2025 Tasmanian Election: Pathways To Government

This article is part of my Tasmanian election 2025 postcount coverage.  

Link to tallyboard thread

Links to individual postcount pages: Bass Braddon Clark Franklin Lyons

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I did write a fair amount about the formation of the next government in the tallyboard thread but it's got somewhat buried in the postcount pages and I wanted to do a new thread to discuss the different pathways to government that might occur after the election. At this time we are starting to see what I suspect will be rather a lot of gnashing and wailing on the pages of The Australian (especially if Labor keeps trying to form government) but a lot of it is clueless.  (Just a note in case anyone thinks I am part of the gnashing and wailing for my tallyboard heading "Tasmania Remains Ungovernable" - nup, it was a reference to "become ungovernable"; I am celebrating the way Tasmanians collectively refused to be told what to do and gave the major parties back another mess.)

As I start this article the numbers sit at Liberal 14 Labor 10 Greens 5 IND 4.  The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers are strongly placed in Lyons and the last seat in Bass is a multi-party scramble with five or six contenders - we will know the outcome of that around August 2.

Meeting the House

The first thing I want to underline is that whatever the numbers, whatever the deals, whatever the deal-shaped objects, Jeremy Rockliff is the incumbent Premier.  As the incumbent he has the clear right by convention to be recommissioned in order to "meet the house" and enable it to decide his destiny.  Also he clearly intends to do it.   It is common for Premiers in minority governments who appear to have lost the election (and it is not clear this is the case for Rockliff yet) to do this, because in theory an MP who was going to back the opposition might change their mind in the middle of the debate, and because decisions about whether a Premier has lost confidence should be made by Parliaments and not by the Governor's reading of MP's letters.  The widespread misreading of Johnston's 2024 letters is a good example of why confidence needs to be determined on the floor.  It is only where the office of Premier is vacant that the Governor must make a provisional decision.  

Media Fail Again Over MRP Reporting

Redbridge/Accent MRP model projects Coalition would be likely to have the most seats if the federal election was held now.  

It does not say Coalition would be likely to have a majority.

It does not predict the result of the election.

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I thought an article was in order to unpack some of what is going on with the recent Redbridge/Accent MRP model and the woeful reporting of it by pretty much every outlet that has so far mentioned it.

MRP models (stands for Multilevel Regression with Poststratification) are not the easiest to explain to lay readers at the best of times, but what we have seen from several media sources reporting on this one goes beyond understandable confusion and into the realms of reckless innumerate false reporting.

What a MRP model does is to build a picture of how certain types of seats are likely to vote based on small samples of all 150 electorates.  Although each seat's sample is uselessly tiny by itself, by assuming that seats that resemble each other in ways that affect voting intention will vote similarly, one can smooth out a lot of the rough edges in the sampling, and samples of a few dozen voters per electorate can build a model that's about as good on a seat-by-seat basis as if those samples were actually a few hundred.  That still isn't very good on a seat-by-seat basis, but on a nationwide basis, the model could capture some general trends about the kinds of seats where each party is likely to be doing well or badly, and about how a party might be going in converting vote share to expected seats.  

Tasmania 2024: Is This Hare-Clark's New Normal?

Before and after ...

TASMANIA 2024: LIB 14 ALP 10 GRN 5 JLN 3 IND 3
Changes from 2021-based notional result: LIB -3 ALP -1 GRN +1 JLN +3

(2021 election for 25 seats LIB 13 ALP 9 GRN 2 IND 1)

(Before 2024 election LIB 11 ALP 8 GRN 2 IND 4)

Counting is over for the remarkable 2024 Tasmanian election and now come the negotiations.  The Jacqui Lambie Network yesterday announced it was expecting to release a confidence and supply agreement within days and independents are also being consulted.  Premier Jeremy Rockliff has stated he intends to request to be sworn back in, agreement to which would be automatic by precedent just to give him a chance to test his numbers even if the Parliament did intend to remove him.  But with Labor seemingly not interested in governing if it relies on the Greens in any fashion, the remaining crossbenchers' choice is to find some way to back the Liberals (at least on confidence votes when they happen) or else back the sort of instability that could see them defending their seats again within months.  If what the crossbenchers actually extract from the government right away (if anything) seems modest or embarrassing, that is one of the reasons for that.

