Pressing On

The Fourth Branch

Since I am trying to convince myself that this blog is not entirely shaped by my own biases, I intend to keep within the broad confines of electoral commentary and, ultimately, prediction. Since it is in my best interests to have accurate predictions, this should somewhat limit my own ideological inclinations and look at cold hard facts. I do data, and I do interpretation, but not opinion. The line between interpretation and opinion can be a thin one, but in my definitions interpretation aims to explain known facts (e.g. the reluctance of the major parties to change leaders) while opinion is about personal judgement and extends beyond the bounds of provable suppositions. Fundamentally, opinion is untestable, interpretation can be born out or refuted by additional data.

As a result, I tend not to focus on policies and promises – which are hard to factor into any predictions mathematically – and use polling as a substitute in their stead. I am not entirely sure why we have opinion pieces in newspapers, unless we have reached a point where we need other people to make up our minds for us, but I will leave policy discussions for those writers.

That said, my initial plan for this week was inspired, or rather brought forward, by Labor's proposed media reforms. I don't intend to go on about Conroy's handling of the bills or debate the merits of the policy. I want to talk about the role the Media has in elections, because obviously the media is instrumental in influencing the voting public. This is why the Coalition was so opposed to Labor's attempts to strengthen regulations on right-wing newspapers, and why Labor has always opposed Coalition funding cuts to the ABC.

Charles Baudelaire famously said that "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist." The same is true of the power of advertising. Many people would swear that they are not swayed by advertising, and it is precisely these people who are swayed most by it. They are convinced that, while others are sucked into brand loyalty, they are immune because of their cunning intellect and penetrating alertness. “I drink Coke and Pepsi,” they explain. “I shop at Coles and Woolworths. I compare three or four mobile phone plans, or insurance plans, or mortgages before I commit.” What they fail to grasp is that they, and indeed all of us to some extent, are ensnared in false dichotomies, or trichotomies, or any-other-chotomies. We choose freely between a narrow field of well-advertised options, but ignore others simply because we don't know they exist or they don't come to mind when contemplating our choices. 

The same is true in politics. Last federal election, when there was a strong sentiment of being fed up with both Labor and the Coalition, over 80% of the Lower House primary vote still went their way. Ignoring the Nationals (but still including the Country Liberals and Liberal National Party of Queensland), the Labor-Liberal dichotomy still garnered over three quarters of the vote. In the Upper House, where minor parties are more easily elected, and therefore more worth 'risking your vote' for, this may be less extreme, but the AEC doesn't do nation-wide tallies of Senate first preferences. (Because senate ballots are organised by candidate, not by party, different states are not directly comparable.) On the other hand below-the-line voting is regularly less than 5% of the total vote in the Senate, which indicates that people still vote for parties, not candidates, and the major parties will naturally dominate that contest. 

Obviously it is in the major parties' interests to keep the media framing their news stories in a Labor-versus-Liberal paradigm, since this results in more of the audience (be they readers, viewers or listeners) supporting or – equally valuably – opposing one party and voting between the two. Some people do this because they don't really follow or care about politics, and just want to get out of the voting booth as quickly as possible to enjoy the rest of their Saturday. Others consider it a waste of their vote if it doesn't go to a candidate with a high chance of winning – although I always wonder how valuable this 'unwasted' vote is if you don't get to exercise the full choice it offers. It also highlights a limited understanding of preferential voting.

It has often been claimed that a free press is essential for democracy. The line was certainly parroted by many newspaper representatives recently in place of actually answering the questions put to them. The media, as a result, is often termed the fourth branch of government; the Executive branch (Prime Minister and Cabinet) rule and conduct the affairs of state, the Legislative branch (Upper and Lower Houses) make the laws, the Judiciary (Courts) uphold them and the Press holds everyone to account. The separation of powers (i.e. the independence of the Judiciary from the Executive and Legislative) is a fundamental check against corruption and is enforced by most national constitutions. For those who insist that the media is a forth branch, independence from the government and courts is of fundamental importance but not necessarily recognised in law. Conversely, most people would probably agree, there need to be some safeguards on accuracy and integrity or else the media fails in its duty to inform the public.

Exactly how strict these safeguards should be, whether they should be embedded in law and who should monitor them is essentially at the centre of the proposed media reforms. I am not going to argue on this point one way or the other, because I refuse to lower the tone of this blog to that of an opinion column. But if the media has a role in ensuring the survival of democracy, it follows that it must also have the power to influence our votes. Just as journalists can provide the facts that allow us to make informed decisions when we cast our ballots, they can weave a story that can channel our emotions and lead us to cast an uninformed, or more accurately, a sentimental vote independent of any objective facts. To return to the world of advertising, it is a well known maxim that “people buy based on emotion then justify after the fact with logic.” Once again, this is no less true in politics.

