Higgins – Australia 2022

Trent – thanks for your observations. It’s still some months from the elecfion so I’m skeptical of looking at poster density as an indication of campaign intensity, but the Greens definitely have a large volunteer base which is a big asset. If they are diverting resources from Macnamara that may explain how they can improve their numbers vs Labor from 2019.

I am fairly sure that the 2CP I once saw for this electorate was closer for Labor than it was for the Greens (and 1.3% is ringing a bell for some reason as the “exclusion point” difference), but I could be wrong. I’m sure that the numbers would be available from Ben or perhaps another pseph.

In 2019, the Greens threw a lot of resources at Kooyong so they are probably diverting some from there as well. They may also feel that Adam Bandt is secure enough in Melbourne that the massive efforts at previous elections does not need to be replicated. What may scare the Liberal Luvvies who may vote Green is the Greens policy to ban horse racing !! In Higgins, Kooyong and Goldstein – banning the Spring Racing Carnival is akin to asking people to kill their first born. It is a policy not widely publicised but banning the Melbourne Cup – really?

I have the 2016 figures when the Greens made the 2CP:

Liberal v Green 2CP – 57.99 vs 42.01
Liberal v Labor 2PP – 60.69 vs 39.31

(Source is the AEC website lists both, as it wasn’t a Lib/Lab contest)

So based on 2016 preference flows, a Liberal v Green 2CP has more chance of unseating the Liberals than a Liberal vs Labor 2CP, it was actually quite a big difference too.

I don’t have a Liberal v Greens 2CP in 2019 though. But the 3PP margin between Labor & Greens was 1.93% so pretty close, actually closer than Macnamara.

As I said earlier though, I wouldn’t write anyone off and consider this a genuine 3 way contest where any of the 3 parties could win.

Remember that 1.93% margin was without Windsor in the seat, so the redistribution alone will wipe most of that out because Windsor is possibly the Greens’ strongest suburb south of the river.

So I think it’s a genuine 50/50 between Labor and Greens but conditions this time might be more favourable to the Greens than in 2019…. And then whichever of the two parties makes that final count has a real shot at unseating the Libs given the small margin and anti-Liberal sentiment in Victoria (and the fact that if it is the Greens who make the count, their 2CP margin may already be under 1% if 2016 is anything to go by).

Hey Adda, it’s Fiona here! The labor candidate is quite controversial, I’m not writing her off here, she isn’t UAP or ONP but still has her anti AstraZeneca retoric, here’s a link, or just search, “Labor Higgins” and the title by 9News will mention her anti AstraZeneca messaging.

https://amp.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-preselects-outspoken-astrazeneca-critic-to-run-as-candidate-in-higgins-20210729-p58e47.html

So yes while she isn’t anti vax, not all voters are as engaged as we are, we’re literally on Tally Room. I do independent electorate analysis when elections come up and I work with a sub section of A current affair, we’ve concluded that she has a harder time messaging than the Greens or Liberals, and as Trent mentioned, Labor realises this, I’ve done door knocking for both Sonya and Michelle and what I’ve noticed is with when I did it with Michelle, one of the 8 houses that would open their doors would recognise and question her medical advice, idk if the Liberals use it as an attack considering they have more “Freedom” messaging, but it seems to be working.

Trent, I personally believe that posters do not make too much of a difference, sure it makes Josh Burns known but that doesn’t mean people will vote for him, I live in the Macnamara electorate too, and what I’ve noticed, walking down St Kilda, I’ve seen a lot of Josh Burns pamphlets in the streets as litter, that’s for a different section of Tally Room, but what I wanted to say is that however you plan to vote, you should get involved this year, if it’s for Josh or Steph, get involved and make a difference.

Fiona

I would still say the LNP are the favourites here, however I do think this seat will be closer then it was last time with Greens finishing second place.

Sonya Semmens is a personable public communicator who prior to the official launch of her campaign has been tireless in establishing a viable community base for herself across the electorate, as others have in noted in their comments about her volunteer support and visibility. Her Greens climate/integrity platform is the equivalent in Higgins to the policies of high profile independents who are forming the most serious challenge to the Liberals in other marginally held electorates with similar demographics. Semmens is definitely the one to watch in the three-way Higgins contest

The ABC says the margin is 2.6 which is a lot closer, which margin is it?

