July 04, 2020

Horse 2726 - The Least Interesting Election Of 2020

The Eden-Monaro by-election being held today will be one of the least interesting by-elections in Australian Electoral History. Unless of course it turns out unexpectedly, in which case it will be unexpected and uninteresting. This election is the sort of snoozefest that not even the ABC's Election Analyst Antony Green can enliven.
"But how is this even possible?" I don't hear you ask because this is a blog post and this particular by-election is so mind numbingly dull that I can't imagine an excited political pundit in this case. "But isn't Eden-Monaro supposed to be a bell-wether?" I also don't hear you ask because only serious political junkees would have known that.
No, this particular by-election is so unbelievably boring that it can only be described by an imaginary nerd in nerd glasses and the 'well actually' voice. My advice would be to turn around now; save yourselves!

Eden-Monaro used to be a bell-wether electorate because it comprised a sufficiently large enough area that the kinds of people who lived in it were sufficiently diverse. These days, the kinds of people who live there are more likely to be seachange fuddy-duddys who vote vaguely leftist. Over the last 20 years, Eden-Monaro has lost its bell-wether electorate status and has drifted into being nominally unsafe Labor seat.
Herein lies all of the reasons why this by-election is going to be as dull as dishwater. This is whatever the opposite of a riddle wrapped in an enigma is. This is like trying to solve a murder where you have a man standing in a room holding a smoking gun and crying while confessing to the murder.

The state of play in the House of Representatives yesterday was that the LNP Coalition holds 77 of 151 seats and government. Given that Eden-Monaro has suffered flooding, bushfire, is currently in the midst of a global pandemic, and the government has been consistently incompetent and uncaring in all of them, the people aren't going to be likely to suddenly change sides and actually vote for the government. Remember, this is the electorate in which a pregnant lady reused to shake the hand of the Prime Minister on television, back in January.
In virtually every poll since the campaign began, the Labor Party has been expected to take +40% of the primary vote and on a two preferred basis, has always been consistently at least 52-48. That indicates that unless there's something amazingly weird that would account for a margin of four percent, then the odds are stacked against the LNP Coalition.

The grand odds of history are also against the government turning over an opposition seat. I had a look through the results of by-elections and the last time that I could find where a government actually managed to flip an opposition seat in favour of them was back in 1915 in the Grampians by-election. That was 105 years ago and before we had preferential voting; which made the job easier.
By-elections are traditionally occasions to punish the sitting government; not reward them.

Also, on this occasion, the Labor candidate is the Mayor of the Bega Valley Shire Council, Kristy McBain. Ms McBain is a candidate with some experience of being in office as opposed to her opposite number in a field of 14, Fiona Kotrjos who although having ran at the 2019 General Election, appears to be a farmer who won a branch vote in a small room. Not that there's anything wrong with being a local candidate but the Liberal Party is trying to win this by-election, not by promoting her but the Prime Minister Scott Morrison. That strategy works well if you have a popular leader but it might not be the best strategy here.

All of this comes together to create a mildly dull sort of election campaign in mildly dull circumstances. If the government does manage the unexpected, then remain in government, they go from 77 to 78 and a majority of 2 to 3. If Labor retains the seat then exactly squat all happens. This is effectively a dead rubber in an already historically unlikely set of circumstances.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that might happen politically today, is if you were to watch the musical 'Hamilton' on Disney+. That's the story of the former Secretary Of The Treasury of the United States and it is the fourth of July; so I suppose that's sort of political. I very much doubt that you'll get much of a song and dance routine from the Eden-Monaro by-election. But just you wait...

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