Donkey Votes

Having argued my case against compulsory voting last week in the abstract, I figured I should try and back my statements up. They say their are lies, damn lies and statistics; I don't do things by thirds so I'm jumping straight into the stats.

There are several stats I could look at here: the AEC formally records the voter turnout and informal votes seat by seat each election. In the last federal election 955,202 registered voters did not vote in person or by other means, and 729,304 of those who did cast invalid votes. Some of these are undoubtedly accidental, but we could look at these stats over several elections and compare them against approval ratings or other figures that could indicate general voter engagement.

However, people failing to present at a voting booth or not casting a valid vote are not my real concern. I am more interested in people who don't really have a political opinion yet vote because they are dragged along to a polling station every few years, and end up distorting the results away from the intentions of those who actually have opinions on the subject.

The problem is isolating these valid, but convictionless votes from the bulk of valid votes backed up by conviction. Last week I briefly touched on Donkey votes as one specific instance of the many plagues ravaging the compulsory voting system.

A "Donkey Vote" is probably the most simple means of filling in your ballot, normally filling the boxes 1, 2, 3, 4... from top to bottom. Because this is a valid vote it is difficult to determine how prevalent this is...

Also, because of the redistribution system, a small change in a close run fourth-place contest could drastically affect the flow of preferences and determine the outcome.

- Infographinomicon Saturday 6th of April 2013

In some circles filling in a ballot from the bottom up, or even at random, is considered donkey voting, though we will restrict ourselves to the old 1, 2, 3, 4's.

As you will see, there will remain a significant level of ambiguity as to the level of donkey voting by the end of this post, but we will try to give a very rough indication of the prevalence of this practice. Researchers at ANU, with more time and resources than I, suggest as many as one vote in every seventy is a donkey vote. This research was published in 2006 and found no appreciable reduction in the practice since the lower house reached its current approximate size in 1984. It would seem naive to expect a rapid drop in donkey voters in the two federal elections that followed. That would mean somewhere in the order of 177,000 valid donkey votes were included in 2010. Interestingly, their research suggests voters are significantly less likely to donkey vote if this means giving a 1 to a female candidate - another argument, I feel, to do what can be done to reduce the influence of these ballots. I have not been able to determine how the ANU team reached these figures, but they will provide an intersting contrast to the figures I will get in this post.

Now, just to be clear, I am not advocating that we should "correct" the election results if we could determine the number of donkey votes statistically. This would be a dangerous step down a slippery slope. If we allow statistical calculations to adjust the results of elections, we could see a time where a small, representative sample of ballots are counted and the results extrapolated from there. I proposed my solution to the problem last week in the form of a check box that gives legitimacy to the idea of casting an invalid vote by choice. Apart from saving scrutineers considerable time in detecting at least some of the deliberately invalid votes, this will be an easier way to produce a recognised official (if invalid) vote even quicker than producing a donkey.

In addition to backing up my arguments against compulsory voting, an accurate count of donkey votes could in theory be a useful predictive tool in close-run seats.

Just to add a little more difficulty into the mathematics I, obviously, do not have access to the ballots themselves, only the AEC published summaries. This means I don't know how many ballots were marked 1, 2, 3, 4 in 2010, or any other state or federal election, let alone how many were intentional votes and how many were donkeys.

This wasn't going to be the normal, empirical method of determining which calculations would work best and implementing them; this was a search for an admittedly flawed but simple approximation that would give a rough means of calculating the influence of donkey votes. It was going to be ball-park at best, refined from less-than-ideal data through trial and error. I was looking for a reasonably consistent figure, apparently around the 1/70 mark (1.4%). [Editor: Yes, we have already decided what we want to find before we start looking. This is not scientific, just "fun" with statistics. We will do some post-discovery analysis after a phenomina is found to test if it does resemble a Donkey Vote.] The best way to find out the true extent of donkey voting would presumably be to conduct a survey, which would be well within the means of the AEC if it were so inclined.

Some of you may just enjoy this retelling of my mathematical Odyssey. For the rest of you, I apologise. You may tolerate this a little longer if you imagine we are actually trying to count the multiple, result-skewing ballots placed by Eeyore in a malicious attempt to rig the Australian elections.

Okay, that was a terrible donkey-voting pun, but I totally nailed it.

How Hard Can It Be?