They’re estimates of the impact of redistribution.

Out of curiosity, how is the non-polling place vote factored into redistribution estimates? I often find that the estimated impacts seem a bit understated.

For example – and I know there are multiple other changes too, and also you would look at all the results not just 2CP, but this is just for simplicity to illustrate – let’s look at Higgins gaining Windsor in just 2CP terms.

Say there are 6000 enrolled voters in Windsor but only 2000 votes at the polling places in Windsor, and they had a 75-25 2CP favouring Labor.

I assume 75-25 isn’t applied to the whole 6000 voters, because as I say, generally I find the redistribution impacts seem understated. And that makes sense because the “other” votes can be quite different.

Say the “other” vote (postal/absent etc) is 55-45 favouring the Libs in Higgins. You also couldn’t apply that to the other 4000 voters, because absent/postal voters who live in Windsor are likely to have a very different result than those who live in Glen Iris or Malvern. So that would be even more wrong than just applying 75-25 to the whole 6000, especially when there’s that much of a stark contrast.

While no methodology would be perfect, I’d think the best approach would be to apply the Higgins-wide difference between polling place & other, to the specific Windsor result.

Using this example….

Just say Higgins was 50-50 (LIB-ALP) on the day and 55-45 (LIB-ALP) for all other forms of voting. That means the Liberals averaged 5% better in “other” votes than ordinary votes.

So if you gain 6000 voters from Windsor booths, where polling places have 2000 votes breaking 75-25 ALP-LIB; you would estimate the other 4000 votes at 70-30 ALP-LIB… 5% better for the Liberals.

I think that’s probably as accurate as it could be, but I’m just not sure how it is usually done. Can anyone shed any light?

Would the AEC have possibly estimated the “other” vote to be closer to the polling place vote, and maybe other estimates used a figure closer to Higgins overall “other” vote?

Sorry just a correction, when I talk about the Higgins-wide “other” vote, or comparing the difference between “other” and ordinary votes, I actually mean Macnamara because that’s where Windsor was transferred from.

But the same points apply anyway.

People who live in Windsor and used postal or absent voting probably voted very differently to people in Caulfield North who did the same

So if Macnamara had say a 52-48 (ALP-LIB) “other” vote but a 60-40 ALP-LIB polling day vote… The for those 4000 Windsor voters not in the polling day stats you’d apply the -8% to the Windsor polling place result, rather than applying 52-48 to those voters.

Is that how it’s done?

That all sounds confusing so it’s best I just summarize again.

Sorry for the 3 posts in a row. I’m just genuine curious about how the redistribution estimates are calculated, and where they may different significantly, would be interested to know which one I think may be more accurate based on how I believe it should be calculated.

Here’s the scenario, with fake numbers for the purpose of a simplistic illustration.

– 6000 voters in Windsor are transferred from Macnamara to Higgins.
– The Windsor polling places had 2000 votes that broke 75-25 ALP-LIB.
– That leaves 4000 voters unaccounted for in the statistics.
– Macnamara as a whole was 60-40 ALP-LIB on the day, and 52-48 ALP-LIB for “other” votes.

Would those 6000 Windsor voters be calculated as:
– 2000 at 75-25 ALP-LIB (polling day result)
– 4000 at 67-33 ALP-LIB (Windsor polling day result, minus the 8% difference between ordinary & other)

Or does it just get calculated like:
– 2000 at 75-25 ALP-LIB (polling day result)
– 4000 at 52-48 ALP-LIB (Macnamara “other” result)

I would think the first scenario would be the way it’s calculated. Obviously there is more to it than that and I’m sure the results of surrounding booths might be factored in as well, but what I’m most interested in is just what calculation is applied to the presumed “other” result… Whether it would be 67-33 or 52-48 based on the above example.

I assume these factors are could be behind the difference between the 3.7% estimated margin on some sites and 2.6% on the AEC & Antony Green’s guide that Bob mentions; because that is quite a big difference.

It’s a good question Trent.

It’s a difficult task to accomplish and made harder as the share of the electorate voting away from an ordinary booth increases.

I have two different approaches. For federal elections, I use my SA1-level vote estimates that are based on the booth results and the AEC’s data on how many people from each SA1 voted at each booth. If 2% of all postal voters in an electorate live in an SA1, I apportion 2% of each candidate’s vote to that SA1. That does have a flattening effect since there is almost certainly some variety in how the postal votes are distributed across the electorate, but it has the benefit of simplicity.

