Saturday night’s result in the ACT election wouldn’t be surprising to anyone paying attention to recent elections across Australia.
The Liberal Party gained ground, while the Greens lost ground. This being the ACT, however, the Liberals didn’t win in a landslide. They failed to outpoll the ALP on primary votes, and it seems likely they will win only one more seat, but not win a majority.
The ACT’s electoral system and political make-up makes it almost impossible for a party to win a majority of seats. The ALP only managed it once, in 2004. The Liberal Party needed to win three extra seats (one in each district) to get to the magic nine seats. While the Liberals appear to have managed to win two of these seats, they didn’t come close to winning a third seat in Ginninderra, meaning they never came close to winning a majority.
Without a majority, it seems very unlikely that the Liberals will be able to govern. The Greens have not ruled out working with the Liberals, but the party has worked closely with the ALP and is not close to the Liberals. Zed Seselja has made it clear the party has no plans to make an effort to encourage the Greens, instead expecting the party to fall into line.
The Liberals have tried to present the election result as a great result for the Liberals. While they have definitely gained a swing, it’s important to note that the Liberals polled just over 38%, while over 50% of ACT voters voted for one of the two centre-left parties who have shared power over the last four years.
While the result was a disappointing one for the Greens, it is still the second-highest ever result for the Greens, and the party is still in a position of balance of power for the second Assembly in a row.
The election result shows yet another example of how difficult it is for small parties like the Greens to survive a period of power-sharing without a backlash from voters. The Tasmanian Greens went backwards after both periods of power sharing in the 1990s.
There are lots of reasons why this can happen. Small parties are usually in a position of opposition from which they can criticise a government’s actions and pick up votes of people unhappy with the government. It’s much harder to do this when a small party is in an agreement with a governing party, whether or not they are actually part of the government.
A small party also tends to lose its independent identity in a power-sharing arrangement. Those happy with the government are more likely to vote for the bigger party, while both parties get the blame for unpopular policies.
It’s not even necessary for the government to be bad or unpopular for a small party to get hit for its relationship to a government, or for a small party to be seen to be changing its policy priorities or selling out its voter base.
Maybe these consequences can be minimised, or maybe they are inevitable. This doesn’t necessarily make a decision to share power the wrong decision: a lot can be achieved by sharing power, but the downsides have to be managed.
This poses a challenge for the Greens going into the federal election. How can the Greens maintain a separate identity from the Gillard government heading into 2013, giving voters unhappy with the Gillard government a reason to vote Green? Recent elections have shown that the Greens vote has weakened over the last two years. It seems inevitable that the ALP will suffer a defeat at the next federal election. Is it inevitable that the Greens vote will weaken, or can the Greens manage to avoid the fate of their alliance partner?
I’m not sure about the rationalising of changes in the primary vote. I think many influences are irrational. For example, the number of people who say that they are going to switch their primary vote from Green to ALP to stop Tony Abbott becoming PM.
That being said, there does seem to be a larger number of soft voters changing their primary vote, particularly towards the Liberal Party. It would be interesting to know the properties of this cohort and their (I would assume irrational) reasons.
I also recall that the four seats the Greens had last time was a bit of a fluke. I seem to remember having three down on the last election night, but it turned out to be four. So really they lost one seat but I’m not sure what percentage a quota is. I’m assuming it’s more than 4% and that changes in preference flows will have a fair bit to do with the outcome.
Well, the Liberals have done better than expected, from the look of things.
I only tipped the Greens to lose a seat, though whether to Labor or the Liberals was another matter. I saw a Mackerras prediction of the Greens losing 2 seats – if that’d happened, I’d felt that a seat would go to either side. But the Greens’ losses look like the Liberals’ gains.
But why would the Greens choose to support the Liberals? They arguably hate the Liberals more than Labor hates them, especially while Tony Abbott is the Federal Liberal Leader.
It’s a pity that, given the scant interest in ACT politics outside the capital and surrounds, few people had any inkling of issues in the ACT. It wasn’t until last week that word was getting out about unmandated rate increases by Labor and potential public service job cuts by the Liberals. Don’t these themes sound familiar?
I note one person’s observation that the cost of living and Labor’s longevity in government should have seen the Liberals win easily but they didn’t make use of this.
Keep an eye on Ginninderra. There’s a very interesting tussle between Labor’s #2 and #3 candidates and the Green MLA (and leader) Meredith Hunter for the last two seats (after the other three have gone Lib 2, ALP 1). It’s pretty close to being a three-way tie between those candidates, which Hunter obviously won’t want to come third in. If that happens, it’ll be a shame for the ACT Greens (back to one member, like before 2008), but it’d also deny the Liberals’ whinge of “but we got more seats!”. Swings ‘n’ roundabouts.
So it seems a quota is about 5%. I know we call these systems “proportional” but if it ends up being that with over 10% of the vote (about 2 quotas) then a party ends up with 1 seat then you have to wonder about the stability of such systems. Same with the result the last time around. The Greens should only have had about 3, but ended up with 4.
Austin: A quota is 16.7% in the 5-member Ginninderra and Brindabella electorates, and 12.5% in the 7-member Molonglo electorate.
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