Senate – Australian Capital Territory – Australia 2022

What % of the vote would Labor need to get to win both senate seats which is extremely unlikely to happen? 66%?

Daniel, more important is the Liberals have to poll below 33%.

It would be more conducive to the Liberals failing to win if exactly 2 other groups roughly split the vote. 2 groups with 0.9 quotas each is significantly closer to winning 2 seats than 1 group on 1.8 quotas.

Maybe the Labor party should tell their voters to toss 2 coins in the voting booth and if they flip 2 heads to vote 1 Green to maximise the chances that the Liberal loses.

Possible, but unlikely. They could do it with slightly over 50% (1.5 quotas), as long as the Greens also got slightly less than 16.7% (0.5 quotas). If the combined left doesn’t make it to two quotas, the Libs win the second seat; if it does, but the Greens get more than half a quota, it probably goes Green. ACT voters are used to Hare-Clark so there’d be more BTL voting than usual, but that’s roughly it.

The Liberals have in the past polled very badly in the ACT ie 21% or so. Such a low figure is unlikely in a Federa election but with COVID anything could happen.

A vote split of say 60% ALP, 22% Lib 18% Green is certainly possible. This would give 2 ALP.

Another possibility would be ALP 45%, Lib 25% Greens 25%, Other 10% . This would give the ACT a Green senator

I feel that the ACT getting a Greens senator, while unlikely, is still more likely than two ALP senators.

Right now, Labor is on about 1.3 quotas, the Liberals are on about 1.1, and the Greens are on about 0.6.

So something like a 6% swing (0.2q) would get e.g. the Libs down to 0.9, Labor up to 1.5.

The trouble with this for the Left is that something like 20% of Labor voters prefer the Liberals over the Greens, maybe even more considering they just got a swing from the Libs. And 20% of Labor’s half quota equals the Liberal getting back to the line; 25%, past it.

If the swing is more than six percent, though, then that should pull the Libs down far enough that they can’t get back on preferences.

20% of ALP voters might usually prefer the Liberals to the Greens but a 6% swing is pretty seismic. If that happens, Zed’s looking for new job. Indeed even a 3.7 or 3.8% swing could be enough to move him on, noting that the usual preference flows to Liberals from right wing parties are not a feature in the ACT.

After looking at NT I thought I’d check ACT out. The Libs were under quota ’84 ’98 but then have been under quota 2013, 2016 and 2019.
ALP vote had peaks of 48.6% in 1993 and 49.9% in 1987. It’s really hard to see this being anything other than 1 LIB 1 ALP.
2013 the Greens got 19.27% of the vote but even then, Liberals were only 600 votes off a quota, and in 2016 it was around 300 votes.
Even with low 20s% for GRNs in 2007 and 2010, it’s a mute point as LIBs had a quota and GRN really were just the best of the rest.
In 1998, the Libs were 4K votes under quota but even then the nearest was the DEMs around 16% and they would have needed to have doubled their
vote or got pretty much every preference to flow to them. It just shows how incredibly hard it would be to bump one of the two majors
off their current seats.

2019 the Libs were about 2.5K votes under quota and ALP about 16K over. The Greens were only at 17.71%. The Greens would be the best
chance to steal a seat but would need a: a big swing from Liberals to GRN and not ALP b: if swing to ALP, hope those voters preference
GRN second c: have all the other groups flow to GRN and not LIB first (or have GRN higher than LIB at some point in their preference)
d: have less left-wing parties (take vote away) and less right-wing parties (direct vote prefence to LIB) running. A lot of things
need to work for that all to happen. Granted, there should be a swing away from LIB in ACT with the way polls are trending.

I don’t know the full parties running yet, but see that Kim and David campaigns are ramping up and could take votes from GRN.
So… after all that rambling… nothing really to see here but 1 LIB and 1 ALP. I’ll re-assess once nominations close.

The result here really depends on what the Greens do, in my opinion.

Labor isn’t going to reach two quotas, and no other party is going to get a seat (they’d have much more chance if there were more than 2 seats available) – basically, the question is whether the Greens can take out the Liberals. Yes, that includes David Pocock – he’s more likely to simply pull some votes away from the Liberals, enough to give the Greens a chance.

