Election 2012. Anyone who says they know what's going to happen is a liar

“Mr Seselja said this morning that he would not rule out a re-think of his election pledge to repeal the Labor-Greens ban on plastic shopping bags”

I read this and immediately thought of Mr Gillespie on RA and laughed outloud in my office and had people staring at me. Is that sad?

Just another cheery Monday…

By the way, that is a beautiful image up the top. Seed on barren ground? Who killed Snugglepot?

c_c said :

If the Greens and Labor had a sense of humour, they could elect Zed Chief Minister, but he’d have to lead a Labor-Green agenda.

Her ego won’t let that happen

Some people on Sunday were asking what Katy Gallagher meant when she said they were getting back to work after a break on Sunday morning. To clarify, members terms ended when the election was called, but the retain executive office until the new CM is in place. So technically she and the other ministers should be back at work.

There’s actually no rule that requires the Chief Minister to be from the party that holds government, that’s only a convention. If the Greens and Labor had a sense of humour, they could elect Zed Chief Minister, but he’d have to lead a Labor-Green agenda.

johnboy said :

WIN’s Luke Dufficy has tweeted a useful list of the ongoing tussles:

Hunter/Henry, Bresnan/Wall, Corbell/Fitzharris, Lee/Doszpot, Rattenbury/Le Couteur, Berry/Bourke

As much as it pains me to say this, I hope Corbell gets up. He doesn’t deserve to go out this way.

Agreed. I did a lot of volunteering for the Libs this time around, and I always make an effort to say hi to the candidates/MLAs from other parties. Corbell was a really decent bloke, happy to have a chat and joked around with me about giving him my first preference. I couldn’t say the same about Katy or Angie Drake – both nasty, arrogant and unpleasant to be around. Kula was especially nice – chatted with him for about half an hour and got along great. Didn’t meet Barr or Fitzharris, and Mathews was decent enough.

rosscoact said :

Please, Please, Please let the Libs get in to govern in a minority government. This has so many upsides and no downsides as far as I can see.
1 A fresh government is the change we need.
2 The greens and labor will stop them from doing anything too stupid
3 We won’t have to put up with Zed doing an Abbott and whining like a consumptive tart about how ‘we wuz robbed’
4 We can have a term of Liberal mismanagement to make Labor look good

I reckon you might be on to something here, along with watto23 @ #51. My feeling (and I guess that’s all it is, along with most other punters here) is that the Libs got their result off the back of a scare campaign and probably that general feeling for a change of government that seems to happen every so often, regardless of the overall political leaning of the jurisdiction. Moving Zed to Brindabella probably helped, too. I don’t reckon it could have been a whole lot else. You could spit thru their policy platform, which contained nothing substantive on a raft of issues, and almost none of it properly costed.

I thought the dog act of the night was Zed beginning his speech over the top of Meredith’s, knowing that Aunty would switch coverage. This couldn’t possibly have been a mistake.

If I was boss of the world, or maybe just advising the two Greens, my feeling would be to let the Tories form government. But do so on the condition that they keep the rates reforms, which are incredibly sensible economic policy (if poorly sold and defended), and include a parliamentary agreement ensuring other parties get a go at chairing committees and have access to government officials for economic modelling etc, much like the current setup we’ve had for the last four years which has served all MLAs, Libs included, pretty well. Then let the more politically astute members of the ALP and the Greens keep the bastards honest for the next four years. If things get really tropical the ALP and Greens can simply form a new government. Having that in the back of Zed’s mind mightn’t be a bad thing.

Labor + Greens = no plastic bags.
Libs + Greens = no plastic bags.

Conclusion: situation hopeless.

My opinion is that it is still too early to predict the outcome with more than 40,000 primary votes to be counted. Maybe we will know by Friday as candidates are eliminated and preferences distributed.
The elephant in the room is the preferences of the Bullet Train and Ungrouped. These swinging voters did not trust the major parties so are making them sweat for the result. Maybe this is a protest vote!