Tasmania 2024: Yet Another Mystery Poll

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage.  Click here for link to main page with links to effective voting advice and seat guides.

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UPDATE 22/3: The Mercury has revealed that this poll was by high-quality pollster Freshwater Strategy and taken about a fortnight ago, and the Fontcast has announced it was THA-commissioned,  New details are also that the Greens are on 13 and Independents 11 in Lyons, the Greens are on 10 in Bass (apparently leaving about 13.7 for independents and others), independents are on 10 in Braddon (leaving about 13.8 for Greens and others) and 28 in Clark (Greens on 20), and in Franklin the Greens are on 13 and independents on 17.  

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Original article

After a reasonably polling-rich start to the 2024 Tasmanian campaign, little polling has been seen recently, with the youngest public poll 16 days out of the field as I write.  This creates a fair amount of uncertainty regarding whether anything has happened with voting intention in what has been a noisy and bumpy campaign.  In particular, has the fact that the Liberals are ahead and are the only party that any poll has had within, say, 5% of a plausible majority result, caused any late bandwagon effect to their side?  (I should note that bandwagons to a party capable of forming majority government don't always happen.  The two elections where conspicuous bandwagons did occur were 2006 and 2018 but for both these elections other factors could be cited.)

Today Sky News has released some figures from a poll by an unnamed pollster and source and have said they have been asked not to name.  As is too often the case Sky have failed to report on the polling dates.  What we have is a purported seat breakdown probably by someone with not much of a clue about how Hare-Clark works (14-9-4-4-4) and primary votes for the majors and JLN only.

The primary votes reported are:

Bass Lib 40.28 ALP 25.87 JLN 10.2 (leaving 23.68)

Braddon Lib 49.24 ALP 14.65 JLN 12.28 (leaving 23.83)

Clark Lib 25.35 ALP 21.37 (leaving an enormous 53.28)

Franklin Lib 33.23 ALP 27.4 JLN 8 (leaving 31.39)

Lyons Lib 38.46 ALP 23.26 JLN 11.2 (leaving 27.18)

Redbridge Says It's A Multi-Party Mess As Voters Flee Liberals

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage - link to main page including links to electorate guides and effective voting advice

Redbridge Lib 33 ALP 29 Green 14 JLN 10 IND/Other 14
My estimate 13-14 Liberal 10-12 ALP 4-5 Green 2-3 JLN 2-6 IND

The second Tasmanian campaign poll by an established and known pollster is out, with Victorian-centred outfit Redbridge releasing its first ever public poll of Tasmanian voting intention.  The sample size is smallish (753 voters) and the sample is spread out over two weeks (Feb 14-28).  

They have also released these combined breakdowns: Bass/Braddon/Lyons Liberal 35 Labor 27 Green 11 JLN 14 Other 14, Clark/Franklin Liberal 30 Labor 31 Greens 18 JLN 4 (ie 8 in Franklin as not running in Clark) Other 17

There is more to come on this poll, including one of the most amusing crosstabs you will ever see, but for now just a quick note on the voting intention numbers.  The Redbridge numbers are significantly worse for the Liberals than both the EMRS public poll and the huge-sample mystery poll of unknown veracity and quality, and very similar to the YouGov poll from January, except that they have treated the Lambie and IND/others votes more normally.  (They've only listed parties in seats they are running in.)

Redbridge have released a seat estimate of 12 Liberal 11 Labor 6 Green 3 JLN 3 Independent based on modelling off mini-samples.  I would expect off these state primaries (based on testing them against my model of the recent EMRS breakdowns) that the Greens would not do quite so well; six seats off 14% would be very lucky.   I got estimates of 13-14 Liberal, 10-12 ALP, 4-5 Green, 2-3 JLN and 2-6 IND for these numbers.  

The Governor's Role In The 2021 Tasmanian Election

The 2021 Tasmanian election campaign (link to main guide) has seen various claims about the role of the Governor Kate Warner, both in calling the election and in resolving the aftermath should the election produce a hung parliament.  Not only are these claims incorrect, but some of them (concerning the calling of the election) are both unfair to the soon-to-retire Governor Warner and by implication anti-democratic.  

Calling the election

The first set of claims that have circulated concerns the Governor's role in calling the election.  The claims being made fall into two groups:

1. That the Governor may have made a mistake in accepting Premier Gutwein's advice to dissolve the Parliament and hold an election.