Look! Over There! A Distraction!

In the lead up to the vote on the media laws, one might have expected the bill(s) to be withdrawn and the PM to point into the depths of her backbench and yell such a line. Perhaps what followed was a distraction planned ahead of time. Probably not. Either way, everyone was distracted. I refer, of course, to the leadership non-challenge. The bit where Julia Gillard went from being PM to being PM. The bit where Kevin Rudd didn't do anything. The bit where nothing changed.

And didn't the media go wild! “Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Nothing has changed! Nothing at all!”

“Is this the end for Labor?” the paraphrased headlines read, to which the answer is 'no'. The events of Thursday last week may cause a small hiccough in the polls, but in the long run Labor is either still in with a chance, or was ruined a long time ago. Only time will tell if their long-standing position in the polls can be reversed or not, but last Thursdays events are unlikely to aid or to hinder in the long run.

Naturally the topic of this post was going to shift to focus on the leadership not-spill, but I have begun by discussing the media because the two are very closely linked. In fact, the leadership problems for Labor are partly – though certainly not entirely – the result of a self-centred media. Much of the modern media considers themselves gatekeepers of knowledge and protectors of democracy. This is almost entirely confined to traditional media – radio, television and especially print media. I briefly referred to The Narrative in a previous post, which is something that others have discussed in far deeper detail. To paraphrase these people, The Narrative is the belief that there can only be one over-arching news story at a time, otherwise we – the poor untrained public – will be confused. At present The Narrative seems to be that the Gillard government cannot do anything right. If they launch an initiative they are spending money they don't have, and if they do nothing then they are failing to meet the needs of Australians. This is why there is constant reference to how bad our economy and job markets are doing, even though we have a AAA credit rating, low inflation, low unemployment, low interest rates and our net foreign debt is insignificant by global standards.

I began my papal election post by discussing the media's unfounded fear of this country becoming irrelevant. There is, however, one greater fear – and one that is far more solid in its foundation – that the media itself may become irrelevant. The rise of the Internet, social media and blogs (like this one (but with wider readerships)) are often seen as inferior news sources that undermine the bastion of purity that is true journalism.

Not the best example of their argument...

The fact is that journalism – true journalism, where investigation, fact checking and probing questions bring important information to light, or where foreign correspondents keep us updated on world events – will never be irrelevant. A hundred bloggers writing in their spare time will not have the resources, be they money, contacts, time or training, to do the job of these people. Who may become irrelevant are the writers of opinion columns, the tabloid exaggerations (e.g. above) and the producers of mindless page-filler titled animals vs hair-dryers (the top news story on NineMSN.com as I write this entry on Tuesday the 26^th)

If alternative sources are replacing the traditional media, it is not because of some deliberate plot, or due to illusions of grandeur among the 'technology-savvy' (and by the 'technology-savvy', I mean anyone capable of using a search engine, also known as 'witchcraft' by some news media editors). It is because the traditional sources are no longer considered adequate (if, indeed, they ever were). We want different opinions, varied interpretations and the ability to make up our own mind. If The Narrative was ever a valid approach to reporting it should have died out with Bakelite appliances and 1950s housewives. But most of all, we want substance.

I should specify, my aim for unbiased reporting extends only to party politics. I reserve the right to criticise Rupert Murdoch and the rest of his friends in this image.

Often we hear complaints that modern politics is too focussed on personalities and perception, rather than policies (again, see the Daily Telegraph example for how the former is used to trump the substance of the latter). News sources echo this sentiment as much as the rest of us. But the solution is simple – the media needs to inject some standards into its political reporting. Major announcements on health, education and, most recently, an apology to victims of forced adoption have all been absent from news headlines, replaced by spats between politicians and internal division. The media is terrified of losing its monopoly on framing the political discussion, but fails to do anything to improve the level of reporting.

All of this puts a very sharp focus on the party leader, and leadership challenges – which in reality are mostly just a change of a figurehead while the policies broadly stay the same. The role of the media in the leadership un-change eight days ago stretches beyond popularity polls and a focus on personal attacks. This is how it has appeared to many people I have spoken too since 2010:

In the year two-thousand-and-ten, the media woke up to a slap in the face. Kevin Rudd had been replaced as PM, and no-one had really seen it coming. Major news outlets determined not to be caught out again. When Julia Gillard's popularity dropped, they began to ask if there would be a return to Kevin Rudd. Leadership speculation was reported for months on end, although all they were really reporting was their own uncertainty. Yes, there was speculation. Mostly it was media speculation. Polls were commissioned asking who would be preferred as PM – Rudd or Gillard. Labor MPs began to ask if they had made a mistake. Some had never supported the change to Gillard in the first palce. Now there was more than speculation. There were “rumblings from within the Labor Party”. Alarmed, number-counters within the party checked and double-checked their figures. They tried to sure up support for their respective contenders. Rather than letting the past die, as would probably have happened naturally, the media accelerated the ALP towards a second vote between Rudd and Gillard. Certain of victory, Gillard promised if she lost she would not contest the leadership, and asked for an equal assurance from the doomed Rudd. Gillard won and Rudd vowed to let the whole issue die.