So, obviously the first thing to try is to determine exactly how much of an advantage being first on the ballot is. Below, I have compared the support for the first party on each ballot to their nation-wide support.

       Please note the distinction between percentage and percentage points

For example, in the Seat of Canberra the Liberal party heads the ticket and received 41,732 primary votes. This is over 37% of Canberra's primary vote, while nationally the Liberal party received just over 30% of the primary vote. In other words the Liberal party preformed 6.75 percentage points better in Canberra than across the nation as a whole.

So we could say that the Liberal party gained a 6.75 percentage point advantage in Canberra (although this is probably not the result of being first on the ticket, as we shall see). More relevantly, it would seem that all first-place candidates gained an average 3.05 pp advantage, if we ignore the independents and non-affiliated candidates from Cook (NSW), Lyne (NSW), Robertson (NSW), Leichhardt (QLD), Denison (Tas), Indi (Vic) and Wannon (Vic).

The first thing to note, of course, is that this boost is very unreliable. More than a few candidates performed worse than the national average despite being first on the ticket - some significantly worse.

Further, if you care to look at the data dump post below this one, you will notice that the candidates who do not rank first on the list get advantages of a similar range. In fact, the average candidate performs 4.06 pp better than their party's primary vote, so by this measure the candidates leading the ballots are not advantaged at all. The 6.75 pp 'advantage' for the Liberal Party in Canberra is more-or-less matched by the 6.8 pp 'advantage' for the Greens and the 6.24 pp 'advantage' for the ALP.

There are several reasons for these results. Firstly, only the ALP and Greens contested every seat in 2010. This means every other party is faced with seats where 0% of the primary vote was received, which obviously undercuts the national primary vote. To return to the Canberra example, there are only three candidates:

1. Giulia JONES (Liberal)
2. Sue ELLERMAN (Greens)
3. Gai BRODTMANN (ALP)

With fewer candidates, more of the primary vote falls to each. In seats with up to 11 candidates, the primary vote is further diluted. Further, different parties contesting different seats vary the primary vote support. If there were a National candidate added to the Canberra list it would carve pretty heavily into the right-wing Liberal Party support base but have a smaller impact on the ALP and Greens. If the fourth candidate was more left-wing - for example someone from the Sex Party - then the Greens would lose out more than the Libs.

Basically, we need to compare apples with apples, even though we've been served a particularly well tossed fruit salad. The best bet seems to be the seats containing only three candidates, specifically the ALP and Greens (who contested all 150 seats) and the Liberal Party. There are six such seats: Canberra (ACT), Barton (NSW), Bradfield (NSW), Mackellar (NSW), Werriwa (NSW) and Braddon (Tas). This sample is not really large enough to provide reliable data, but it is the best available for our current methods.

The Barton ticket is headed by the ALP, the Liberal Party leads the Canberra and Braddon ballots and the rest are topped by the Greens candidate.

Looking at the columns that represent each party's primary vote as a percentage, thus eliminating the influence of district population size, we can compare the average primary vote for each party in these three-way contests with their 'lead average' - that is, their average primary vote from only the ballots they lead. The ALP appeared to have a 10 pp advantage when it lead the ballots, and the Greens are not far behind with 8.01 pp. The Liberal party, however, fell 8.81 percentage points. At best these results are inconclusive, which is hardly surprising considering the constrained sample size.

A Swing and A Prayer:

It is a long shot, but it might just pay off. That was my thinking as I started plugging in an entirely new set of raw numbers to see if a regular, reasonably consistent 'advantage' could be determined by looking at changes in the electoral pendulum instead of primary votes.

By looking purely at the swing within a seat I was hoping to eliminate many of the problems with the primary vote. Firstly, we would be comparing a seat's data against itself, not against national averages. This would eliminate problems of smaller parties standing in fewer seats getting a lower national primary vote purely as a result of limited reach. Secondly, with many parties from 2010 having stood the same candidates back in 2007, the influence of the parties on each other in a given seat should be consistent, and thus minimal in the results. Seats with large numbers of candidates in '07 were unlikely to drop to a small field in 2010 which meant the division of votes among parties should be reasonably constant.