It’s not quite so bad for pre-poll votes since there are now multiple pre-poll booths in a federal electorate so you’re not sampling data from the whole electorate, but for postal votes it’s not great. And it’s more of a problem in urban seats than rural (that’s probably true for this whole thing).

For state and local elections, where I don’t have the location booth data, I split up the election day booths based on the change in the border, tweaking them so you get roughly the right number of voters being moved (sometimes I’ll split a booth in half or 2/3-1/3 to make the numbers roughly add up), then for the remaining votes I distribute them with a skew that matches the ordinary vote skew. So if Labor did 10% better in one segment of an electorate than in the rest on election day, I try to skew the pre-poll and other votes by 10%.

I probably should try applying the latter formula to the SA1 level for federal redistributions but it’s a big task.

I think Antony’s methodology is probably pretty similar but he may be skewing the other votes in a way I’m not.

It doesn’t usually make much of a difference but the suburb of Windsor is quite distinctive so moving it in and out of Higgins can really show up how your methodology varies.

In the end I don’t think it makes much of a difference if you use my margin or Antony’s. Either way it’s very marginal.

Thanks for the detailed response Ben! That’s really interested and informative.

I didn’t realise you could get the data of how many people voted by post per SA1, that would definitely help make those numbers more precise but I agree that applying the skew that you apply to state elections on top of that would probably make it even more accurate. That said, it does sound like it would be a really difficult ask unless there was a quick formula that could be applied.

Like you say, in most seats or most areas being redistributed it probably makes very little difference anyway, but in suburbs like Windsor where a party does 18-25% better than the overall electorate result, it becomes more noticeable and can be a good test case.

Either way it’s a marginal seat winnable by all 3 parties this year I think. Can’t wait to watch it unfold on election night.

I’m not sure if this has been discussed yet, but when Higgins was Liberal v Greens in 2016, the Liberal 2CP margins were:

7.99% vs Greens
10.69% vs Labor.

The Liberals did 2.7% better versus Labor than Greens due to preference flows.

Now, 2019 was Liberal v Labor so we don’t have a LIB v GRN margin.

But if, as the AEC & Antony Green’s guide lists, the redistributed Liberal v Labor is only 2.6%, it’s quite possible that margin could be almost entirely erased already if it were a Liberal v Greens contest….

We also don’t quite know what impact losing Hughesdale and gaining Windsor would have had on the 3PP count; that 1.93% 3PP margin between ALP and Greens in 2019 could almost be erased too and is likely under 1% at the very least.

If we had the data, notionally this could very well be close to a tie between Greens & Labor at the 3PP count, and then close to a tie between Liberal & Greens at the 2PP count already, quite likely less than a 1% margin for each.

Given how close this seat potentially already is, I’m surprised it’s been flying under the radar compared to the seats with teals.

I’d put this as the Liberals’ most “at risk” seat along with Chisholm, and it’s quite possible that the Greens may already only be a 1% swing (against both Labor and Liberal) away from winning it.

Interesting analysis Trent, although Kevin Bonham has the 3CP swing needed for the Greens at 2.6% as well (https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2022/04/poll-roundup-federal-hung-parliament.html) so I’m not sure who has the done the maths with the different 2PP. I have money on the Greens to win anyway – its the kind of seat where Morrison is toxic, and I don’t think Katie Allen will be able to do much to stop the association. The Labor nominee doesn’t seem up to it, either. Greens will target this hard, I think, and have the networks in the area to do it properly.

My guess there is that in the absence of a LIB v GRN margin or any data around ALP to GRN preference flows in 2019, he could just be applying the LIB v ALP margin and substituting the ALP for the Greens.

Without any data I guess we have no real way to know whether the LIB v GRN margin would have been smaller than the LIB v ALP margin other than to speculate, but based on 2016 I definitely think it’s likely (although probably not quite as dramatic a difference as it was that year).

I agree with your assessment though. I’m tipping a close Greens win. To be honest I haven’t set foot in the “Liberal heartland” of the seat to detect a mood there, but certainly the Chapel St corridor doesn’t feel like an area where Katie Allen will do well.

