See Peter Hartcher in SMH on the Greens. He notes that the opinion polls tend to overstate Green support. (Newspoll used to understate it, but joined the others after the last election to include Greens in readout of parties.)
As he also notes, Greens will very likely hold the balance of power all by themselves, ie Labor + Greens = majority, after this year’s election. (Antony Green actually did the sums way back in July last year.)
In HoR, Greens got 5.0 percent in 2001, 7.2 in 2004 and 7.8 in 2007.
Mr Hartcher kind of anticipates a double digit Green vote this time, but this seems ambitious - at least in the lower house. Labor’s primary vote will probably increase [ie from current polling numbers], at the expense of the Greens.
I reckon between 9 and 9.5 is a reasonable ballpark expectation for the Green (HoR) vote.
In the case of a half Senate election, under a situation where say the Labor party vote drops at the expense of the Liberals and Greens, I suppose you could expect a situation where Labor will be tending to lose seats to the Greens rather than the Liberals.
3 Coalition seats in NSW seems safe, as with Victoria since many right wing minor party preferences flow through to the Liberals. I suppose in Victoria, either Labor or the Greens will win Fieldings old seat in a half Senate election.
In Queensland, 3 Coalition seats seem safe and the Green vote seems to start from a low base. This would probably simply yield a gain of one seat from the Coalition, reversing what occured in 2004.
3 Liberal seats in WA are safe, as are 2 ALP seats. The last seat would be favoured to be won by the Greens however votes from ALP and the Coalition could leak to this new “anti mine tax” party which is starting up. The WA Greens can’t win in WA without Labor preferences so if the ALP preferences are lesser than that last seat could be an interesting contest likely between the Greens and another minor party.
SA is interesting due to the Xenophon effect. The SA Greens have a very low primary vote to start with so I am not going to try to thought experiment that situation therough yet.
Here in WA the only lower house Green Mp Adele Cornes- (Fremantle) is now planning to run as an independent Green- she took the seat from Labor. But after revalations of an affair between herself and Troy Buswell the Liberal treasurer she ended up resigning. He seems more popular! Many people thought it was a dubious conflict of interest and it is probable the seat will return to Labor.
Personally I tend to think a green vote will ulrimately favour the Libs at the expense of Labor= so could be a very close contest.
For the Greens to completely gain the balance of power ALP + Greens must gain two seats.
The first should easily happen in Queensland, where the Coalition won four seats in 2004 and you’d expect one of those seats to fall to either Labor or Greens. For the sake of balance of power it doesn’t really matter which.
The other seat should be in Victoria, where you’d expect Fielding to lose to either Greens or Labor.
If these two seats fall then the rest is academic, the Greens have the balance of power in their own right, and Labor is a long way short of being able to pass legislation just with Nick Xenophon’s one vote.
A couple of percent in the House should be enough to give Tanner a real scare. What would happen if it did fall – retire, engineer a by-election in a safe seat or just bide his time and try to win it back? Have any prominent ministers lost their seats before when their government has still been returned?
Social change like Melbourne going Green happens slowly yet when it does occur appears revolutionary.
After all it is not that long ago (30 years) that the inner cities where working class right wing labor bastions.
More likely Melbourne will turn when the government next changes or when Tanner retires. When it does turn it will be a long time before it moves from the Greens. It is an interesting juxtaposition – having to deal with the Greens in the Senate yet fight them in the inner cities.
I wonder how the preferences will flow? Remember Senator Fielding is there courtesy of the ALP.
When the government changes, it’s likely to include a higher Liberal primary vote which would manifest itself somewhat in Melbourne, which makes the Greens getting into second place a bit harder. Is it true ALP types tactically vote the Libs ahead of themselves and the Greens to make it more likely it’ll end up ALP v Lib in such seats?
Peter, the “in SMH” link is wrong, unless your blog has been renamed!
[Peter: thankyee Tristan, fixed.]
‘Have any prominent ministers lost their seats before when their government has still been returned?’
Yes, although perhaps the answer depends on how you define ‘prominent’.
For example, Frank Forde lost his seat in 1946 despite the Labor government being returned, and at the time he was the party’s Deputy Leader, and thus de facto Deputy PM, although that title did not officially exist then.
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