Tasmania 2018: But What Does It All Mean?

LIBERAL 13 LABOR 9 GREEN 1 UNDECIDED 2
Undecided: Franklin - Liberal vs Green - tossup
Undecided: Bass - Labor vs Green vs Liberal - Labor slightly favoured, Liberal chance remote

After the last Tasmanian election, I saw no need to unpack possible meanings of the result, as I thought it was all obvious to anyone who had followed the state's politics through that time.  This one, however, is different, though I certainly won't claim to have all the answers.  A government that seemed to be sleepwalking to a loss of majority has rebounded to the point of suffering just a trivial swing against it.  The Labor opposition did rebound to a degree, but mostly at the cost of the Greens.

Some facts and stats

A few facts about the election first.  For the first time since the 1970s, and the first time for a conservative party since 1912-3, the Liberal Party has topped 50% of the primary vote for a second election in a row.  The charge was led by Premier Hodgman, whose 38.3% is the highest candidate vote since Robin Gray in 1986.  (Hodgman will also break Doug Lowe's 1979 record for the largest number of votes recorded by a candidate, though this record is somewhat meaningless because of population growth. Lowe's record for the highest candidate percentage, 51.2%, may very well never be beaten - and I don't think the fact it was achieved before Robson Rotation really makes much of a difference.)

Tasmania 2018: Commissioned Pokies ReachTEL

On 14 Feb 2018 the Australia Institute Tasmania conducted a ReachTEL poll for the 2018 state election (see guide), some questions from which have been on public display for some time.  Some results on company tax cuts and donations disclosure were published some time ago and a further tranche on poker machines was published a few days back.  As well as this I have obtained (with thanks to the reader who passed it on) the primary voting figures from the poll, which was taken on the night nominations for the election was announced.

Voting Intention

The voting intention figures are old rope now but may be of some interest in terms of discussions of how the campaign has unfolded. Voting intentions were Liberal 41.7 Labor 30.5 Green 11.0 JLN 4.6 Other 8.0 Undecided 4.2.  What would be a staggering 68% of undecided voters said they were leaning to the Liberals, except that the effective number of undecided voters after scaling would have been just 39, giving that 68% figure a margin of error of at least 15% (even more after scaling).  After redistributing the undecided the results were Liberal 44.6 Labor 31.1 Green 11.1 JLN 4.8 Ind/Other 8.4.