As a side note, I was up in Windsor today and it was interesting to see Josh Burns posters in phone booths that previously had Katie Allen posters in them. It’s not even Josh’s electorate! Strange that the ALP are buying advertising space in Higgins, but not using it for their Higgins candidate.

Holding Macnamara must be their priority. They would also know that lots of St Kilda and St Kilda East residents frequent the Windsor end of Chapel St.

Which kinda contradicts their objection to the redistribution where they argued Chapel St has no links to Macnamara, when they then go and buy out-of-electorate advertising space on Chapel St to target Macnamara voters…

I agree Trent I have been predicting Higgins as a gain for the Greens for months now. Normally I’d ignore the noise of possible green gains in seats but weirdly this one which seems shockingly like a layup for the Greens is going under the radar compared to seats like Griffith and Macnamara where it seems like far more of an uphill battle. I just don’t understand why those two are being hyped up so much for the Greens when they’re shockingly close here.

Yeah I’d say this is the most likely Greens gain tbh and I find it weird that it isn’t getting as much attention.

Was ‘polled’ for Higgins tonight. ‘Polled’ Inverted as it was blatant push polling for the Greens. At least the actual polling question came first. Slagged off both Libs and ALP. Most interesting question was “were you aware that there is only 3% gap that stops the Greens winning the seat?”. Anybody encountered similar push polls and questions in other Greens targer seats?

Interesting!

I haven’t been polled once this year. Back in 2018-19 when I was actually living in Higgins (Prahran) I was polled countless times for both the federal and state elections. Some were clearly commissioned by both the Greens and Liberals too. I remember the Greens ones followed up the polling questions with a lot of questions about climate action; prior to the state election I got Liberal commissioned polls that asked about crime concerns.

Given how much of a target Macnamara is, I would have expected some polls this time around too but nothing yet.

I’m not sure about the Greens winning here however, I’m confident that Greens will be in second place & we might not know for days who is the member here. I would like to note I’m not ruling that LNP could lose here.

I also think it’ll be so close (Greens probably leading on the night, but knowing that postal votes will break for the Libs) that this seat won’t be called for a few days, and genuinely could go either way.

There’s a lot going against the Libs here, not the least of which being that it’s flanked by Kooyong, Goldstein and Chisholm which all seem to be getting a lot more of the Liberals’ resources and attention, while this seems to be flying under the radar on a much slimmer margin than two of them, and with more left-leaning (some very much so) suburbs than any of those seats.

The Age reported this afternoon that Ingram Spencer, the UAP candidate here, has been taken into custody with 13 charges against him. Apparently the UAP are considering disendorsing him.

Higgins is already one of only 2 seats without a One Nation candidate (interestingly it would have no doubt been one of the seats where they preferenced Labor too), and now it may also be the only seat to not have a UAP candidate either.

Higgins might be an interesting case study at this election, in assessing to what extent people are willing to stay with a moderate Liberal in the absence of a teal candidate. I’m quite surprised Allen is a short priced favourite here. On paper and with the broader mood it looks like it should be a Labor or Greens gain.

In her interview alongside Frydenburg this morning, the last question a journo asked her was about recent internal Labor polling which apparently showed that Morrison was more unpopular in Higgins than in any other Liberal-held seat in the country.

I haven’t seen any other reports about that polling, but a journalist brought it up in their question (which was if she’s noticed that impacting her campaign).

If I were a gambler, I’d throw on a few bob that he won’t be the last UAP candidate to get disendorsed between now and the election.

I have no stats but only the vibe – newly a resident of Higgins in the posh part of South Yarra. Katie Allen’s arguably cynical floor crossing on the RDA doesn’t sit well with her voting with the LNP on repealing the Medevac legislation. As a former senior paediatrician. Hmm. ALP candidate (another doctor!) has done herself no favours with AZ comments – arguably irresponsible given at the time it was the only vax available for most including the well heeled older residents of the Domain precinct. From an infectious diseases specialist. Beggars belief how she was preselected but I hear it’s something to do with Albo’s hatred of Shorten or something. Whatever. To me the Greens candidate seems a bit earnest yet meh. Haven’t been polled. Barely even a leaflet shoved in the letterbox. The rich here in this small enclave won’t vote ALP but might vote Green.

https://www.theage.com.au/cbd/lib-moderate-sends-how-to-vote-cards-preferencing-anti-vax-pro-putin-palmer-candidate-20220502-p5ahvg.html

This won’t help Katie Allen’s cause at all and will reinforce her opponents’ argument that while she may be a moderate, her party and their alliances are not.