But the media didn't.

'Speculation' returned. 'Rumblings' were detected every now and again. Eventually another vote had to be held, or else the government would be hamstrung throughout the campaign by a constant focus on instability rather than policy – because the media will always report personality clashes and infighting over government projects and funding. That's why people watch sports, not accountants. The Colosseum is three or four times the size of a Greek amphitheatre; Roman gladiators were always more popular than Greek debates and political plays. Or obscure blogs on elections, for that matter.

Rudd kept his promise not to challenge, and the media was outraged. They had been duped once by failing to suspect the challenge that put Gillard in power, now they had been duped again into expecting a challenge when there wasn't one. And because Rudd had made it clear he was not going to mount a challenge before the next election, much of their previous work was exposed for the empty supposition it was. Worse still, there was a risk they might have a stable government and have to report on boring old policy, not the brutal cut-and-thrust of backroom deals between faceless men. It was unthinkable – like a crime series written about the solving of crimes rather than the strain of the job on the main characters' families, or the sexual tension between two cops.

The leadership not-really-at-all-anything-like-a-challenge

These leadership challenges – or non-challenges – are not confined to the Labor Party or to federal politics. The changes in the federal Liberal Party leadership, from Nelson to Turnbull to Abbott might not be new news, and they were in opposition at the time, so it is often ignored when Coalition MPs point the finger at the Labor Party's instability. Since then the South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill forced his predecessor out of power, Lara Giddings replaced David Bartlett (although this was done amicably) and in the last month there has been new leadership in the governing Victorian Liberals, and in the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory.

Interestingly there is a large push from outside the federal Liberal-National Coalition to bring back Malcolm Turnbull as leader, and Kevin Rudd consistently out-polls Julia Gillard. Understandably many people are confused by the persistence of these parties to persevere with their less popular leaders. In reality a change of leadership would actually do more harm than good for both parties.

James Glenday has written a good article on the nature of polling and its (ab)use in reporting. To quote a short section:

[...] during this term of Parliament there have been several poll-related stories suggesting Kevin Rudd would beat Opposition Leader Tony Abbott if he were returned as Labor leader.

For much of the 43rd parliament polls have showed Mr Rudd is indeed more popular than Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.
However, because Labor trails the Coalition by a long way on the primary vote and on a two-party preferred basis, there isn't enough hard evidence to suggest Mr Rudd would certainly win an election.
Professor McAllister says, "Relatively small numbers of people change their vote from election to election. So the net effect of a popular or unpopular leader is not as large as people think."

It is also important to ensure personal preference is not confused with voting intention. For example Dr Kevin Bonham provides us with a table comparing Galaxy and ReachTEL polling. Both favour Rudd over Gillard, and diverge on the preferred Coalition leader between Abbott (ReachTEL) and Turnbull (Galaxy). Since Galaxy is a national figure, and ReachTEL is Western-Sydney specific, we'll focus on the Galaxy Results.

Normally a quick news story will glance over this data and move on. However, if we break the polling down into ALP, Coalition and the rest, we see that ALP voter preferences for PM are, in descending order, Gillard, Rudd, Turnbull, Abbott. Coalition preferences run in exactly the opposite direction. The rest run Rudd, Turnbull, Gillard, Abbott. So the decision is more complicated than at first thought. A lot of the votes for Rudd over Gillard comes from Coalition supporters – who won't vote ALP regardless of who leads – and a fair chunk of Turnbull's support comes from staunch ALP voters – who won't vote Coalition. Changing leaders could arguably win over many of "the rest", although the left-lean in that sector (preferring Rudd to Turnbull and Gillard to Abbott) may represent some entrenched Greens voters who won't budge either.

Another poll, dissected on Gordon Graham's blog, indicates that among Labor voters the perception is that things are as good or better under Gillard compared to Rudd's time in office (Better 42%, Worse 39%, Undecided 19%).

As I mentioned earlier, a change of leadership is rarely more than a change of figurehead. While people do vote based on opinion and how likeable a Prime Minister is, they are equally swayed by how policies may effect them. The big, terrifying taxes and the revolutionary, life-changing programmes are almost always less drastic than initially portrayed, but they have far more emotional impact than the personality of the leader.

A leadership change will, at best, provide a temporary blip in opinion polling and be thoroughly ironed out by election day – unless the change occurs shortly before an election, but this would mean leaping blindly into the vote and could result in a massive backlash (as with the 2010 Federal Election) or appear to indicate instability.

