THE BARTLETT Labor government is facing a swing in the mid-teens and a virtually certain hung parliament after a farcically bad campaign. Two words say all you need to know: “Team Bartlett”. The party that branded itself as a team led by a leader goes to the election as a disorganised confused self-cannibalising mess led by a divisive Premier, despised by supporters of other parties and with a net satisfaction rating of –18.
The Newspoll just released shows Labor on 35, the Liberals on 36.5, and the Greens on 25.5. Newspoll has generally been very accurate in Tasmanian elections and I don’t think they will be far off in this one either. In the last four it has errors of 0, +1 (1 point over actual), +1, +1 for Labor; –1, -0.6, -3, -3 for the Liberals and +3, 0, +2, 0 for the Greens. All these are within the margins of error, but there is a whiff of suggestion (based on the net pattern) that Newspoll tends to very slightly overstate the Labor and Green votes at the expense of the Liberals. If this continued, a breakdown along the lines of 34-38.5-24.5 (a 15% swing with the Greens getting most of the goodies) might be expected. At this stage of play it appears the Bartlett government is seen as being worse than Ray Groom’s and almost as bad as Lowe/Holgate. I have spent much of the last few years arguing that the Greens could not realistically get more than 23 at this election, but it looks like they may actually do a little better than that after an excellent campaign and an endless supply of free hits from the other parties (Labor in particular). The Greens have used much the same leader/team branding as Labor but have made it work because their leader is well regarded across the board and they have not displayed any significant disunity.
Matthew Denholm has discussed likely seat-by-seat results and on that basis come up with 10-10-5 as a likely outcome. (see HERE). Infuriatingly, no seat-by-seat breakdown has yet been released to justify this projection or make the basis for it available for scrutiny so we are in the dark about whether that is an accurate conclusion to draw or not.
A consistent pattern based on EMRS samples has been that two seats are really in play: Braddon which could go 2-2-1 or 2-3-0, and Denison where any of the three parties could miss out on a second seat. In all probability, nine seats for each major party and four for the Greens are relatively secure, and the fight is over the remaining three, with Labor only really in the hunt for one of those. That reduces the range of seriously likely outcomes to these: 10-11-4, 10-10-5, 10-9-6, 9-11-5, 9-10-6. Anything other than these five would be a surprise at this stage.
Of these 10-10-5 now seems the most individually likely, because it can occur in two very plausible ways, depending on how unevenly spread the evidently very high level of Green support is. Every electorate can go 2-2-1 or Braddon can go 2-3-0 with Denison going 2-1-2. In my analysis of the EMRS figures, some assumptions about how far out EMRS’s distributions are likely to be point to 10-10-5 as the most likely total. Others point to 10-9-6 as the sum of all the most likely electorate totals, with 9-10-6 perhaps the more likely net distribution (confusing!) Anyway for now I am predicting 10-10-5, but without great confidence given the shortage of quality data.
Matthew Denholm has claimed that the Green vote in Braddon (targeted by the ALP in its anti-Greens campaign) has slumped but 300 votes per electorate is still a small sample and it would be necessary to see the breakdown to say whether the Green vote has really crashed too far in that electorate.
I will post an update in comments if exact seat figures become available later. This is written very briefly as I have fieldwork commitments this morning.