For those blocked by a paywall, the article states that Katie Allen posted out tens of thousands of HTV cards with the UAP candidate above Labor and the Greens, the day before he was arrested on harassment charges.

She has now had new ones printed with him last, but it’s probably too late.

It also highlights 2 other things which weaken her talking points:

– If Katie Allen is promoting herself as peo-climate, putting the Greens second last contradicts that (and putting a party owned by a mining magnate above them seems especially hypocritical)

– Katie Allen is using the Labor candidate’s comments about Astrazeneca against her, but that line of attack doesn’t hold much weight if you then preference explicitly anti-vax candidates above her

Finally, even before being arrested, the following was already public about the UAP candidate:

* Anti-vax and posted false death stats about Pfizer
* Celebrated Shane Warne’s death because Warne supported Djokovic’s deportation
* Believes Port Arthur may have been a hoax
* Supports Putin and the invasion of the Ukraine

You have to ask why it took his arrest for Katie Allen to bump him down from near the top of her HTV card.

I’m wondering how much this might impact her chances? Will the other parties be able to capitalise on this?

And how many “on the fence” Liberal voters might be put off by her HTV card when they receive it? Regardless of whether they know about the UAP candidate’s issues, simply preferencing anti-vax and climate-hoax parties above Labor & Greens when she is building her brand on being a pro-science and pro-climate moderate would surely raise eyebrows, because a HTV says a lot about which parties your values align with the most.

Or will not enough people notice or care enough for it to make a difference?

It’s a similar issue in Goldstein and Kooyong Trent, where they’ve put the independents below right wing parties. The reality is that liberal preferences won’t be distributed in these seats, so I don’t get why they would open themselves up to attacks over preferring right wing candidates by doing this.

Also think this will be a safe Labor or greens gain, whoever comes second. I’m suprised by its relative lack of attention by political journos in the media, Morrison is toxic in this kind of seat. Allen will benefit from a sophomore surge but I don’t think it’ll be enough to offset the general swing away from the coalition in these kind lf inner city seats

100% agree Xenu.

Liberal preferences in this seat will never be on any consequence because they will always have the highest primary vote, and even beyond that only the order of Liberal, Greens and Labor (or a high profile teal for the seats that have them) actually matter anyway.

It’s literally of no consequence to the results at all if ANY party on the ballot puts minor candidates like UAP second or last on their HTV. The placement of minor parties is purely to send a message about your own values.

So why, if you’re trying to compete with more progressive opponents, in a seat that is socially progressive and put off by your party’s more conservative wing, and you’re building your brand as a moderate voice for science and climate, would even consider putting anti-science, anti-vax or mining parties above the other majors? It just sends a bad message and aligns you with the values the voters in your seat despise.

It makes no sense and I think it will backfire.

I agree this should be a Labor or Greens (more likely Greens) gain, and am surprised it’s being so overlooked by journalists.

Trent
It is all an argument for optional preferential voting at Federal level . Unfortunately the system forces you to acknowledge clowns in one way or another. It also has to be acknowledged that there is a bigger picture such as future senate relationships.

Redistributed you’re right that the main driver of the Liberals putting questionable candidate orders on their HTV cards is due to deals with those parties to get their senate preferences.

It’s a bit like cutting off their nose to spite their face though. By trying to secure UAP or Lib Dem preferences in the senate, they’re jeopardising blue ribbon HoR seats like Higgins & Goldstein where voters will be appalled by moderates like Katie Allen distributing HTV cards that align her more with anti-vax candidates than climate candidates.

You would think they could have a bit more flexibility in those arrangements, like “We’ll put you above xx in the senate and in at least 130 lower house seats” but have some discretion to not do so in seats where it could hurt their image and undermine their messaging/branding.

Yeah the teal wave is sucking up a lot of attention (and especially in neighbouring Kooyong) at the expense of focus on this seat. Since betting odds are almost always determined by media attention, that means that while those seats have had the odds moving recently against the Liberals, there’s still some (in my view) quite generous odds for Labor and Greens here.