The appearance of instability is an even bigger reason as to why the parties want to retain their current leaders. At the moment the claim that federal Labor is incompetent is being pushed by Coalition MPs. No surprises there. Part of that argument has been the persistent leadership problems for the Gillard government. This means that a change in ALP leadership will add fuel to the fire, and probably cost a lot more in the long run than it earns; there is no doubt the Coalition would capitalise enormously on such an event. Conversely a change of leadership in the Coalition would cost them the high-ground. The recent changes in Victoria and NT have already proved to be a significant thorn in the side of those pressing this argument for the opposition.

For those who want a Rudd or Turnbull government, I can see only one option. To install Turnbull you must, counter-intuitively, get Labor elected this election and hope that the Coalition drops Tony Abbott after losing what should have been – based on current polling, at least – an easy win. Alternatively, to get Rudd back, you will have to get Tony Abbott elected as PM and give the Labor party the chance to pressure Gillard into resigning. A forced leadership spill won't work, since Rudd has tied himself to his pledge to run only if the position is vacant. However, in such a situation, I would expect the leadership to pass to Bill Shorten since very few people who served under Rudd enjoyed the experience.

From W.A. to W.S.

What About Me (It Isn't Fair (I've Had Enough Now I Want My Share))

A lot has been written about Western Sydney this election. A lot more than anyone could want to read. This week I add to that glut of text and hopefully say something new. The reason I am taking the effort to discuss what many might consider an exhausted topic (though believe me, the media will continue to flog this kind of dead horse until September) is that for all that has been written, there seems to be little understanding of what is going on, politically speaking. That is not to say that I am somehow endowed with inside knowledge of the politicians' strategies, but anyone who watches ABC's Q&A will see a tweet more or less every week along the lines of 'there's more to Australia than Western Sydney'. Some were even amusing! (Sadly it took a few seconds for me to get that one...)

There is apparently a strong sentiment of 'what about me?' in the electorate at large which betrays a fundamental naïvety of how elections work. The simple fact is that, as far as lower house voting goes, most of us don't matter that much. I certainly don't, because my seat (Mayo) will stay firmly in Liberal pockets (assuming the Liberals can avoid any screw ups several magnitudes larger than any in the last 50 years). Last election was going to be “lost and won in Queensland”, although Sydney did get a mention.

I think most of us actually get this. There are marginal seats and safe seats. The politicians have to fight over the marginal seats a lot more than their safe ones. What I think has happened here, though is a combination of several things:

1. This is a long election and people can see a lot more Western Sydney stuff coming
2. Western Sydney is a smaller area than usually focussed on
3. The rest of Sydney can see how much greener the grass is to the west, at least in terms of political focus and promises, and inner Sydney is not used to being shown up. Melbourne, Brisbane and other metropolitan centres aren't too impressed either.
4. Increased social media participation, especially in the political arena, since last election has made the disquiet less quiet, and
5. Not many people are particularly enchanted with “either party” of politics (because there are only really two parties, right?) and therefore anything “either” does is demonised. Labor in particular cannot to anything right (perhaps because that is part of The Narrative as Andrew Welder suggests) and Labor is really the driving force behind the Western Sydney focus. The Coalition is happy to play along because the longer they spend fighting over the working and lower-middle classes the longer the Coalition can expect the support of everyone else by default. The fact that Labor has not (and possibly cannot) communicate with anyone else has been noted by others.

There was a similar feeling in 2010 when both sides were serenading the independents to form government. One news station that displays tweets* included one with the general sentiment of 'I wonder if we would be receiving more attention if we had voted for an independent?' The simple (and I think obvious) answer would have been yes. But independents can be comparatively less effective in non-hung parliaments where they do not hold the balance of power. Even candidates from major parties like Labor and the Coalition have limited power when in the majority and even less when in opposition. In a democracy all voters have a say, but in a nation of 21 million you cannot expect a big one. Nor can you expect all voters opinions to be treated equally. Donors with mountains of money will always have a bigger say. Supporters of representatives who hold the balance of power in either house will always have a bigger say. And in election years, voters in marginal seats will always have a bigger say. Voters like those in Western Sydney.

But These People Have A Point!

I mentioned that Queensland was seen as key in the last federal election. Both parties put a fair few resources into that state, and Labor lost seven seats, leaving them 8 of the 30. Many people point to just one equation to explain this.

Rudd, of course, was a proud Queenslander. I think its a bit more complicated than just that, but that is neither here nor there. Rudd was a definite factor in Queensland and elsewhere. I guess you could argue that in the end Queensland was instrumental. Labor lost ground there and nearly lost government.

Fortunately for the ALP, there haven't been any major, controversial events that implicate Labor politicians headlining Sydney's news lately, have there? Oh, wait...

That is Eddie Obeid, if you didn't recognise him. So is this.