If the Greens campaign hard, and the Liberals focus their attention on other parts (under the logic that this always goes 1 Lab/1 Lib), then the Greens could conceivably get across the line. And if that meant the end of Zed, I’d be happy with that.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7687009/new-polls-show-re-election-trouble-for-seselja/ Polls for the ACT Senate – that have a degree of plausibility apart from a 7% UAP vote

From a copy of the article posted in the comments at PollBludger by sprocket__, the polling numbers are as follows (averaging the pairs of numbers provided – coming from two polls):
Labor: 36%
Liberals: 24.5%
Greens: 14.5%
Pocock: 12%
UAP: 7%
Rubenstein: 6.5%
Others/Undecided (calculated from the above values, not sure which it classifies as): 0.5%

Based on these, Labor gets a seat, and then the quotas look like this:
Liberal: 0.735
Greens: 0.435
Pocock: 0.36
UAP: 0.21
Rubenstein: 0.195
Labor: 0.08
Other: 0.015

So Other and Labor will both be knocked out – I’d say a lot will flow to Greens, Pocock, and Rubenstein over UAP or Liberals… which would push Rubenstein above UAP. Which means the last four would look something like:
Liberals: 0.83
Greens: 0.47
Pocock: 0.41
Rubenstein: 0.25
Exhausted: 0.04

Pocock is a climate activist, and Rubenstein is a human rights campaigner, so I’d expect a solid flow between them and the Greens. Truth be told, I suspect Zed is gone, based on this. I can’t see there being enough leakage to get him over the line.

Glen

I read UAP as getting 7% on the robopoll but 2% on the other poll.

Flow of preferences from Pocock to Greens may not be that strong as Pocock is getting a lot of his votes from Zed. Best chance of defeating Zed is if Pocock leads the Greens on the final exclusion – flow of Greens preference to Pocock will be stronger than from Pocock to Greens

Basically the second seat is going to be between Pocock, Seselja and Goreng Goreng, sadly I don’t think Rubinstein has enough profile to win at this point.

Doug – I only saw one value given for UAP, and figured it must have been the same for both.

Pocock might be getting the votes from Zed, but I suspect that Pocock’s HTV will direct preferences to Greens and Rubenstein over the Liberals, and I suspect that most of the voters who go for Pocock will only really care about putting Labor over Liberals or Liberals over Labor, so they’ll follow it up until that point.

Zed has announced a major fundraising campaign

Zed should retain, despite being a Labor stronghold- I don’t think most Canberrans want a one party state which is essentially what would be happening by electing the Greens or Pocock.
Barr hasn’t done the Labor brand any favours with the Campbell tender process botch or the botched public housing relocations. As well as the seeming growing influence of the Greens in government in Canberra.
Also as much as Zed is disliked by segments of the Canberra electorate, Gallagher also is a divisive figure.
Some promising numbers for Liberals from the ACT election to build on in Murrumbidgee and Yerrabi as well

LJ Davidson, if Gallagher were to lose some of her primary vote the could actually be bad for Zed if that vote goes to Pocock or the Greens.

Ideally “the left” would want 2 candidates starting on 0.8 quotas rather than, say, Labor on 1.2 quotas and someone else on 0.4 quotas. That way Labor is in the count to collect a few preferences that may otherwise exhaust or go to Zed.

The ambiguity of some of these lesser known Senate candidates does make the preference predictor a bit cloudier.
I just think the crowding of left candidates, frees up the conservative bloc entirely for Zed. Also not entirely sure Pocock’s bulk preferences go to Greens, Labor, etc..
If there is a split in this leftward flow that favours Zed, which would be the counter to Gallagher’s primary vote dropping
Zed got 0.97 quota last time around, and coupled with the encouraging Canberra Liberals performance, I can’t see that fluctuating too much.

A 33% quota makes other than a 1 /1 split unlikely

In 2016 ACT elections, the Liberals saw a swing against them of 2.2%, and in the 2016 federal election, Seselja treaded water, basically staying steady.

Then in 2019, Seselja saw a 1% swing against him. And in the 2020 ACT election, the Liberals saw another 3% swing against them. And that was during the Coalition’s big Covid boost.

The last time there was a big swing to Labor over the country – in 2007 – the Liberals (under Gary Humphries) saw a swing of 3.7% against them. If that were replicated now, Seselja would be on less than 0.9 quotas. That’s dangerous territory, especially when Pocock, in particular, is a teal, and thus could pull some extra vote away from the Liberals.

Let’s look at the lay of the count when Seselja nudged over the line in 2019… there were four candidates left in play – Seselja himself, the ALP’s second, the Greens’ first, and Pesec, an independent.

