Victorian 2022 Postcount: Northcote and Preston

 As I roll out postcount threads I'm finding that there are not that many seats in serious doubt this election but I'm keeping an eye on a few seats that are also interesting in that they underlie general trends.

The Greens seemed set for a very good election after the Liberal Party preferenced them but at the moment it looks like they have only one gain to show for it in Richmond.  At one stage in early counting the Greens were projecting to win or go close in Footscray, Pascoe Vale and Preston and to win Albert Park if they could finish second, but all of those fell over.  (They are 8.2% off second in Albert Park with no prospect of bridging that off 13.1% of minor candidate shrapnel that is also splitting to Labor.)  Many of these seats were not that competitive to begin with but there are some underlying themes in this performance: a rather soft Green primary vote that is easily gouged by the Victorian Socialists especially for one thing.  

Victorian 2022 Postcount: Teal Seats (Hawthorn, Mornington)

This post follows post-counting in seats being contested between the Liberal Party and teal independents.

The Victorian election has been a shocker for independents.  Firstly they've failed to replicate the 2.6% swing to them at the federal election and remained on 6% of the primary vote (as correctly picked by Resolve in their final poll which was the only final poll to offer a clear demarcation of "independents").  Secondly they've been unlucky with the distribution of that vote, and look like they could come away with about five second places but no wins.  The rural seats of Benambra and Mildura closed up in late counting last night, but Benambra is 78.5% counted so I greatly doubt it's going to move into my frame.  There are two seats where teals are currently trailing by not very much that I will cover here.  In Kew, the Liberals' smart preselection of a female candidate likely to appeal to teal voters in Jess Wilson has succeeded in warding off the teal challenge.  Teals have also failed to register any vote of consequence in a few seats where they were touted as contenders, especially Brighton and Caulfield.  

One might say the poor result of teals at this election is because they were a federal protest movement with no relevance to a state Labor government, or because they were unable to be as well-funded as the federal teals.  I think there's more though, and I was especially intrigued by the teals picking a prominent fight with the VEC over how-to-vote cards.  The teals won that fight and rightly so, but the fact that they were spending time and energy on that suggested that either they couldn't find more important issues to prioritise or else they weren't prioritising them.  I did wonder about the tactical wisdom of it at the time.

Victoria 2022 Lower House Postcount: Summary Page And Classic Seats

STATE LOWER HOUSE SUMMARY

SEATS WON ALP 56 L-NP 28* Green 4 IND 0 

IF ALL CURRENT LEADS/EXPECTED LEADS HOLD ALP 56 L-NP 28* Green 4 IND 0 

* includes Narracan subject to being retained at supplementary election

Seats covered previously:

(Bass won by Labor)

(Hawthorn and Mornington  won by Liberals)

(Hastings won by Labor)

(Pakenham won by Labor)

Northcote (Labor has won)

Preston (Labor has won) 

Link to Upper House coverage

Victoria 2022 Legislative Council Live

The primary vote count is more or less complete - analysis continues on this thread until the button press but go to Button Press Day thread for summaries of results and analysis as they arrive.

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SEATS WON OR LIKELY: Labor 15 Coalition 13 Greens 3 Legalise Cannabis 2 Shooters 1 One Nation 1 Animal Justice 1 Labour DLP 1 

SEATS IN MOST DOUBT:

SE Metro: Liberals vs Lib Dems - very close and very difficult to model

W Vic: Legalise Cannabis vs Greens - Greens slightly favoured

W Metro: Liberals favoured vs Labour DLP

Overall outlook: ALP/left majority (22 seats expected)

Relatively few "Druery candidates" currently in line to win.  

Most crossbench incumbents will not be returned.

Victoria 2022 Live

The starting line: Labor 57 Coalition 26* Green 3 IND 2

Labor has retained majority government with little if any net seat loss

SEATS APPARENTLY WON (some not confirmed) ALP 52 L-NP 24* Green 4 IND 0 (In doubt 8)

* includes Narracan subject to being retained at supplementary election

SEATS APPARENTLY CHANGING (some not absolutely confirmed)

ALP to Lib: Nepean

ALP to Nat: Morwell

ALP to Green: Richmond

ALP to IND or Lib: Hawthorn

IND to Nat:  Shepparton, Mildura

LIB to ALP: Glen Waverley, Ripon

IN SIGNIFICANT DOUBT (others may be added):

ALP vs GRN:  Northcote (ALP leads)

ALP vs IND: Preston (Exclusion order issue)

ALP vs Lib: Hastings (ALP ahead), Bass (ALP ahead)

Lib vs ALP: Croydon (bouncing around lots), Caulfield (Lib ahead)

Lib vs IND for gain from ALP: Hawthorn

Lib vs IND: Mornington

(NB Party-occupied seats that are notionally for the other side are counted for the party holding them.  Morwell treated as ALP)

*Narracan is treated as a Coalition retain pending supplementary election.

How To Make Best Use Of Your Vote In The Victorian Upper House

This is just a quick piece to give my voting advice for the benefit of those who have seen the recent publicity about voting below the line in Victoria but would like advice on how to do it. This is what I advise as being the best way to make effective use of your vote.  

