Rebecca White and Anne Urquhart To Run For House Of Reps

I have four (!) articles I'm aiming to write for this site in the next week or so but the first cab off the rank should be the one where my local knowledge is most relevant, that being today's news that Rebecca White and Anne Urquhart will be running for Labor in the federal House of Reps seats in Lyons and Braddon respectively, resigning their State and Senate seats to do so.  The candidate to take on Bridget Archer in Bass, Tasmania's other competitive House of Reps seat, has still not been announced.

Rumours about White and Urquhart running have been around for some time and frequently canvassed on the Fontcast podcast and at times in mainstream media, the White one steadily gathering pace despite having been denied by the candidate in a debate for the March state election.  The Urquhart rumour, together with one that Shane Broad might quit state parliament to run for the federal Braddon seat, has been on and off but it is now clearly on, with the Prime Minister's social media announcing both Urquhart and White as candidates during his visit to the state today.

Rebecca White and Lyons

Rebecca White has been a state MP for Lyons (Tasmania has multi-member Hare-Clark electorates) since being elected at the 2010 state election at the age of 27.  White's debut "Renewal in Lyons" ad campaign featured a brief glimpse of two Polly Waffle wrappers being pushed into a bin, widely interpreted as a shot at Labor veterans Michael Polley and David Llewellyn, the latter of whom White then displaced.  White polled strongly in the 2014 state election and became leader in 2017, elected unanimously in some haste after then-leader Bryan Green resigned.  

White served as leader from 2017 to the 2024 election except for a brief period following the 2021 election.  She resigned and made way for David O'Byrne following the 2021 election loss but O'Byrne's leadership lasted just 22 days before he was brought down by a sexual harassment scandal and White soon returned.  On White's watch as leader, Labor lost three state elections to the Liberals under, successively, Will Hodgman, Peter Gutwein and Jeremy Rockliff.  

The 2018 loss saw the party significantly rebuild its vote and seat share but the election was overshadowed by controversy over the party's poker machines policy, which only seemed to play well in the inner cities.  The 2021 election was a tough one for the party in view of Gutwein's hugely popular handling of COVID issues, but infighting in the party (primarily, a pro-union hard left faction trying to block the preselection of the Right's Dean Winter, who is now leader) never helped, and nor did the party's backflip (or as opponents had it, Becflip) on the poker machine plan.   Labor lost vote share in every seat with a 20-point crater in Clark.  The 2024 election was an opportunity for Labor to improve with a huge swing against the Rockliff government, but most of the spoils went to third parties and independents, with federal drag, policy misfires and a generally low-key campaign not helping matters.

Direct polling of White's popularity has been rare.  In the 2018 election leadup she was extremely popular with ratings as high as net +40 being referred to; I doubt this was still the case in 2021 but didn't see figures.  Outside of the "COVID moat" period in 2020-1, White has been unusually competitive for an Opposition Leader in EMRS preferred premier polling, beating Hodgman on this indicator several times, as well as Gutwein twice and Rockliff once in the early days of their premierships (when incumbents tend to do less well).  However her tendency to do extremely well on head to head polling has never seemed to translate to primary votes.  This is not the only head to head aspect where White has done very well - she flogged both Hodgman and Gutwein in election debates according to undecided voter panels. This to my mind partly reflects that pollsters are not very good at finding the right kind of undecided voter for such cases, but for sure she is a strong performer in such contexts.  

White has also topped the poll in Lyons at three consecutive elections, polling over 15,000 votes in each case (including polling exactly 16338 votes in both 2018 and 2021!)  Massive leakage from her surplus in 2024 showed that these were far from all just Labor voters picking the most prominent Labor candidate.  The state party will miss her vote-getting ability greatly, but it will also be an opportunity for them to spread their vote in Lyons among less well known candidates and improve their chances of picking up seats by that method.  

A common criticism of White's leadership has been that the party under her did not seem to stand for anything and that state Labor has lacked a clear political identity.  This said her replacement by Winter, who is pushing a jobs-based rebrand that partly harks back to the ALP of the early 2000s, has not yet lifted the party's polling.  

