In the 2010 Federal election, preferences from the Australian Greens are almost worthless to the major parties in electing Senators. Only in Western Australia (and possibly Tasmania) do Green preferences, based on current polling, affect the outcome of the Senate election. That is the conclusion from my latest batch of simulations of the forthcoming Australian senate election.
From my previous simulations, we can see the Senate election this year is going to be a lot less interesting than in 2007. Solid Green voting and lower Coalition voting means most states will return 3 ALP senators, 2 Coalition and 1 Green. However, of the slim pickings available, the most interesting Senate battles this year are probably in Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales.
Since we use above-the-line preferential voting in counting the ballots cast for the Australian Senate, political parties are able to do deals with each other to rank their candidates higher or lower. This "saves" the vast majority of voters from having to do it themselves (Luke's tip: ALWAYS VOTE BELOW THE LINE).
Above-the-line voting leads to a lot of back-room dealing before an election whereby parties try to gain favourable preference deals, hoping to ride preferences into the Senate (ala Steven Fielding in Victoria in 2004). This wheeling and dealing is generally an unpleasant affair since strategists have to weigh up the desire for a good deal versus doing a deal with ideological enemies.
Despite the angst caused by the desire to get good preference deals, in the majority of cases the stress counts for naught. Put simply, if you get enough votes you get elected. Preference deals are far behind in effectiveness. It is only in borderline elections that the arcane black magic of party preference deals actually matter, and even then, with so many independent actors in the system, for an individual party, preference deals may as well be random. This is backed up by repeatedly by the results of my advanced election simulator, apollo, which is going to be applied to today's question:
Do the major parties need Green preferences in the Senate this year?
The logic is that in a close preferential election with two big parties and a mid-sized third party, the preferences from the third party play a crucial role in deciding the eventual winner.
So we can break the question into three small questions: What happens if Green preferences are distributed randomly? What happens if the Greens preference the Australian Labor Party (ALP) above the Australian Liberals? And the reverse, what happens if the Greens preference the Coalition above the ALP?
Let's test these scenarios on the battleground states this year, Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales, and see if we can come up with a theory that answers our main question.
Firstly, we run a control of 10,000 simulations of the 2007 senate candidates but updated using the latest newspoll polling data, an aggregated version of which is available courtesy of pollytic's most excellent blog. In these simulations we distribute preferences distributed randomly. Pollytics provides up-to-date polling information broken down by state. After running the standard batch of simulations, I'll run the same scenario but filtering Green preferences so that they always go to Labor above the Liberals. Then I'll run it a third time, with Green preferences going to the Liberals over Labor. I'll do this in each of the battleground states.
New South Wales
In our random preference election of 10,000 6-seat simulations seats, Labor wins 30,035 seats (50.06% of seats), the Coalition wins 21,514 (43.8%), the Greens win 7,196 seats (5.89%), and the others win 1,254 seats (2.09%) (even the Australian Democrats win 8 seats out of 60,000 - 0.01%).
Then if we force all Green preferences to go to Labor and run another batch of simulations, the results are as follows: Labor wins 50.1% of seats, the Coalition wins 43.65%, the Greens stay on 5.89%.
Hmm, not much difference at all.
If with do the opposite and force Green preferences to the Liberals, we get Labor on 50% of seats, the Coalition wins 43.97% and the Greens are still basically unchanged on 5.84%.
Not much difference is there? This is probably due to the vagrancies of the six-seat senate election, where the current polling in NSW shows the result of 3 ALP, 2 Coalition and 1 Green seats is a foregone conclusion.
Queensland
In our next battleground state the ALP is traveling pretty well in the random preference election, winning 49.98% of seats, the Coalition on a pretty tragic 35.86% and the Greens on 11.99%. The "others" win 2.17% seats (mostly Hanson and Family First - it's all a bit 2007 isn't it?).
When the Greens divert their preferences to the ALP the results don't even budge: ALP on 49.99%, Coalition on 35.86% and the Greens with their new Andrew Bartlett lovin' ways stuck on 12.02%.
With the Libs on top, we get Labor on 49.97%, the Coalition on 35.86% and the Greens on 12.05%.