At first glance this looks like a passable approximation of a donkey-vote. The average swing towards a party is increased (or the swing away is reduced) when that party leads a ballot. It makes sense for habitual donkey-voters to show up in the swing, since the leader of most ballots will normally change from election to election. The average improvement (= Average Swing - Average Swing (Lead)) in percentage points when leading the ballot is 2.34, which is significantly greater than the 1.4 proposed in the ANU paper. None of this confirms that the apparent trend favouring the ballot leaders is a result of donkey-voting, of course, but it is encouraging.

As we saw before, there are a lot of other factors that can give a candidate an apparent advantage. The real test is to see if this advantage is universal, or if it is only really present for the top name on the ballot. [Editor: Here is the post-discovery analysis as promised.] If this effect was unique to leaders of the ballots then there is an implied correlation between being placed randomly at the top of the list and receiving a larger swing. Now correlation does not mean causation but since there is a known mechanism (donkey-votes) that could plausibly explain the link, that would be evidence enough to me, and post hoc ergo propter hoc be darned.

I repeated the process, selecting the candidates that came last on each ballot instead and found that the average last-place swing (2.42) was quite close to the overall average swing (2.78). More experimentation is needed, but as shown above the yellow bars (indicating the average swing for each party when it leads the ballots) are regularly above the average of all ballots and the average of ballots where a party comes last - at some points excessively so.

EDIT: I have since calculated the average swing towards candidates second on the ballot at 1.59 pp (see data dump). This is below the overall average (2.78 pp) and last-place average (2.42), but not by much when compared with the advantage to first place swings averaging 5.11 pp.

It would be remarkable if this variation was solely the result of donkey voting, however at the moment it appears that there is a boost in the realm of 2.3 percentage points for parties that lead the ballot.

Semiconclusion:

This topic is far from exhausted, however the next model is a little more complicated and I will be away over the next week, so the second half of this article will be your automatic upload next Friday. In the mean time, I'd like to provide a quote from one of the researchers on the ANU paper, Ms. Amy King:

"On average, 15 of the 150 federal electorates are won by margin of less than 1.4 percent.

"In one out of ten seats ... it could have changed the result.”

If these numbers are accurate then under compulsory voting, I think it is a pretty safe bet that more than one seat has been won as a result of donkey voting. While the ANU's 1.4% donkey-vote rate is some way below of our 2.3, it is important to stress that even a minor change (in the order of fractions of a percent) can influence the order that candidates drop out and thus who makes the two-party preferred match-up.

Data Dump

This is a supplement to the post above. This does not count towards my limit of one post per week, and should be read in conjunction with the post to which it refers.

Raw Data for Table 1:

Comparison of each candidate's primary vote (as a percentage of all votes) within each electoral division to the national level. Candidates listed in ballot order. This blog does not support any larger version of this image. Click here, then click Options > Download to get the full-size.

While candidates leading the ballot perform better on average than the national primary vote, so does every other candidate. In fact, the average advantage (Advantage = District %Primary Vote - National % Primary Vote) is 3.05 percentage points, while for all candidates the average is 4.06. This general boost to all candidates is probably a result of various division-specific factors, including fewer opponents in some seats, fewer opponents with similar support base and uncontested divisions lowering the National P.V.

Independent and unaffiliated candidates are ignored as there is no meaningful primary vote nationally.

Parties with differing names recognised in the AEC data as the same party (e.g. ALP and Country Labor, The Greens and Australian Greens etc.) share their National Primary vote. Note that the AEC data treat the Liberal Party and Country Liberals as separate parties, and also that the LNQ data cannot be reliably conflated with either the Liberal or National Parties.

Raw Data for Table 3:

Swings to each party in each Electoral District.

Although the net swing in any election should be naught after adjustments for voter turnout (i.e. any lost voter for one party should be a gain for another) very few of the above seats sum to 0. In fact Balarrat (VIC) and Wills (VIC) are the only seats to do so. This is because all of the other seats have some party or independent from 2007 failing to run in 2010.

Swings to Independents are considered unreliable in this instance because new candidates get a swing from 0.00% of the vote, and represents their initial support, not a change in support from the previous elections. This problem is less common among established parties since a change of candidate still allows for swing compared the the previous candidate.

Supplement to Table 3:

 

Average of swing for parties depending on their position in the ballot's candidate order.
e.g. the ALP suffered an average of 5.07% swing against them in divisions where they placed last on the ballot.

Note that the Communists only ran a single House of Representatives candidate in 2010, and that this candidate was last on the ballot, meaning the All Ballots figure is identical to the Last Place figure.

