Canberra – Australia 2016

I lived in the ACT for several years. While both seats are safe Labor, Canberra is always ~4-5% softer than Fraser/Fenner. The inner south has traditionally been an affluent area that has a stronger Liberal vote, and there are none of the 70-80% Labor areas that you see in the inner north. All of the 70+ Labor booths here are the areas transferred from Fraser/Fenner in this redistribution.

It will be interesting to see if the ACT gains a third seat in the next Parliament. It has been close for a while, but never quite got there.

@MM I agree. Although Fraser came close to winning it (Fraser) in the 75 landslide.

I hadn’t noticed before that the Bullet Train party retained their deposit here. No doubt high speed rail is something of interest to a lot of Canberrans, but I’m still surprised that party would get 4% anywhere.

Donkey vote, maybe?

Bullet train vote increase just about matched the drop in the Greens vote – My suspicion is that that’s where it went, along with the vote for the Secular Party. Figures don’t support Mark’s perception of Central Canberra as having a stronger Liberal vote – there is very little difference in the ALP 2PP vote across the electorate at Ben’s district level of aggregation. Where ALP vote is lower Greens tend to be the beneficiary rather than the Liberals. Liberal voting hot spots are down at the suburb level. I would guess Chapman, Farrer, Forrest perhaps?

Nick C: Probably something to do with the fact that the Canberra air market is dominated by business and government travellers which means the low cost carriers don’t service it, and consequently fares are high.

Also the idea of 60-minutes-to-Sydney without enduring an hour of the airport circus at either end probably sounds quite attractive.

That is a remarkably consisten set of numbers across the regions.

PJ: That’s probably a result of Canberra’s urban planning: no building on the hills so you don’t get large congregations of the wealthy up where the views are great, and public housing spread around the suburbs so there aren’t large congregations of the less well off either.

Urban planning seems to be the Greens’ candidate’s background this time around. She’s also been campaigning hard throughout this campaign. Safe Labor seat but an interesting challenger nonetheless.

I can’t quite get a handle on how the preferences will work this time around. Libs and ALP don’t seem to want to preference the Greens so will we have a bullet train?

Maybe a bullet train would meet up with light rail and make for some very interesting public transport – actually, maybe the Greens’ candidate should team up with the Bullet Train party for some intriguing urban planning.

As the overwhelmingly likely last two candidates in the count, Liberal and Labor preferences don’t matter in this seat.

@Andrew just looked at the Greens candidate’s twitter. She has seriously been getting around town and has met her fair share of dignitaries too. Her campaign looks even stronger than the senate candidate’s, and that’s supposed to be the “winnable” one.

Also the enrolment numbers in Canberra are extremely high, even for young people.

Should be a swing towards the Greens if they can keep ACT and Federal politics separate, mainly by the virtue of the redistribution. Nowhere near enough to clinch 2nd though, and there’s every chance that light rail will actually create a swing towards the Liberals in Tuggeranong. Any data out there about how much voters distinguish between territory and federal?

The Liberal candidate is a complete non entity. No social media at all or information about her other than the fact that she exists and she’s running for the seat of Canberra on the Liberal website.

Interestingly Andrew Leigh and Katy Gallagher both seem do be doing the bulk of their campaigning for other candidates outside the ACT (typical for ministers in safe seats), while Gai Brodtmann is doing a very local campaign of door knocking and stalls. Probably just strategy to have one active candidate in Canberra, and her role is only parliamentary secretary (although her superiors are unpopular Feeney and Conroy).

I’m not ruling out interesting things happening in this seat.

My prediction: Easy Labor hold.

Maybe Labor win with somewhat reduced margin.

@John, agreed, it was the Greens’ Twitter that caught my attention. Perhaps there will be a modest amount of attention (read: votes) directed towards Greens though it would seem that something extraordinarily significant would need to occur for the Greens to get such a big swing away from the ALP/LibsNats and for presences to come into play.

