2024 Tasmanian Postcount: Lyons

LYONS (2021 Result 3 Liberal 2 Labor - At election 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 IND)
Notional 2021 7-Seat Result 4 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green

SEATS WON: 3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN

CALLED WINNERS: Rebecca White (ALP), Guy Barnett (Lib), Jane Howlett (Lib), Mark Shelton (Lib), Tabatha Badger (GRN), Jen Butler (ALP), Andrew Jenner (JLN)

SEAT LOST: John Tucker (IND)

(Links to other seat postcount pages Bass Braddon Clark Franklin Summary)

As I start this piece Lyons is 79.1% counted with the Latrobe polling place still to add on Sunday [EDIT: Latrobe is of course in Braddon so it appears this was an out of division booth that was intended to be counted separately but will now not be.  The reason Lyons is lagging is that it has a much higher out-of-division vote than other seats.]. The Liberals are on 3.01 quotas, Labor have surged late in the night to 2.64, the Greens have 0.83, JLN 0.67, Shooters 0.38, John Tucker 0.26, Animal Justice 0.13 and why did the rest bother.  I expected Lyons to be the hardest seat to follow on the night and it has been but not in the way I expected.  

WA Washup: Another One Bites The Dust

It's a familiar script.  Five conservative state and territory governments have sought re-election since the Coalition took power federally and only one of the five (NSW) has survived.  Western Australia joins Queensland, the Northern Territory and (less emphatically) Victoria as jurisdictions where Coalition incumbents have been given the boot in the last few years.

The outcome in WA has been on the cards for years, and the fact that the Barnett government lost breaks no new ground by itself.  Defeat could be predicted as probable based on a combination of what I call federal drag (being of the same party as in power federally), the age of the state government, and the federal government's poor polling.  Indeed even Colin Barnett's poor personal ratings alone suggested he was already likely to lose this election less than a year out from his very strong 2013 result.  There's a strong case that Barnett should have been removed at least a year ago. Those who failed to do so look quite silly now, but they are geniuses compared to those who wanted to replace Mark McGowan with someone not even in the parliament because McGowan was thought to be too boring to win the election!

Patchy Polling In WA As The Final Week Begins

Going into the final week of the WA campaign, not much has changed from where it started a month ago.  The relatively scant and yet surprisingly diverse nature of polling data available leaves poll-watchers free to choose their own adventure, from a comprehensive win for Mark McGowan's Labor opposition to a very close and messy race in which Colin Barnett's Liberals might even cling on in minority by the skin of their teeth.  About the only thing the statewide polls agree on is this: following a shambolic and confused campaign, One Nation may have tanked.

The following table gives all the statewide polling known to me.  The poll marked as "Essential" is known to me only from a Poll Bludger exclusive that describes it as Greens-commissioned Essential robopoll.  That description places it at least two degrees of separation from anything we can place verified trust in but I mention it all the same.  I've also given an average and a time-weighted (but not performance-weighted) aggregate, in each case excluding the Essential.

In this case though, I don't place that much confidence in aggregation methods. There is a major house-effect difference between the ReachTELs and the Galaxy/Newspoll stable, worth at least four points on each major party's primaries, and coming out at two or three on the 2PP only because ReachTEL use respondent preferences (which have been skewing massively to Labor).  There's a pretty good chance here that someone's right and someone's wrong.  We're not just seeing margin of error issues here - there would not be such large and consistent differences in the major party primaries by pollster if we were.  (And no, voting intention doesn't bounce around this much in reality through a campaign either.)

WA: Grim Newspoll For The Barnett Campaign

By any normal measure the Colin Barnett Liberal government in Western Australia is in its final weeks.  A weak economy, long incumbency, federal drag (and from an unpopular federal government at that), disunity, a disliked Premier and bad 2PP polling would together spell "GAME OVER".  It's actually not easy to find electoral precedents for a government with quite so many things against it all at once.

The close nature of some recent 2PP polling, however, has given some (but not all) Liberals serious hope that they can sandbag their way back into power, especially if they can get One Nation preferences.  The latest Newspoll has, for now, pretty much pulled that rug out from underneath their feet.  It's much too early to say that it's all over, but things do not look good.