24 October 2008

Lib HQ, forget panic - it's time to put on the brown underpants!

| jimbocool
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OMFG! I know I said I wouldn’t post again until the end of the weekend because of the volatility in the ACT election count and I wanted some quality time alone with my slide rule to do some projections, well it seems there’s no need. I reckon it’s all over, the Greens get the last seat in Molonglo. Even the circumspect Antony Green has moved them into ‘favourite’ status for the last seat!. Tonight’s count, which included all the interesting booths I mentioned earlier today- except Red Hill for some reason, although Reid is counted – has Elena Kirshbaum a whopping 494 votes ahead of Giulia Jones at the crucial point.

By my count there’s 4401 First Preferences to go to the Libs, 2982 to the Greens in the remaining booths (including Red Hill, which isn’t on the list, but as I understand the alphabet comes before Reid, which has been counted). the Libs votes need to get TWO elected, whereas the Greens only ONE – so lets split it evenly between Hanson and Jones 2200 each. Jones is 494 votes behind Kirshbaum tonight. So, very roughly, Kirshbaum gets the residual of 2982 -say 2500 – plus the 494 she’s ahead, meaning that Hanson has to end up with 3,000 of these last booth votes to win – and these booths heavily favour Hanson. Other random preferences cancel each other out. I can’t see Jones making up the gap.

Le Couteur will overtake Kirshbaum shortly so it will be she who is elected.

Kudos to whoever it was who called “Black Swan” on two Greens in Molonglo.

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I would imagine lots of people who voted for Lab/Lib might not have allocated prefs, but it doesn’t seem to matter in their case as they get closer to a quota faster (sharing as they do).

I went for an indie and then preferenced up to 7.

Hare Clark just seems weird to me. I don’t really get it, it’s far too complicated to make any rational sense. To me it just seems to favour the established parties. It looks like people got in almost in direct proportion to their media coverage.

Speaking of which, I’m still pretty annoyed with the ABC and CT for not really giving much info about the smaller groups and indies. Canberrans were pretty desperate to find an alternative voice to Lab/Lib this time, which is unusual in a Labor town. I think that’s why Greens have quadrupled their vote – they got airtime/coverage AND were perceived as the only alternative, thus picking up HEAPS of protest votes. They are going to have to live up to the faith people have put in them to restore the balance!

According to latest ABC article, Caroline has beaten some candidate called Julie Jones…

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/25/2401247.htm

I still despair when I see someone with an AMP sticker on their car. What did they really think they would achieve?

Simple issues for simple people. All the big complex questions were too much, so they cleaved to a party who brought it back to the important things in life: cars.

Thank god their votes didn’t go anywhere!

Dear Jonathon What a load of crap, are you still bitter about not running for the Libs in Molonglo? I’m sure you could have pulled at least 250 votes.

Jonathon Reynolds8:22 am 26 Oct 08

Heard on the grapevine that Coe’s campaign cost in excess of $120,000 (mainly through donations)- the real value may be never known as the figures will be generically “buried” in the Liberal Party FAD return rather explicitly shown on individual candidate FAD returns.

Just goes to show that if you throw enough money at a campaign you can achieve a result.

Reference: http://www.elections.act.gov.au/parties/fad.html

disenfranchised7:53 am 26 Oct 08

This was a very poor result for the Liberals. Watch now as the spin starts to mask this poor result. The facts speak for themselves. The Liberals have gone from 7 seats in 2004 to 6 seats in 2008. They have experienced a swing against the party of over 3%. Most importantly, this has happened at a time of a major fall in popularity for the incumbent Labor Government. This was the Liberals once in a decade opportunity to snatch government. The conditions won’t be so good in 2012 (against Gallagher). Yes Seselja scored many votes – but the campaign centred around him. We had ads about were he went on holidays as a kid! Smyth never had such a personally targeted campaign (because of course he didn’t need one, as he was well known). Seselja was made leader in December last year (10 months is more than long enough these days). The Liberals were the choice of 30% of the community (ie 70% didn’t choose them). They are now a Party comprised of mostly right wing MLAs pursuing a strong Christian (read Catholic) agenda. How do they expect to build their base on that?