Not long now…

*preferences (@kme)

Interesting – just received a glossy Liberal party attack leaflet in my mailbox this afternoon. Attack on Labor’s tax, borrow spending. what is interesting is that the authorisation is from the Canberra Liberals. It’s a generic attack leaflet not directed at the ACT specifically.

I am trying to get my head around why they would spend money in the Canberra electorate. The real issue here is in the Senate where the Liberals are spending money on television ads promoting Zed in a generic feel good way with no mention of specific Liberals policies – that I understand. An attack on the Greens I could understand but hasn’t happened so far.

Received that same leaflet. It’s likely an attempt to drive the Liberal vote up. The real “senate race” is whether Zed can make his quota or not.

On the other hand the Morgan poll for this seat had Libs slightly ahead of Labor in first preferences, though they’re nowhere close to winning the seat. Perhaps they want to win the first past the post vote for some reason. “Labor only got in off the back of Greens” messaging for the upcoming ACT election perhaps?

Definite attempt to insert ACT issues into the current federal coampaign. New signs out this morning saying put Labour & Greens last, the other suggesting a vote against light rail. Couldn’t see any party authorisation – but may have been in miniscule print. Also widespread reports of push polling across the ACT using light rail against ALP.

Very bizarre

Daniel, some of Morgan’s seat polling this election has almost parted company from reality(!). I’d expect Labor to comfortably finish in first place and win easily.

I assume the Liberal polling is for the Senate, as there is no hope of them winning a lower house seat in Canberra.

Campaign has shown signs of Liberal concern – what might be giving them a sleepless night or tow is that unlike last election there are three right minor/or micro parties running candidates instead of only one – Liberal Democrats, & Christian Democrats have joined
Ris Up Australia..Canberra is not fruitful territory for such parties but if they took several percent off the Liberal vote it is hard to be sure what would happen. Lats time Rise Up Australian had 0.6% and they have been more visible this time doing some handing out of how to vote cards at prepoll. Liberals last time had 33.1%.If they dropped back to 30% they would probably survive but there would be no guarantee of a bulk supply of preferences back from conservative voter that was there under the previous system.

It’s very bizarre how the Liberal candidate for Fenner and the Greens candidate for Canberra are running more active campaigns than their counterparts in the other seat. Past elections would suggest the smart move would be the other way around.

The end result of the light rail related advertising may be Canberra and (northern seat starting with F) going in similar ways to previous elections despite the redistribution evening them out, but Canberra should do better than most areas when it comes to distinguishing between tiers of government, given how many of its residents work for one of those tiers.

Light rail caper including push polling and now a leaflet in the letter box is from the Canberra Liberals – they seem to be throwing money pushing a local issue – which will be on the agenda in the ACT election in October – definite signs of someone panicking

Could this affect the result?

http://www.aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/Special_Category/Norfolk_Island_electors.htm

It talks about ‘eligible’ electors having to enrol for the electorate of Canberra. Norfolk Islanders don’t won’t to be part of Aus, would they enrol?

BJA from Ryan – Doubt it would make much difference even if they did enrol- Canberra and Fenner are two of the largest electorates in Australia. Enrolees from Norfolk would hardly be noticed in an electorate of 120,000.Even less in a Senate electorate of nearly 240,000.

Thanks, I just didn’t know anything about Norfolk Is population wise. As an outsider, its hard to imagine lots of people in the ACT.

BJA from Ryan

Norfolk Island has a population of just over 2,000

BJA: The ACT’s population is about three-quarters that of Tasmania.

Huge increases in Labor primary vote in Tuggeranong, which I really didn’t see coming. This is the area where I thought Light Rail would really hurt Labor and Greens, but Greens more or less held their votes; if there were negative Greens swings they were small.

A working class demographic shift doesn’t really explain it either.

It could be an area of genuine swinging voters that ignore territory politics in Tuggeranong.