https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-29778-210.htm
31,532 - BELYEA, Jodie (ALP)
29,877 - CONROY, Nathan (Lib)
4,997 - BRESKIN, Alex (Grn)
As I write this, the results for the by-election in the division of Dunkley, look very much like the Labor Party will retain the seat; with Jodie Belyea winning 41.02% of the primary vote, versus former Mayor of Frankston Nathan Conroy with 38.87% of the primary vote. This by-election was not the result of a member resigning but by the death of sitting Labor member Peta Murphy who had been battling breast cancer for 13 years. So unlike other elections where the previous member was unpopular and/or left in disgrace, this by-election was held in a fairly neutral environment.
Jodie Belyea winning 41.02% of the primary vote, which is a swing of 0.05% to Labor is so slight as to be statistically unimportant. It is so small that the by-election actually tells us nothing about Labor's chances of retaining government in 2025. I personally think that there will be an early budget in March; with the election taking place on or about the 17th of May 2025; which would be an ordinary House and Half-Senate election.
Nathan Conroy was in fact a fairly popular Mayor for Frankston; which meant that he could and did run a pretty positive campaign. However, if you had been watching Sky News, reading either The Age or The Herald-Sun, then you would be forgiven for thinking that this would be an absolute walkover for him. The obvious question is 'what went wrong?' and the answer is 'nothing really'.
Except:
https://twitter.com/sussanley/status/1763060889765515496
If you live in Frankston and you’ve got a problem with Victorian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor.
If you do not want to see Australian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor.
Send Labor a message.
- Sussan Ley, 29th Feb 2024, 15:37pm (on X)
Sussan Ley, the Member for Farrer and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, decided to turn this into a racist dog whistle campaign. Trying to stoke the fires of irrational fear by blaming "foreign criminals" when we all know that she really means 'black people' but is too craven to bring her actual racism into the light, is quite frankly despicable.
There probably will be a lot of commentary about 'who really won' the by-election as though this were some gnostic set of runes that nobody can read but the thing about a an election is that it is really ridiculously easy to determine who won. We have the numbers. The person with the most votes after all the instant run-offs, that is the person with more than 50% plus 1 of the votes has won the election. You don't need to clutch pearls, look at bird entrails, read tea leaves or wave burning leaves over your head - the person 'who really won' the election is the person who WON the election.
However in dissecting why the Liberal Party lost the seat when their candidate was actually quite affable and seems like a nice chap, then this moment at thirteen minutes to four in the afternoon, which is time enough for news bulletins to pick up their sound bites, the exact moment that the Liberal Party lost the seat.
At this point, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, made her intentions clear that she intended to court the racist vote for her own political ends, and rather than mere blaming the Labour Party for this or that, turned this into a 'wink wink nudge nudge black people' moment. Sussan Ley as an openly racist knave, tried to dog-whistle and the people of Dunkley responded by telling her party where to go.
If you drill down into the numbers as they stand, the Labor Party retained its primary vote. The Liberal Party can try and pretend that it has had a successful campaign but all that they have in fact done, is pick up votes from the absence of Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the United Australia Party. I do not know how you can pretend that a 6.82% gain is a success when the corresponding loss of 7.70% is from parties who weren't even running. What that actually says is that 0.88% of the population or 709 people, would rather vote for an empty chair than you.
If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that trying to use American advisors and American strategies to push American-style misinformation in an Australian context, is a road which puts you on a hiding to nothing. Yes, there was a time and a place when demonising asylum seekers and blaming immigrants for the woes of the country did work but that was back in 2001. American advisors which suggest that a winning political strategy which involves energising their base, is in the third decade of the twenty-first strategy, a losing one.
The take-aways from this election are that the Labor Party has gone nowhere because boring government is good government. The Liberal Party only increased its primary vote because the further-right-wing sections of the political spectrum fielded zero candidates. The Greens having lost 4% of the vote are going AWOL in the public imagination. And weirdly, the fact that we have an Animal Justice, a Libertarian, and a Victorian Socialist who together polled 5.48% of the vote would suggest that the fringes of the electorate are fracturing.
Curiously, I suspect that Ms Ley is either delusional, drunk, or just openly lying to the Australian people:
https://twitter.com/sussanley/status/1763882241892270580
The people of Dunkley have sent Anthony Albanese a strong message and it's not ‘Happy Birthday’, it's 'do something about the cost of living crisis.’ A swing of this size at the next election would see us win 11 seats from Labor. This is a terrible result for the Prime Minister.
- Sussan Ley, 2nd Mar 2024, 20:01pm (on X)
I actually do have a spreadsheet and can calculate this.
Ms Ley is in fact correct, a swing of this size at the next election would see the coalition win 11 seats at the next election. By my reckoning, they would increase from 55 to 66 seats. Also, a swing of this size at the next election would see Labor pick up two seats, taking them from 77 to 79. The Greens would lose 3, Centre Alliance would lose their only seat, and there would be 7 independents.
I still fail to see how retaining a seat is a "terrible result for the Prime Minister". Perhaps someone can explain that to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment