Q. Do the Labor and Liberal parties need Green preferences? A. No Saturday, February 27, 2010

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?

Can David Winderlich win? Sunday, February 21, 2010

Yesterday, one reader commented on my simulation of the forthcoming South Australian state election that it was a "big assumption" to assume minor-party/independent (MPI) preferences could flow equally to the Greens as well as each other. The implication being that a candidate like David Winderlich would harvest more MPI preferences than the Greens and is therefore a higher chance of winning than the 20-30% I gave the micro-parties/independents.

Let's see, shall we? (Yes, I do requests!)

Since I had already set up the scenario for SA 2010 for the previous run, it was simple enough to make adjustments and run two new scenarios. The first new scenario is a set of simulations where Winderlich's vote climbs from 0% to 6% and everyone's preferences are distributed randomly. The second new simulation is similar. Winderlich's vote climbs from 0% to 6% but the random preference distribution is filtered so that minor party/independent candidates always preference him above the Greens.

Tight Race for South Australia Legislative Council State Election 2010 Wednesday, January 20, 2010

In 1985 the South Australian Legislative Council adopted an electoral system "almost identical" to the method used in the Australian Senate. The main difference being that instead of six seats available at a "normal" senate election, in a South Australian state election, eleven seats are up for grabs. The similarity to the Senate makes it perfect for my election scenario designer cassandra and my advanced simulation software apollo to try and predict the outcome of the 2010 South Australian state election.

If the election were held today, of the 11 seats available, Labor would win 5 seats, the Liberals would win four seats and the Greens would most likely win 2 seats but with a good chance that the micro party with the highest non-major vote would win the last seat.

Disaster looming for Coalition in Queensland and Western Australia Friday, January 1, 2010

If the latest Newspoll figures are correct, then the Coalition is in danger of losing two traditionally held Senate seats in Queensland and Western Australia, with the collapse in the conservative vote benefiting Labor and the Greens. This would be a remarkable result, particularly in Queensland, where in that state the Coalition face the prospect of going from 4 seats at the 2004 election to only 2 seats in 2010.

Using apollo, my advanced simulation software, I take the Newspoll figures and simulate the 2010 Senate election in each state. The results are as follows:

NSW: ALP 3, Coalition 2, Greens 1
VIC: ALP 3, Coalition 2, Greens 1
QLD: ALP 3, Coalition 2, Greens 1
WA: ALP 3, Liberals 2, Greens 1SA: ALP 3, Liberals 2, Independent 1
TAS: ALP 3, Liberals 2, Greens 1
ACT/NT assume split 1/1 Lib/ALP (no simulations run)

For a total election result:
ALP 20 (+4 over current senate and a total of 32), Coalition: 14 (-7, total 32), Greens: 5 (+3, total 6), Ind: 1 (+1, total 2)

This is a dramatic (in Senate terms) change since my last simulation was run in November. At that time, apollo predicted the ALP would win 20 seats, the Coalition to win 16 seats, the Greens to win 3 seats, and Friends of Xenophon 1 seat.

The big changes since the last simulation (the two lost Coalition seats) are in Queensland and Western Australia.

Queensland

In November, the Liberals were neck and neck with the Greens for the sixth and final senate seat in Queensland (50% for the Greens, 33% for the Coalition). However, a rise in the Greens vote has solidified the minor party's lock on the sixth seat (they win in 66.4% of simulations) and seemingly pushed the Coalition out of contention (below 14% - output was garbled d'oh).

This is bad news for both Russell Trood and Brett Mason, the third and fourth Coalition senators from Queensland. Neither of them will be returned to the Senate at this rate.

Western Australia
In Western Australia, the strongest state for the Liberals at the 2007 election, the result is nothing short of catastrophic. Going from an absolute lock on a third seat at the next election, the Liberals are facing a shock loss of their safest "third seat".

The following two images need a bit of explanation. With Liberal and Labor expected to gain a full quota for two seats each, the fifth seat becomes a contest between the parties with the highest remaining quotas. By this stage, the Greens have a higher quota than either of the majors and so win the fifth seat. This leaves the Liberals and Labor fighting over the sixth and final seat. The increase in the Labor vote has seen them edge past the Liberals, winning a third seat in 49.5% of simulations compared to the Liberal's 39%.

This is still an extremely close battle, but the fact the seat is no longer a lock for the Liberals must be extremely worrying for them, and strengthens the case for Rudd to risk a double dissolution election.

The Liberal senator most at risk appears to be Senator Mathias Cormann, who was third on the Liberal's Senate ticket in 2004.


Conclusions
The falling Coalition vote has turned their previously winnable third seat in Queensland to a likely (but not totally solid) Green's seat. This is a remarkable turn around since these senators were last up for election in 2004, where the Howard led Coalition won an impressive four seats in Queensland (and overall control of the senate). They have also lost their lock on a third seat in Western Australia, with the seat now winnable by Labor.



