Comments on: SA election: highlights of week one

By: The Poll Bludger » Blog Archive » Guten Morgan, Herr Rann

The Poll Bludger » Blog Archive » Guten Morgan, Herr Rann — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 02:33:41 +0000

...] p 1 per cent on the previous poll. If anyone was wondering, the graph of Morgan results in this earlier post features Coalition primary vote figures that were arrived at by adding 1.5 per cent to the Liber [...

By: Gus

Gus — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 09:02:14 +0000

It’s good to see the Family First preference history get a bit of scrutiny. Anthony Green suggests that the 2002 South Australian election showed they can deliver 60% of preferences in seats where they direct preferences to Labor.
He points to the three seats (out of 27) where FFP preferences were directed to the ALP. In those safe ALP seats, preferences went to Labor 63.8% (Elizabeth), 59.0% (Playford) and 53.7% (West Torrens).
Labor won the most “marginal” of those seats, West Torrens, with a 2PP vote of 58.6%.
I suppose you have to be thankful for small mercies but delivering 53.7% (305) of the 568 FFP votes doesn’t demonstrate a particularly disciplined voting bloc at least not when it comes to voting Labor. Overall apparently 66% of FFP preferences flow as directed. This suggests FFP voters are ok with a bit of direction provided the direction is Vote Liberal.
You could speculate that had the Libs been preferenced by FFP in West Torrens they would have got the 66% flow and Tom Koutsantonis would have seen his 2PP drop negligibly to 58.1%.
Labor doesn’t need Family First. If FFP preference the ALP in marginals this time round it will be pure opportunism a case of them jumping on the winning bandwagon and attempting to take credit.
Having tried to turn Fran Bedford’s re-election into a referendum on the Relationships Bill you would expect Andrew Evans to give the legislation speedy passage if the people return her. Well, no you wouldn’t.

By: tom

tom — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 05:08:56 +0000

It appears that there are enough rich middle aged men, whose careers would be destroyed if their illicit affairs became public, that are so angry at the way that Libs treated Brindal that they must just hand the seat to Labor

By: The Poll Bludger » Blog Archive » The one and Unley

The Poll Bludger » Blog Archive » The one and Unley — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 02:27:06 +0000

...] f to India. Anyway, today the paper has run a poll of 516 voters from a seat identified in Tuesday’s post as a potential upset Labor win, the inner city electorate of Unley which the Liberals hold wi [...

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 00:48:11 +0000

Hear hear, Cameron.

And good luck with the Hartley campaign. SA parliament will be a much better place without Joe Scalzi.

By: Cameron smith

Cameron smith — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:57:39 +0000

its quite clear “left wing FFP” is that ray guy that was crapping on about the exact same thing not two weeks ago… pretty sad making up a second name to try and prove something.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:04:49 +0000

Again with the misleading FFP propaganda. The Relationships Bill is not a “watering down” of marriage. All together now: marriage is federal law, the Relationships Bill is for SA law ONLY.

If you had been paying attention, “left-wing FFP”, you should have preferenced the Libs at the last election as Labor clearly set out its plan to introduce this Bill in its 2002 policy platform.

This apparent “groundswell” of so-called “left-wing” FF supporters seems pretty meek – Frances Bedford, FF Enemy #1, looks set to be returned with an increased margin in Florey.

By: dovif

dovif — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 12:13:17 +0000

I do not know where the notion that the Labor party is better for social justice etc comes from.

For Example Beasley, whom labor proclaim as the “most decent” human to never led Australia, have so far launch a leadership challenge when Latham was in Hospital, he waited for his enemy to be weak to go for the kill. When his other enemy and former loyal deputy is under pressure from Beasley’s faction, Beasley show how “decent” he is by not protecting Simon Crean

The facts are they are all politicians, and they will try and win vote however they can and morals have very little to do with it and you should be most weary with the ones who want to be nice.

While I do not like Howard or the Liberal party much, us in the eastern states knows what the Labor party is really about, for example in NSW where the Labor has been in power for too long. We no longer have public transport/hospital/police/education system. This is disprite of NSW receiving record revenue.

The reason being that in NSW we now have record public servant, not more police/doctors. Since Labor is 90% ex-union official, they employs more union member,k whose dues are re-contributed to the ALP’s coffers. So much for labor being the party who can deliver services/being better for the poor.

Sorry SA, you will figure out what the labor party is about in 8 year

By: Antony Green

Antony Green — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 12:01:39 +0000

I wait to see how FFP go. Their vote at the Federal election in S.A. was the same as at the previous state election (taking account of non-contests in 2002), and their preferences were only slightly stronger to the Liberal Party. I for one don’t buy some of the mis-information that gets spread around by both supprters and opponents of Family First.

And it is amazing how many wrong facts get reported about Family First. On Tuesday, the Australian reported the Party got as high as 14% in Queensland at the Federal election. I check. They got 6.4% in Groom, and under 4.5% in every other seat.

For all the talk of a huge wave of support for Family First, Fred Nile and the Call to Australia in fact did considerably better at the 1981 and 1984 NSW elections. A vote of over 9% in 1981, twice what Family First achieved in the S.A. upper house in 2002.

The real interest is which seats (if any) Family First choose to direct preferences to Labor. The 2002 South Australian election showed they can deliver 60% of preferences in seats where they direct preferences to Labor. In a seat like Light, a decision to direct preferences to Labor would guarantee a Labor victory. It will be interesting to examine the register of how-to-votes.

By: Left wing FFP

Left wing FFP — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 11:47:09 +0000

As an FFP voter, who has always preferenced Labor candidates, I would like to kill the myth that all FFP voters are “converts” from the Liberal party. Many hold quite strongly to the social justice tennants of the left as reflected in socio economic policy. This is reenforced if anybody has bothered to inspect the spectra of FFP voters on the Bryan Palmers Politics Test. In fact in social and economic policy they are the only centrist party. The thing that distiguishes them from the others is their conservative stance on traditional family (largely faith based) values, which they hold with a passion.

So this year I will be preferencing the Liberal candidate, for the first time in my 32 year voting life, as a protest against the dilution of marriage consequential to the Relationships Bill, in the hope that this will send a directed message to Labour in advance of the pending final vote on this bill. And there are many more like me. So don’t presume for one moment that an FFP vote will simply be “returned” to the Liberal party from whence it came.