Age And Canberra Are Still Killing State Governments

 Advance Summary

1. One of the most important factors in state election outcomes is the influence of whether the governing party at state level is in Government or Opposition federally.  To be the same party as the federal Government is a disadvantage.

2. Another important factor is the age of the state government, with governments tending to do worse the longer they have been in office.  

3. In the last six years, all same-party state governments that have faced elections have lost seats in significant numbers.

4. In the meantime, two of the three opposite-party governments gained seats (though one very old opposite-party government was defeated, but with a 2PP swing to it.)

4. It might seem logical that if the federal government at one state election was the same as at the previous election for that state, then this factor would not generate further swings against an incumbent state government of the same party, or further protection for one of the opposite party.

5. However, the evidence suggests otherwise.  It appears that more voters continue turning against state governments that are of the same party as the federal government, over successive elections, even when the same federal government had been in office at the state election before.

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!

ACT Election Live and Post-Count Comments

Labor minority government returned - ALP 12 Liberal 11 Green 2.  
This was also the interim outcome

Postcount Comments

(NB Through the week I will be posting comments here only in the evening, because of work commitments)

What happens now is that votes are gradually entered into the computer and a series of interim preference distributions are released, leading up to the final "button press" which is expected to happen next Saturday.  As we get closer to the full count these should become more accurate as an indication of what will happen, but for the time being it is useful to keep an eye on differences between the current primary count (which is based on more votes) and the primary count for the interim distributions, and also to bear in mind that the counting of postal votes may favour the Liberals.

Saturday: It's over!  In Brindabella Nicole Lawder (Lib) has won the final seat from Labor's Angie Drake by 553 votes.  Drake outlasted Steven Bailey by 307 votes at the second-last exclusion, but had Bailey survived that exclusion he would have lost anyway, probably by more than Drake did.  In Ginninderra the Ginninderra Effect has indeed struck again - Labor with 2.74 quotas at the final exclusion have won three seats while the Greens with 0.78 at the same point have missed out.  This is because two of the Labor candidates had a very evenly split share of their party's votes, and indeed it wasn't all that close between them and the Greens (701 votes for Tara Cheyne over Esguerra with Gordon Ramsay actually ahead of Cheyne at that point).  In Murrumbidgee the Greens are up by 800.  The other two electorates were decided by thousands.

EMRS: Liberals Rebound With Abbott Dead Weight Gone

EMRS: Liberal 48 Labor 25 Green 20 Ind 7
Interpretation: Liberal 49 Labor 29 Green 17 Other 5
Result of poll if election held now: Liberal Majority Government (probably 14-7-4)
Aggregate of all state polling: Lib 13 ALP 8 Green 4 (next most likely is 13-9-3)

A new EMRS poll of Tasmanian state voting intentions has been released and this one shows a massive eight-point shift to the Hodgman Liberal government since the previous poll in August. (Also see the trend tracker.) Really not a great deal has happened at state level since the August poll and I would interpret as much of that shift as isn't just random sample noise as being mainly down to federal factors.  The removal of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister has led to a general improvement in what little state Coalition polling has been seen around the country since the switch.  In the case of Tasmania, this is the Hodgman Government's best result from this pollster since a very similar result just after its election, and suggests it would retain its majority with one or maybe two seat losses.

EMRS polling tends to skew to the Greens and "Independent" and against Labor, so I interpret the poll as a little less dire to Labor than it seems.  All the same, the state swing is on paper only enough for Labor to pick up one seat in Braddon and one in Franklin.  In the case of the one in Franklin, a 1.3% swing is required, and while this poll points to about a 2% statewide swing, the Liberals would go into the election with three Franklin incumbents to Labor's one (compared with two each last time).  Thus I don't think Labor would regain that seat based on this poll.

New South Wales: Decisive Win For Coalition

Seats apparently won: Coalition 52 Labor 32 Green 3 Ind 2

(Includes some seats not absolutely certain)

Seats in doubt and not included in list above:

East Hills: likely Liberal retain

Gosford: Labor leading

The Entrance: likely Labor win

Lismore: National vs Green, Nationals currently slightly favoured

Expected outcome Coalition 53-54 Labor 34 Green 3-4 Ind 2

Normal Programming Resumes

The Liberal-National coalition under Premier Mike Baird has won the NSW state election comfortably and decisively despite a large swing back from the massive margin in the 2011 poll.  On present counting, both the primary votes and the seat distribution will finish up about as predicted before the election.  The main surprise is a strong seat performance by the Greens, who without much increasing their statewide vote have won three or perhaps four seats.

New South Wales Roundup: Is Even This A Bridge Too Far?

Time to kick off some NSW state election analysis, much of it in broad and general terms.  I haven't done the usual seat-modelling yet; that will follow in a week or two.

