Fadden Live: Who Gets The Swing?

Summary

Fadden (LNP 10.6%), vacancy for resignation of Stuart Robert

CALLED (7:26 pm) Cameron Caldwell (LNP) retain

Small 2PP swing to LNP ( 2.72%), slightly above average for contested opposition vacancy

Poor result for Greens, One Nation and obscure independents, strong result for Legalise Cannabis

Live Comments (scrolls to top)

12 August:  The final results have been published and the swing is 2.72%.  Legalise Cannabis stayed ahead of the Greens, failing to overtake One Nation by just 31 votes.  There are "swings" to both the LNP and Labor and away from One Nation at the 4CP stage, but this is not comparing like with like because Legalise Cannabis are the fourth party.  The most striking result in the figures is that the flow of One Nation preferences to LNP jumped to 77.06%, which exceeds the flow in any classic-2PP seat in the entire 2022 election except Gippsland.  In the Gippsland case One Nation were first on the ballot and the National's Darren Chester was second, so the flow included donkey and similar votes.  I would take this as a sign that One Nation voters are pleased that Peter Dutton is LNP leader, although it may also be they are happier to have Stuart Robert gone and/or that they are displeased with Anthony Albanese, his government or its Voice proposal.  

Friday 28th: The remaining postals count has gone to zero so the primary count is probably done now barring very minor corrections in the distribution of preferences.  88.5% of postals came back but 4.1% were disallowed, meaning 84.4% made the cut, a very common figure.  Swing is now 2.72%, turnout is 72.54% and the Citizens Party is last by 19 votes.  Next we get the distribution of preferences sometime next week maybe, which will yield some interesting order of exclusion and probably 3PP/4PP data involving One Nation, Legalise Cannabis and the Greens.  

In Search Of Australia's Most Ratioed Political Tweets

Note added Feb 2025: I really enjoyed maintaining this article but stopped updating it early in 2024.  At the moment I don't feel inclined to resume it because of dissatisfaction with Elon Musk's undesirable influence on the platform, which has taken the fun out of ratio-spotting for me.

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(This article is updated regularly - original introductory text below.  To save people the effort of scrolling through to see if a very recent tweet has been added, I will be noting the most recent addition at the top, when I remember that is.  The most recent addition was by ABC Insiders added 5 Mar 24)

Note new rule added 1 Dec 2020 to address tweets with replies disabled.

Revised new rule added 28 Sep 2023 to address tweets with replies disabled partway and regarding quote-tweet changes to above rule.

RULE CHANGES: Effective 1 Jan 2022 new tweets will need to have a ratio over 10:1 to qualify.  They can qualify by either the Replies/Likes method or the Quote Tweet/Retweet method, whichever is higher, subject to at least 100 Replies or Quote Tweets respectively.  However I will only track the latter if (i) replies have been disabled or (ii) I have been notified or otherwise become aware that a given tweet is scoring highly on this score.   Selected tweets with ratios between 5 and 10 will still be added if they are of unusual interest to me - which includes tweets by the left of politics or relating to opinion polling or elections.  )

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Following the 2019 federal election defeat, Labor is having a hard time reappraising its relationship with coal.  The party was smacked senseless in mining towns in Queensland and copped a 9.5% swing against it in Hunter (NSW), where Labor voters deserted to One Nation in droves.  At the same time, mixed messages on Adani probably saw it lose votes in the other direction to the Greens in the Queensland Senate race.  Labor MHR for Hunter, Joel Fitzgibbon, has been particularly keen to reconnect with the coal industry following his own somewhere-near-death experience, but when he tried this on Twitter this week, it mostly did not go down well with the natives:

Fitzgibbon's tweet attracted far more replies than likes.  On Twitter this (with varying definitions, eg including or not including retweets as well as or instead of likes, where to set the cutoff etc) is known as being ratioed. The formula I use is simply (number of replies)/(number of likes), counting anything over 1 as an instance.  While there are cases where tweets attract more replies than likes because they provoke a genuinely long discussion or outpourings of sympathy, these exceptions are very rare indeed (especially in politics).  As a general rule, a tweet that is ratioed is so because it has been piled onto by opponents.  Frequently there is a very good reason for that, but in politics the response can be affected by partisan bias.