Lyons federally is a rural and fringe urban seat where personal connections to communities are very important and candidates are often preselected years in advance.  The seat used to be a seat for life for this reason and between 1946 and 1993 had only one change of MP! However it became more turbulent in 2013-6 with Eric Hutchinson (Liberal) winning it from Dick Adams (ALP) in an election where forestry issues killed Labor in northern Tasmania, then losing it to now-incumbent Brian Mitchell after just a single term.

Mitchell recorded a 1.35% 2PP swing in his favour in 2019 (2.52% above the national Labor result) yet a 4.26% swing against in 2022 (7.92% below).  But both these Lyons campaigns were highly unusual.  In the 2019 campaign Mitchell won what would have otherwise been a very close contest after his Liberal opponent Jessica Whelan was disendorsed post-nomination over extreme social media content.  But in 2022 it was Mitchell himself who faced similar heat over material that had been known during the 2019 campaign but largely ignored then.  Prior to this episode Mitchell's larrikin persona and media-savvy posting had played well on social media and I believe being unable to campaign through such methods hurt him in a seat that is becoming harder for Labor through demographic realignment anyway (low-income, low-education-completion etc).  Mitchell's willingness to stand aside gracefully for White should be very much welcomed by the party should it continue.  

In my view Labor were, pre this announcement, in major danger of defeat in this seat by Liberal Susie Bower who has had another few years to build profile for her run against Mitchell. Having a replacement candidate available with a ready-made profile across this hard-to-cover electorate where incumbency matters so much looks like a get out of jail free card for the government - but that is not to say that victory should be taken for granted in a seat that seems to be fairly tough for the party (a recent Redbidge-Accent MRP nowcast the seat as a Coalition gain, though that model is blind to candidate factors).   If Rebecca White does get elected and the Albanese Government is returned, I will be interested to see what use is made of her experience. 

Recount for Lyons (state)

White at this stage intends to resign her state seat when the election is called though opponents will pressure her to quit earlier.  This will trigger a Hare-Clark recount.

The recount will be based solely on the votes White had when elected, which is all her primary votes.  The fact that Richard Goss was the last Labor candidate standing in the original count is irrelevant.  The winner will surely be one of the five unsuccessful Labor candidates.  Based on White's cutup, it is known they will start the recount with at least the following votes:

Ben Dudman 12.3%
Casey Farrell 10.1%
Richard Goss 9.0%
Carole McQueeney 8.9%
Edwin Batt 8.3%

35.1% of White's votes flowed to Jen Butler who was elected and 16.4% leaked to non-Labor candidates (mostly Jacqui Lambie Network, Greens and Liberal candidates in fairly even proportions).  It is not known where any of these votes went next.   It would not be that surprising if the White-Butler votes helped McQueeney by including an element voting specifically for female Labor candidates.  Candidates from other parties can nominate for the recount but all of them will be cut out before any of the Labor candidates are, leaving as many Labor candidates as nominate to fight out the seat.  Then it will simply be a race on preferences to determine the winner.

For those trying to predict this mess it's worth knowing that the vote for Labor minor candidates was highly regionalised, with Farrell the highest scorer behind White in the Derwent Valley, McQueeney on the east coast, Batt in the Southern Midlands, Goss in the Northern Midlands  and Dudman in most of Meander Valley (though Goss did better in some Launceston area Meander Valley booths).  All five are councillors for these LGAs.  I analysed the primary votes for these candidates weighted by how many votes White got in the booths and other vote groups where they got votes and on that analysis Goss came out slightly ahead of Dudman.  But it may be that voters who voted for White are more likely to be younger voters who also liked Dudman whereas Goss had more appeal to an older demographic, which could explain why Dudman gets more White preferences directly than Goss does.  (This factor can also help Farrell).  

Anne Urquhart and Braddon

Anne Urquhart has been a Labor Senator for Tasmania since 2011, having been elected at the 2010 half-Senate election.  She was second on the Labor ticket behind Helen Polley in 2010 and promoted to the top position above Polley in 2016, retaining it for 2022.  Prior to politics, Urquhart was a very long-serving AMWU state president and later secretary.  She has been Labor's Chief Whip in the Senate since 2016 and has had various other roles that are noted here.  She is also a past President of the state party and is Labor's "duty Senator" for Braddon, meaning she has been the Senator tasked with representing Braddon and commenting on its issues.  

