There’s been some discussion on a previous thread about the impact of various issues on preference allocations by The Greens. The point I was making in reviewing Anna Bligh’s “green themed” couple of days is that Labor is appealling over the head of Greens voters – in the knowledge that the party has been caught on the hop by the early poll, has a low membership, and will have difficulty covering booths in many seats. That’s compounded by The Greens’ approach in targetting a small number of inner city seats. In this election, they’re running hard in Indooroopilly and Mount Coot-tha. Despite their historically high vote in the latter seat, Larissa Waters is most unlikely to worry Treasurer Andrew Fraser. Nor do I think sitting MP (and former Labor member) Ronan Lee has any real chance in Indooroopilly.

To some degree, what is being played out here is also a bit of jostling within The Greens for Senate preselection.

There’s a bit of an irony in the media coverage of The Greens. As I was suggesting, the easiest way to get very sparse column inches is to talk preferences. But the ALP isn’t necessarily going to do much bargaining. For one thing, there are a lot of Brisbane seats where the Greens’ vote in 2006 was smaller than the primary margin between the ALP and the Liberals, and OPV has the potential to make these contests into basically first past the post races. In a culture where “Just Vote One” has become ingrained, the exhaustion rate is high, and where The Greens’ organisational deficit allows Labor to try, at any rate, to hoover up second preferences regardless of what the party or candidate recommends, preference allocation isn’t much of a trump card.

The impact of OPV is poorly understood across most of the media.

I’ve been arguing for a long time that The Greens should see state elections as more of a party building exercise rather than chasing what’s currently a chimera – winning a seat.