, but the new government under Wayne Goss did not take office until 7 Dec.  For cases before that debatable one, we have to go back to instability in Victoria 1950-1952, Victoria 1943-1945 and NSW 1920-1922.  (In all those cases the government of one state changed multiple times without any intervening changes federally or in other states.)  

Marshall's demise also ends the fifth longest spell in the last 100 years without a change of government anywhere in the country. There were longer gaps in 1935-41, 1959-65, 1983-8 and 2002-7.  (For the records at leadership level see the previous post.)

At the time of writing it is not clear Marshall will even retain his seat in the parliament; he is a shaky favourite to overhaul Labor's present lead once prepolls and postals are added.  However if he does, and if he then resigns and causes a by-election, there would have to be a serious chance of Labor winning it.  

After implementing a Whitlam Clause for the previous edition (ie a defeated PM staying on as Opposition Leader doesn't count) I've decided this was too counter-intuitive and to take a more populist road in future.  So now if a PM loses then the poll pays out at that point, and even if they become Opposition Leader, they still count as having been the leader to go.  However if an Opposition Leader ceases to be such by becoming Prime Minister, that doesn't count.  

Old Rope: A New Low In The Australian's Newspoll Commentary

With a quietish day in the South Australian count so far, I just thought I'd take the time to call out an article about Newspoll that was published yesterday in The Weekend Australian.  

The article was entitled "PM wins back women's support" and appeared on page 6 of the Weekend Australian.  It commenced with the following claim:

"Scott Morrison has recovered lost ground with women voters in recent months and has built up a larger lead over Anthony Albanese on the question of preferred prime minister among women than men, despite an onslaught of criticism on various gender ­issues."

Other claims included in the article were:

"Although the Prime Minister lost his lead over the Labor leader in Monday’s fortnightly Newspoll, Mr Morrison consistently outranks the Opposition Leader on satisfaction ratings among women voters, an analysis of quarterly demographic breakdowns reveals."

From this I expected that the Australian was releasing a fresh quarterly breakdown for the January-March period.  But no cigar (there might yet be another poll to come this month and be included in the breakdown anyway).  Here's some more:

"But Newspoll surveys show that, at the end of last year, Mr Morrison had a lower dissatisfaction rate among women than men and the same net satisfaction rate – the difference between voters’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction – among men and women."

"But, on the question of who would be the better prime minister, Mr Morrison has had a bigger lead among women since late 2020 and has always had a better net satisfaction rating among females."

(I take it that the word "he" has been omitted before "has always"  Otherwise it makes no sense as a better net satisfaction rating is not relevant to who is the "better prime minister".)

South Australia 2022: Classic Postcounts and Legislative Council

EXPECTED FINAL RESULT LABOR 27 LIBERAL 16 IND 4

On this page:

Expected Labor gain vs Liberal: Gibson (included in tally above)

Expected Liberal retains: Heysen, Dunstan, Unley, Morialta

On other page: Waite, Finniss, Hammond, Flinders.

This page follows classic (Liberal vs Labor 2PP) seat post-counts and also follows the count for half of the Legislative Council.  The Council count does not currently look all that close, but that might change.

Three seats (Hartley, Morialta and Unley) dropped back into the in doubt category on the ABC site overnight.  These are sites where the Liberals were projecting to win before the projection was switched off and still hold healthy leads; I expect these leads will increase and the Liberals won't be troubled holding these seats.  

(Update Monday: the leads in Unley and Morialta came down with further counting to 50.32-49.68 and 50.50-49.50.  It is most likely the Liberals will pull ahead or at worst break even on prepolls and postals so I am still treating those as expected Liberal holds for now, but may add sections below should this not happen as the count goes up or if there are changes to figures.)

(Update Tuesday: The Liberals have surged to the mid-51s in Unley and Morialta putting those beyond doubt.) 

South Australia 2022: Messy Postcounts (Waite, Finniss, Hammond)

Expected final result LABOR 27 LIBERAL 16 IND 4

On this page: Waite (assumed Labor win vs Holmes-Ross (IND), exclusion order issues.)

