Crikey

My colleague the Poll Bludger drew attention this morning to the latest Newspoll on state voting intention in New South Wales, which shows premier Kristina Keneally with strong personal ratings but still trailing badly on voting intention.

The Australian‘s coverage, however, is interesting in its own right. Before even telling the reader what the poll numbers are, it proclaims that “In NSW, the Keneally government is dead in the water.”

Now, I can’t object to someone reporting an opinion poll with that phrase, because I’ve done so myself. In a blog post on 18 June 2007 (let me know if you can find it in the Crikey archive, because I couldn’t) I reviewed the Howard government’s poll results under the heading “Is the government dead in the water?”, answering the question with a guarded “yes”:

Things could change; nothing is impossible. But there is simply no precedent in modern Australian history for a government coming back from such a dire position.

But that was only five months out from an election, not eleven; the quantity of polling evidence was much greater; the Howard government was trailing 57-43, not 55-45; and the electoral boundaries were not weighted in its favor the way they are for the NSW government.

The Keneally government would have a reasonable chance of winning an election on a 52-48 deficit, a movement of only 3% from its current standing. Anyone who thinks they can write off the chance of a 3% movement over almost a year has got no business writing about politics.

For the record, I don’t think such a movement is likely; a Coalition victory is much the more probable result. But it’s some distance away from the certainty that the Australian would have you believe.

I’ve left Denison until last, partly because that’s the way I’ve travelled the state, from north to south, but also because it’s possibly the most interesting electorate.

Denison is central and suburban Hobart, west of the Derwent, from Austins Ferry in the north to the northern edge of Kingston in the south. It’s the only electorate with no rural component. It is also the Greens’ best electorate and the Liberals’ worst.

Pre-poll voting in central Hobart

In 2006 the ALP won three seats and the others one each: the Liberals finished on 1.6 quotas, only narrowly ahead of the Greens on 1.48. In 2002 the Greens had actually outvoted the Liberals, although neither won a second seat.

At the beginning of the campaign one would have said Denison will definitely return two ALP, a Liberal and a Green, with the fifth seat up for grabs between all three. But in light of what’s happened in the last few weeks, and the fact that the opinion polls just seem to get worse for Labor, we can pretty much reduce that to a straight Liberal vs Green contest.

As I explained this morning, the figures in Newspoll (assuming a uniform swing) would put the Greens slightly ahead. And in fact they don’t even need to be ahead: if it comes out, for example, at Labor 2.5 quotas, Liberals 1.8 and Greens 1.7, the Greens could reasonably hope to overtake the Liberals on Labor preferences.

At the moment, however, Labor looks like being much closer to two quotas than two and a half, and could conceivably slip below two. If that happens, the Liberal-Green contest becomes moot: they could each win two seats, leaving Labor with just one.

For the Greens, winning two seats in one electorate – and Denison is clearly their best chance, although Franklin is not impossible – is the real breakthrough moment. Until they can do that, they will always be a minor party; if they break through, they can set their sights on parity with the other two.

Labor’s troubles in Denison are compounded by the fact that it’s the electorate of the premier, David Bartlett, and there is serious talk that he could lose his own seat. One of the new Labor candidates is Scott Bacon, son of former Labor premier Jim Bacon (just as one of the Liberals is the son of 1990s Liberal premier, Ray Groom – hey, it’s Tasmania), and he is streets ahead of the others on visible publicity.

Mention should also be made of Andrew Wilkie, former Green and former ONA whistleblower, who is running as an independent and has drawn first place on the ballot paper. No-one gives him much chance of winning, but he could provide a handy bundle of preferences to the Greens, and the fact that he is the only independent of note in the state highlights how completely the three parties have come to dominate the picture. (Socialist Alliance is also running, for light relief.)

If you read the Australian for the commentary rather than the numbers, you’ll think that today’s Tasmanian Newspoll says that “The most likely result” is “Liberal and Labor stalled on 10 seats each and the Greens rising from four to five seats.”

But that’s not quite true. While 10-10-5 is a very likely result, Newspoll actually says that Labor will retain a narrow plurality, 10-9-6.

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