It will be interesting to see second choice of Pocock voters and they knew he had no chance.

Patience grasshoppers!

….or we could just do it all again 🙂

WIN’s Luke Dufficy has tweeted a useful list of the ongoing tussles:

Hunter/Henry, Bresnan/Wall, Corbell/Fitzharris, Lee/Doszpot, Rattenbury/Le Couteur, Berry/Bourke

justin heywood said :

Kiron2222 said :

“crypto-marxist obsessions.”

The Greens are Centrist/Social Democratic party. Their Economics fall very much in line with Orthodox Economics, much more than Labor or The Liberals. Greens Voters also are typically far more knowledgeable on Economics than voters of the other parties. Greens Economic policies are more in line with Henry, The IMF and The Treasury than the Major parties.

The Political Compass, which has looked at all the parties policies, have squarely put Greens as Centrists boarding on Social Democrats. Labor are Neo-Liberals and hard Conservatives.

The fact you consider a Centrist party “Marxists” (I believe you are using Marxist in the “Conservative” sense in being the exact opposite of what Marxism actually is) just means your political baseline is in the far-right, along with much of Australia at the moment.

If the Greens are economically bad, then the IMF, Henry, The Treasury and pretty much every classical economics book is also incorrect.

If the Greens are “Centrist’, then who the hell is to the left of them (apart from Socialist Alternative)?

How can you be centrist, when you are nowhere near the centre?

As for your unsupported claim that Green voters are much more knowledgeable about economics than other voters, I dispute that as well with an unsupported assertion of my own. I was at uni with a lot of Green supporters, and I work in a field where many of the people I deal with are Greens. Their economic knowledge usually extends no further than helping out on a stall at the local craft market.

Why is it that those who style themselves as ‘Progressive’ have often not progressed far enough to realise that others may challenge their world view on quite legitimate grounds?

Re the economics claim, there was a large poll done in australia that asked voters on current issues, how economics work etc (questions about, for example, how the RBA works). I’m trying to remember where I saw it. The Fin Review? Anyway, all voters came out pretty badly in terms of understanding, but it’s true the Green voters came out in front.

That’s not exactly a reference, but it’s definitely been done. I’ll google around to see if I can find it again.

Please, Please, Please let the Libs get in to govern in a minority government. This has so many upsides and no downsides as far as I can see.
1 A fresh government is the change we need.
2 The greens and labor will stop them from doing anything too stupid
3 We won’t have to put up with Zed doing an Abbott and whining like a consumptive tart about how ‘we wuz robbed’
4 We can have a term of Liberal mismanagement to make Labor look good

I suspect the reason the Canberra Times poll got it so wrong is that polling is totally unreliable under Hare-Clarke type electoral systems. You might as well flip a coin and predict a result that way

It’s really designed for elections under single member electorate systems or presidential elections – and even then they’re pretty unreliable at predicting results unless you run a series of polls, which of course didn’t happen in this case.

Still, the fact that they got even headline trends wrong is very worrying, and points to a possible in-built sampling bias.

None of this excuses CT from running their headlines. Seasoned editors should know better – and ought to at least appear more impartial

It would be amusing if the greens offered support for the liberals as long as they keep the stamp duty tax reforms :-). Those same reforms used as a scare tactic which IMO was the most likely reason they did so well. My main concern is not that the liberals polled well, but that their campaign was based on the scare campaign. I can only cringe at what Abbott might do next year. Of course I’m also dumbfounded by the lack of response from labor on the triple rates crap.

Androyd said :

Alistair Coe the top ranking Liberal in Ginninderra. Sweet Jesus.

He couldn’t even voice his own ads, but he’s the voice for Ginninderra.

Alistair Coe the top ranking Liberal in Ginninderra. Sweet Jesus.