While investigations are ongoing, it has been oft repeated that Obeid has ruined Labor in NSW for a whole generation of voters. I think that's probably overstating it – most people will be saying 'Obeid? Who's that?' in an election or three – but it does make Labor's brand pretty toxic in the Sydney area.

Labor could always hope that people don't confuse federal Labor and state Labor, and vote accordingly. But you see the thing is: Western Australia. If voters are willing to punish WA Labor for Gillard policies, what are the odds Sydney voters won't let state Labor controversies colour their federal opinions?

Still, six months is a long time in politics. Perhaps Labor can claw back some support by then but, as plenty of other, more influential bloggers have pointed out, the ALP's chances are greater elsewhere.

The key idea in these articles looks at “winnable seats” for Labor based on the Mackerras pendulum. I'll be using the under-6% definition of marginal that has served us well so far, so my results will differ a little from Gordon Graham's (the last link) which looked at seats under 5%.

The majority are in Queensland (10) followed by Victoria and NSW (6 each), WA (4) SA (2) and NT and Tasmania (1 each, with Tasmania's seat being Denison and taken from an independent).

Specifically, these ones.

Mr. Graham suggests that the Obeid matter is fatal for Federal Labor in NSW, and that the ALP in Victoria and SA have pretty much maxed out their support. Denison is also considered safe for the independent at this early stage. After the WA state election I would expect we can rule out many ALP gains there as well, short of a massive turn around. All of this only serves to further highlight the importance of Queensland, and it has been suggested that the anti-anti-Rudd sentiment in that state may have weakened since the ALP took a thrashing three years ago.

However there is something very strange going on. 'Western Sydney' is obviously a very nebulous area, but it is defined by at least one NSW newspaper to be the combined seats of Banks, Blaxland, Chifley, Fowler, Greenway, Lindesy, McMahon, Paramatta, Reid and Werriwa. None of the marginal non-Labor seats (i.e. possible wins) lie in this area. Benelong, Hughes, Macarthur and Maquarie neighbour this area, and would make far more sensible targets based on the methodology of Mr Graham. For the record I think these were very well-written, enjoyable, informative articles but they don't consider the flipside:

Which ALP Seats Are Losable?

Again, using the 6% cut off line we find the answer:

1 in the Northern Territory, 3 in WA, 4 in Victoria, 7 in the Sunshine State and a whopping 12 in NSW. These include Banks, Greenway, Lindsey, Parramatta and Reid within 'Western Sydney'. The PM's visit to the area was based in Rooty Hill in Chifley – a Labor seat, albeit a safe one. Labor isn't trying to win seats, it's trying to not lose them. They're sandbagging – a phrase you might have heard several times in the Western Australian election coverage if you were so inclined to watch.

When the tide was clearly favouring the Liberals and Nationals in WA, who were expected to wash away many marginal seats with a flood of votes, the Labor party started sandbagging. This is a process where you fortify the marginal seats against your opponents, at the expense of safer seats. Perhaps you think you can save more than you'll lose. Perhaps you trust the safer seats to hang on. Or perhaps you are playing the long game like Mark McGowan appears to be, retaining the marginal seats in order to have an advantage there next election, when you plan to win back your formerly staunch support base.

I don't think federal Labor is doing any of the above. What I think is really going on here is the ALP trying to assess what the damage is in NSW. If they think they can recover, they'll focus on this area up until polling day, with a few open plays for Queensland and perhaps WA. If not they can either abandon the “new Liberal heartland”, or keep the focus there as cover while introducing plans that will hopefully pay dividends in Queensland and other areas without directly drawing the Coalition's attention away.

I said that Labor was leading the charge on Western Sydney and that the Coalition was happily playing response, safe in the knowledge they have a good chance of holding this “heartland” and can probably win without it anyway. At a deeper level, though, it is Labor who has been out-manouvred. I think federal ALP sandbagging is a lot of playing catch-up – a catch-up campaign that looks disturbingly like a mere continuation of the WA state sandbagging, and the 2010 federal sandbagging, and the SA and Tasmanian sandbagging before that. In 2010 sandbagging just preserved Labor's grip on power. It is a strategy that is unlikely to hold back two tidal waves in a row.

* I'm not a twitter user, but I must admit it is generally a pretty good forum for venting your frustration where no one (outside your own friendship group) is going to hear you. Much like screaming into the vacuum of space. Or writing an election blog. Why you would add in a news broadcast with a hashtag is beyond me. If your five minutes of fame is 140 characters on the bottom of a TV screen then … well, I'll let you judge what that means for yourself personally. I would rather be noted for making some kind of contribution to society, but whatever floats your ego, I suppose.

Half-Year Exams

The Results Are In...

