Ben is joined by Jill Sheppard and Emily Foley to discuss the long-term trend of the major parties losing primary votes: what is causing the trend, how it might play out in 2025 and whether they can do anything to reverse the trend. The seat of the week is Bruce in south-eastern Melbourne.
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I had two flashbacks when listening to this podcast.
The first was a post election feedback presentation given by all parties after 2019 election at the Queensland Parliament. At that time I asked the Labor person – shouldn’t you be worried about your primary vote; this is heart attack territory for any major party wanting to be in majority government? It was a very dismissive answer, which indicated to me that no-one was taking this seriously. Well maybe they were, but they were not going to admit it publicly.
The second was last week’s episode of Swingers on the ABC, which covered many of the points raised here. I can’t remember the exact figures but I think it was 89 seat were decided on primary votes 20 years ago and at the last election some 19 seats were decided on primary votes, so we better get used to the role of minor parties.
I see the decline of the major parties being more a problem for Labor, than the Liberals. From this layman’s perspective there seems to be more growth in progressive minor parties, than what there is for the conservative side. It seems to me that the smaller conservative parties tend to be noisy, but not large in numbers. Whereas the pressive minor parties seem to growing in parties and numbers, which to me seem to represent a bigger threat to Labor.
I for one thought Dutton was in with a show towards the end of last year. Not because I saw he and his party had the answers, but because they were riding that giant wave of discontent against sitting governments. That all swung around in the last month when Trump went all crazy and people started to have second thoughts about what a mini-me Dutton Government could actually implement. It seems Albo possible could get his second Scott Morrison.
I realise that government is formed in the lower house, but lately I feel, because of the limited candidates I have in my seat with CPV, that the Senate is where I really get to express my true voting intentions and that may be the most interesting result this time around.
Agree Neil about 2025 being a sort of repeat of 2019. Morrison was not well liked at the time, similar to Albanese today but he represented a ‘safe’ pair of hands compared to uncertainty offered by the opposition party, so voters reluctantly backed him and the Coalition.
“From this layman’s perspective there seems to be more growth in progressive minor parties, than what there is for the conservative side.”
I respectfully disagree. In one random electorate (Leichhardt) we have the LNP, One Nation, Katters, Libertarian, Family First and Trumpet of Patriots – six parties on the right, plus an independent who is preferencing the LNP second and Labor second-last. They are opposed by Labor, the Greens and Legalise Cannabis. Seven choices for the ‘right’, against three choices for the ‘left’.
Looking at another random seat in a different state (Gilmore), you again have LNP, One Nation, Family First and the Trumpets, going against Labor, the Greens, Legalise Cannabis and a leftish independent (glancing very quickly at their website, no HTV offered).
It may be a completely different story in the Senate, but even then you have characters like Rennick running in Queensland splitting the right even further.
@Real Talk I think their point was more about the vote than the number of contestants. In that electorate, probably only ON and Katter will get any decent number of votes, the rest will struggle to get their deposit back. Katter only runs in a handful of seats, so for most of the country ON is the only rw minor to get any real vote share. On the left, Greens of course do well, but also LC get a decent vote, and VS in Victoria.
Also of course you’ve got left-leaning indies in a lot of places, and a spattering of others who don’t do very well.