GuruJ said :

What the hey JB, let’s see how good my spreadsheet skills are. Here’s my prediction –

Ginninderra: Alistair Coe, Mary Porter, Vicki Dunne, Chris Bourke, Meredith Hunter
Molonglo: Katy Gallagher, Jeremy Hanson, Giulia Jones, Andrew Barr, Shane Rattenbury, Meegan Fitzharris, Elizabeth Lee
Brindabella: Zed Seselja, Brendan Smyth, Joy Burch, Mick Gentleman, Andrew Wall

Elizabeth Lee is a big call, but she’s picking up most of the preferences from people who don’t want to vote for sitting candidates in Molonglo. Same with Meegan (although she’s further ahead and therefore more likely to win). I believe 8-7-2 is correct, but the really interesting question is how Shane and Meredith will decide who to back for government. I hear one is much more open to siding with the Libs than the other…?

Do the greens have to vote for someone? Could they elect not too and go back to the polls to get a better outcome for themselves?

The two parties that had swings against them, The Greens and The Motorist Party have extremist elements. I think the vote results were indicating a rejection of extremism. From the Greens support towards bogus asylum seekers, to the Motorists association with the former extremist One Nation party. I guess Marion Lê probably also falls into the category of refugee activism which is more associated with the politics of Green factions that are related to far-left refugee advocate groups, hence the lack of votes received by Marion Lê Social Justice Party. I think there is a concern in the community that Green idealism and naivety in their immigration agenda and policies could place social cohesion and multiculturalism at risk. Because the Greens haven’t really done anything bad as far as civic issues, such as transport and health are concerned.

What the hey JB, let’s see how good my spreadsheet skills are. Here’s my prediction –

Ginninderra: Alistair Coe, Mary Porter, Vicki Dunne, Chris Bourke, Meredith Hunter
Molonglo: Katy Gallagher, Jeremy Hanson, Giulia Jones, Andrew Barr, Shane Rattenbury, Meegan Fitzharris, Elizabeth Lee
Brindabella: Zed Seselja, Brendan Smyth, Joy Burch, Mick Gentleman, Andrew Wall

Elizabeth Lee is a big call, but she’s picking up most of the preferences from people who don’t want to vote for sitting candidates in Molonglo. Same with Meegan (although she’s further ahead and therefore more likely to win). I believe 8-7-2 is correct, but the really interesting question is how Shane and Meredith will decide who to back for government. I hear one is much more open to siding with the Libs than the other…?

Kiron2222 said :

“crypto-marxist obsessions.”

The Greens are Centrist/Social Democratic party. Their Economics fall very much in line with Orthodox Economics, much more than Labor or The Liberals. Greens Voters also are typically far more knowledgeable on Economics than voters of the other parties. Greens Economic policies are more in line with Henry, The IMF and The Treasury than the Major parties.

The Political Compass, which has looked at all the parties policies, have squarely put Greens as Centrists boarding on Social Democrats. Labor are Neo-Liberals and hard Conservatives.

The fact you consider a Centrist party “Marxists” (I believe you are using Marxist in the “Conservative” sense in being the exact opposite of what Marxism actually is) just means your political baseline is in the far-right, along with much of Australia at the moment.

If the Greens are economically bad, then the IMF, Henry, The Treasury and pretty much every classical economics book is also incorrect.

If the Greens are “Centrist’, then who the hell is to the left of them (apart from Socialist Alternative)?

How can you be centrist, when you are nowhere near the centre?

As for your unsupported claim that Green voters are much more knowledgeable about economics than other voters, I dispute that as well with an unsupported assertion of my own. I was at uni with a lot of Green supporters, and I work in a field where many of the people I deal with are Greens. Their economic knowledge usually extends no further than helping out on a stall at the local craft market.

Why is it that those who style themselves as ‘Progressive’ have often not progressed far enough to realise that others may challenge their world view on quite legitimate grounds?

Can we now all go back to whatever it was we doing a month or so ago and forget the charades?

Minority ALP government led by Gallagher.

Not sure o thumpy one.