A full six months – almost to the day – from the Australian federal election and it is time to check how we are doing. I was planning to assess my predictions for the WA state election, and I will, but yesterday we also got the results of the papal conclave. I wasn't expecting any results from Italy until today at the earliest, but now we get to look at all the predictions in one fell swoop.

Let's do the bonus question first, then the lengthy multiple choice section

Don't Cry for Me Argentina:

Okay. Two things straight up. A) I got this one wrong. B) It is Pope Francis. That is all. Full stop. The end. He is not Pope Francis I until we have a Pope Francis II.

Now normally these self-reflective posts are about learning how to form better predictions next time and me parading how right I was. Since I wasn't right and there may not be another papal election for over a decade it might seem a bit redundant to dwell on this. However, I would not be worthy of my place on the blogotubes if I did not get personally offended whenever reality impinges on my interpretation of the facts and try to justify my way out of it. So, like a seven year old who explains you only won because s/he had a sore leg (which s/he never bothered to mention before hand) this is why I am right and the Cardinals are wrong:

Very few expected Bergoglio to win, especially as the conclave drew nearer. Everyone was either backing a European or clinging to the idea of an African pope. Latin America might have made more sense than Africa, since it has a larger Catholic population, but a black pope would be a more obvious break with tradition and would allow easy parallels with Obama. Or so the media thinking seemed to run (because the Catholic Church is all about breaking with tradition and totally bases its choice of pope on superficial similarities to world figures). So there is at least the consolation that I'm not the only one to get this wrong.

Secondly, he's a Jesuit. There has never been a Jesuit pope since the order was founded in the 16th century. There have been Franciscan popes and Dominican popes but no Jesuits, until yesterday. Jesuits do not pursue high office unless ordered to by their superiors. I'm not going to criticise Pope Francis for taking the job – though I reserve the right to tut in the strongest possible way if I disagree with his actions later – it is just that it is really strange to think that a Jesuit would become pope. Clearly he thought that the Church was in need of him, and that the Church itself, and God, were the superiors that required he take up the role.

Thirdly, there was the whole accused of kidnapping thing. It was ages ago, and unsubstantiated, but I thought we were past the age of Popes with shady pasts.

I decided against a Hitler Youth reference here.

Oh wait, no, there it is in the caption...

Again I'm not judging the guy (yet). He is innocent until proven guilty. I just did not expect the conservative Cardinals to take that risk – especially given the current reputation problems the church is facing.

A lot is being made of the fact that he is the first Latin American pope. In fact he is the first non-European pope. After almost 2000 years of popes poping their papacies I'm all for a change. I didn't expect one though. I've already mentioned that he's the first Jesuit pope. And he was elected after the first papal resignation in six centuries. That's a lot of records broken. He has also taken an unused Papal name. The last pope to do that (not counting John-Paul I, who really reused two names) was Pope Lando in 913. That's one-thousand, one hundred years ago exactly.

He lived a long time ago in a Vatican far, far away.

What is it with Popes and Star Wars?

So yes, this was a surprise pope. A decision, I would argue, that was very difficult to predict. But he seems sincere and his assumed name has been read to imply that he will try to rebuild the church's reputation – just as St. Francis physically rebuilt churches by hand. And he may be a conservative against gay marriage and broad use of contraception, but he did stress that it is important to respect people who identify as homosexual and that the use of condoms is acceptible to help stop the spread of HIV.

The surprise is not necessarily an unpleasant one.

Labor Pains

Closer to home (especially if home is Western Australia) there were the state elections. While final counts are expected to be completed over the next day or so, we have enough data to be pretty confident in calling most of the seats. The good news is that our predictions were far better here than in Rome. By which I mean we got over 0% right. In fact, if we assume there are only two parties in contention for each seat (which there aren't) then you would expect to get 50% right just on dumb luck, and we did better than that too!!!

On the latest data our accuracy in the WA elections was 92.45%. That sounds really impressive, but remember you get 50% right by flipping a coin, and a lot of those seats were no-brainers. When Wagin was held by the coalition with a margin of 28.4%, and second place was another coalition party, it is not hard to guess that it will not be going to the Labor party in an election with a clear pro-Coalition swing.

I would say that anything below 90% accuracy in mediocre at best, and you'd need to break 95% to consider your predictions to have been particularly good. So we're in the comfortable mid-ground at the moment, but I'm looking to improve in the short term. Counting is still underway, with just shy of 90% of the vote counted in the lower house. Since you never get a turnout of 100% of eligable voters this is more or less complete, and very few seats could change hands (if any - I haven't done the maths on this) with the remaining count. Some seats can be called on first preferences alone - in Cottesloe for example the Liberals received 64.6% of the primary vote and win the seat before preferences are redistributed.

