ACT Election 2024 Preview

2020 BASELINE: ALP 10 Lib 9 Green 6 (ALP-Green coalition government)

At election ALP 10 Lib 8 Green 6 FF1 (1 Liberal incumbent disendorsed and joined FF)

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This is my preview page for the 2024 ACT election.  In the absence of any reputable polling whatsoever for the entire term (seriously!) there is not too much of use I can say about outcomes, beyond pointing to some possibilities.  What I can do is look at the nature of the contests based on the 2020 result and the history of ACT elections.  The ACT is of special interest to me because it uses a variant of Hare-Clark, the system also used in Tasmania.  I may get around to writing a special effective voting article but in case I don't here's one I prepared earlier.  Firstly, I've revised my view on something about the theory of ACT elections.

Well Yes There May Be A Bit Of Federal Drag In The ACT

Federal drag is the theory and fact that it is harder for state and territory governments to do well at elections when the same party is also in power federally, especially if the federal government is not that popular.  We saw this effect in spades in the recent NT election when the first of Labor's mainland dominos fell back with a drubbing that reduced Labor to 4 seats out of 25.  One could hardly blame the feds for all of that - though one could also blame them for more than some might like to.  (There was a lot of talk about how the Voice helped Labor hold up in the majority First Nations seat, the corollary of that is that it helped them get smashed everywhere else).  

Previously when I have looked at the federal drag effect in the very left-wing ACT I have not found anything to see - there just isn't a corellation between federal drag and government seat share change.  However, on a careful look at the history of ACT elections there seems to be something - you just need to ignore the swing from 1989 and 1992, and also looking at the balance of seats between the majors shows the effect up more strongly than whether a government gains or loses seat share, because the proportional size of the crossbench fluctuates a lot more than elsewhere.  The reason for ignoring 1989-1992 is that the 1989 ACT election saw a massive and largely once-off protest vote against self-government with the major parties managing only 37.7% of the vote between them.  Labor increased from 5 of 17 seats to 8 of 17 in 1992 in the face of federal drag, but this was mostly really about a protest vote in the 1989 election disappearing.  

Why I've Quit Doing Paid Election Coverage For The Mercury

Between 2013 and 2024 I covered four state and four federal elections via live blogging for The Mercury on contract on election night, as well as writing several commissioned articles in the leadup to various elections.  I enjoyed providing this coverage and working with The Mercury's reporters and staff on election nights tremendously.  I think The Mercury in general serves the population of Hobart well, as a rare example of a Murdoch tabloid that is not particularly slanted, and that the paper provides a lot of good coverage of local political matters.  I have high regard for several journalists who work there.  In general my relationship with The Mercury in this time has been excellent, albeit slightly strained at some state election times by some polling coverage issues (lack of transparency and detail around secretive local industry polls and passing off reader surveys as polls, for example).  One doesn't expect to have everything.  

However I have decided to end this association because the Mercury's online subscription system, and customer relations in the event of failure of that system, are so dreadful that I will not work for a company that continues to rip off its customers in this way.   I will think about options for future Tasmanian state and federal election night coverage, but probably not now, as I am very busy for the next few weeks.  It's sad to have had to move on from work I and many readers enjoyed in such disappointing circumstances, but it's time to do something else with my Tasmanian and federal election nights, whatever that may be.  

Crying Wolf: More Embarrassingly Bad Tabloid Poll Reporting

 "Anthony Albanese could be on track to being a one-term Prime Minister, with a new poll showing Labor's primary vote crashing in three major states.  The federal government is in serious trouble in the eastern states - where most of the seats are - with Labor down to 24 per cent in Queensland, 28 in Victoria and 32 in NSW."

"Labor’s primary vote has crashed to just 24 per cent in Queensland, 28 per cent in Victoria and 32 per cent in New South Wales, the wolf + smith shows.  But Labor is dominant in South Australia, where its primary vote is 41 per cent, and 60 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis.  The poll – which measured both state and federal voting intention – suggests the government is in dire trouble in the eastern states, with just 43 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in Queensland and 48 per cent in Victoria."

This is how the Daily Mail and the Murdoch tabloids (Courier Mail/Daily Telegraph etc) respectively wrote up a massive new poll by an initially mysterious outlet wolf + smith.  But this was in fact another example of laughably incompetent poll reporting from these outlets, one that again happened to be in service of the narrative their right-wing readers would want to see.  What the poll in fact found is very different.  The state-level figures these outlets were commenting were state voting intention not federal.  This was made so abundantly clear in the poll report that, among other subtle hints, the whole of page 10 of the poll report is devoted to making it clear that the rest of the report is state not federal.

Poll Roundup: 50.5 Is The New 51

2PP Aggregate 50.6 to ALP (-0.1 since end of last week)
Aggregate has changed little since loss of about half a point in mid-July
Election "held now" would probably produce minority Labor government

I haven't done a federal poll roundup for a while and today is a randomly opportune time to do one following the second straight 50-50 Newspoll and mention some general themes in recent 2PP polling.  In the last week we have had:

* Newspoll at 50-50 (ALP 32 L-NP 38 Green 12 ON 7 others 11)

* Redbridge at 50.5-49.5 to ALP (ALP 32 L-NP 38 and the rest not published yet, but I'm expecting Greens either 10 or 11)

* YouGov at 50-50 (ALP 32 L-NP 37 Green 13 ON 8 others 10) (Note: normally the 2PP for these primaries would be 51-49 to Labor, though it is possible to get 50 from these primaries sometimes because of rounding and perhaps also the makeup of others.).  

* Essential at 48-46 to ALP, equivalent to 51.1-48.9 (raw primaries ALP 29 Coalition 33 Greens 13 ON 7 UAP 1 others 11 undecided 6 - meaning the major party primaries are effectively more like 31-35)

* Morgan at 50.5-49.5 to Coalition by respondent preferences (50-50 last election) (ALP 29.5 L-NP 39.5 Green 13 ON 4 IND 9 others 5 - Morgan has a standalone IND option on the ballot everywhere, which is likely to be overstated)