Preferences and 25% of the primary vote are yet to come. This time four years ago the Greens 4th seat wasn’t on the cards.

Even if 8/7/2 is the breakdown the Greens have some hard thinking to do. Their vote appears to have declined due to being to close to Labor (at least in part).

Furthermore expansion of their vote in the future is reliant on taking votes from Labor rather than Liberal.

Zed on the other hand really is faced with just this shot. So despite the election night theatrics he might be willing to really deal.

So really we need to see which Greens he has to talk to.

Let them count the votes.

“HSR party killing the Greens makes me sadface :(“

Why can’t Greens supporters use their full name ‘Bullet Train for Canberra’?

Christen Milne was finally forced to actually say the party name on ABC TV today.

It all been a little Harry Potterish to me.
You-Know-Who, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The Bullet Train for Canberra party.

Tetranitrate said :

colourful sydney racing identity said :

One thing to watch will be what happens with AMP votes in Brindabella, if there is a repeat of the practice of exhausting the vote that occurred last time, I think the greens may go close to retaining a seat.

It’s possible – but I don’t see where the votes will come from to get the greens ahead. Unless the liberals suffer major leakage I just don’t see how Greens can get the preferences to get up. From what was being said last night Bullet Train preferences are going everywhere and there’s no reason for Independent preferences to favor the greens. There’s just not enough votes floating around for them to actually pick up. Same issue Chic Henry is going to have.

Bit of a long shot – I expect that where amp voters have allocated preferences they will go to the Libs which will give them a third seat pretty quickly, a high number of exhausted amp votes would keep the greens in it for a bit longer.

Quote of the day has to be from Niki Savva on Insiders this morning about the CT poll:

“The poll has proved to be quite spectacularly wrong, so, ah, funny about that…”

“crypto-marxist obsessions.”

The Greens are Centrist/Social Democratic party. Their Economics fall very much in line with Orthodox Economics, much more than Labor or The Liberals. Greens Voters also are typically far more knowledgeable on Economics than voters of the other parties. Greens Economic policies are more in line with Henry, The IMF and The Treasury than the Major parties.

The Political Compass, which has looked at all the parties policies, have squarely put Greens as Centrists boarding on Social Democrats. Labor are Neo-Liberals and hard Conservatives.

The fact you consider a Centrist party “Marxists” (I believe you are using Marxist in the “Conservative” sense in being the exact opposite of what Marxism actually is) just means your political baseline is in the far-right, along with much of Australia at the moment.

If the Greens are economically bad, then the IMF, Henry, The Treasury and pretty much every classical economics book is also incorrect.

Betting agencies continuously adjust their odds based on the bets that people make. Sure, they make an initial guess, but their odds reflect punters’ views, not their own. It’s a bit daft to suggest they’re politically skewed, as they make no pretence at being experts.

Antony Green is still tipping 8/7/2. But with the great man starting last night saying it was all over and wasn’t going to be close (ABC News24, around 18:15) I suspect he’s a little dusty on the local vagaries. He does however have this bombshell on the preference flows from the electronic vote:

The first preference distribution for Molonglo based only on electronic votes delivered four seats to the Liberal Party. If this were to occur once all votes are entered, then academic papers will be published on whether the best tactic for a party is to have votes evenly divided between candidates, as was the case with the Liberal ticket, or concentrated in one candidate as took place with the Labor ticket. The most likely explanation at the moment is that the electronic votes were not representative of the final result.

colourful sydney racing identity said :

One thing to watch will be what happens with AMP votes in Brindabella, if there is a repeat of the practice of exhausting the vote that occurred last time, I think the greens may go close to retaining a seat.

It’s possible – but I don’t see where the votes will come from to get the greens ahead. Unless the liberals suffer major leakage I just don’t see how Greens can get the preferences to get up. From what was being said last night Bullet Train preferences are going everywhere and there’s no reason for Independent preferences to favor the greens. There’s just not enough votes floating around for them to actually pick up. Same issue Chic Henry is going to have.

