Coalition out of danger zone in Western Australia Thursday, April 22, 2010

Newspoll has released its quarterly detailed breakdowns of people's voting intentions, including state-by-state breakdowns of primary votes. This allows us to extrapolate an interesting state-by-state swing to or from the major political parties, the Australian Labor Party, the Australian Liberal Party and the Australian Greens. Applying this swing to the 2007 Senate election results and running a batch of simulations using pyapollo we can see what trends are likely to be apparent in the Federal election later this year.

If an election was held today, the Senate results would possibly be Labor 19, Liberals 15, Greens 5, Independent 1. If Independent Nick Xenophon does not stand a friendly candidate and sits out the 2010 election (which is likely), the Greens are favourites to win the final seat in South Australia.

Read more after the jump...




This would give a final 2010-2012 Senate make up of Labor 35 (+3), Coalition 31 (-6), Greens 8 (+3), Xenophon/Independent 2 (+1), Family First 0 (-1).

I've been running simulations for four or so months now, and so now have two data sets from Newspoll: one from last quarter 2009 (Q4) and now a new one, for the first quarter 2010 (Q1). This means we can see which parties are doing better or worse as the current term grows long in the tooth.

Since last year, the Labor vote has softened slightly. This has allowed the Liberals to claw back a senate seat in Western Australia. However, with 15 seats the Coalition is still falling considerably short of its 2007 Senate result of 18 seats. The Greens are still sitting on 5 or possibly 6 seats.


Compared to 2004

Due to 6 year terms, the next Senate election is actually for seats last contested in 2004. As we can see from graphs 2 and 3, the Liberals are heading for a shocker. In 2004 they won control of the Senate, reaching the magical 39 seat mark (38 seats is required to block legislation, 39 to pass it). In 2010, they look to be dropping 6 seats - ouch - with Labor and the Greens picking up 3 each. This will leave the Coalition with minority status in the Senate and sharing the balance of power with the Greens.


Trend since December 2009

It is not all bad news for the Coalition. In December, my simulations were showing that the Liberals were going to go from 4 seats in Western Australia to 2. Since that time their vote has recovered somewhat, and pushed the final seat in WA back into their column.


Western Australia

If we take a closer look at Western Australia, the most likely result in December was 3 Labor, 2 Liberals, 1 Green. Now the state splits 3 Liberals, 2 Labor, 1 Greens.

Something to watch out for though is the Nationals are running a stronger campaign in 2010. This will probably inflate the Coalition vote by a vital one or two per cent and keep the Coalition out of danger. The consequence of this is possibly a battle between the 3rd placed Liberal, Mathias Cormann (who interestingly was appointed to the Senate and has never faced an election), and the top placed National, John McCourt, for the final WA Senate seat.


Conclusions

The Liberals have gained one seat (in WA) in my simulations since 2009, however, they are a long way short of their 2004 high water mark. 2010 could place ALP close to gaining control of the Senate itself, although the high Green vote makes this unlikely.