I would struggle greatly to write as many words quickly about Urquhart as I have written above about White.  The reason for this is that with rare exceptions such as former Senators Lisa Singh and Eric Abetz (and from time to time Polley though usually for the wrong reasons) most Tasmanian major party Senators are famously invisible!  Even seasoned Tasmanian politicos will usually struggle to name the full set!  But a search for media mentions of Urquhart shows plenty of activity this year with over 100 distinct references in the last six months alone (and similar in 2023 so this is not a sudden upswing in mentions either.)  A high proportion of these are talking about local issues, including the current hot potato for the government in the seat, the management of the endangered Maugean Skate in Macquarie Harbour.  Among the hits I found was a classic from June 13 with Urquhart telling The Advocate that the ALP Braddon candidate (now known to all to be her) would be "a fantastic local candidate [..] who knows what matters here and can deliver a stronger better Braddon".

Urquhart - long a major figure in the Tasmanian ALP left - has rarely been controversial but did ruffle some feathers in 2021 with her support for David O'Byrne, firstly in the leadership contest and then following his forced resignation from caucus. 

For some elections, federal Braddon was not far behind federal Bass in having a bloodthirsty response to incumbent MPs.  It threw out Labor's Sid Sidebottom in 2013 (having also kicked him out for a term in 2004), the Liberals' Brett Whiteley in 2016 and Labor's Justine Keay in 2019 (after she had survived a mid-term by-election).  Braddon is very rich in natural resources; it loves logging, mining and farming and is a dead zone for the Greens.  Demographically the seat is one where Labor has been struggling at state and federal level, though the state result there this year was a lot less bad than some feared.    

One might look at the 8% margin from 2022 and wonder why Labor is wasting any even remotely good candidate on this seat.  However that margin was recorded by Gavin Pearce as a first-term incumbent with a 4.9% swing in his favour (the highest to a sitting Liberal in the country).  Realignment was one factor there but another was the news that Labor candidate Chris Lynch had a 1994 conviction for meth trafficking on his record.  There are few seats in the country where that sort of thing, even from 28 years ago, plays worse.  Now Pearce has quit politics meaning that the seat is vacant, while Urquhart if not that high-profile is still a more than replacement level Labor candidate in existing profile terms taking over from a bad choice.  The road to Pearce quitting also involved him grumbling a fair bit, including a failed attempt to get Bridget Archer blasted out of Bass via deselection.  His replacement Mal Hingston is not especially high-profile.  

Nonetheless, it's 8%. Are those things worth 8%?  I doubt it.  And the above mentioned skate/fish-farming issue is potentially a big problem for Labor at this election, much as forestry has been in the same seat in the past.  Even though Labor is now making noises to try to downplay the controversy, I am doubting that the local industry groups will accept that it is sorted.  

Casual vacancy

To run for Braddon, Urquhart will need to resign from the Senate.  This will create a casual vacancy unless Labor has opted for a double dissolution.  Labor could (subject to its Help to Buy bill being rejected again) call a double dissolution for late February or March though dates in late March would involve unduly long campaigns.  If Labor did opt for a double dissolution it would be interesting to see the shape of the party's ticket in Tasmania and how many if any of the other Labor incumbents recontested (economist Richard Dowling has already been anointed by Albanese to replace Catryna Bilyk on the half-Senate ticket should Bilyk retire).

Assuming it's a normal half-Senate election, Urquhart resigning would trigger a casual vacancy replacement process for her seat through to mid-2028.  Casual vacancies are filled by appointment by a joint sitting of the state parliament but the person appointed must be a member of the party the vacating Senator was elected for.  In practice this means that the party's nominee gets the spot, generally without incident - in theory the parliament might refuse to endorse the nominee as Tasmania briefly did with John Devereux in 1987.  