This response from Sportbet:

Dear John,

Thank you for your email.

Any winnings already paid out to punters as part of the Early Payout will be kept by the punters regardless of the final result. If the Liberals were to win the Election, those punters who backed Liberal will also be paid out so effectively all bets would be paid as winning bets.

Sportsbet.com.au do process Early Payouts from time to time such as Sally Pearson in the Olympics and we have gotten it wrong a few times in the past including the payout on Chris Judd for the Brownlow Medal when he did not win.

If you require any assistance with the above, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Service Team. We are here to help via Live Chat, Email, or Phone.

Kind Regards,

Paul
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One thing to watch will be what happens with AMP votes in Brindabella, if there is a repeat of the practice of exhausting the vote that occurred last time, I think the greens may go close to retaining a seat.

johnboy said :

Also I’ve got an inquiry into SportsBet about what they’re doing with payouts already made for a Labor victory.

They won’t do anything about it, money’s been paid. Iasbet are wisely hanging off on paying out on seats won- looking forward to collecting on labor to win 7 @$1.80 🙂

chewy14 said :

colourful sydney racing identity said :

Kiron2222 said :

HSR party killing the Greens makes me sadface 🙁

Does anyone know who was behind them and from where they received their funding?

What? Are you suggesting that they were CAG funded? Never. Hahaha.

Not suggesting anything of the sort-just a question

JB it’s cute when you make a post criticising the validity of election predictions by others which you respond to by referencing your own navel gazing effort a few months ago. But then that fits the old media is crap but the new media is god narrative…

And on the face of the numbers it does look like the HSR vote is very close to the decline in the Green vote but that assumes certain voter intentions vis single issue representation. More likely the HSR is a kind of greenish techno protest vote driven by the genius of new media marketing since it is dubious that a single elected representative (which is the best they might achieve) would have any bearing on whether a high speed rail link ever gets built. We can’t even build a tram to gungahlin or tuggers without the motoring interests screaming economic rationalism and a VFT remains a victim of the universal right to drive a car or a truck along with the idea that we all pay for the roads.

495 WTH who are these people !!

http://www.electionresults.act.gov.au/partyungrouped.html

Well i lost my bet of pocock getting less than 20 votes. he got 131 primary last time i looked.

Almost everyone (excepting the leaders) needs preferences and we’ve not seen a glimpse of where the No.2 votes will flow.

All this talk of Berry over Bourke, Rattenbury over le Couteur, etc is ridiculously premature.

Interim distribution of preferences using electronic votes (pre-poll and on election day) were uploaded to this page on the Elections ACT web site last night.

With 23% electronic votes for Ginninderra and Molonglo, and 21% for Brindabella, it’s got to be a relatively good indication of where the votes will flow. Certainly better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick.

re the CT poll, it certainly didn’t reflect the disgruntlement I was hearing and expressing either.
My vibe is that Tuggers constituents would be more then pissed off if we got more of the same crap for another four years. I sincerely hope the ‘kingmakers’ think long and hard about who to support this time around.
I also think that the massive Greens vote last time was an indication of wanting a clear ‘third voice’. The general view out there is that the Greens did not give the people what they wanted because they caved. They are now seen as not only Claytons Labor, but even more annoying than Labor. Ergo, the Greens got punished this time around. Nothing to do with the Bullet Train, or anyone else.
If they really want to prove they are not Claytons Labor, let’s see them giving the people the change they are seeking. Here’s a hint: what would the result be if there were no Greens?

I don’t think there is too much to be surprised about in the voting trends so far. Those who voted Green in 2008 hoping that they would, like the Democrats, keep the bastards honest, have woken up to reality, and the Labor and Liberal campaigns about ACT public sector job losses and rates rises have probably cancelled each other out. Throw in an “it’s time” factor after eleven years of so-so government, and the result is about what you might realistically expect in a relatively comfortable, public service/university town.