Despite a high "other" vote in Queensland, polling at the moment is in a similar place to NSW. On current polls, no preference deal that any party could reasonably expect to make will change the result of 3 ALP, 2 Coalition and 1 Green seat.
From my previous simulations, we can see the Senate election this year is going to be a lot less interesting than in 2007. Solid Green voting and lower Coalition voting means most states will return 3 ALP senators, 2 Coalition and 1 Green. However, of the slim pickings available, the most interesting Senate battles this year are probably in Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales.
Since we use above-the-line preferential voting in counting the ballots cast for the Australian Senate, political parties are able to do deals with each other to rank their candidates higher or lower. This "saves" the vast majority of voters from having to do it themselves (Luke's tip: ALWAYS VOTE BELOW THE LINE).
Above-the-line voting leads to a lot of back-room dealing before an election whereby parties try to gain favourable preference deals, hoping to ride preferences into the Senate (ala Steven Fielding in Victoria in 2004). This wheeling and dealing is generally an unpleasant affair since strategists have to weigh up the desire for a good deal versus doing a deal with ideological enemies.
Despite the angst caused by the desire to get good preference deals, in the majority of cases the stress counts for naught. Put simply, if you get enough votes you get elected. Preference deals are far behind in effectiveness. It is only in borderline elections that the arcane black magic of party preference deals actually matter, and even then, with so many independent actors in the system, for an individual party, preference deals may as well be random. This is backed up by repeatedly by the results of my advanced election simulator, apollo, which is going to be applied to today's question:
Do the major parties need Green preferences in the Senate this year?
The logic is that in a close preferential election with two big parties and a mid-sized third party, the preferences from the third party play a crucial role in deciding the eventual winner.
So we can break the question into three small questions: What happens if Green preferences are distributed randomly? What happens if the Greens preference the Australian Labor Party (ALP) above the Australian Liberals? And the reverse, what happens if the Greens preference the Coalition above the ALP?
Let's test these scenarios on the battleground states this year, Queensland, Western Australia and New South Wales, and see if we can come up with a theory that answers our main question.
Firstly, we run a control of 10,000 simulations of the 2007 senate candidates but updated using the latest newspoll polling data, an aggregated version of which is available courtesy of pollytic's most excellent blog. In these simulations we distribute preferences distributed randomly. Pollytics provides up-to-date polling information broken down by state. After running the standard batch of simulations, I'll run the same scenario but filtering Green preferences so that they always go to Labor above the Liberals. Then I'll run it a third time, with Green preferences going to the Liberals over Labor. I'll do this in each of the battleground states.
New South Wales
In our random preference election of 10,000 6-seat simulations seats, Labor wins 30,035 seats (50.06% of seats), the Coalition wins 21,514 (43.8%), the Greens win 7,196 seats (5.89%), and the others win 1,254 seats (2.09%) (even the Australian Democrats win 8 seats out of 60,000 - 0.01%).
Then if we force all Green preferences to go to Labor and run another batch of simulations, the results are as follows: Labor wins 50.1% of seats, the Coalition wins 43.65%, the Greens stay on 5.89%.
Hmm, not much difference at all.
If with do the opposite and force Green preferences to the Liberals, we get Labor on 50% of seats, the Coalition wins 43.97% and the Greens are still basically unchanged on 5.84%.
Not much difference is there? This is probably due to the vagrancies of the six-seat senate election, where the current polling in NSW shows the result of 3 ALP, 2 Coalition and 1 Green seats is a foregone conclusion.
Queensland
In our next battleground state the ALP is traveling pretty well in the random preference election, winning 49.98% of seats, the Coalition on a pretty tragic 35.86% and the Greens on 11.99%. The "others" win 2.17% seats (mostly Hanson and Family First - it's all a bit 2007 isn't it?).
When the Greens divert their preferences to the ALP the results don't even budge: ALP on 49.99%, Coalition on 35.86% and the Greens with their new Andrew Bartlett lovin' ways stuck on 12.02%.
With the Libs on top, we get Labor on 49.97%, the Coalition on 35.86% and the Greens on 12.05%.