Pesec favoured the left – ATL preferences flowed 24.9% Labor, 23.7% Liberal, 23.9% Greens. The combined ALP+Greens+0.488*Pesec vote would have been around 79000 votes, compared with Seselja+0.237*Pesec being about 96000 votes. Note that Greens preferences did not favour the Liberals much at all (less than 12%).

Which means a swing against Seselja to the left of 9% would be enough to unseat him (note: it only has to be half the difference). And that’s before you factor in Pocock’s strong campaign, which is likely to not only pull votes from the Liberals, but also from UAP preferences, further weakening Seselja’s chances.

Which leads to four possibilities…
1. Greens keep ahead, and then Labor/Pocock leakage push Seselja over the line.
2. Pocock gets ahead of the Greens, absorbs nearly all of the Greens vote, and pushes past Seselja.
3. Greens keep ahead but anti-Seselja and anti-Liberal sentiment are strong enough for the Greens to get over the line.
4. Labor manages the impossible, and manages to clip past Greens and Pocock, and ultimately nudges past Seselja on anti-Liberal sentiment.

These are ordered by likelihood, in my view – but keep in mind, we may be talking only a 40% or so chance of Seselja winning (depends on how the rest of the campaign goes, really).

Was the last ACT election actually encouraging for the Liberals? They did get a swing to them in Yerrabi but they still only managed to get 2 out of 5 seats there, and there was actually a bigger swing *against* them in Murrumbidgee. Plus they got reduced to just 1 of 5 seats in Kurrajong (and almost in Ginninderra too). Overall, there was a decent swing against them – and that was in an election where they were facing a 20 year old incumbent government!

I don’t think the Liberals will be able to win government in the ACT at the state level for the foreseeable future, especially if the federal Liberals continue to shift more to the right. Canberra is one of the most progressive cities in the country, and with the city making up 90%+ of the ACT, the local Liberal branch needs to be seen as moderate and open to supporting issues like climate change and gay marriage.

After the 2020 election, the ACT Liberals chose moderate Elizabeth Lee as their new leader. Whether she is able to distance herself from the federal Liberals in order to win locally remains to be seen, but if she can achieve this then she will be like some moderate Republicans (Charlie Baker and Larry Hogan) who were able to win elections in strongly Democratic leaning states mostly by distancing themselves from then President Donald Trump.

@Yoh An generally in Australian politics the counter to a safe party held area is for the opposing party’s membership to be on the extreme side factionally as that is all that remain to volunteer.
As an example, most of the Labor branches in Northern and Eastern Sydney were/are run by the minority Hard Left branches and Union affiliates.
In Western Sydney, in Labor Electorates like Watson and Blaxland, the Liberal Hard Right controls these branches.
Zed’s control of the Canberra Liberals, which was forged by his rolling of Humphries came from consolidating the hard right and socially conservative elements of the branches in ACT. This will be very hard to shift, as Canberra Liberals are already operating off a skeleton membership and moderates don’t make up the bulk organisational numbers.
@some guy I think the Liberal vote in ACT has hit a floor and can’t see it drop significantly anymore. There’s also no real benefit for Canberrans to shift away from the 2 party paradigm, as if the Coalition manages to squeeze back in but loses the 2nd Senate spot- I’d suspect Canberra would be frozen out of a lot of funding as punishment (a reverse prop barrelling).
Zed’s distinct separation from most of Canberra’s main political players does provide an actual alternative for those that aren’t public servants or work in academia. There are still quite a few of those in Canberra.
The ACT election was still a relatively good performance from the Libs considering the leader had little to no name recognition whilst Barr had wall-to-wall coverage 3 months prior. With the exception of SA, the last 2 years have been a boon for incumbent governments.

LJ Davidson – you might be right that the Libs have hit a floor above the senate quota in the ACT, but I don’t agree that’s actually good for Canberra. If the Libs determine they can’t really lose this seat, they’ll ignore it. But if they actually lose, they’ll have to fight to win it back. It’s the marginal seats that attract attention & funding (which honestly I think is kind of the problem with Australian politics, because a lot of people don’t live in marginal seats).

Paywalled, but: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7713900/pococks-race-to-topple-zed-in-senate-gets-significant-boost/?cs=14329

Any thoughts on how this will play out? ACT voters tend to be fairly independent in their preferencing in the Senate, but it will have some impact.

Hard to say, but don’t think it will be bad for Pocock. Might even help him get some additional name recognition and tactical votes from left-wing voters.

Apologies – comment above was in relation to the Advance posters https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7713793/i-am-an-independent-pocock-slams-false-closet-greens-smear/

As for Labor preferences – won’t be that many available after the quota is filled, but it might be good for an additional 1%.