1. On the large ballot paper (Legislative Council), vote below the line for candidates.  Do not number any boxes above the line for parties.

The Victorian system is different to the federal Senate system.  In the federal Senate system, you can put the parties in an order of your choice above the line, but in Victoria you cannot do that: if you rank parties above the line as nearly all voters did in the Senate in May, your preferences beyond 1 will be ignored.  If you do vote 1 above the line then your preference is allocated according to a ticket lodged by the party you have voted for.  This system is called Group Ticket Voting.  It is long-discredited and has been abolished everywhere in Australia except for the Victorian upper house.  It results in parties using networked preference deals to elect MPs who have no real voter support (in cases less than 1% of the vote) at the expense of deserving candidates.  (For more see my recent article about the history of party policies around this disaster.)

Victoria Lower House 2022: Final Days Rolling Poll Roundup

2PP Polling Aggregate (not necessarily accurate) 55.0 to ALP (last-election preferences).

Aggregate of pollster-released 2PPs (ditto) 54.1 to ALP.

Labor appears overwhelmingly likely to win.

Labor majority more likely than not if past polling/results history holds up

This post will track polling for the Victorian election released in the final week of the campaign.  A section dealing with each new poll that I see will be added to the top of the post, however polls will not be added during the day on Thursday because of a field trip.  As I start there is only one poll two polls to discuss, following the common second-last-week drought in state elections, but I am sure more will be added in coming days minutes and that one poll is interesting enough to be worth putting out an article based on it alone.  

Until the release of this week's Resolve poll there had been nothing significant since my previous roundup.  There had been an odd Lonergan poll for the Victorian National Parks Association (incidentally the sponsors of the most accurate poll in 2018, a ReachTEL) but that poll with a Green vote of 19% cannot be taken seriously as a voting intention poll.  Firstly the poll did not ask voting intention questions first up but asked them "Immediately after main body questions", the main body questions covering a series of environmental issues and hence being very likely to skew the voting intention questions in favour of the Greens.  Secondly it is not clear whether the voting intention results reported are those weighted by "Age x Gender, Location" or were reported simply as sample size information.  

I have added a #pollshapedobjects section at the bottom to cover any even more useless offerings.

EMRS: First Expanded House Poll Not Bad For Government

EMRS: Liberal 42 (+1) Labor 29 (-2) Greens 14 (+1) IND 15 (+1) (likely to be inflated) Others 1

Largest Liberal lead since lifting of state borders.

Estimated seat result: Liberal 16-17 Labor 11-12 Green 4-5 IND 1-3

The usual very quick post following the release of an EMRS poll for Tasmania.  The new poll taken November 8-15 shows the Liberals on 42%, Labor 29%, Greens 14%, Independents 15% and others 1.  The poll is not statistically different from the August poll but nonetheless the Liberals have their largest lead of the year at 13%.  There might be some recovery from the crash in support following the reopening of state borders last summer, but it is still too soon to be sure.  In any case, there are two familiar themes (i) the Liberal Party is substantially ahead (ii) Labor is, at this stage, not lifting off to anything much above what it got at the 2021 state election.  The swing is going more or less all to "independent".  The next election is two and a half years away if the parliament goes full term so there is still a lot of time for things to change.

Legislation to restore the House to 35 seats with five divisions of seven members has passed the Parliament so from now on I will be projecting these polls first and foremost for a 35 seat House (in which the magic majority target is 18 seats).  As noted in the August article the suspiciously high "Independent" vote remains an interpretation problem; this would be expected to crash once voting options were known but where those votes would go is another question. 

As only Clark and Braddon recently had significant independents I have assumed they would again attract significant independent votes, and that the independent votes likely to appear in the other seats would scatter and/or be peeled off by other parties.  On this basis I estimate this poll as pointing to 16-17 Liberals, 11-13 Labor, 4-5 Greens and 1-3 Independents if an election were "held now".  The Liberals would probably only win two seats in Clark (which might elect a second independent, or give Labor and the Greens four between them) and would be touch-and-go when it came to a fourth in Lyons.  Unless the Liberal vote is huge then the orthodox pathway to 18 seats would be four in the three northern seats and three in Clark and Franklin, however two in Clark and four in all the others is another in-theory possibility.  As the election gets closer it could be that high-profile independents emerge in other seats to try their luck under the restored system.  

The story would be fairly similar under the 25-seat system, where the Liberals would probably only get twelve on these numbers, with only one returned in Clark, although retaining the second Clark seat might be possible with a more focused campaign in that seat.  So on these numbers the recent switch back to 35 has probably made retaining a majority slightly harder.  

The only thing to see on the leadership front is that there isn't anything to see; Jeremy Rockliff has a rather modest lead over Rebecca White (46-34) on an indicator that generally favours incumbent leaders.  

