With the Victorian election almost upon us there are many guides to individual seats available. To add to these I have developed a simple regression model to predict the 2010 Labor primary and two-party preferred votes and the 2010 Green vote in each electorate from the social composition of the electorate as revealed by the […]
Labor wasn’t saved by the goldfields after all
This was a very good result for the Coalition. Obviously Labor had weakness but the Coalition had to be in a position to take advantage of them and to survive the scrutiny of an election campaign. Whereas in NSW and Queensland the opposition wilted under the pressure of an election campaign the Coalition flourished. The […]
Will Labor be saved by the goldfields?
The basic point about elections are that they are usually competitions about the provision of goods and services valued by all voters. Everybody wants better schools, hospitals, public transport etc. For this reason electoral swings tend to be fairly uniform as Gary King argues. Ryan Sheales complains:
Does the Sex Party threaten the Greens?
This is the opinion article I submitted to The Age on the Australian Sex Party, which they did not publish:
The fate of forestry
Media reports suggests that an end to native forest logging is inevitable regardless of who wins the Victorian election. Issues around native forest logging have frequently been the object of electoral controversy in Australia. But much discussion has been misguided.
Victorian Labor and rural electoral myths
Is Victorian Labor in trouble in rural areas? This theme is getting some coverage in the media. However much of the coverage tells us very little. The Age interviewed Mallee farmers, the problem is that they have always been very conservative. Year in year out the small rural polling booths in the Mallee record primary […]