In theory a Senator might resign, run for the House of Representatives, lose and then get appointed to their own casual vacancy, but this has never so far happened (there have been cases of this at state level in NSW).  It would leave the Senate seat vacant for months, albeit at a period when federal Parliament wasn't sitting.  I am not sure if this is why it has not happened (there is a view that normally state parliament should be recalled to fill vacancies within weeks) or if it is just the case that it has never come up because MPs who resign from the Senate to run for the Reps almost always win (Kristina Keneally, one exception to this, was at the end of her term anyway).  A theory I've already seen floated here is that if Urquhart and White both lose, White could fill Urquhart's casual vacancy.  It may be none of this chicanery is on the cards and Labor will simply find another new Senator to replace Urquhart, who was likely to be close to retirement anyway.

The Pressure Valve: Does The Defeat Of Same-Party State Governments Help Federal Governments?

It's 1992.  The unpopular Cain/Kirner Victorian Labor government has been sent packing.  In comes Jeff Kennett and some voters are soon alarmed by his New Right agenda.  Cue massive protests.  The Keating federal Labor government has been struggling in the polls but it springs to life soon after Kennett's win (though that was far from the only cause).  In the 1993 election Labor gets a 4.34% swing in Victoria and gains four seats.  Across Bass Strait, where a short-lived Labor government had been removed in early 1992, there's an even bigger swing that yields another three.  The three Tasmanian losses are the first signs on counting night that something has gone terribly wrong with John Hewson's unloseable election, and these seven seats picked up by Labor in these two Liberal states combined are the backbone of Keating's against-the-odds win.  

Victoria 1992 is the paradigm case for a theory that one might call the "pressure valve" theory of state elections, that there is a drag effect of state elections upon federal elections and that federal governments benefit if the voters let off steam by throwing out an unpopular state government of the same party instead of taking their anger with it out on the feds.  Better still if the new state government has started to frighten the horses.  I have talked a lot about "federal drag" on here, which refers to the fact that state governments do much worse at elections, all else being equal, when the same party is in power federally.  Age and federal drag are the two biggest killers of state governments and it is for this reason that the Miles Government was always likely to lose by about as much as it did.  But does it work the other way?

Many years ago - and I am not sure it is still online anywhere - Matt Cowgill posted some analysis of "state drag" that found, as best I remember, that if "state drag" on federal elections existed at all it was much much weaker than federal drag, and that even establishing clearly whether there was something there at all was rather complicated.  Remembering this I have generally not seen much in the theory of "state drag" when people have asked me about it.  But as this very specific version of the "state drag" claim is being talked about a lot in the wake of the dumping of the Miles Government, I thought I would look at it and see if there is anything in it.  

The first simple test I looked at is this: if a same-party state or territory government loses office, is the federal government's 2PP swing at the next election better or worse than the national 2PP swing, and if so by how much?  

For the last 50 years I found 28 cases of a same-party state or territory government being voted out of office: three in NSW, five in Victoria, three in Queensland (I have included 1995-6 as the effect of the 1995 election plus the 1996 Mundingburra by-election was that the Goss government was removed before the 1996 federal election), six in Western Australia, four in South Australia, just two in Tasmania, three in the NT and two in the ACT.  

Between 1974 and 1987 there were not that many cases of same-party state governments being kicked out though Coalition governments in SA, Victoria and WA were all thrown out in the leadup to the Fraser federal government being likewise evicted in 1983.  From the 1987-1990 federal term on at least one same-party state government has been defeated in the leadup to every federal election except 2007 (the reason in that case being there were none left to defeat after three terms of Howard federal drag.)  The most such cases happened in the 1998-2001 term (Coalition governments in Victoria, WA, NT and ACT) and the 2010-2013 term (Labor governments in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and NT).  The 2010-2013 case is exceptional in that 78.4% of the population lived in areas that had kicked out their state government during the federal term.

What I find on that basis is ... nothing to see!  Of the 28 cases, in 14 the federal government did better than the national swing after the defeat of a state government.  In the other 14 cases it did worse.  Overall in the mean case the federal government did better, but only by 0.14 points which is not even remotely statistically significant as the standard error on this estimate of the mean is 0.36 points.  

