By-elections of the 44th Australian Parliament (2013-2016)

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I think it'll be 51-49 ALP... but that's only an educated estimate.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I'm going to be a pessimist and guess 51.5 LNP. I do think it'll be very close though, within 5 or 6 points.

Are there any times in which you aren't pessimistic?

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I'm surprised by the lack of leaked internal polling I've seen for Griffith.

I'm not - internal polls are always leaked for a purpose, and sometimes I doubt whether the poll was actually in the field... If Labor is ahead by more than the MoE, nobody is going to want to leak it - Labor would fear that it might let their voters become complacent, and the Liberals would fear that it would discourage their voters from voting for them. Only if internal polls were especially close, would there be any point in a leak.

Exactly - what I've heard is rumbles (and before hifly jumps on me, yes, very vague rumbles) that Butler is ahead (not miles ahead by means - in fact the exact quote was "her primary vote looks pretty strong and Glasson's primary is weaker than last year"). The fact that there have been no leaks of internal polling and the only message is that both are saying "it's a very close race" kind of verifies this to me.

I don't see this being a 6-10% drubbing, but a lot of it comes down to preference flows too. Both are desperately trying to avoid seepage to smaller parties and risking vote exhaustion, with 11 candidates on the ballot, that is a risk.

Context from Antony Green...

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If the swing was on the average, that would make Griffith the second safest ALP seat in QLD after Blair and roughly on par with Rankin.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I say 51-49 Butler, the sheer number of candidates and unpredictable preference flows make this really hard to call.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

My final prediction is 53.4% ALP

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I don't know if Labor's plan to make this a referendum on Tony Abbott is smart...in the highly likely event that the Libs do better than last time surely that would show that their opinion on Tony Abbott has improved then according to this logic?

All by-elections in Australia turn into referenda on the Government. The more I think about it, the less sure I am there will be any improvement on the Lib performance from September.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I think I'll go with 50.5% LNP on this one, even though the internal apparently shows the ALP on 53%. The Liberals might just be trying to downplay expectations by claiming they have "no chance".

Thank God, if you'd picked the ALP, I would have been worried.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Polls have closed in Griffith

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I don't pay attention until 5-10% of votes are in.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I'm calling it...

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I wish I'd have kept my original final prediction of 52.6% ALP

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

My gut reaction was that there would be a swing to the LNP, but I over-thought it and pushed it out, but it will be interesting to see where postals go, because it doesn't look at the moment, like they'll be as strong for Glasson as they were in September.

My base views on this was
* Griffith is not a naturally ALP seat (affluent, suburban, very small non-English speaking pop'n), if it were in Sydney or Melbourne, it would be a Liberal seat.
* Rudd's personal vote hadn't completely evaporated in 2013 but it's those kinds of personal votes that keep seats when they normally wouldn't hold
* Glasson had more money and had been campaigning for 18 months for the seat - 2 months ago, no one had any idea of who Butler was...
* Plus, electorates tend to punish those who force them back to the polls too soon, look at the Cunningham by-election in 2002... although it should be noted that the swing to Labor in the Wannon by-election in 1983 after Fraser quit was bigger than the TPP swing last night.

So I was of two minds - I saw plenty of reasons for a swing against the ALP (albeit not enough to lose it) and at the same time, found it difficult to see how the LNP could out-do September with everything going for it.

I think there's a reasonable argument to look at the actual results, and the votes for minors/independents are equal and more so, than the primary vote slippage from the ALP. Which explains why the ALP is down 1.6% on primary, but 0.7% on TPP.

So it's not anything for either party to crow about... and Brandis' "well, the ALP would need 58-59% of the TPP for this to not be a disaster for them"... ugh

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Glasson is refusing to concede.... despite needing 70% of remaining votes to win... Glasson won postals 52-48%, but Rudd won the other categories. However, I'd note that there were no absentees this year and those who wanted to vote absentee would either have to pre-poll or postal and it looks like the pre-polls that are out have a slight swing to the ALP.

So... Glasson frankly looks ridiculous.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

So... Glasson frankly looks ridiculous.

Not as ridiculous as Butler who had a reasonably piss poor performance when you consider the national level of support for the government.
Looking at the headlines this seems like a mild win for the LNP.

I outlined the internal seat and demographic challenges. It wasn't as simple as all that and you know it.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Glasson has conceded.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The High Court has voided the WA Senate results and ordered a fresh election for all six seats

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I would be very very surprised if the Lib primary goes anywhere else but down, everyone else will likely go up... but I think people might be over-estimating the PUP.

I think we'll end up
3 Lib
2 ALP
1 GRN

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

I think there will be drops in the votes for micro parties, the electorate won't want to mess about with protest votes.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

We've had the first attempt at a poll for the WA Senate vote...

The results are as expected, massively increased support for the usual suspects, collapses in the smaller parties... keep in mind the quota for a seat is 16.7%

This is primary vote only.

LNP: 45% (+6 on 2013)
ALP: 32% (+5  " ")
GRN: 12% (+3 " ")
PUP:  1% (-5 " ")
Others: 10% (-10 " ")

Based on this, the LNP would have 2 quotas outright and be short of the third by 5%, the ALP would be 1.4% short of 2 quotas. The Greens would struggle on those numbers (almost 5% short of a quota)... but it depends on the make up of preference flows from the micro-parties.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

We've had the first attempt at a poll for the WA Senate vote...

The results are as expected, massively increased support for the usual suspects, collapses in the smaller parties... keep in mind the quota for a seat is 16.7%

That would be the quota if there were five seats up for election, but since there are six seats the quota is in fact 16.7% -- under the numbers you posted 3 LNP, 2 ALP, 1 Green would almost be assured.

Surely you meant than the quota is 1/7 (6 seats), so 14.3%?

Ugh - yes, shouldn't teleconference and type at the same time...

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Is there any chance the ALP will bump Joe Bullock down to its 2nd or 3rd slot?

No... virtually none.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The Senate election tickets are out and the ALP/Green tickets will preference each other before PUP and the Libs.

It leans me to suggest a 3 Lib 2 ALP 1 GRN outcome is more and more likely.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

My very tentative prediction for the Senate election ...

I'm tentative largely because it's an Australian Senate election, therefore the possible combination of result is nuts.

LNP - Primary vote 41% - eventual quotas: 3
ALP - Primary vote 31% - eventual quotas: 2
GRN - Primary vote 12% - eventual quotas: 1
PUP - Primary vote 7%
Others - Primary votes 9%

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

He's a bone-headed moron

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Ha! So it's us with the problem?