TAB is 1.36 Lib, 5.00 Lab, 5.5 Green. Sportsbet 1.30 Lib, 5.00 Lab, 6.00 Green. For reference, Frydenburg has already lengthened to 1.63 and 1.65, while Sharma and Wilson are now even or underdogs in their contests.

I don’t intend to encourage gambling, mind you. I just find it an interesting indication of how far under the radar the seat is flying, when other similar seats are rapidly shifting in the odds, reflective of the attention they receive.

I just posted a PV, 3PP and 2CP prediction in the Macnamara thread, I’ll attempt the same here for what I predict in Higgins.

Primary Votes:
43% Liberal
26% Greens
26% Labor
5% Others

3PP:
45% Liberal
28% Greens
27% Labor

2CP:
51% Greens
49% Liberal

I pretty much agree with your prediction Trent, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended up being a slightly stronger margin for the Greens on the 2CP than 51-49. This is one of the seats I will be watching most closely on election night.

I think there’s a really simple explanation for why Higgins has gotten much less media attention. Higgins is a likely Greens gain. Most media figures on 6/7 figure salaries do not care about or actively despise everything the Greens do. Ellen Mary Fanning for instance does not have to worry about making rent or if she can afford a root canal.

The Teals on the other hand are almost tailor made media-bait; they’re rich girlbosses and/or literal ex-media figures who talk about abstract issues like integrity or, to be fair, very real issues like sexism in the work place that even very successful women can relate to.

Somewhat surprised to see a few predictions that the Greens will get up. I live in the seat and I am finding the sentiment is more in favour of Labor’s candidate Michelle Ananda-Rajah. She seems to be running a good campaign, quite visible. I think her primary vote will be closer to 30% and then she will romp home with Green’s preferences. Sonya Semmens is not running a campaign like Jason Ball did in 2016 and 2019, which really built up the Greens vote. People quite like Katie but the Libs and Morrison are absolutely on the nose.
Purely anecdotal / observational. Very interested to see how it plays out on election night.

Reading back my last comment it sounds a lot more sexist than I meant it to, so for clarity’s sake I mean that that sort of common class identification applies every bit to people like Andrew Probyn or eg the many male journalists working in AFR, ABC or Fairfax as much as to Ellen Mary Fanning. The Teals share a common upper-middle class cultural background with the media establishment that’s common with both men and women.

FL – are you trying to say that the “Teals” have a “diversity” issue because they all have very similar back grounds and life experiences (ie upper-middle class) and predominantly female?

I was saying that the media has a representation problem but for the record, I do think the fact that nearly all that climate 200 candidates share that wealthy background is also a problem, yes, but it’s also very much par for the course in parliament. There are already plenty of men in parliament.

Hugo wdym? Michelle is running a much drier campaign compared to Fiona McLeod and soft undecided-voters hearing about Labor blaming Shorten’s loss of a focus in Higgins May turn voters off. And also if you take a stroll through South Yarra or Prahran you are immediately bombarded with phone booths either displaying Sonya or Katie. What area do you live in, I live in Prahran.

It’s interesting to see your prediction Trent, what preferences give the Greens the bump over Labor when the first count is identical. I personally believe Greens will come out second and then shorten the lead but still win on second. Especially with Reason’s decision to preference Sonya second (But also the AJP’s choice to preference Michelle) the difference here is that Reason voters are more likely to follow HTV cards but not AJP voters as they are normally more politically active and aware

Also i again don’t know what area Hugo is from but in Prahran, Armadale and Toorak, on the weekends I constantly see Sonya’s volunteers hitting the streets.

But still end of the day it’ll be interesting to see who wins this seat!

Fiona I agree with pretty much all of that. I’ve seen only Katie & Sonya stuff around Chapel St too, no Labor except Josh Burns advertising outside his own seat. But the east of the seat might be the opposite, that’s where Labor are strongest.

As for the preference flows, I think Labor will come out worst from minor preferences:

– Reason may have been 50/50 between Greens & Labor but putting Greens second on the HTV should give them the edge, still this is where Labor will get most of theirs

– I actually didn’t know AJP put Labor ahead of Greens, I expected the opposite. But traditionally it has been AJP preferences that helped the Greens leapfrog Labor as they got the lion’s share of them. Greens went from 3rd to 2nd in Prahran in both 2014 & 2018 off the back of AJP preferences.

