Warringah – Australia 2016

Mad Tony shouldn’t have any trouble being returned, but I get the sense that his continuing presence in parliament can only be bad for PM Turnbull. Abbott still has a delusional belief that he has a legacy to defend, he may inadvertently end up writing Labor’s attack ads for them

@GG Labor won’t. The moment they start drawing attention to the leadership spill then attention is equally drawn to the way Shorten knifed Gillard.

W of S
Yes when labor do political execution, there are buckets of blood !!!!.Everyone gets there hands in it !!!. The libs were far more clinical, & cleaner !!!. Malcolm even says he & Tony are still friends, of many, many years !!!!.

@Winediamond well we are the experts at it. Labor are only novices at knifing leaders. We got rid of Hughes in 1922, Menzies in 1941, Gorton in 1971 and now Abbott in 2015. These were all PMs, let’s not even go into the numerous Opposition Leaders that we tossed!

W of S
Technically you are incorrect about Gorton . He committed political hari kari, by voting against himself !!!.

@Winediamond half the party voted against him. Even had he not used his casting vote against himself, there was NO way he was going to carry on!

@Winediamond, although strictly speaking you’re right. If we are being absolutely technical, then we also have to exclude Hughes and Menzies – neither one’s leadership was ever put to a vote. Rather, they were pushed out. Same thing basically.

GG, I agree, after 20+ years it might have been time for poor old Tony to move on. It’s actually quite uncommon these days for defeated leaders to hang around (unless they want to cause trouble).

Completely agree with MM and GG, I honestly can’t see why Abbott is still there. It’s a bit too late now but if a strong independent had come out of the woodwork something interesting may have happened. Abbott will hold easily although it’s quite probable that the Greens could beat Labor into second.

Abbott is a conservative warrior. His motives are to fight for a conservative moral worldview in government, much in the vein of US conservatives. He’s not the kind of politician who’s interested in a post-parliamentary career so has no reason to go anywhere. He doesn’t come across as someone who wanted to be PM for personal vanity or prestige, but as someone who wanted to be PM to further a moral agenda. You can see this in the way he haphazardly tried to pursue policies without anything like the kind of strategic political sense that John Howard had. Even if he can’t be PM again, I’d expect him to stick around for a long time, happy to wield whatever level of influence he can. He’s basically a career politician driven by moral convictions, not the kind of person who’ll quit his political career just because he lost the Prime Ministership.

@Nick C I completely agree with your assessment.

Interesting to see that James Mathison, the TV personality is running for Warringah. It’s hard to judge his level of support at the moment, but it is entirely possible that he could run second as he would have reasonable name recognition, and I suspect a bit of money to throw at it. Further helping his cause, I’d imagine that all other parties except for the CDP to preference him over Abbott.
Watch this space, who knows what will happen.

Interesting to see that James Mathison, the TV personality is running for Warringah. It’s hard to judge his level of support at the moment, but it is entirely possible that he could run second as he would have reasonable name recognition, and I suspect a bit of money to throw at it. Further helping his cause, I’d imagine that all other parties except for the CDP to preference him over Abbott.
Watch this space, who knows what will happen.

Starting just 5 weeks out it may be difficult for Mathison to have time to build a strong enough campaign to be a serious threat, but if he’s got good support and advice behind him, presumably he should finish 2nd, though mostly that’ll be at the expense of Labor and Greens votes. I don’t doubt that an independent could eat into the Liberal vote enough in a seat like this to put it at risk, but I’d think it would require a campaign that starts a lot earlier than 5 weeks out.

Always good to see something to make otherwise boring safe seats interesting anyway.

IK that independents generally do much better than the ALP/Greens in these safe Northern Beaches/Shore seats but I think it may come down to what his ideology is. While I am not saying that the electors of Warringah will only elect a true blue conservative, if this independent it too far to the left then I seriously doubt he will get elected, no matter how much funding/recognition he has.

Further I do not think he has the LOCAL profile to build a successful candidacy. I mean even Peter Macdonald who was the state MP for Manly failed to dislodge Abbott. While I do think that Abbott is much more on the nose now than in 2001, this is still quite significant.

Thirdly and finally, the Libs have never even polled below 50% of the PV – to find that stat you need to got back to 1943 where the UAP only polled 48% in an extremely difficult election.

In spite of all this however, we shall see what develops in the coming weeks.

Labor drew position 1 here, with NXT in position 2 and Abbot in position 5 (of 10). James Mathison took position 7.

I’d expect this to be less “safe” after this election, due to a confluence of a few factors… but I’d imagine Abbott will still win (hard to imagine a swing larger than 15%).

It’s not going to be easy, but I think all of the candidates running will take different chunks of Abbott’s vote and all of those people will make a point of putting him last. NXT will get a good chunk of the right leaning vote that’s abandoning the liberal party. Labor gets traditional swinging voters and donkey voters. Mathison looks set to get the protest vote; I think he’s the main candidate that’s being backed by the “anyone but abbott” movement emerging in the seat. Him saying he’d support a liberal government in a hung parliament to me seems like a smart move (despite running as a centre left candidate). The Greens candidate is impressive, will get the younger vote (nor Mathison as the media likes to assume), took 2nd against Baird and has managed to get plenty of media.

No idea where it will end up but it will be interesting to see how all the challengers do and whether it’s enough to dislodge Abbott or at least make his seat “marginal”.

Found myself at Bridgepoint in Mosman recently. Hard to imagine how that area couldn’t vote Liberal.