Deckard said :

How much would they have had to pay out? I wouldn’t think they’d carry much money on the ACT election. And it gets them some ‘free’ advertising with air time on local radio and mentions in the CT and Riot Act.

If, and it’s still a huge “if”, the Liberals get over the line one would guess sportsbet won’t be able to get the paid out bets back, but some punters holding Liberal tickets would have a pretty good claim to a big chunk of change.

So a very unhappy bookie I would imagine.

SO annoyed that the election coverage took up all our Saturday evening viewing on ABC1 and on 24! I know the elections important and all that – I too am axiously/excitedly/whatever waiting on the outcome but PLEASE is a blow by blow account for 6 hours whilst also telling us that results are not likely to be known for a week useful because entertaining it is not! I miss my murder shows …

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

For those who thought the CT poll was a crock – can I ask why?

On the face of it, they seemed to have a statistically representative sample (of the ACT, at least; perhaps they should have done the same for each electorate).

I could understand if you had an issue with their methodology (for example, you could point to an underlying, as-yet-undetected bias in their sampling).

But if the answer is ‘it flew in the face of I what I just know to be true’, then how did you know, exactly? (And why aren’t the bookies beating down your door to take advantage of your magical super powers?)

It’s strange but it just didn’t seem to line up with what is heard people saying. I haven’t looked at their methodology but the result would seem to show there was something amiss.
And the bookies probably don’t like me because its likely ill be taking some of their cash.

johnboy said :

Also I’ve got an inquiry into SportsBet about what they’re doing with payouts already made for a Labor victory.

How much would they have had to pay out? I wouldn’t think they’d carry much money on the ACT election. And it gets them some ‘free’ advertising with air time on local radio and mentions in the CT and Riot Act.

HenryBG said :

3/ Environment? What environment? The Greens just don’t seem to care anymore.

Yep – Canberrans have watched the Greens going all poll-data-driven, and being corrupted by the wish to stay in power at any cost. At both fed and local level, barely a mention of the environment as the Greens paid homage to middle suburban concerns. Sort of. In a Katie sort of a way.

Also, with the bullet trainers they do appear to have been a well placed hand grenade fracturing the Greens first preference vote.

Bullet Train supremo Tim Bohm is of course the boss of 2B Marketing which has had quite a lot of work from various developers.

Sure in theory those votes will come back to the Greens in later rounds. But that’s not much help if a low primary vote has seen your candidate excluded before the preferences can come back.

Also I’ve got an inquiry into SportsBet about what they’re doing with payouts already made for a Labor victory.

yoyo23 said :

I’m just disappointed that it seems people did vote for the libs due to their really negative campaign. I hope that doesn’t give signals to the Federal level, but I worry that is the direction of politics now. Come on pollies, lift your game!

Labor and The Greens should have romped it in. Remember that during the campaign the Alan Jones/Destroy the Joint scandal erupted and we saw Gillard’s speech in the House. The leftists should have been riding high, especially in a city like Canberra.

The fact that with everything going the leftists way, the Libs are now within a seat of winning government confirms the nationwide swing to the right as exemplified by the NSW and Qld elections, by elections and the NSW local government elections.

Don’t try and make excuses like the Bullet Train Party split the left vote or they “killed the Greens”. The Bullet Train Party was not a left party, they were a single issue party. They had no other policies. The Greens had some rather stinky baggage that people were willing to overlook up till recently. They were harmless when they were just a fringe party on the sidelines but when they became part of governments and forced them to adopt silly, useless and expensive policies such as the carbon tax, everybody began screaming “enough!”

The Greens are on the way out, thank God, and politics in this city – and the country as a whole – is slowly returning to normal.

caf said :

I’m not sure I’d call a drop from 16% to 11% a “disintegration” of the Greens vote. At the last election both Labor and Liberal went backwards to the benefit of Greens & others – the opposite has happened this time around, with both Labor and Liberal regaining ground.