On this page: Finniss (Liberal expected to defeat IND, either by exclusion order or on 2CP. )

On this page: Hammond (assumed Liberal win)

On this page: Flinders (assumed Liberal win)

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General update 30/3: All seats have been determined now with the result at 27-16-4.  As Hammond is now showing as a 2PP I am assuming it as well as Waite finished as 2PP contests while Finniss and Flinders did not, but I am awaiting confirmation of that.  

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Welcome to my SA 2022 post-counting coverage.  The result of the election was a win to Labor with about as many seats as polling-based seat models predicted, but the downside for the Liberals in terms of losses to independents appears to be on the high side.  As well as the expected wins by Dan Cregan in Kavel (a massive win) and Fraser Ellis in Narungga, they have lost to Geoff Brock in Stuart.  That leaves two seats that are the subject of this thread - Finniss (where they may lose to a new independent) and Waite, where the ex-Liberal independent Sam Duluk seems to be doomed but it's not at all clear that the Liberals will get the seat back.  This is the thread for messy, interesting post-counts, and I also have one up for the vanilla postcounts and the Legislative Council (which currently seems to be tracking towards 5 Labor, 4 Liberal, 1 Green and a battle between One Nation and the reborn Family First for the final seat (or maybe LDP but they have form for dying on preferences.))

South Australia 2022 Live

CURRENT PARLIAMENT Liberal 22 Labor 19 IND 6 

CURRENT NOTIONAL INCUMBENTS Liberal 23 Labor 20 IND 4 (three INDs defending seats won as Liberals)

LABOR HAS WON MAJORITY GOVERNMENT (25+ SEATS EXPECTED)

SEATS APPARENTLY WON: Labor 25 Liberal 13 IND 4 In Doubt 5

Seats in doubt:

Gibson (Labor leading in Liberal seat)\

Dunstan, Heysen (Liberal leading in Liberal seat)

Finniss (IND vs Lib in Liberal seat, depends on exclusion order)

Waite (very messy, probably Liberal vs Labor in IND seat)

Refresh for recent comments - about once every ten minutes at peak

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South Australia 2022: Final Newspoll And Other Comments

Time for a short post ahead of tonight's South Australian state election, which I will be covering live on here from the close of polling and, as time permits, through the postcount over coming weeks. 

This has been another state election to have seen remarkably little polling.  The only statewide public polls have been two Newspolls by YouGov and one self-branded YouGov poll (the two versions employing different weightings).  The first Newspoll had a 53-47 Labor 2PP lead, the final Newspoll had 54-46 (41 Labor 38 Liberal 9 Green 12 Other), and the YouGov in between had 56-44.  There is very little sign of life for the Marshall government in all this, but it's still within the reach of polling error that it might lose the 2PP more narrowly (or if it's a big error, get around 50-50) and then, perhaps, get lucky enough with the distribution of votes to hang on in a hung parliament.

Using the 54-46 Newspoll as an input, my conditional probability model (see previous article) suggests that Labor would win the 2PP in around 26 seats to 20 for the Liberals (Mount Gambier is excluded from the model).  However, there is a widespread expectation (including some remarkably short betting odds) that the ex-Liberal independents will all be re-elected despite the clouds hanging over all of them except Dan Cregan.  That would end up with a 26-17-4 parliament.  The seat model can't reliably predict which of the seats on 6-10% margins would fall, other than that on a 6% swing enough of them would be close enough to going that Labor should pick up a couple just by luck.  A similar outlook is seen in betting odds, which continue to have Labor favourites in the low-hanging fruit of Adelaide, Newland, Elder and King, but not in any other Liberal seats.

EMRS: Government Down After Reopening

EMRS: Liberal 41 (-8) Labor 31 (+5) Greens 12 (-1) others 16 (+4)

Live expected seat result in election "held now" if poll is accurate: Government would lose one seat in Clark (12-9-2-2 or 12-10-2-1)

Polls at this stage of cycle are not predictive

The first EMRS poll since Tasmania's December re-opening is out and sees a large slump for the Gutwein Liberal government, although such mid-term slumps are common in Tasmania and the government spent much of the previous two terms in a similar position to the latest polling.  After a December poll that showed no real difference from the 2021 election, the poll taken in late February - early March finds quite a different result.