Picking Winners #3: 1998 Reflections

1998 saw a national swing of 4.61% to the ALP, giving it 50.98% of the two-party-preferred vote. It only won 67 of the 148 seats or 45.27%. A depressing reflection for Labor voters. With a uniform swing in every electorate, the ALP would have won 17 of the 18 seats which it did capture, plus 11 more.


This graph of seats which changed hands includes Hume which switched from National to Liberal, Curtin and Moore won by the Libs from independents and Kalgoorlie won by the Libs from the former ALP member and then independent. These swings are not towards the ALP.



Most of the large swings against the government were in safe ALP or Coalition seats. A lot of "wasted" votes. With only 0.93% more in 8 marginals Kim Beazley would have saved us 9 years of Mr. Sneaky.

Kevin Rudd will be hoping that this pattern does not repeat itself in 2007 or that the national swing is enough to overcome this.

Original post at: Labor View from Broome

Picking Winners #2: Seats changing hands

There was quite a spread in 2004 as the national, seat by seat, swings show. An earlier post shows the top 20 of these.



In 2004, 70 seats had a swing less than the 1.79% average towards the government and 79 had a swing greater than the average. Yet so few seats changed hands. Those that did were all over the place. All the Coalition wins were with swings greater than the average except one. Reasons varied. Four weeks before the campaign the impact on Tasmanian seats of forest policy could not have been anticipated quite the way it panned out.

If the swing had only been the average 1.79% in the seats picked up by the government, 6 of the 8 would still have been changed hands. Had the swing been uniform then the ALP would have won 59 seats compared with the 60 they did win.

The spread seemed to even out in the end across the nation. But if you're trying to pick a particular seat to have a punt, good luck!

Original post at: Labor View form Broome

Picking Winners #1: Top 20 Swings 2004

Picking winners which won't follow the uniform swings used in the plethora of pendulums and meters is a hard job for psephologists. This table shows the 10 seats from the last election with highest swing away from the Howard government and the 10 with the highest swing to them.

The difference between Gilmore (-4.55%) and Canning (9.16%) is a huge 13.71%. If you take into account the 1.79% national swing to the coalition, the swing in Gilmore was 6.34%, to the ALP and 7.37% to the Liberals in Canning. Interestingly, neither seat changed hands. It may all even out in the wash, but it makes the punters' job harder than ever when it comes to picking winners in individual seats. Form is not always a good indicator.

Original post at: Labor View from Broome