Blogging Senate forecasts and results in the WA Senate re-election until officially declared.

Twitter: @AU_Truth_Seeker


Tuesday 3 September 2013

Tasmania - a close escape from "unrepresentative swill"

By  more good luck than good management, it appears likely that the swing from ALP to Liberal is so strong in Tasmania as to push the Liberal Party up to 43%+, but not so strong that the ALP vote drops below 29%. Together with the fact the greens will almost certainly poll 15%+, this will ensure minor parties are thankfully locked out of the Tasmanian Senate lottery.

So the final Tasmanian Senate outcome will likely be:

- 3 Liberal
- 2 ALP
- 1 Green

In the event of either party's primary vote falling beyond these levels, preferences will lead almost certainly to Family First Party being elected at the expense of the party whose vote dips the most. Kevin Bonham touches on this in his blog.

Tasmanian preference flows
ALP gets: SXP
LNP gets: Country Alliance
Green gets: Pirate
FF gets: Liberal Democrats, Rise up Australia, Palmer, Christians, DLP, Shooters&Fishers, Aus Independents, Senator Online, Katter, No Carbon Tax, Fishing&Lifestyle, Stable Population, Smokers, Stop the Greens.

I've got nothing against minor parties. In fact, the presence of a diversity of views in parliament enriches our democracy. I remain fundamentally opposed to the current system which is being manipulated by micro-party barons, as the system has the potential to reward luck and dodgy side deals instead of popularity. The current system does not guarantee that community views on policies are equally represented in parliament.

Thankfully, reasonable estimates of votes in Tasmania will not result in the election of "unrepresentative swill".

8 comments:

  1. Family first gets up in about 2/3 of a set of Monte Carlo based runs in the region of the current vote. In reality, the likelihood of this outcome is somewhat reduced as leakage from the BTL will reduce this somewhat.

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  2. What % swing ALP-Lib are you assuming? I just get a straight 2-3-1 split.

    What % minor party vote are you assuming?

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    1. Swing in Tasmania is looking around 15-17% in the north, about 10% in the south; basically a return to normal and a touch further. Greens votes are looking like 20% in the south and about 7% in the north.

      I'm anticipating a high 'other' vote this time around, possibly as high as 10%. It's not simple guessing as KAP and PUP especially are unknown factors, and the effect of the proliferation of parties is unknown - whether that leads to a higher other, whether that leads to a significantly reduce ATL vote.

      So my basis is around 45-32-13-10. From there I'm running a variance of 20% of their primary vote on the three major parties, and higher on the micros to produce a good spread of starting points.

      Muppet: The LDP really needs things to go unaccountably well for them to get up. They have few contributors while FF is still in the race, and most of those require them to rack up a pretty solid (say 3%+) vote on their own to stay in long enough to start to collect. Even with Column B and the potential for people to presume they are the Libs, I can't see that occurring. There is no campaign being run to speak on in the North; there may be something I'm unaware of down south.

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    2. Great comments!
      I have slightly tweaked my model to apply a proportional reduction in Greens vote, based on National. I'm getting 44-28-16-12.

      In terms of the variance, as we get closer to election day I'll be modelling 5% on the majors, 50% on the minors and 15% on the Greens.

      I'll have some results up in the next couple of days.

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    3. There are a few local polls around - see Kevin's place for most of the relevant info. I suspect 16 is more the upper limit rather than the mean for the Greens in Tassie - a range from 10-16 seems possible, with 13-15 likely. I'd suggest leaving 20% variation in there for the Green vote.







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  3. I don't think the Green vote will hold that much after the departure of Bob Brown. I think it's also very questionable whether the Liberals will primary three quotas on their own given so many micro-rights luring voters away. I think this race is still very much alive.

    The LDP didn't run in Tasmania last election (and 2007 was not representative as they used an acronym not a name) so that's another wild card. If they primary above 2% (as they did in NSW and QLD) then there's a chance they could get in front of FF and be in the race for the last spot. If there is a last spot available.

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  4. I'm guessing LDP at 1% in Tas - 2% might be too far. Last time, they got 1.2 in WA, 0.6 in SA. And there's also more minor parties running this time too.

    I'm assuming a straight 17% reduction in Greens vote nationwide, in line with BludgerTrack numbers.

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  5. Hi TS - can you run your simulations with both Fishing parties on 1%?

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