Others require some guesswork as to how the voters second and third preferences ran. I am relying on Antony Green's predictions of how preferences will flow for these, which I understand are based on approximate figures from previous elections. I will be developing my own preference predictions for the Federal election closer to the date [Editor: no you won't], but in the mean time these are as below:

Greens: 7:3 Labor to non-Labor ratio

Australian Christians – 3:7 Labor to non-Labor

 Family First – 3:7 Labor to non-Labor

  Independent – split 50:50

(unless something is known about the candidate)
 
National Preferences – 1:3 Labor to Liberals
Liberal preferences – 3:17 Labor to Nationals

Directed Labor preferences - 4:1 Nationals to Liberal or Other
Undirected Labor preferences - 3:2 Nationals to Liberal or Other

Labor preferences (North West Central only) - 3:7 Nationals to Liberal or Other

(Non-Labor is basically the Coalition unless there is something going on with an Independent.)

So this is how we'll be calling seats until I get better data, and what I'll be basing this review on. There is no time like the present, and no place like the results table:

Before we jump into the errors (in bold) lets look at the ones I got right. After all I know why we got those ones right (or at least I think I do).

If we ignore all seats over 10% (i.e. safe or very safe) then I got 34 right out of 38. That is around 89½%, and a more reliable assessment of how we did. Not bad by any means, but not mindblowing either. Like I said, it's a comfortable result with room for improvement. Everything over 10%, in fact, is so safe that swings in excess of this cannot be accepted by the ABC's election calculators, and on election night coverage the angular swing graph maxes out. The highest margin seat to change hands (ignoring the retiring Independent in Churchlands) was Perth, on 7.7%, and this was a particularly bad election for the incumbent's party.

Of course, even with such a foregone conclusion, Collin Barnett still insisted the election would be close in order to rev up supporters into a pro-Coalition campaigning (and voting) frenzy. The rest of us knew that the swing was strongly against Labor - so much so that I had all Coalition seats, no matter how marginal, being retained. Polling was indicating swings of 7%, but I knew that it could be much lower in non-safe seats so I labelled all Labor seats under 5% as likely wins for the Coalition and all seats under 8% as too close to call.

This was a rough approximation, and much more simplistic that I would have liked with more forward planning on my part and less technical problems on my computer's. Given the polarised electorate, however, it proved to be generally pretty accurate.

Error. Error. Error.

Even given this, I just want to say "what the heck, Albany? What. The. Heck." I don't think even my best prediction methodology could justify why the most marginal Labor seat in the state (indeed, the most marginal seat in state of any persuasion, excepting Morely which was nominally Labor with a Liberal incumbent) did not fall. 0.2% is nothing. In an electorate of around 20,000 voters that is about 40 votes. Labor was holding on by 40 votes, and did not lose them! In fact it was one of only 4 seats to see a primary vote swing to Labor (the others were Kwinana and Rockingham - safe Labor seats - and Churchlands where the incumbent independent was retiring.)

The other mistakes I made were the three Labor seats with margins between 3.8% and 4.8% (inclusive): Collie-Preston, West Swan and Gosnells. Perhaps I should have stretched the tossup range down to include these, but only calling seats with half the predicted state-wide swing or less seems like overkill. If you don't want to take a view on difficult seats, then why not just give up on saying anything useful, predict Wagin as a Coalition win, call everything else a tossup and claim a 100% accuracy?

Instead, I'm going to do the sane thing and try to learn what actually unfolded in these seats. On election night there was a lot of talk about sandbagging. Seats like Perth with 7.7% margins were changing hands, and little Collie-Preston with 3.8% didn't move because Labor was "sandbagging". Local factors were coming into play as Labor tried to hold what ground it could. Local promises, spending and visits to the area are all traditional sandbagging tactics, where a party tries to shore up specific seats at the cost of neglecting others. I'll discus this more next week, just to keep you on the edge of your seats, but essentially there are several reasons why this might be advantageous. This particular election I think Defence Minister Stephen Smith was on the right track when he kept talking about setting up springboards for next election.

Labor knew it was going to lose and, despite Barnett's insistence, the Coalition knew it was going to win. Labor decided to stop focusing on the unwinnable battle (though not by any means pull back on the attack) and looked long term. By my count McGowan still has 21 seats, two more than Geoff Gallop A.C. won in 1996 before gaining 13 seats for victory in 2001. While this was the largest rejection of a sitting WA state government since federation, Minister Smith was still very optimistic about 2017. If McGowan was indeed looking back to Gallop, then holding on to the less reliable seats with margins around 4% is going to be a good head start. Safer seats like Perth (last held by the Coalition from 1965 to '68) and Pilbara ('74 to '83) can be expected to return to 'normal' Labor positions and would be pretty marginal under the coalition. In short, the safer, re-winnable seats were sacrificed for the harder-to-regain (but still defensible) 4% region.

In future it will pay to give a closer look to seat-specific issues in borderline tossup seats.