Blow me down. Malcolm Mackerras finally got a prediction right. I was sure the Greens were SOL when he predicted them to get 4 seats, but there you go.

harley said :

ABC reports it’s been declared and is all official as of 8:10pm ish…

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/25/2401247.htm?section=justin

And then provides a complete statistical breakdown in a table… that is wrong.

Brilliant!

Man, there’s just no pleasing some people 🙂

Real poll junkies like it long & slow!

Even Zed said it would be another week in the Canberra Times this morning.

I know, that requires two filters.

Great result though – Go The Greens

I thought we had to wait another week?

Man, there’s just no pleasing some people 🙂

Curiously, in spite of claiming to have been updated mere minutes ago, the “Live Results” below that ABC story are still predicting 7 Lib seats. Makes you wonder what sort of prediction algorithm they have when it doesn’t even get seats right that have been officially declared 🙂

ACT Electoral Commission have declared it.

Greens 4, Cliberal 6, ALP 7.

I thought we had to wait another week?

ABC reports it’s been declared and is all official as of 8:10pm ish…

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/25/2401247.htm?section=justin

And it was used to describe a Black Swan event.
For context, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/black_swan_theory

Ari said :

Hey Caf, black swan is bingo-callers’ slang for the number 2.

I don’t think it is referring to a particular poster.

Maybe it is a bingo call, but the Black swan was mentioned on Riotact as an arguing point in Zugzwang, but its was ns who used the phrase over in http://the-riotact.com/?p=9404

#12 posted by ns
(Rioter)
10:59, 22 Oct 2008

If the Greens get more than 3 seats I think you can definitely call this a Black Swan.

Look at what just came into my possession. An email from Gary Kent.

Dear all

I am writing to thank you for your tremendous help and support during the recent election campaign. Although I was not successful this was unrelated to your sterling efforts on my behalf. If I had my time over I would do a l lot of things differently but you live and learn. One of the pleasures of the campaign was the strengthening of old and making of new friendships and I am very grateful for that.

Right now we must all hope that the Canberra Liberals win the critical third seat in Molonglo and I wish Jeremy and Giulia all the best in that battle.

I think the Canberra Liberals team performed fantastically over the past few months and I pay a special tribute to Zed Seselja who captured Canberra’s imagination with his ability to drive forward the Liberal agenda and clearly rattle a defensive Chief Minister. It was a sterling performance and one of which we should all be very proud.

Congratulations to Alistair Coe and Steve Doszpot who each put in amazing efforts to win their seats.

Best regards to you all and thank you once again.

Gary Kent

Gary no congratulation to Vicki and Brendan, just your mates Coe & Doszpot – typical.

Enjoy your next visit to Caphs with them.

BTW we haven’t heard anymore about Jones and the printing thing in Queensland. Does anyone have any news on that.

I have to agree with VicePope.

They would have spent $400,000 on the campaign to promote and raise his profile and to only get 1.5 quotas is embarrassing to say the least. Vicepoe, I disagree his vote was dragged up by a lack lustre team, it was more that he wouldn’t let them talk. Notice only the right wingers received press.

Humphries got 1.6 quotas and they didn’t run a presidential campaign like this one. And when Humphries ran you knew who he was running with, they didn’t hide half their candidates.

When will they get it, Canberrans are looking for a socially conservative small “l” liberal, moderate party to vote for. Not a bunch of right wing bible bashing anti abortion anti euthanasia rednecks. Yes rednecks is the only way you can describe Zed, Vicki, Coe and Jones. Join the 21st century people.

It will be interesting to see what the AGM holds for the liberals – I smell a backlash against the right. Lets hope thats the case and we can get some decent liberals to vote for.

If you ran a corporation this way the CEO would be gone. Zed should fall on his sword as well as the others I mentioned higher up.

Be nice if the CT would pick up this thread.

Soolin – have to disagree again. Every story on WIN this year that had an ACT spin was accompanied by Zed or one of his happy gang saying whatever it is that politicians say. Ditto the radio. I wouldn’t have counted the Canberra Times stories. He was known out there – ultimately, the punters just didn’t want him.

Agree however on the coverage of NSW politics. It’s more exciting (a bearpit Assembly, Della Bosca, the lamentable Costa and Sartor a government in difficulties, an opposition with more ideologies and feuds than members and, locally, a “National Nine” news coverage fixated on NSW, ie Sydney. Good grief, they even had an assassination a few years back). Somehow, the local sandpit is just not as much fun.

