Vacancy for resignation of Daniel Andrews (ALP)
Welcome to a quick preview and live thread for the Mulgrave by-election in Victoria. This is the second time this year that both major parties have fronted up for a by-election caused by a mid-term resignation of a sitting Premier. In case that doesn't sound like much, prior to this year that hadn't happened in any State since 2008, and had only happened ten times that I can find since 1970. (This is the first year in that time with two of them!) Often when a Premier quits the seat they vacate is such a safe one that Oppositions don't risk embarrassment by contesting.
There are many odd features of the Mulgrave contest and while the general buzz around it is much weaker than for Rockingham I think it's worth covering even if it turns out to be a fizzer. I'll have some live comments scrolling to the top tomorrow night.
2PP swings when Premiers vacate
As mentioned above a 2PP contest in a seat for a mid-term vacating Premier is a relatively rare event. Victoria hasn't had a case since 1981 (the Liberal Party did not contest when Steve Bracks quit) and half the cases since 1970 where a 2PP swing is available or can be estimated have been in Western Australia.
For the record here is a table of those I found (there is no 2PP estimate available for Barambah 1988). In every case there was at least probably a 2PP swing to the opposition (though in the case of Kew 1981 this is not beyond doubt because of undistributed Democrat preferences).
Notes: Swing figure is swing to Opposition at the by-election (italics are estimates, Nedlands 1982 estimate was by Malcolm Mackerras). St 2PP is the Government state 2PP at the previous election. Seat 2PP is the Government 2PP in the vacating Premier's seat at the previous election, shown in italics where the oppisition didn't make the 2CP. (Incidentally there have also been three Northern Territory cases, with swings to oppositions of 7.0%, 9.2% and 16.9%.)
There is a significant relationship between the previous Seat 2PP and the swing to opposition but I wouldn't read much into that because of the small sample and the fact that most of the by-elections were outside Victoria:
By historic standards it isn't that likely that a government would lose the 2PP in a seat held by a former Premier on a margin around 10%, but it is possible. (Kew 1981 was a near miss on a similar margin). Whether the 2PP decides the outcome in Mulgrave's case remains to be seen. Blue dots are Coalition Premiers and red dots are Labor ones, for what it's worth. The relationship between the previous state election 2PP and the swing to the Opposition in the by-election is weaker and in fact not statistically significant.
Andrews, an unusual Premier
The average 2PP swing when Premiers depart in the by-elections shown above was 10.9%, just over what the Liberals need to win the 2PP here and well above the 5% or so one would normally expect for a government vacancy (there is not enough recent Vic data to do a Vic-specific estimate here). However this includes Premiers who were popular and long-serving and others who had not been there for long at all. Andrews is for sure a major Premier, in the job for almost nine years. However Andrews had the unusual property that while more voters in general approved of him than disapproved, those who disapproved tended to disapprove very strongly.
There isn't anything like the evidence of a building net personal vote for Andrews over time in Mulgrave as there was for McGowan in Rockingham (in fact, after adjusting for redistributions Mulgrave wasn't any better for Labor relative to the state average at the end of Andrews' career than after his first term as an MP). I've also tried to use Legislative Council vote differences to estimate a personal vote, but here it doesn't seem that Andrews' 2022 result was anything special compared to other Labor incumbents in nearby seats. Most likely having Ian Cook run against him with something of a folk-hero image in some media damaged Andrews' result in 2022, and also the seat may be simply becoming a bit less Labor-y over time. So I don't think Mulgrave is starting from an obviously inflated baseline of the sort I'd normally expect for a departing major Premier.
This said there may still exist plenty of voters who will not vote for Labor without a candidate of Andrews' prominence, but will they be cancelled out by voters who specifically disliked Andrews returning to the fold now that he's gone?
Three-cornered contest
Mulgrave was much hyped at the previous election because of the unusual candidacy of Ian Cook, a local catering company owner whose business was temporarily shut down following a listeria outbreak that killed a hospital patient. The case gave rise to "slug gate", a colourful conspiracy theory (of some interest to me as a professional malacologist) that a slug had been planted in Cook's building to fuel the case for shutting it down. (Cook recently had a pyrrhic victory in court in which the shutdown was ruled procedurally unfair but he was paid no compensation.)
Cook (Independent) did not get near defeating Daniel Andrews, but he did finish second. Surprisingly, the final indicative distributions revealed his two-candidate preferred vote of 39.2% was weaker than the Liberals' 39.8%, despite the Liberal candidate Michael Piastrino at most times seeming more like an escapee from one of the more excitable "freedom parties" than a mainstream candidate. Although I would have thought Piastrino's campaign would have driven off anyone who could even passingly stand Andrews, 20% of the preferences with Piastrino at his exclusion still flowed to the Premier.
