Melbourne Ports – Australia 2016

If the ALP slips into third then I think the Libs would be favoured here. Those HTV cards and the more conservative nature of the Jewish vote would be a decisive factor. A gain of 2 (in here and in Chisholm) would be very helpful in helping the Coalition get to a majority.

I agree that it is too Doug.

Remember too that preliminary preference allocation on election night is done differently to the real process when numbers are finalized, election night is a shortcut process that allocates all preferences straight to whichever of the two 2PP parties the voter put higher.

That’s especially relevant here because the margin between Labor & Green right now is only about 1200 votes. But there are over 4000 ‘Others’, almost entirely of parties similar to the Greens, so on election night they counted straight towards either ALP or Liberal 2PP but once allocated officially (eliminating one party at a time, from last place up), the Greens are likely to end up with alot more of them than Labor which could propel them into second place even if Labor have a higher primary vote.

That’s what happened in Prahran 2014. Greens were third on primary vote but passed Labor after the allocation of Animal Justice preferences and went onto win the seat. This is eerily similar, from the slim margin between ALP & Green to the strong result by Animal Justice, to the Liberal vote over 40%.

Genuinely undecided 3 way contest!

I think if it turns out to be Lib v Green, as long as the Lib primary stays around 41%, the Greens would need about 2 in 3 Labor preferences to get to 50% 2PP and the Libs would need about 1 in 3 to get to 50% 2PP. About 2/3 to Green and 1/3 to Lib is roughly what I’d expect too… Going to be interesting!

Danby is probably going to be lucky that he didn’t deliver certain govt to the Coalition. A 1% to 1.5% shift here could’ve done that.

This contest had it all, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-02/four-arrested-over-damage-to-polling-booth-signs-in-melbourne/7563640?section=vic

Watching Danby deliver the seat and therefore government to the LNP will be sufficiently amiliorated by seeing Danby lose his seat.

Hypothetically speaking, what would the Lib PV need to be to win the seat from Labor assuming they finish second and not third as projections suggest?

I did a bit of modelling myself last night based on the first batch of postal votes, and looking at 2013’s results for Absent, Dec PP & Provisional while taking into account the swings as well as informal %.

Basically I put together a ‘worst case scenario’ (for Labor) with the Libs getting 59-41 of postals and I applied a 5% Liberal swing (well above the actual swing) to the 2013 TPPs for Absent, DPP and Provisional on this year’s numbers…. And that worst case scenario came out at as a 50.01-49.99 win for Liberal. It was about 20-30 votes in it.

So I think Tallyroom is right to call the seat for Labor now because a 5% Liberal swing compared to 2013’s results is unlikely considering ordinary votes only had about a 2% swing and postals so far have had a 3-4% swing.

It’s likely Labor will lose another couple of % after postals but probably win somewhere close to 50.5-49.5.

So essentially a Liberal win would require about 59-41 of postal votes in TPP terms, in addition to a 5% swing across the Absentee, Provision and Declaration Pre-Polls still to be counted.

Thanks Fluffhead! Still an interesting seat nevertheless. IMHO this seat will definitely go to the Liberals when Danby goes.

I’m not so sure, I think what Labor loses from the Jewish population if Danby goes they might gain back around Port Melbourne & Albert Park swung away from Danby. He’s very unpopular outside the Caulfield/Balaclava area, because he is seen to largely ignore most of the electorate. Obviously the very clear backlash against Danby in St Kilda went straight to the Greens as St Kilda votes more like the northern suburbs, but I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a bit of the Liberal swing up around Port Melbourne & Albert Park came from dissatisfaction with Danby too, so that area could see a swing back to Labor if they had a stronger candidate.

Then on top of that there’s obviously a likely redistribution due which might see the more Jewish areas removed from the electorate altogether (this will increase the Greens’ % and numb the Danby factor), and also the transient nature of Melbourne Ports’ population always adds an element of unpredictability too. Who would have thought Port Melbourne polling places would register an 8% Liberal swing for example!

It’ll no doubt remain a 3 way marginal for the foreseeable future I think, but I see it being a Green v Liberal seat within the decade, most likely Green for the long term but with a Liberal win along the way.

I think some people are somewhat misrepresenting the Jewish population. I have family in this area from one side of my family (that side is Jewish), and most of those would support Labor, followed by Greens.

For some reason, a lot of people assume that the majority of Jewish people in Australia are anti-Palestinian. I can vouch for the fact that, at least some Jewish people in the area do believe that Israel is being attacked unfairly… but are also of the view that the Israeli government are going too far, and would agree with the Greens on the issue.

It is my understanding, which is admittedly limited (as I live in Queensland and am not, myself, Jewish, so I don’t exactly interact with a broad cross-section of the Jewish population down there), that a reasonable chunk of the Jewish people in the area tend to favour Labor over Liberals anyway, and are more likely to support the Greens than the Liberals.

In short, Jewish people aren’t a monolith when it comes to political views, and aren’t all that likely to make their voting decisions on the basis of policy towards Israel in isolation, any more than most Australians would.

I live in the Caulfield North section and the reality is if you don’t vote in a Jew – there will be no representation in parliament. If the Liberals did present a better Jewish candidate, they would win – easily. But that wasn’t the case in this election. Though many may disagree with the new territories invasions, it does not means the definitive pro Palestine policy of The Greens will ever be acceptable.

