EMRS Says Tasmanian Labor's Getting Nowhere

EMRS: Liberal 39 (+1) Labor 29 (-3) Green 12 (-2) IND/Other 19 (+3)
Election "held now" would be some kind of hung parliament, but further improvement for the government would put it in contention for winning outright
Jeremy Rockliff increases slim Better Premier lead

In 2021 Tasmanian Labor had a poor election result.  Blighted by infighting and candidate disasters and facing a supremely popular Premier riding a COVID management surge, the party managed only 28.2% and lost a seat in Clark to an independent.  Two and a half years on the Premier is gone, and the "moat" phase of the pandemic that boosted his party has gone.  Also gone are two backbenchers who defected to the crossbench, three other Ministers who quit the parliament, another Minister from the Cabinet, and Adam Brooks after some number of minutes as a returned MP.  The government itself was almost gone two months ago when a crisis involving the resignation of then Attorney-General Elise Archer could have sent it to a snap election.  It remains at the mercy of two indies who at times say some very strange things.  These are hard times to govern in without this chaos.  The government is almost a decade old and has spent much of the year lurching from one crisis or shambles to the next and under pressure over a range of unpopular policies, including the now-shelved fire levy.  So where is the Opposition in this feast of opportunity?  According to the latest EMRS poll it's on ... 29%.  Pretty much back to where it started.  

A few caveats are needed before I get too carried away with what I expect to be the consensus that Tassie Labor just isn't banging the rocks together despite often effectively criticising the government's performance on specific issues.  Firstly, the government is likely to be benefiting, or at least the Opposition suffering, from federal drag.  State governments are more likely to do better at elections when the opposing party is in Canberra than when it isn't, and state oppositions are more likely to suffer likewise.  There's no accounting for the Victorian Liberals here (this is only a tendency) but I suspect federal drag isn't helping Tasmanian Labor, especially now the Albanese Government's honeymoon has worn off.  Voters are of course pessimistic at the moment and concerned about cost of living, but they know that's both a state and federal issue.  

Secondly I would expect that EMRS is polling a deflated Labor vote compared to what would occur in an election held right now.  The record high EMRS others vote of 19% (17% independent) is likely to include a high measure of vote-parking and wishful thinking.  I think the way in which EMRS uses an open-ended voting question and then only offers fallback choices of Liberal/Labor/Green/IND/unstated other party might affect the very high support for independents.  

Thirdly, while EMRS does have a rather good track record in state election polling (even when, as in 2021, its final poll was well before the election) it would be useful to see more transparency and in particular a clear statement, released with every poll, of what weightings it is using in its state polls and what is the effective sample size.  It will also be interesting to see closer to the election whether they start breaking out fourth parties that are clearly running, to see if some of the supposed "independent" vote is really for those.  And finally, sample size - with only 911 decided respondents we can't even really be all that sure that the government's lead has increased since the last poll; then again it might have increased by more than that.  We just don't get a lot of polls to go on here.

But there is a recurring problem with Tasmanian Labor and that is that it has, for the last few years, been far too easy pickings for critics left, right and anywhere who assert that it stands for nothing other than hoping it will someday get elected by default.  

An Example Of The Labor Problem

A current example of this is Labor's position on the proposed Macquarie Point stadium.  It's not the most important issue for voters at the moment, but one article gives a vintage example of the sorts of knots Labor is tying itself in.   The party says it is strongly against the stadium but voted to approve submitting it to the amended Project of State Significance process, after which it will come back to the Parliament for a final decision (assuming that process is ever completed).  Depending on the numbers in future parliaments, Labor's decision to vote to send the stadium to the POSS process could result in the stadium being approved without whatever comes out of the process being known at any election. So if you are so sure the stadium is a disaster, why would you risk that?  Ah, because the (bound to be expensive itself) POSS process will make it easy for voters to see how terrible the stadium will be!  

But Labor claims to know the stadium will be awful anyway. So if they're so certain, surely they could make it easy for the voters to see this too by, er, telling them.  (Leaving aside that the voters already supposedly know it and hence don't need to be told by POSS, Labor or anyone). The only way this position can be even semi-logically defended is by assuming that Labor needs an independent process to lay out for voters how bad the stadium is because they are not capable of communicating obvious concepts themselves.  