Daniel’s question about percentage needed for ALP to win both seats which he sort of answered himself iD 66.66% plus 2 votes. What needs to be remembered is that to achieve this ALP will exhaust 33% and they then need the remaining votes to be higher than Greens. Greens will get the seat if Liberal Preferences are distributed. This is not out of question.
My prediction is Libs 1 Australian Labor Party 1.

It’s fascinating seeing the different media treatment for candidates in this seat. Pocock is getting a 2-week writeup in the Saturday Paper on the basis of his biography, but Rubenstein is out every week in the Times doggedly releasing policy on integrity and climate. It looks like a huge volunteer presence with Pocock – so many shirts! – but I’ve seen very little of them actually doorknocking on socials whereas the Greens doorknocks look like the biggest in the ACT in terms of numbers of volunteers. And all the Advance signs did was make the Greens look cool.

With a seat like the ACT every candidate should have knocked on every door at least once in last two years. Any candidate you have not met at your front door should be put near bottom.

Andrew Jackson

Beyond being completely unfeasible given COVID spread and unpredictabilities associated, a Senator who is seen to represent their communities well and represents their views (same goes for other candidates).

Is this the same polling as referenced before?

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7725702/new-polls-show-zed-seselja-in-big-re-election-trouble/?cs=14329

Behind a paywall, but at any rate, it gives the following:

– ALP Gallagher – 27
– LNP Seselja – 25
– IND Pocock – 21
– GRN – TGG – 11
– Palmer – 6
– IND Rubinstein 6
– unsure – 8

These numbers would see Gallagher and Pocock elected, probably pretty comfortably.

Expat – no, that’s a new poll. Pocock 21 is a big step up from 12 percent in the earlier Redbridge. And yes, it would be a comfortable Labor/Ind win. Even if those numbers are treated with a grain of salt the movement to Pocock seems apparent – making this a Seselja-Pocock race.

Pocock has revoked his Zimbabwean citizenship, right?

Pocock has also renounced South African citizenship due to the fact that he was born in south Africa. Some caution on the poll – Greens vote may have been understated as it is geographically concentrated – the other thing is that the obviously massive tactical voting intention by Labor and Greens supporters to ensure Zed is defeated may fall back now that they think that Pocock has plenty of support

Is the main distinguishable factor between Gallagher, Goreng Squared, Pocock and Rubenstein just personality at this point?
Doesn’t seem to be much policy differentiation between the 4.
Wouldn’t this create a pathway for Zed as he would essentially capture the non-left vote in ACT (what remains). Seems like his campaign is more or less written for him eg. someone who isn’t like the above.
One of the problems with preferential tactics is sometimes the brains of these ideas lose sight of the bigger picture.

Advertising the fact that you won’t even pretend to care about the issues that the vast majority of the electorate care about doesn’t seem like a great way to differentiate yourself, but it is startling how similar all those candidates are. The Greens should be making so much more of the fact that Pocock, for instance, seems to agree with Labor, and therefore the Liberals on just about everything.

My only reason to slightly doubt that poll is that Labor dropping from 39.4% to 27% seems unlikely, even factoring in the pull of Pocock and Rubenstein. Maybe it’s because of strategic voting, but I feel like it’s a little unbalanced.

It has UAP on 6%, up from 2.3%… that might be part of the problem. I could believe Labor on 30%, with UAP on 3%.

I shouldn’t call that poll result a “comfortable” victory – it’s very close. But 25 for Zed is probably not quite enough in terms of preference flow.

Redbridge always has UAP vote very high – part of the reason is probably because the name gets read out. The Labor vote seems a clear underestimate as well.

@ FL I wouldn’t say Zed doesn’t care about the issues, he just has a different approach to resolving them.
Besides he doesn’t need to win the majority of voters to get a spot, that’s the whole point of the Senate.
In fact many would say the same about the Greens, One Nation etc.. only appealing to a segment- yet they are still in the Senate
I’d also disagree with the interpretation that Labor is just like the Liberals. One of the biggest criticisms from many Canberrans about the Barr government is that they are receiving too many of their directives from the Greens.
Particularly the supposed feasibility of the 2B corridor of light rail which has ruined many roads and with little consultation of residents

LJ believe what you like about Zed, but he’s a very right wing guy. ACT is very progressive, has only gotten more progressive as the years have rolled by, yet still only has two Senate spots to fill. The Liberal Party’s credibility has only diminished and I don’t think there’s enough of a constituency there for a contrarian campaign anymore.