It will be very close this election and I also expect it to fall next election.

I am surprised at the surprising low voting count (63%) as of July 7. Is it possible that 30% of the vote is postal? This is very high compared with previous years.

Good points Glen. I think it is easy to get caught up in generalizations of how different sections of the community vote.

The general theme or belief, which I admit I also based my predictions on, was that the Jewish population mostly voted Labor primarily because of Danby’s long running engagement with the community, but that if Danby wasn’t the MP we’d see a possible swing to the Liberals in the area, who typically poll the highest in Caulfield despite the strong Jewish support for Labor.

Also this last election was a pretty nasty campaign in terms of the candidates accusing each other of being anti-Israel. Owen Guest accusing Labor of being anti-Israel by preferencing Greens; while Danby accused the Greens of bigotry for not attending a Zionist event and snuck Liberal-preferencing HTVs to Jewish constituents). So I think the candidates’ behaviour itself probably inflated those generalizations about the Jewish vote in the area.

In any event, Caulfield has the lowest Greens vote of the electorate so a redistribution will only help them catch up to Labor.

Interestingly, my relative who lives in the general area appears to be in Goldstein, but I’m not 100% certain. It looks like there are four different electorates that intersect around that area – Goldstein, Hotham, Higgins, and Melbourne Ports.

If there’s a redistribution, I could see much of the Jewish population of the region being combined in a single electorate, whichever way the redistribution moves things.

Incidentally, to the Glen who posted right after me, from Caulfield North – if Danby wasn’t in parliament, that would NOT mean that there would be no Jewish representation in parliament! Josh Frydenberg is Jewish, as is Mark Dreyfus, both in far more significant positions within their respective parties.

Three Jewish politicians in the House out of the 37 electorates in Victoria, when the Jewish population of Victoria is less than 1%. You really can’t complain about it.

Yeah that’s right. I think Goldstein already absorbed part of Elsternwick and my guess is that Hotham & Goldstein will absorb most of Caulfield at some stage.

The Liberals fielded a Jewish candidate for Ports in 2013 but still lost. I think it’s because Danby has been very entrenched in the community for such a long time.

Greens and Libs have both come out and stated they don’t think the ALP can be assured of winning this seat. So, interesting counting ahead.

My back of the envelope figures is that Danby is 900/1000 votes behind where he needs to be. Wouldn’t be surprised if this is the Libs second gain in Victoria.

Serious questions need to be asked of the AEC how they didn’t see this happening, the VEC had come to a result by this stage in a seat of Prahran.

That’s a bit harsh on the AEC. Since the Greens do so poorly on postals here, I assume they need to first count all the declaration votes, then do a full preference distribution to confirm who actually finished second. That’s a lot of work.

Kevin Bonham apparently had a tip-off that the Greens were in fact getting a strong enough flow from Danby to win (which surprises me), but this may change after all the postals are in.

MM
What do think about the contention , that once labor loses M Ports they will never recover it ??

I agree with the contention that it would likely become more of a Liberal v Greens seat, with it being more difficult for Labor to win…..but “never” is overstating it.

The redistribution might have an impact on all parties’ future prospects for this seat. We’ll see.

could be interesting yet: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-results-liberal-party-and-greens-claim-labor-could-lose-in-melbourne-ports-count-20160710-gq2ue0.html

So is it a strategic voting electorate or not?

I guess hard to know until final figures come in, but possible already that a few Liberals might have thought that they should have got a few friends to vote for the Greens (or if someone did so wondering if they went just too far).

MM
Never say never eh !!!??

I think it’s highly unlikely Danby will be beaten, but still possible. I have a thread on it here: http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/house-of-reps-postcount-2016-melbourne.html

Australian.politics.com 11 July provides a welcome insight and analysis extraordinaire. Plus consider this:
“Good noW!”® B”H
12 July 2016./ 6 Tamuz 5776.
The real winners are the voters who voted for “Principle over Party”. Their vote is certain. It was never in doubt. Principle is amazingly empowering. That is why i stood in this election, to empower people, to put their Principle as their principal vote, and vote Party second as the vehicle, not as the object, to take Principle to Canberra, to sort out between darkness and light. Every vote for Myers’ empowerment campaign, “Principle over Party” won from the the moment they exercised their choice and voice to put Principle, that defines each one of us, first. Discerning between going to the polls to vote for a Party, or to go there to empower oneself by voting for Principle, first, is a fundamentally different approach. Hopefully, there will be another opportunity for the “Party’ voters to stand for what they believe in and about who they really are, rather than be robbed of this opportunity by being persuaded to sacrifice themselves/yourselves fr a Party or others, who are only interested in what you can do for them, and ten forget about you, rather than the other way around. All this starts with small numbers of those who have greater discretion and insight. But join in, this is not an exclusive club – it’s one that enjoins you to become an individual empowered by your own integrity to “Not do unto others what you wild not have them do unto you” [Hillel, Tractate Shabbat 31a], and “Love your fellow as you love yourself” [Leviticus 19:18].
Yours sincerely,
Dr Yaacov Myers, John B. B”H, noW!, “Good noW!”®, 5776.
BSc, MBBCh(Rand), FRCP(SA), FRACP, Ph.D.
Independent candidate for “Principle over Party” Melbourne Ports, Federal election, 2016/5776.

Does anyone actually know what is going on down there?