A story today that Abbott was devoting his own time and campaign resources to help out Karen McNamara in Dobell. Doesn’t sound like he’s too worried here.

Mathison did initially say he’d support a Liberal government, but later said he wouldn’t support either side in a hung parliament which seems like the better strategy. I think the first answer was a rookie error perhaps driven by what I’d consider mistaken interpretations of the reaction to Windsor and Oakeshott’s decisions. For one thing, a significant difference is that Windsor and Oakeshott at least had a background in conservative politics, but Mathison is running as a progressive candidate with no reason why voters should expect that their vote for someone presenting themselves as a progressive candidate explicitly campaigning against the values of the modern Liberal Party should then help form a Liberal government. Nobody expects that if the Greens win Higgins Jason Ball is going to support a Liberal government because ‘it’s a traditional Liberal seat’!

Unless Mathison’s campaign is a complete flop, the Labor and Greens votes won’t be going up here, that’s not how the electoral dynamics of this part of the world work. If Mathision does well he’ll be taking up to half ot the Labor and Greens votes from 2013, and then of course needs, along with the NXT candidate, to be getting votes from the Liberals. Labor and Greens won’t be taking votes off the Liberals here and are largely irrelevant.

If he had any political experience, Mathison clearly isn’t showing it, getting caught out on 2GB for not paying a bill that is 4-5 months old and then lying to Ben Fordham that he had paid it that day.

He seems to be campaigning on a Progressive Base targetting ‘Gen-Y’ voters who hate Abbott. The problem she will have is that the Northern Beaches has one of the highest concentrations of 55+ citizens in NSW and they won’t have a clue who Mathison is, let alone actually vote for them.

I agree with Daniel. I would see NXT actually doing well in a seat like this, taking the small-l liberal vote and then collecting preferences from the ALP (whose brand on the north shore and northern beaches is toxic) and the Greens.

I think it will be Abbott vs NXT 2CP, Abbott winning the Primary Vote on about 51% and ending up around 55-56% after preferences.

The other thing about NXT is that it’s the candidate most likely (of the 4 with a chance of coming 2nd) to have voters who aren’t putting Abbott last. They’re running an open ticket.

Not sure if they’ll end up with the 2CP but they’d have a better chance of beating Abbott than if preferences flowed to Greens or Labor.

I predict Abbott will be brought under 50% for the first time in his career, but he’ll retain the seat. If I had to guess Greens would get the 2CP with Mathison and Labor preferences.

Labor preferenced Greens first on their HTVs. They spat the dummy when Greens didn’t reciprocate but as far as I’m aware they haven’t changed anything.

Warringah is essentially a seat of two differing electorates. The peninsular side based on Manly can and does swing as has been evidenced by the state seat of Manly being occupied by Independents for a number of terms. As Ben states in the above summary, former state Independent member for Manly Peter McDonald gave Antoine a distinct bruising at the 2001 election.

It was the Mosman based western segment of the electorate that is the immovable conservative bedrock that saved Antoine in 2001 and will ensure this seat remains in conservative hands for as long as this seat crosses the Spit.

Good to see the mad monk out and about. Could a lazarus be on the cards? And no I am not referring to the Senator!

@JH I remain skeptical. From my understanding, John Howard was a far shrewder politician than Abbott.

I agree re the comparison Wreathy, but the mad monk is streets ahead on deviousness.

I am hearing that the mad monk is going to be onstage with the PM at the Liberal Launch. If so, the body language by both persons should be interesting!

The final outcome will be interesting because you have:

* ALP preferencing Greens second (HTV cards printed before Greens deal reneged)

* Greens preferencing Mathison second, NXT third

* Mathison still to publish is how to vote card

* Mathison being endorsed today by Dr MacDonald

* ALP candidate in Twitter spat with Mathison, can’t see him getting Mathison preferences.

I can only see Mathison pulling votes away from Greens and ALP, not Liberals. Roy Morgan poll on Monday showed Libs 53%, ALP 22%, Greens 16%, Other (6 candidates) 9%.

With preference deals in place, and Dr MacDonald endorsement, I could see a scenario in which the Greens manage to finish second on preferences. They seem to have played the election well – their candidate took a year off Uni to prepre for the campaign and doing a deal with Mathison was smart (especially when the gap between Greens and ALP could be bridged with strong Mathison preference flow).

Would be a major coup for the Greens to announce on election night re: Abbott and use it to support their policies are gaining traction etc.

My prediction: Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott will easily win again.

Although it is quite clear much of the Northern Beaches hate Abbott, he will win by more than 50%, there are plenty of oldies in the rich-ass suburbs such as Clontarf, Balgowlah, Fairlight and Seaforth who will vote for Abbott no matter what, plus the richies living in Mosman who will also vote for Abbott no matter what. The northern end of the electorate (Brookvale, Dee Why and parts of Manly) is noticeably less conservative than the western end being the working class area but there will be many older people who won’t have a clue who Mathison is, the younger generations are also not likely to vote for him and will likely vote for either the Greens or vote Liberal as their parents did.

According to AG, the Greens made the 2CP cut after the distribution of preferences.

All class by Tom. How disrespectful to our seniors.

@Queensland Observer There is a level of truth in Tom’s argument though, older people so tend to favour the Libs and Nats, as well in an electorate like Warringah, Abbott would be pulling upwards of 70% of the senior’s vote. To be fair this electorate would vote for a rock if it was endorsed by the Liberal Party.

What looks like the completed recount gives a final result of Lib 62.5 vs Green 37.5 here.