About the methodology:
I took the swings in the ALP, Coalition and Greens votes recorded in the most recent newspoll and applied it to the 2007 senate vote each party received. For each state, I run 20,000 simulations with random preference tickets (a similar run on the 2007 results shows a very high accuracy of simulation) and tabulated the results.

Start your own political party Monday, December 21, 2009

Just released a new web application for political parties. It's called PartyPartyParty, a meta name considering its function but also in honour(?) of Party! Party! Party!, the short-lived political party in the ACT in the 1980s. This is the first release.

Should have more idle speculation shortly: "What would the Senate be like if it was one electorate?"

Liberals need perfect storm to lose Higgins Friday, December 4, 2009

Here's a super quick one, mostly to test the normal distribution features of apolllo (my advanced simulation software).

What are the chances of defeat for the Liberals in Higgins tomorrow?

Taking the 10 declared candidates for tomorrow's lower house (hey, I thought this was for SENATE speculation) by-election in Higgins to replace noted high taxing former treasurer Peter Costello, and the How-To-Vote cards available online (Liberals, Democrats, Greens, One Nation, Liberal Democrat Party and the Australian Sex Party), and reverse engineering the others, I created a scenario in my election simulator, Cassandra.

Then I started adjusting the Liberal vote down and the Green vote up until the Green candidate started winning. I used the Green candidate because the 2007 election indicates that party has the best chance of defeating the incumbent party in the absence of a Labor candidate.

Once I had a bare minimum scenario for an upset, I put it through my program apollo, which allows me to run thousands of simulations using slightly different parameters.

In this case, I ran 20,000 simulations using a normal variate distribution on the votes and a margin of error of 4%. It's all idle speculation dearies.

Fig 1 - Margin of Error 4% on my prediction

What goes Figure 1 show? Well, with a base vote of 38% for the Greens and 46% for the Liberals, the Greens win the election in 8% of 20,000 simulations. The Liberals win in 92% of simulations.

Bumping up the margin of error to 10% we get a slightly different graph:

Fig 2: Margin of error 10%

The Liberals win in 75% of simulations.

So even with a low primary vote of 46% for the Liberals and an exceptionally high vote of 38% for their nearest competitor the Greens, we can see pretty quickly in the above graphs how unlikely is a Greens victory.

Bumping up the Greens' primary vote to 40% and dropping the Liberals to 45% tips the simulations solidly in the Greens' favour, reflecting favourable preference deals. But a Liberal vote of 45% in Higgins would be such an earthquake that the Liberals would lurch straight back into crisis. We can only hope.

Rudd's double dissolution bluff Sunday, November 29, 2009

A double dissolution election, where twice the number of Senate seats are up for grabs, would be more trouble than it is worth to the Labor party.

While control of the Senate is a glittering prize for parties of all persuasions there are also several consolation prizes when it comes to the Upper House. In 2004 the Coalition won a fourth seat in Queensland which, combined with solid results everywhere else and in 2001, tipped them into a majority. Labor strategists are hoping that the next election will smash the Coalition's stranglehold on the Senate and either give Labor a majority of its own (unlikely), or at least reduce the power of the Coalition so that no single party has control. With Labor high in the polls and the Liberal's vote sinking lower and lower, the temptation is there for Labor to pull the double dissolution trigger and hope it translates into a radically improved situation for the government.

Unfortunately for Rudd a double dissolution would not improve Labor's practical position above that of a regular election. On the contrary, a double dissolution holds significant drawbacks for the government.

Running a wide ranging simulation based on the swings recorded in the latest Nielsen poll as applied to the 2007 vote in the Senate, the results under a double dissolution show that Labor would go sideways, the Coalition would go backwards and Greens would emerge as the big winner, leaping from five seats to around eleven, an unprecedented number for a third party. Independent Nick Xenophon could capture two seats in South Australia, but lose the balance of power, surely a negative outcome for the feisty independent.

The practical result of all this is that Coalition would lose its ability to block legislation and the Greens would gain the balance of power on the cross-benches.

However, under a regular half-senate election, which will occur naturally if the government serves out its full term, while the number of seats won by the parties varies in the simulation, the practical results are the same:- the Coalition loses its majority and the Greens gain control of the cross-bench.

To repeat, the practical result from the next Senate election is the same whether it is a half-Senate or full-Senate election.

So with nothing to gain from a double dissolution except breaking the Liberal's hold on the Senate a few months early, the risks of such a course of action are very high. A double dissolution would possibly split the upper house and lower house elections, meaning Australians would have to go to the polls effectively twice as often until they were re-synchronised, surely an unpalatable situation for any major party. A full-Senate election would also crack open the door for micro-parties of a right-wing nature to fluke one or two seats. The prime candidates for an upset being a Pauline Hanson-type candidate in Queensland and a Family First candidate in a state like Victoria or South Australia.

For the hassle, cost and future pains caused by a double dissolution election, the gains for Rudd and the Labor government are simply not worth it. Labor's double dissolution bluff to tame the Senate is just that, a bluff.