Opinions vary as to whether Cook might greatly boost his vote in a by-election with no significance for forming government (and perhaps be a serious contender this time), or whether he will suffer from not having Andrews or Brett Sutton to rail against anymore and from a more respectable Liberal alternative.
The Mulgrave 2022 count produced many conspiracy theories, and continues to be the subject of false claims that polling showed Daniel Andrews would lose (see B1 in my disinfo register).
New major party candidates
Cook is a constant but the major party candidates have changed. The new Labor candidate is Greater Dandenong mayor (for the past year) and psychologist Eden Foster. Foster's council area includes the southern half of Mulgrave and her own ward overlaps a small part of it. Foster is only a first-term councillor and the use of the ward system coupled with round-table elections means there's not a lot on the record about her electoral appeal, but she's presumably done something right to get the big job unopposed.
The Liberal candidate is long-term Liberal policy advisor Courtney Mann, who also self-describes as an educator but thus far I have found no further information re that. Mann was the candidate against Andrews in Mulgrave way back in 2010; at that election the swing in Mulgrave (7.3% 2PP) was just above the state average of 6%.
Aside from the majors and Cook, the remainder are not likely to much disturb the scorers: a Libertarian, Animal Justice, Victorian Socialists, Sustainable Australia, Family First, Greens (their 7th worst seat in the state last year) and a minor indie who didn't clear 1% in 2022.
Polls
All things being equal governments will do better in by-elections when they are polling well at state level than when they are polling badly. The only state poll since Jacinta Allan became Premier was by Resolve Strategic and suggested that Labor would very easily win an election "held now" but some caution should be attached to the figures because of the federal tendency of Resolve to be way better for Labor than other pollsters. At least there is no sign that the government is trailing.
No seat-specific polls have been seen. The Herald-Sun has printed noises about Labor polling supposed to show a swing from them to Cook, but said outlet is yet to print a full page apology for giving credence to Cook campaign street team exit poll rubbish that suggested Cook was winning last time (wrong by a mere 18%).
Federal drag factors might have some influence. The Albanese government has been sliding in the polls (it is still ahead but down to 52.3 in my aggregate now) and has had a bad week with news of released detainees some of whom had serious criminal records breaking in the last few days.
Other factors
The ballot draw is less favourable for Labor than in 2022 when Andrews drew top of the ballot; the difference between first out of 14 and eighth out of ten could be worth as much as 1%.
Antony Green has drawn attention to low prepoll and postal returns in what could be a sign of a poor turnout, or a high on the day vote, or both. If there is a high on the day vote they might struggle to find booths, with only 10 of the 20 booths from 2022 on offer to voters. Most of the temporarily abolished booths were small but it's notable that in them Labor won the 2PP 62.3-37.7, compared to 57.5-42.5 at the booths that have been retained. This means that all else being equal, Labor's swing in the booths overall will underperform its swings in the individual booths by about 1.8% - a trap for unwary players if there's a contest. Especially, Brandon Park booth could pick up less Labor-friendly voters from Waverley Meadows, while Gladeswood booth could move towards Labor relatively in the absence of Waverley Park.
Federal drag is possibly a factor. The Albanese Government has come back to about its previous election result in polling in recent weeks, and the last few days have been torrid for it with coverage of released detainees (some with serious criminal records).
Benchmarking
I like to set benchmarks for what should be considered a good result for the major parties to guard against the tendency of parties to engage in spin post the by-election. But this one is quite tricky ...
For Labor, firstly they want to win the seat - a loss to either challenger is bad (worse if it's to the Liberals). But ideally they would want to have clearly won on the night, even if Cook gets vaguely close. If it's called for them by the end of Saturday that is at least decent. A good result would be that with a 2PP of 55 or better vs the Liberals. (The 2CP against Cook is irrelevant so long as they beat him.)
For the Liberals, to at least get a substantial 2PP swing would be some kind of foreward progress, and to finish second and get the margin under 55-45 would be good and should take a lot of pressure off John Pesutto if it occurs. Finishing third again isn't necessarily bad, but it depends on whether the reason for that is that Cook has done better than 2022. In particular the Liberals would feel it had been a worthwhile exercise if their preferences helped Cook to win or nearly so. What would be really bad for the Liberals would be a repeat of 2022 (or similar) - an outcome in which neither they nor Cook make much headway and Foster wins quickly and easily. The Liberals did very well in the absence of Labor in the Warrandyte by-election but Opposition Leader John Pesutto may still be only one shocker away from being shown the door. A bad Liberal performance here would be seen as a bad sign for their hopes of winning outer suburban seats in 2026 with an "inner city wet" type leader.
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