I’m with Hobbyhorse1 on this. Zed didn’t get a lot of media coverage until the actual campaign – so that negates the honeymoon effect.

Canberrans could quite easily know more about what’s happening in NSW politics than what goes on right here. Shortly after Zed took over the leadership a lot of people couldn’t tell you his name. I think most Canberrans would get it right now.

HobbyHorse1 – disagree. As the leader for the campaign, Zed was responsible for its ultimate lack of success. His “personal vote” wasn’t all that high, and was dragged up by the limitations on his Molonglo colleagues – Burke was a known dud, Jones was known only for an inept ad about nothing, Hanson barely known at all, Kent as a divisive influence and White (who?). Anyone who wanted to vote Lib had little choice.

And I’d disagree about this being the best case. He had a one-year (nearly) honeymoon and should have done better.

Zed did well – check out his personal vote. Any issues were more to do with the baggage he inherited (which is now gone) and the leakage of preferences because of Mulchay, Cross Pangallo, moterists etc.

The Libs may have lost a seat (yet to be finalised) but have renewed at least 50% of the MLA’s and the party is united.

This was the best case scenario when Zed assumed the leadership.

Zed really has to go. In a gimme election, that was the Libs’ for the taking, their vote went down. They picked up nothing that leached from Labor. Zed was at the front of almost all promotional material and has to carry the can, tap the mat etc. There may be no-one better, but he’s clearly not what the electorate wanted – at least not this time. (My vague understanding was that he would be pushed by the end of 2008 if they lost and by the end of 2009 if they won, anyway, and if the people expected were elected).

What really cost the Libs was that their proxies – the Motorists and the C(R)AP – didn’t return votes to them. In fact, failures by their voters to preference probably cost seats. Funny in a way, because if they had a consistent policy it was pretty much to exile Jon Stanhope.

Tetranitrate12:25 pm 25 Oct 08

Bruce K, you miss my point – I agree Vicki is not fit to be leader.
Problem is she’d be the only alternative to Zed at this stage, so Zed stays.

Tetranitrate12:21 pm 25 Oct 08

Fact is the people of Gininderra voted for Coe, they could have voted for no BS accountant Myers but they voted for Coe.
Now perhaps he had an advantage as far as resources go being the head of their northern branch and all but the fact is enough people voted for him to get him elected.
I don’t know for sure I’m not a Liberal.

Part of their problem may well be that the of people who make up ‘soft’ liberal supporters (particularly in Canberra) aren’t very interested in being involved in the party while those who ARE interested are far more conservative.
Vicious cycle – the more ‘loopy’ their branches get the less non fruitloops can stomach it and leave/(never join), the more loopy their branches get.
And in Canberra’s electoral system, the ‘hard’ supporters will still get a few candidates over the line.
At least that’s one theory.

Just back to jimbocool’s analysis, how did you get the figure for remaining primary votes?

Liberals received a total of 27785 primary votes, according to the commission’s website, and in the latest table of distributed preferences, they have counted 19585 of them, leaving the liberals with 8200 yet to be counted. Do the same with Greens and they have 4528. That’s a lot more than jimbo’s figures.

disenfranchised11:58 am 25 Oct 08

Canberra needs a strong Opposition to keep the incumbent party/government on its toes. It is unfortunate that the Canberra Liberals persist in selecting such right wing candidates. They don’t seem to understand that the Canberra community is, compared to other jurisdictions, a progressive community: one looking for a mix of sound economic management with a sensible “progressive” approach. This election should have been theirs. Carnell tapped into that sentiment. Follett did. Stanhope has. Kaine was pragmatic. The problem for the Liberals these days is their Party branches are full of fruit loop right wingers running a strong christian agenda. They have conducted a nasty campaign over the last 7 years (post Carnell) targeting small l liberals. For example, some of Coe’s Young Liberal mates are terrifyingly naive, aggro and ultra conservative. The Young Libs have been in a constant state of ideological war within the Liberal Party. Until the Liberal Party allows for all facets of the broad church to be considered candidates they are doomed to opposition. Charismatic leaders like Carnell need to be revered not pilloried (as many Liberals did). Their only other leader (other than the accidental leader Humphries) , Kaine, left the Party. Isn’t there a message in that? Like many in the community, I will not vote for right wing people with socially conservative agendas. One day they might just get it (when they are down to about 4 members).