Feds Will Destroy Everything

A common theme on this website is the massive influence of which party holds power federally on state elections.  While this impact is not obvious in every election, and isn't even present in a few, there is a long-established pattern that is the very first thing anybody looking at state elections needs to know.  Once a party has been in government federally for any length of time at all, it starts tending to shed seats in state elections.  This process continues until it has lost most if not all of the states, and not long after that it will probably lose federally as well.  A new federal government comes in with massive majorities in many states, and then starts losing those.  Rinse and repeat.

Since the Liberal-National Coalition came to power federally it has faced four state elections, winning only Tasmania where an ancient Labor government could not escape retribution for a deeply disliked coalition with the Greens.  This happened while the federal government was still relatively new.  However, the Coalition has also lost office in Victoria and Queensland and failed to win in South Australia.  The Victorian result was no surprise, SA was a vaguely forgiveable case of electoral geography 1, 2PP vote 0, but the Queensland result was an earthquake.  The government that had won office with a record majority only three years earlier, almost wiping its predecessor out of Parliament, was sent packing (by one seat) with a 14% swing against it.  The LNP's aggressive and divisive born-to-rule approach in office had done it no favours but things would have been very different had Julia Gillard still been in the Lodge.

With declining levels of rusted-on adherence to both major parties, there's just no such thing any more as a win so big that you cannot possibly waste it in a single term.  That applies especially when the prevailing wind from Canberra is not in a party's favour.  In fact, the idea that a seat margin at one election determines the seat margin at the next is overrated anyway - what winning big really does is just gives a party a lot of seats in which it has new personal votes.  It turns out that in NSW even that doesn't apply much this time around.  So is there such a thing as an election that is too hard to lose, or is nothing actually safe in state politics anymore?

Fisher, State By-Elections and Federal Drag

Nat Cook (ALP) provisionally won, defeating Dan Woodyatt (Ind) by 226 votes at the critical exclusion point then Heidi Harris (Lib) by 23 votes.  This is currently being recounted, with Cook defeating Woodyatt by 219 in the recount and defeating Harris by nine votes. Cook will now take her seat and Labor will have an outright majority.

The win may well be challenged in the Court of Disputed Returns.  In this case Labor will hold the seat until such time as the court decides the case.  The court could confirm the win, order a by-election or declare the Liberals to have won the seat.  

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Postcount Introduction

This article follows late counting in the South Australian Fisher by-election.  As at the close of counting on the night this seemed like a very likely win for the ALP who had a 52.1% two-party preferred lead against the Liberals.  Even with a very large percentage of prepolls such leads are very rarely caught.  Although there was still some threat from the independent Dan Woodyatt, I thought I should place the at that stage apparently likely ALP win in its historic context.  That was the theme of the original article. 

What Kills State Governments: Age Or Canberra?

Note (2020): An updated sequel to this article has been published, see Age And Canberra Are Still Killing State Governments

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Advance Summary:

1. This article examines the influence of two factors on the fates of state governments at elections: the age of the state government and whether the same party is in office federally.

2. Results since 1969 show a moderately strong influence of which party is in office federally, but only a very weak impact of age of government.  A state government that is of the same party as the federal government is generally strongly disadvantaged.

3. In the 1970s and 1980s two very old state governments were repeatedly re-elected.

4. Since 1989, both the age of a state government and whether or not the same party is in office federally have been strongly connected to state results.  

5. It is rare, perhaps increasingly rare, for a state government that is the opposite party to the federal government at the time to lose.  When this happens there are very strong reasons for it, with leadership instability a common factor.

6. The strength of the impact of federal politics on state politics can predict otherwise surprise results like the 2014 South Australian election win by Labor.

7.  Furthermore, if the federal government is of the same party as the state government then there is a strong relationship between the popularity of the federal government and the fate of the state government.

8. Even without any knowledge of events or polling in this parliamentary term, models based on the history of these two issues still imply that a change of government in Victoria is likely.

Victorian Liberals: Going, Going ...

This is an overview of the state of play in the leadup to the Victorian election, prompted by recent polling.  I expect to make more detailed modelling attempts much closer to that poll.  In summary, this article argues that the Baillieu-turned-Napthine government's first-term status provides no argument against the reasons why it could lose.  While the defeat of this government is not yet a done deal, psephologically, it has at least one foot in the grave.  There is still time to climb out, but it won't be easy.

One of the themes I've been following on this site is the way in which federal politics contaminates state voting intention.  As noted in Is Campbell Newman Actually In Trouble? life gets much harder for state governments when they have a party of their own persuasion in power in Canberra, especially if the federal party isn't polling well.  This is also well covered in Peter Brent's current piece, Dog Days For State Conservatives.  Of the four conservative state governments elected while Labor was in office federally, all are showing signs of wear and tear.  We still have astonishingly sparse state polling from Western Australia since Colin Barnett polled a very poor personal result, but it wouldn't be at all surprising to see Labor in the lead there soon.  The NSW polling picture is still re-sorting itself after the shock loss of a Premier, and in Queensland the LNP have only a narrow lead (Queensland polling updates added) and are still struggling greatly to build their vote share to the level needed to make their unpopular Premier's own seat safe.