Taking that poll at face value – it is conceivable that it could be a Pocock and Zed combination. It would depend on where the UAP prefs go – if it was fairly tight then that would get Zed to 30 and would pick up some leakage on the way. The ACT is a very politically literate population and it is conceivable that Pocock and Rubinstein could pick up lots of votes that go to ALP and Greens in the lower house. So a big drop in ALP vote is not inconceivable

It’s hard to read this vote. I have seen a lot of Pocock volunteers out in Civic and at EPIC Farmers Markets for weeks now, and an ALP presence (again alongside Pocock volunteers) at Kaleen. So there is a lot of ground work being done by the Pocock campaign.

Rubenstein is getting some traction in terms of media, but as always in the modern era, I wonder who tunes into it. Not, I suspect, many of the recent immigrants in the suburbs around Gungahlin. If she is only able to reach the politically engaged, that’s only half the population here.

In terms of the Advance campaign, I think it may backfire badly on the Libs. I am seeing similar stuff online, and many of the comments in response seem to be along the lines of: “we don’t see the Greens as the root of all evil, and weren’t going to vote for them, but now that you have made such a fuss about it, we are more inclined to vote for Pocock as a kind of “Greens lite” (and as a way of sending a pox on both your houses message to both major parties). Alternatively, some of the responses are “if that’s the best you (the Liberals) have got, and you want to play in the gutter, we will vote for Pocock out of spite for your behaviour.”

Suffice to say that in my personal circles, both Seselja and Morrison are very much on the nose.

As for the ACT Senate result, I can’t pick it – but I think it may surprise us all.

This could be a historic election in the ACT with the first time the traditional ALP/Lib duopoly is broken. It seems Canberrans seem to think this time it will happen, and the announcement by the PM of cutting the Public Service probably won’t go down well in the ACT of all places.
I think this time it will happen, as the Lib vote is tanking.
ALP 1, Pocock 1

I wonder if this announcement by the Coalition of cutting billions from the public service is the final nail in Seselja’s political coffin. I’m sure public servants overwhelmingly vote for Labor, Greens or progressive independents anyway, but cutbacks will hurt everyone, as fewer public servants around means fewer customers for local businesses too.

Gallagher/Pocock to win IMO

“Is the main distinguishable factor between Gallagher, Goreng Squared, Pocock and Rubenstein just personality at this point?”

***

No, there are huge policy differences between the Greens and Labor.

For just some examples; Labor supports tax cuts for the rich, keeping JobSeekers and Pensioners below the poverty line, abusing asylum seekers, and opening new coal and gas projects (in total contradiction of climate science).

Generally speaking, Labor are a long way to the right of the Greens. See here: https://www.politicalcompass.org/aus2022 and ABC’s Vote Compass: https://votecompass.abc.net.au/

It would be great if both TGG and Pocock won – that’s the ideal scenario for those who want action on climate. Very unlikely though. The Greens candidate TGG would definitely make a better Senator if she wins but Pocock would certainly be better than Zed, and Katy too for that matter.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks like Gallagher and Pocock should get elected at the expense of Seselja. I don’t think preferences have been distributed yet, but Labor’s primary vote is only juuuuust shy of a quota so Gallagher should have no trouble getting elected, whereas Seselja is well-below a quota and only marginally ahead of Pocock. Seems like Pocock should easily get elected ahead of Seselja with presumably strong preferences flows from the Greens and Rubenstein.

Would be the first time a territory has elected someone other than 1 Lib 1 Lab.

Before the election, I thought Katy was in real trouble because David Pocock would split the progressive, left-wing vote (Greens, Labor) whereas Zed’s vote would remain stable and even preference David Pocock. I’m guessing there was tactical voting and preferencing amongst the non-Liberal voters.

If the Liberals want to win in 2025, they must not preselect a hard right conservative like Zed. It won’t work for an affluent, progressive electorate like Canberra. He’s a career politician and so with his background, it would be hard to compete against indepedents or Greens. Zed may try to get back into ACT parliament or get parachuted into a neighbouring federal NSW seat one day. I doubt that the ACT Labor or Federal Labor governments would offer him a public service job.

@Votante, I’d say what’s more likely is Elizabeth Lee, the current ACT Lib Leader, will resign from the ACT LA and contest the preselection for the senate seat should Zed lose. With the direction the federal Libs are going, it’s increasingly unlikely that the Libs will ever take power in ACT even with a moderate leader like her, who’s probably the least controversial Lib leader in the country.