2. That the Governor made the correct decision, but that she must have relied on false or misleading advice from the Premier in so doing, and would otherwise have not called the election.

I first saw claims of type 1 in an April 2 op ed by Charles Wooley  (paywalled, and need to scroll down).  It's far from being the only thing I disagree with in that article:

What's This Then? Commissioned Poll Claims Liberals In Trouble

 Australia Institute uComms: Liberal 41.4 Labor 32.1 Greens 12.4 IND 11 Other 3.1

If accurate Government would probably lose majority (approx 12-10-2-1 or 12-9-3-1, perhaps more INDs)

Handle with caution - commissioned robopoll, IND figure looks exaggerated

Aggregate-based model of vaguely recent vaguely public polling: approx 13-8-3-1

A week out from the 2021 Tasmanian state election (link to guide main page) there remains no public polling that is less than two months old.  This is a parlous situation and I feel that relying on the media to commission useful polling at a useful time has failed and that for future state elections it will be necessary to look at crowdfunding reputable polling to fill the void a few weeks out.  If, that is, such a thing proves viable.  

Tasmania 2018: What Happens If No Party Wins A Majority?

UPDATE 28 Jan: Parts of this article relating to Labor are now out of date with ABC TV News tonight clearly showing Labor leader Rebecca White saying that Labor will not govern in minority.   See update at bottom of article.

UPDATE 31 Jan: And I missed it at the time but Will Hodgman also on the first day of the campaign said "We will govern in majority or not at all [..]"
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Advance Summary 

1. Despite widespread reports to the contrary, neither major party appears to have given an explicit commitment that they will not govern in minority should no party win a majority at this year's Tasmanian state election.

2.  The leaders have only given various, often ambiguous, commitments that they will only govern "alone" or that they will not govern via deals with, or with the support of, minor parties.

3. A widespread belief that if there is no agreement between parties the Liberals would be forced to keep governing appears to follow instead from a direction from Governor Underwood to Premier Bartlett to form a government in 2010.

4. In theory, a government in such a position could instead resign, but this seems unlikely in practice.

5. In the absence of at least a tacit arrangement between parties, the most likely outcome of a hung parliament would be the Liberal Party continuing in minority unless/until the government was defeated on the floor of the House.

6. For this reason, a parliament without any party holding a majority might (if all parties stuck to their pre-election commitments but no party gave any new ones) be unusually unstable.

EMRS: White Lead Is A Big Problem For Liberals

EMRS August Lib 37 ALP 34 Green 16 Ind 6 JLN 5 Other 1
Interpretation Lib 39 ALP 38 Green 13 Others 10
Modelled seat result based on this poll if election held now: Liberal 11-12 seats Labor 10 Green 3-4 
Warning: Polls are snapshots, not forecasts
Preferred Premier Rebecca White leads Will Hodgman 48-37

A new EMRS poll of state voting intentions is out.  Also see the trend tracker. The party breakdown shows scarcely any change from the May result but the startling outcome is that Rebecca White leads Will Hodgman as preferred premier by the thumping margin of 48% to 37%.

Let's put that in the historic context drawn from other states.  It's very simple: preferred premier is an indicator that usually strongly favours incumbents.  When established state premiers trail as preferred leader in Newspoll (never mind by eleven points), they either lose the next election or are removed by their own party.  EMRS is not Newspoll, and it's possible its continued devotion to landline polling (which I strongly believe to be not fully randomised) has meant its results have become total rubbish.  But if that's not the case, the government should be rather worried.  The suggestion is that so far negative attacks on the new Opposition Leader have either not worked at all or even backfired.  

Opposition Leaders don't lead by eleven points just because people like them.  Historically this sort of imbalance happens when governments are in deep trouble or their leaders are unpopular, or both. Federal governments sometimes recover from it; state governments historically don't. The large lead for Rebecca White is probably also a sign that among the voters who EMRS flags as undecided, or as intending to vote for a minor candidate, there are probably a lot who are leaning towards Labor or likely to direct preferences Labor's way.  It should be noted, for contrast and a bit of sobrietry, that the recent ReachTEL had only a small White lead from a format that doesn't skew to incumbents, so perhaps this EMRS is an outlier.  I am also aware of an unpublished commissioned poll showing Hodgman with a small lead using similar question design to EMRS.