Having mentioned two 1993 cases in point for the "pressure valve" theory it is worth looking at the major examples against it.  In 1983 the Liberal government in Western Australia had been evicted during the federal election campaign but this did not prevent the swing to Labor in WA being 4.6 points higher than the national swing (I am using David Barry's estimates, others are slightly different).  A possible special factor there is that Bob Hawke had strong connections to Western Australia; although born in SA he had grown up in WA and his uncle had been a Labor Premier there.  

The end of the Goss government across 1995 and 1996 did not stop the swing against Labor in Queensland in John Howard's 1996 landslide win from being 3.6 points higher than the national swing.  Again this government was defeated only during the 1996 campaign and with the novelty of a mid-term change of office depending on the vote of a crossbencher, it may not have really sunk in that there was a lasting change at state level.

The third largest case on the negative side also comes from Western Australia and also involves a very recent change of state government at the time of the federal election.  It is in fact 1993, when the decisive but 'not that bad' loss for Labor at state level encouraged Keating to call the federal election right away.  Labor in Western Australia underperformed the federal swing by 2.65%.

There's an argument here that when the state government has only just lost office at the time of the federal election, there might not be time for any effect to kick in yet.  The new state government might be undergoing a honeymoon effect that might lift the federal Opposition's brand enough to cancel out any relief factor at the booting of its predecessor, for instance.  

If I rerun the test to exclude all cases where the gap between the state and federal elections was less than three months, the theory does considerably better.  Now there are 12 cases of outperformance to eight of underperformance, and the mean swing difference is 0.74 points (the median is 0.45, with the Tasmania 1993 outlier having a big impact on the mean).  So there could be something in the "pressure valve" theory but (i) if so it only kicks in once the new state government has had time to do stuff some voters might not like (ii) if there is an effect, it's not a big one.  

There are only seven cases where the party that would benefit from the effect has overperformed by over 1%.  Three of these are in Tasmania and the NT, and of the others Queensland 2013 could have had more to do with the re-instatement of Kevin Rudd (Qld) as Prime Minister, and NSW 1990 could have been influenced by the dumping of John Howard (NSW) as Opposition Leader.  The remaining cases are Vic 1993 and 2016.

Why isn't state drag a more prominent thing?  One view I have on this is that state politics is seen as subordinate to federal and so voters are far more likely to use a state election to sound off at a federal government.  They want a state government that will stand up to the feds but not enough to kick out the federal government just to achieve it.  Another is that from time to time a particular issue overlies state and federal politics in a given state and makes the federally governing party both more likely to suffer a swing against it at both levels and hence more likely to lose.

As I often hear it, the "pressure valve" theory also argues that throwing out an unpopular state government doesn't mean that the federal government will do well in the state, just that it will do better than it might have done if that state government had not been thrown out, ie that unpopular state governments drag the same party's government at federal level.  NSW and Queensland had high swings against Labor in 2010 and also had very unpopular state Labor governments at the time (in Queensland's case the dumping of Kevin Rudd was a factor as well).  Some other possible examples are Victoria in 1990 and Tasmania in 2013.  

I haven't tried to evaluate this one yet as the state polling record is very patchy and also as state government popularity is often influenced by federal factors anyway.  Often when a same-party state government does get the boot, its polling declines in its last year and may not have necessarily been as bad more than a year out.  So I think it would be challenging to get enough polling data - especially from the last 10 years or so - to judge this one from.  

At the least, my analysis suggests that Labor being thrown out in Queensland is unlikely to be a path to a large overperformance for Labor in the state.  

Note: Because the national swing includes the swing in the state(s) that evicted their government(s), the difference between the swing in those states and the overall swing in all other states, as opposed to the national swing, is going to be slightly greater on average than the numbers I give.  It's not obvious what is the best way statistically to test differences - for instance because 2013 saw four same-party state governments booted, the large swing to the Coalition in Tasmania 2013 gets over-represented.  I may at some stage look at overall swing in states where a same-party government was booted vs overall swing in states where this did not occur, by election.  In 2013 the difference in this case was 0.60 points.