What's really going on here is that Labor is terrified of being wedged. If the Opposition actually gets into government and the POSS process ever completes, can those who don't want the stadium be sure it will really vote against it under a perhaps different leader and in different economic circumstances?  Who knows?  

Labor has also recently dodged taking a stand backed by actual votes when it came to amending the government's electoral law reforms and also when it came to the government's recent Bill for presumptive sentencing for child sex offenders.  There was a more defensible argument in both these cases (it is better to have some electoral reforms than risk having none and presumptive sentencing is not the same as the mandatory sentencing Labor has blocked in the past) but again the calls rang out that state Labor is flipflop central.

Potential Seats

Which is all fine strategically if the government is dead anyway, but that's not yet completely clear.  In this poll the government has opened up a 10% primary vote lead, similar to where it was in mid-2022.  What might this mean in seat terms is hard to say with a fifth of the electorate supposedly intending to vote for unstated independents or others, but here's a starting point for the 35-seat parliament.  

On what is basically its 2021 election vote, Labor would win 10 seats with good prospects of third seats in Franklin and Lyons, depending on the distribution of vote shares.  The Liberals would probably get four in Bass and Braddon and three in Lyons, 2-3 in Franklin and presumably 2 in Clark (left-wing as Clark is, it's hard to credit a 1-6 right-left result).  So 15 or 16.  The Greens actually aren't assured of any gains at all on a lacklustre 12% but would have a fair chance of picking up Bass or Lyons depending on who else was in the mix, and some shot at a second in Clark unless there was a second strong Independent.  Kristie Johnston would presumably be re-elected.  From a baseline of 15-10-2-1 there are about seven seats that would be loose, and none of the "big three" would get a lot of those; new crossbenchers (which could include some of the existing defections/ejections from the major parties) would probably get a few.  If Labor ended up forming a government in an election that looked like this poll at all, it would probably be some kind of rainbow coalition with a lot of moving parts. The Liberals might be able to govern in some kind of minority, depending on who got elected on the crossbench.  

But there is also a history of bandwagons at times appearing for the party that looks like it can form majority government.  This was most starkly seen in the leadup to 2018 where in late 2017 an EMRS poll had the major parties tied; there were then strategic internal polling claims showing an increasing Liberal lead and a few months later the Liberals retained office topping the primary vote by 17.6%.  The evidence is not entirely conclusive because the two elections that show the strongest suggestion of a bandwagon effect (2006 and 2018) are also the two that saw the biggest third-party spending controversies.  

To its credit, Labor is getting organised for the next election early and next month it intends to release a full slate of candidates; several preselection aspirants have featured in the media already.  While its confidence in an early 2024 election may or may not be well placed (the opposition has predicted elections that did not occur several times before) having a full slate ready to go will give some impression of organisation and allow time for profile building, and for liabilities to be identified and replaced.  (Oh and to find out which aspirants have approvingly retweeted the Bob Brown Foundation.)  There have been several announcements by Labor candidates intending to seek preselection for the Lower House already, including the long-awaited move by Josh Willie MLC to contest Clark.  (I expect that he will bolt in.)

Absent of a seat breakdown there is not much to add re this poll, save that the Better Premier indicator saw Jeremy Rockliff's slender lead over Rebecca White grow from 42-39 to 42-35, with Undecided gaining four.  I never know quite what to make of EMRS Better Premier polls not showing the same skew as the same question everywhere else, but this is also consistent with the damage from earlier this year being gradually repaired.  

Update: David O'Byrne Deselected

A piece of the puzzle has fallen into place with confirmation that National Labor has rebuffed David O'Byrne's bid for reselection for Franklin, meaning he cannot run as a Labor candidate.  He will therefore either run as an independent (resulting in expulsion from the party) or retire.  O'Byrne running as an independent would at least have a realistic chance of re-election and is widely expected to win if he runs.  

Update: ALP Candidate List

Labor has released a list of 30 preselected candidates but there is not a lot of obvious firepower.  (Derwent Valley Mayor Michelle Dracoulis is perhaps the highest profile new addition).  Hobart Councillor Ryan Posselt has not at this stage been selected, but it is unknown to me why or if this is a final decision.  (Update: seems he is still being vetted.)