Following the spate of resignations earlier this year and controversy over the tactical wisdom (or otherwise) of the proposed AFL stadium there has been speculation that the government is approaching the end of its shelf-life and is highly likely to at least lose its majority at the end of the term.  This poll however doesn't find the rot setting in in the minds of voters and for now it has the government competitive for a majority while Labor has work to do.  It will be interesting to see if anything changes in this regard during 2023.

Modelling The Seat Of Pascoe Vale

PASCOE VALE (LABOR VS LIB 22.7, EST LABOR VS GREEN 12.5 based on 2018 preferences)

Why is this even here? Vacancy, change in Liberal preferencing

Does this market know something that I don't?

One of the interesting ALP-Green seat contests in this year's Victorian election is Pascoe Vale, which seems to be between experienced political advisor Anthony Cianflone (Labor) and Merri-bek Councillor, campaigning director and volunteer Angelica Panopoulos (Green).   This seat has seen a lot of debate with some people saying the Greens are seriously in the mix and others saying Labor will win it easily.  I've been looking at this seat a lot and I kept taking into account all the fancy stuff then making basic errors, so I thought I'd try to do it justice, post a full projection and see where that ended up.  In 2018 this seat saw a contest between Labor and independent Oscar Yildiz, which ended up not terribly close with Labor winning 58.58-41.42.  On a two-party basis it was uncompetitive with Labor winning 68.32-31.68, while the Greens finished third on primaries on a mere 12.94%, not far above the Liberals.  With Yildiz having gone to the Victorians Party (which was then a non-starter) and the 2PP margin now above 20% this sounds utterly boring.  However, the Liberals' decision to preference the Greens, plus a very Greens-friendly redistribution, appears to make it interesting.

Firing Blanks: The Victorian Teal Open How-To-Vote Cards Dispute

 Update Nov 17: Teals Win (for now)!  It is being reported that teals have won their VCAT appeal against the VEC's refusal to register various cards.  This follows events yesterday where the VEC ordered various candidates to desist from distributing these forms of cards, an order it may now turn out the VEC had no business making.  A link to the judgement will be posted when available.  The VEC can appeal to the Supreme Court if it wishes.

Disallowed proposed Frederico how-to-vote card

Yesterday there was significant publicity about the status of some proposed open how to vote cards for various Victorian election teal independents including Felicity Frederico (Brighton), Mellissa Lowe (Hawthorn), Sophie Torney (Kew), Nomi Kaltmann (Caulfield) and Kate Lardner (Mornington).  The Victorian Electoral Commission has disallowed the proposed card above on the grounds that it shows blank boxes.  Despite the card twice saying the voter needs to number all the boxes, the VEC is concerned that the imagery may result in a voter voting 1 for Frederico and then stopping (which is informal in Victoria).  The VEC points to the 2018 VCAT decision in Sheed v Victorian Electoral Commission while the teals and their supporters point to the lack of any problems (in either law or formality) with similar cards for Monique Ryan at the federal election.  Legal challenges are being mooted.

Victorian Lower House: Not All That Much Narrowing Here

POLLING AGGREGATE 55.8 TO ALP (not necessarily accurate)

Labor currently appears overwhelmingly likely to win, most likely in majority with low but realistic chance of hung parliament

A roundup of Victorian lower house polling themes is about a week overdue, but before I start this one, a big shout out especially to Ben Raue at The Tally Room for his coverage of this election.  While I've been appallingly busy (not to mention busily appalled) Ben has issued a remarkable total of twelve articles about the Victorian election since October 29, a rate of just about an article per day!

As of my last article on Victorian lower house voting intention back in late August, Daniel Andrews' Labor government was polling far better than a government of its age should be doing, now that it no longer has the Morrison Coalition government to rail against.  I expected that things would get a little closer and that by this time we'd probably no longer be seeing 56-44s, but thus far only Newspoll has been consistent with that expectation.  And even then, Newspoll was still pretty lopsided.  

How Not To Do Hare-Clark Public Funding Threshholds In Tasmania

Updates added during debate in November (at bottom)

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In late 2021 the Tasmanian Government released draft Bills concerning electoral funding and disclosure and miscellaneous electoral matters, and called for submissions.  I sent in a submission, which was duly published, but my advice concerning a major flaw in the electoral funding model was then completely ignored in the version of the Bill introduced in parliament and the accompanying second reading speech.  (The Bills were actually introduced in May - unnoticed by me at the time - but the Electoral Disclosure and Funding Bill has just reached the second reading debate stage).

Not to put too fine a point on it, I am getting really jaded with writing submissions.  I keep having to spend my spare time (which does not exist) writing submissions for nothing to try to ensure that governments do not make serious errors, only to find that in this case it does not even stop the mistake being made.

If the submission process does not result in the correction of howlers that are pointed out in submissions then what is the point of calling for submissions and what is the point of writing them?  The Tasmanian Government, for some reason that has never been explained, even sets the deadlines for public submissions at 5 pm, which makes meeting submission deadlines just a little bit harder for people who have to juggle countless other things while trying to write them.  Is someone seriously going to start working on them at 5 pm?  Would it really matter one iota if the submission was received at 10 pm or even 7 am the next day instead?  (Federal JSCEM submissions have a midnight deadline.)