These elections sure give good bang for the buck though – several sitting members looking like being replaced by members of their own side again (eg. Corbell and Doszpot).

My point is it is the extent to which the Greens decline that will determine this election. If their vote was another point down Zed would have been bathing in champagne last night. Another point firmer and we’d all be hearing how amazing Queen Katy the beloved is.

As it is, let’s wait and see how those ginninderra preferences flow.

Which is pretty much what a pundit worth listening to was saying in July.

For those who thought the CT poll was a crock – can I ask why?

On the face of it, they seemed to have a statistically representative sample (of the ACT, at least; perhaps they should have done the same for each electorate).

I could understand if you had an issue with their methodology (for example, you could point to an underlying, as-yet-undetected bias in their sampling).

But if the answer is ‘it flew in the face of I what I just know to be true’, then how did you know, exactly? (And why aren’t the bookies beating down your door to take advantage of your magical super powers?)

Yep, I knew that CT poll was a crock of sh*t. I just wasn’t getting that feeling at all from people I’d talked to.
Interesting to see the exact layout of the assembly, hopefully the new faces can bring some intelligence to the LA.

colourful sydney racing identity said :

Kiron2222 said :

HSR party killing the Greens makes me sadface 🙁

Does anyone know who was behind them and from where they received their funding?

What? Are you suggesting that they were CAG funded? Never. Hahaha.

I’m not sure I’d call a drop from 16% to 11% a “disintegration” of the Greens vote. At the last election both Labor and Liberal went backwards to the benefit of Greens & others – the opposite has happened this time around, with both Labor and Liberal regaining ground.

These elections sure give good bang for the buck though – several sitting members looking like being replaced by members of their own side again (eg. Corbell and Doszpot).

Kiron2222 said :

HSR party killing the Greens makes me sadface 🙁

Does anyone know who was behind them and from where they received their funding?

the Crimes calling the election on Thursday shows the arrogance of the mainstream media – they think they can tell us how to think and know what we want.

is it any surprise that FTA tv stations and newspapers are not doing as well as they have in the past?

Kiron2222 said :

HSR party killing the Greens makes me sadface 🙁

We have a preferential voting system. So they did nothing of the sort.

A lot of assumptions in last night’s TV coverage, too; even by Antony Green. Almost everyone (excepting the leaders) needs preferences and we’ve not seen a glimpse of where the No.2 votes will flow.

All this talk of Berry over Bourke, Rattenbury over le Couteur, etc is ridiculously premature.

Holditz said :

I would suggest that Antony Green has a pretty good idea what will happen.

Yeah. He’s awesome. Getting a bit long in the tooth now though – I hope somebody’s training up a fresh-faced stats geek to be the new Anthony Green?

Kiron2222 said :

HSR party killing the Greens makes me sadface 🙁

The Greens killed themselves. I’d say 3 things caused this, and if they want to fix it, they should address these:

1/ Their response to the Canberra Hospital figure-fudging fraud was the polar opposite of what a 3rd-party should have provided. They demonstrated that they will not “keep the bastards honest” and that they would choose pragmatism over enforcing accountability.

2/ The 44% of Canberra families who send their children to non-government schools would be fully aware that Green education policies are aimed at severely disadvantaging their children’s schooling and would surely vote accordingly. This would ironically include the lentil-eating crystal-healers from Orana.

3/ Environment? What environment? The Greens just don’t seem to care anymore.

I’m just disappointed that it seems people did vote for the libs due to their really negative campaign. I hope that doesn’t give signals to the Federal level, but I worry that is the direction of politics now. Come on pollies, lift your game!

HSR party killing the Greens makes me sadface 🙁

I would suggest that Antony Green has a pretty good idea what will happen.

I doubt anyone will know for sure before 30 November who is steering the ship. Hare-Clark is just there to work out which way the 50c piece will fall.

Imagine how awkies it’ll be for Sportsbet if the Libs form government……