Upper House:

Assuming that everyone votes "above-the-line" (which is actually left of the line in WA state voting), the current WAEC figures give the following results:

Northern Metropolitan

2008 Previous Seats: 3 Coalition (Liberal), 2 Labor, 1 Green
My Predicted Seats: 4 Coalition, 1 Labor, 1 Green
Likely Resulting Seats: 4 Coalition (Liberal), 2 Labor

Southern Metropolitan

2008 Previous Seats: 3 Coalition (Liberal), 2 Labor, 1 Green
My Predicted Seats: 3 Coalition, 2 Labor, 1 Green
Likely Resulting Seats: 3 Coalition (Liberal), 2 Labor, 1 Green

Eastern Metropolitan

2008 Previous Seats: 3 Coalition (Liberal), 2 Labor, 1 Green
My Predicted Seats: 3 Coalition, 2 Labor, 1 Green
Likely Resulting Seats: 3 Coalition (Liberal), 3 Labor

Agricultural

2008 Previous Seats: 5 Coalition (3 National, 2 Liberal), 1 Labor
My Predicted Seats: 5 Coalition, 1 Labor
Likely Resulting Seats: 4 Coalition (2 Liberal, 2 National), 1 Labor, 1 Shooters and Fishers

Mining and Pastoral

2008 Previous Seats: 3 Coalition (2 Liberal, 1 National), 2 Labor, 1 Green
My Predicted Seats: 4 Coalition, 1 Labor, 1 Green
Likely Resulting Seats: 3 Coalition (2 Liberal, 1 National), 1 Labor, 1 Green, 1 Shooters and Fishers

South West

2008 Previous Seats: 4 Coalition (3 Liberal, 1 National), 2 Labor
My Predicted Seats: 5 Coalition, 1 Labor
Likely Resulting Seats: 4 Coalition (3 Liberal, 1 National), 2 Labor

This was calculated from the preference flows using this calculator and these numbers as of March 15. In the Northern and Eastern Metropolitan regions the Greens failed to get enough votes and their seats passed, perhaps predictably, to Labor. I was fully aware that I had done no research into the Greens and that this could happen, but those are simple errors that can be corrected by not writing my predictions an hour before election day.

In the South West region the coalition failed to take a fifth seat from Labor, which may be because the Coalition has maxed out its support, something I also mentioned last week.

The real surprise, for me at lest, was in the Agricultural and Mining and Pastoral regions, where one predicted Coalition seat in each went to the Shooters and Fishers. Given I didn't look into the Greens it should not be surprising I didn't even consider the SFP. However, as Antony 'Pseh-God' Green points out, in the Mining and Pastoral region this could easily revert to a Nationals seat with right-of-the-line votes counted - especially considering how many flow-ons the SFP required to get that far (Liberal, ACP, Family First and independent).

In the Agricultural region the SFP benefits from a couple of independents, ACP, Family First and Labor. Even before these it is only 1000 votes from the lead, so there would have to be considerable upset to the flow of preferences to give the Coalition the fifth seat I predicted.

Southern Metro was the only region I got 100% correct. In terms of accuracy, I'm going to use a calculation which is favourable to me but also, I think, fair. Where the Coalition won one fewer seats than predicted and the Shooters and Fishers picked one up, some might count that as two errors. I'm counting it as one, since only one seat was incorrectly predicted (the SFP seat was predicted Coalition).

North Metro: 5/6
South Metro: 6/6
East Metro: 5/6
Agricultural: 5/6
Mining & Pastoral: 5/6
South West: 5/6
TOTAL: 31/36

That is around 86% accuracy. Again, this figure looks good because there are always some givens - such as the Coalition and Labor gaining enough support to win at least one seat in most cases.

Conclusions:

In the upper house I correctly predicted 31 of the 36 seats. This could be improved by paying more attention to parties outside the Labor-Coalition dichotomy and by running through expected preference flows to see just how many people are supporting surprises like the SFP.

In the lower house I correctly predicted 49 of the 53 seats I did not rule as tossups, but need to pay more attention to local issues in tossup or near-tossup seats.

I also called the next government/premier of WA correctly (Coalition) for one easy point.

In the papal elections I correctly predicted 0 of the 1 popes. Oh well. Ignoring the easy next premier question this is a total of 80/90. With or without the next premier point, were sitting on more or less 89% accuracy.

Then again, if it were possible to predict all of these votes with 100% accuracy, there would be no point in me running this blog in the first place. Don't get your hopes up - I'll be blogging away for a while yet.

Although on that note, I will be rather busy next week doing that thing again. You know, that thing that gives me money? Anyhow, I wouldn't dream of leaving you unblogged, so there is a post about Western Sydney automaticly scheduled for next Friday. It was written more than a week in advance (before this post, actually,) so it could be irrelevant, outdated and far from topical. Then again that's about par for the course with this blog.