– Preferences from the right wing minors will probably fall into two categories: those who preference the Libs, and those who just put the 2 majors last which will end up with the Greens. So I think the Libs will get most of their preferences, followed by Greens then Labor.

That’s basically how I came to that 5% going approximately 2% Libs, 2% Greens, 1% Labor.

My guess for primary votes was that Labor and Greens will be very close, either could be ahead of the other by <1% around the 26% mark, but those preference flows above should put Sonya ahead of Michelle.

My prediction on the night is the Greens will be leading with a 2CP of around 52-53% but it will be too close to call with postals still to count, which will cut it back to about 51% and it won't be called for a couple of days.

Of course if Greens and Labor are that close, it will complicate that count even more and they won’t know who the 2CP count is until the full distribution of preferences.

And on the night the AEC will probably count Liberal v Labor actually, because that’s what it was last time, so when I say in the comment above that Greens will be leading on the night with a 52-53% 2CP, that will probably actually be Labor, not Greens, and it will be unknown on the night whether a LIB v GRN recount is needed. So the whole thing will be a big question mark until postals are counted and the full distribution of preferences is done.

It may be more clear that either Labor or Greens have beaten Katie Allen, than it is which one actually beat her.

Who says Reason voters are more likely to follow the cards / less politically aware?

Reason voters tend to be a very politically-literate crowd. Much more so than when they were the Sex Party, as changing the name got rid of the troll votes (for better or for worse), so no one’s voting for them without knowing a reasonable amount about who they are.

The core Greens and AJP voters are also very politically-aware, a lot of the activist crowd etc, but with the Greens and AJP it’s more obvious what they stand for (it’s in the name) and therefore they get a greater number of people voting on “the vibe” without necessarily knowing huge amounts about politics.

AJP have preferenced Labor above the Greens in QLD in seats where the Greens could overtake Labor as well. Allegedly the AJP think Labor have promised them policy concessions when elected in return? Sounds like AJP got fooled to me.

AJP member here.

Will admit ideologically it’s a bit bizarre to go ALP > Greens, but there’s mostly clear reasons from a psephology/politics perspective.

Realistic aim of AJP in terms of electoral prospects is to gain upper house seats at state elections. In Vic in particular, greens not likely to have any surplus to distribute to a middling AJP candidate hoping to pick up a seat.

Given AJP candidates generally only poll somewhere from 0.5% – 5%, even full HTV “compliance” (incredibly unlikely) isn’t likely to swing the dial.

And in utilitarian terms, a trade off of some HTV’s/preferences for some shelter funding (or hell a duck shooting ban one day you’d hope) is a reasonable deal.

Unfortunately the strategy could fall down in 3CP seats like Higgins, because of how tight the Labor/Greens race is for 2nd.

Overall I disagree with it – but know why it was done.

LIB DEMS ANNOUNCE THEY ARE PREFERNCING LABOR ABOVE KATIE

That’s interesting and unexpected, especially since Katie put the Lib Dem at #2.

I wonder if it’s a strategic decision to keep Labor above the Greens, which could be for two reasons:

1. Perhaps they see the writing on the wall that Katie is most likely gone anyway, and would rather a Labor MP (likely to be single-term in this seat) than a Greens MP who would be more likely to establish themselves and be shielded from swings against the ALP next time;

2. It could actually be strategically aimed at helping Katie in the 2CP count, because in previous elections, Labor preferences have flowed better to the Greens than the other way around (opposite to most seats) and by a significant margin. In 2016, the LIB 2CP was almost 3% better vs Labor than Greens. So in a near 50/50 race, it’s very possible that Katie Allen could win vs Labor but lose v Greens.

Now, that second point does sound a bit counter-intuitive because if you want Katie Allen to win a 2CP count vs Labor, and your voters have put Labor ahead of her, then you’re actively helping Labor. But they may have done the maths on it, and thought that their preferences may only give Labor a 0.5% advantage over Katie Allen; but a Liberal vs Labor count compared to a Liberal vs Greens count might give Katie Allen a 2% advantage.

I’m probably thinking way too much into this and I doubt they have done that level of analysis, so it’s probably more likely either just sending a message against the Liberal moderates (like One Nation), or the first point above – thinking Katie is gone anyway and wanting to help Labor beat the Greens.