Tetranitrate said :

At least Labor has a few competent people to replace Stanhope with – who do the liberals have?
There’s no way they would accept Smyth so that leaves Vicki Dunne and several new MLA’s who aren’t going to realistically be able to become leader in the near future.
Do you really think Vicki Dunne is a good choice for leader?

Tet, Vicki Dunne couldn’t run a mass in Rome – sorry yes she could thats the problem. As “disenfranchised” said time for Zed and his brother in law Seteven Doyle to pull their heads in. Their campaign smacks of our old friend from the NSW right David Clarke sticking his nose in to make sure more of the right get in. NSW here we come again. It will take 4 years to fix this F….up that Zed and his mates have created.

Shame on you, call yourself a christian, no true christain would behave the way you have.

Tetranitrate9:32 am 25 Oct 08

At least Labor has a few competent people to replace Stanhope with – who do the liberals have?
There’s no way they would accept Smyth so that leaves Vicki Dunne and several new MLA’s who aren’t going to realistically be able to become leader in the near future.
Do you really think Vicki Dunne is a good choice for leader?

Tetranitrate9:28 am 25 Oct 08

disenfranchised – fall on his sword? are you joking?
If indeed you’re correct that they’re too socially conservative Zed’s the least of your worries.

Even without Giulia, right wingers are now at least half the parliamentary party (anyone know where Hanson stands?).
Dunne, Doszpot, Coe.
Hanson expressed a lot of support for Zed on election night so assuming that’s true, Zed has a reliable 3.

With equal votes would this mean they flip a coin on who gets to be leader next time they have a spill?
How ironic.

Hey Caf, black swan is bingo-callers’ slang for the number 2.

I don’t think it is referring to a particular poster.

As Jimbocool says: Kudos to whoever it was who called “Black Swan” on two Greens in Molonglo.

So, yes, Mackerras gets the kudos.

caf said :

Black Swan my shapely butt…

Need evidence for the shapely butt, please.

Black Swan my shapely butt, in my book all the kudos goes to Malcolm Mackerras for predicting exactly this (as reported in Mumble, October 18).

disenfranchised8:40 am 25 Oct 08

It has been interesting to observe Seselja’s bravado. He leads a party for 10 months (which is more than long enough these days – ask Barnett), achieves a swing AGAINST his party of over 3 per cent, at a time when there was a massive community falling out with Stanhope and his team, and now wants the prize of government. The result in this election has been that the Liberals garnered around 30 per cent of the vote – that is a very POOR result. Smyth did better in 2004 overall. That’s right – check the figures. Is it too much to ask that Seselja and his Chief of Staff Doyle pull their heads in and get rid of the swagger? By the way I thought employing family in your office was frowned upon. The Liberals have become right wing Catholic dominated. Not a hint of “small l” about that group. This election shows they are unelectable with their current right wing hue. It is plain silly to be declaring victory, trying to mask the underlying failure of this campaign. This was their best opportunity for a decade and they could only get 30 per cent across the board! If Jones loses, Seselja must fall on his sword. Six seats would be an unmitigated failure. Equally, it is time for Stanhope to go too. There are rumblings already in both camps.

Hey Jimbocool – perhaps one of these is a way out of your current dilemma – http://www.thescreamonline.com/strange/strange2-2/hatsofmeat.html

And thanks for the psephological goodness.

Zed’s dead baby! Zed is dead.

Jimbo – you and your slide rule have been an inspiration over the last week. Great work.

Tetranitrate11:02 pm 24 Oct 08

No, the greens can still decide who governs, but labor has a much stronger mandate now.

It’s all very puzzling, but the good guys might do even better. But. will this not mean that Labor have the largest number of candidates in? And can therefore claim gov’t without anyone’s help? Although I guess if the greens then hopped in with the Liberals, they’d have it.

Most puzzling. I hope the greens do it however.

Tetranitrate10:45 pm 24 Oct 08

So Hanson gets up, Jones doesn’t? sorry, that isn’t entirely clear to me, need sleep

damn you sepi! And after all I did in explaining Hare Clark! Let’s just wait until the poll is declared…hat eating may well just be a non-core promise!

Kewl – now who was going to eat their hat???

You’ve made my evening jimbocool- great news!

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