Not-A-Poll Reset: Andrews Resigns

After a brief appearance that there could be a challenge from Ben Carroll, Jacinta Allan has been anointed unopposed as the new Premier of Victoria, replacing Daniel Andrews who announced his resignation yesterday.  It's therefore time for another reset of the Next Leader To Go Not-A-Poll, voting for which has commenced in the sidebar.

Andrews has given little reason for resigning other than that he just felt that it was time to move on after nearly nine years as Premier and before that four as Opposition Leader.  Andrews led his party back to Government in 2014 in a single term after a narrow shock loss in 2010.  He was massively re-elected in 2018 despite polls that had a merely comfortable victory, and won again in 2022 with a modest swing against him and no net seat loss.  The opposition might not have beaten him in 2026 either and will be greatly relieved that he has gone.

Andrews was a polarising forthright leader who has had a larger impact on Victorian politics than even most other state Premiers who are in the job as long.  Voters who disliked him tended to dislike him with great passion, but more voters liked him than disliked him.  Yesterday I found that he had a career average net polling average of +17%, which isn't Peter Beattie territory (Beattie averaged +31 in Newspoll specifically) but is still pretty high.  Andrews' average was boosted by nearly half of his polls having come during 2020, but even with 2020 removed entirely he still averages a rather good +10, and that's with very little polling from his first few years in office.   His preferred Premier ratings were often modest because of the love-or-hate polarisation he attracts.  Supporters and opponents alike who built their whole online personalities around this man will be lost to work out what to do with themselves.  

Personally I appreciated Andrews' realism on election night 2010 (a great contrast to so many party hack guests on election broadcasts when their side is losing), his candour in destroying silly questions from journalists and his unwillingness to kowtow to social reactionaries.  However Andrews was a dead loss on Victoria's dire need for electoral reform to eliminate Group Ticket Voting, and I hope his successor will lead from the front on the need for Victoria to hold proper democratic upper house elections.

Andrews' departure leaves a somewhat murky by-election for his seat of Mulgrave, which he last won with margins of 10.8% vs Ian Cook but 10.2% two-party preferred.  There is risk here for the government but also the Opposition and I expect to cover that count here.

So how did Not-A-Poll go this time around?  Well not too flash; there was some support for Andrews to bow out but only 11% of voters picked it, with Annastacia Palaszczuk having been the big favourite to go first in this round.  

Most of the recent voting had been Palaszczuk for obvious reasons and it won't be surprising if she races ahead this time as well, with her Government polling badly a year out from an election and with some leadership speculation in recent times.  That said plenty of others have claims - Andrew Barr has been there for a while, Jeremy Rockliff leads a somewhat unstable minority government, no polling from the NT where Natasha Fyles might be at risk has been seen for a long time, and then there are the federal leaders.  

With that, happy voting!

Addendum: The Fate Of Mid-Term New Leaders

James Campbell in the Herald-Sun notes that it is 50 years (Hamer 1973) since Victoria last re-elected a government that changed leaders in mid-stream.  This is true but it appears to be a result of small sample size, since elsewhere in Australia the electoral record of mid-term takeover leaders of this kind is not so dire.  Almost half have been re-elected and Victoria has gone the longest since this occurred.

It's also probably significant that all four of Victoria's mid-term Premier takeovers were federally dragged (the state and federal governments were the same party) at the time of their re-election attempts.  Of the state and territory leaders in this sample, those who had federal drag to deal with at their first election have a 10-15 win-loss record while those who do not are batting 8-6.

Andrew Barr (ACT) and Marshall Peron (NT) are the only ones since Hamer who have been re-elected more than once.  All the others either contested only one election or were defeated at their second attempt.