Despite a high "other" vote in Queensland, polling at the moment is in a similar place to NSW. On current polls, no preference deal that any party could reasonably expect to make will change the result of 3 ALP, 2 Coalition and 1 Green seat.
Like New South Wales, Green preferences have made no difference to the result at all.
Western Australia
Western Australia is different to the Eastern seaboard. Instead of the "standard" split of seats, the Liberals are polling high enough in WA to make the battle more interesting.
In a random preference election, our sand-eating cousins over in West Texas spread their seats 100% between the ALP (43.2%), the Liberals (41.15%) and the Greens (15.65%).
With the ALP favoured, the results show a slight improvement for the ALP at the Liberal's expense: ALP (44.6%), Libs (39.8%) and the Greens (15.59%).
Western Australia
Western Australia is different to the Eastern seaboard. Instead of the "standard" split of seats, the Liberals are polling high enough in WA to make the battle more interesting.
In a random preference election, our sand-eating cousins over in West Texas spread their seats 100% between the ALP (43.2%), the Liberals (41.15%) and the Greens (15.65%).
With the ALP favoured, the results show a slight improvement for the ALP at the Liberal's expense: ALP (44.6%), Libs (39.8%) and the Greens (15.59%).
When the Liberals are favoured, the improvement is reversed, with the ALP slipping to 42%, the Liberals rise to 42.37% and the Greens holding steady on 15.62%. What is interesting about this figure is that the Liberals jump ahead of the ALP, meaning the result in WA was more often 3 LIB, 2 ALP, 1 Green than the other way round.
This is the only state of the three where Green preferences appear to have an effect, and not only that, but to have changed the result.
So if Green preferences have made a difference here, then what is the difference between WA and the other two states?
Unlike the other states, the contest in WA for an extra seat is much closer between the ALP and the Liberals. Not only that, the main contest for an extra seat looks likely to be between the Liberals and Labor. The only other state where there the Liberals and Labor might benefit from Green preferences is in Tasmania where the Greens may have a surplus ... which makes me wish I had run a Tasmanian simulation too!
If I were Senator Mathias Cormann, the third Coalition Senator from WA, or Glenn Sterle, the second Labor Senator from WA (or whoever the third candidate is for that party) I would be pushing for a special deal with the WA Greens, since it might be a make or break deal for them in that state, unlike in others.
If I were Senator Mathias Cormann, the third Coalition Senator from WA, or Glenn Sterle, the second Labor Senator from WA (or whoever the third candidate is for that party) I would be pushing for a special deal with the WA Greens, since it might be a make or break deal for them in that state, unlike in others.
If I was the leadership of the Greens, presumably Bob Brown and WA Senators Rachel Siewert (up for election) and Scott Ludlam, I would be leveraging the WA preferences across the other states, since the WA Greens preferences look to be the most valuable the party has and the other states not so much.
Conclusions
With most States in this forthcoming Federal election sitting on a safe Senate split of 3-ALP 2-Lib and 1-Green due to the estimated high Green vote of 12%, Green preferences are almost valueless in preference deals.
With the contest for the final seat nominally between a major party and the Greens, by the time the Green candidate is eliminated, the final seat has been decided. That is to say, the Green candidate either wins the seat, or is eliminated last (and so their preferences are not needed). Since Greens are polling just under a quota in each state and far above other minor parties, all their votes go to themselves or never get distributed.
As we can see from Queensland and New South Wales, Green preferences make no difference in the current political climate.
Green preferences are most valuable in Western Australia (and possibly Tasmania where they may poll over a quota), where the final seat is a contest between parties other than the Greens. Green preferences in Western Australia are possibly the decider in who wins the contested seat.
This simulation has raised more questions for me: In a double dissolution would Green preferences be more important? My gut instinct (this is idle speculation after all) is that yes, they will be much more important. If the Greens trade preferences for reciprocal preferences from one of the majors, does that help the Greens? And if so, which party's preferences, Liberals or Labor's, would help the Greens the most? And finally, given that the Greens are going to be the last minor candidate standing, are the preferences from the micro candidates below the Greens, such as Family First and the Sex Party, important?
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