Removing the Carer's Alliance and Country Liberal values from the All Ballots average (on the grounds that no comparisons can be made) reduced the All Ballots total average to 2.64.

All Ballots total average is 1.28 counting only the parties included in the Last Place count, 0.33 for counting only Second Place and -0.15 for First Place. On this basis, candidates in Last Place candidates received a 1.14 pp greater swing towards them than the average, Second place candidates 2.09 pp and First Place candidates 5.26 pp.

Australian Elections and Me - A Love-Hate Relationship

In the immortal words of Eddie Izzard "So... Yeah..."

There hasn't been much to fire up my imagination this week in the realm of electoral blogging. Everyone has been distracted by North Korea's latest Kim-Jong-Un-ism.

There are a couple of pet topics I've been saving up as fillers for just such an occasion. The first is economics and the second is the voting system. Both deserve a little more statistical analysis than I have been able to afford this week. So what you get is a disappointingly/mercifully short article on the latter that will be backed up by a glorious/tedious statistical supplement/page of indecipherable graphs.

How Voting Works - Lower House

For those who never bothered to learn how your vote is counted, this section is probably not of any interest to you. For everyone else this is old news rehashed as blog filler. But I'm writing this anyway because this is my blog and I call the shots around here.

When you go to your local voting booth you will receive a small green form and a big white form. The green form is the lower house form and is your opportunity to vote for the seat for your member. You fill in the boxes next to each candidates name with ascending numbers, where 1 is the person you dislike the least and the highest number is the one you dislike the most.

These votes get counted and assigned to the candidates ranked 1 on each ballot:

In the Australian electoral system, the winner is not simply decided based on who gets the most primary votes. Let us imagine this election is largely focused on the controversial new chicken wings policy. The first three parties above are anti-chicken wing, and the final party is pro-chicken wing. While the majority of voters (68%) voted anti-chicken wing, the lone pro-chicken wing party has come out on top because their opposition's vote is divided.

Instead the lowest ranking party has its votes redistributed according to their second preferences (i.e. go to the candidate with a 2 next to their name).

The process is repeated until only two candidates remain. This means all of the red votes are redistributed according to their second preference, and all the yellow votes that flowed on to the red stack go to their third preference.

The result is close, but the X-Wing Party comes out ahead and claims the seat.

Because certain parties have similar policies to other parties, you can often predict where the majority of votes are going to flow. This is increased by 'how to vote' cards that encourage voters to preference some parties over others. For example, the Liberal and National parties normally preference each other on 'how to vote' cards and their similar positions on many issues mean that the majority of redistributed Liberal votes go to the Nationals and vice versa.

This allows us to make more accurate predictions from polling data and ensures that every vote counts, so that the person who wins is not just the one with the most first-place votes - they also need relatively few last-place votes.

How Voting Works - Upper House

The white ballot elects senators for your state or territory. It is larger than the green ballot, but there are three ways to fill it out.

Firstly, you can fill in all the boxes below the line, which then works much the same way as the green ballot. Secondly, you can fill in one box above the line. This saves you considerable research time, because your second and later preferences follow a pre-determined path set by your first choice. Of course, it pays to know what this path is before voting, so that you can make an informed choice and not have your second preference going to your least favourite party.

The third option is to do both. It is only marginally longer than filling in every box below the line, but it means if you make a mistake below the line and your vote would otherwise become invalid, they revert to your above-the-line preference flow pathway.

The advantage of voting above the line is chiefly one of speed and simplicity. It does meant, however, that you vote for a party rather than for a particular candidate. Once the nominees are finalized in August this blog will provide links to your senate nominees preference flow paths, so you know exactly where your above the line vote will go.

The advantage of voting below the line is the control you have over your vote. This blog will also contain as many resources as I can muster in order to allow you to make an informed choice as to who you place 43rd and who you place 44th. Another advantage is that you can support your favourite party while snubbing that annoying, out-spoken senator and ranking her or him way down the list.

The advantage of voting above and below the line is obvious - it is just the same as voting below with a backup in case you mess the form up. Of course you can always just ask for another form if you spot the error yourself, or do what I do and take in an A4 copy of the draft white ballot already filled in and tripple checked. Draft white ballots will be available on this blog, or just on the other side of a link, later this year.

Compulsory Voting, O How I Loathe Thee.

Compulsory voting does several good things. It forces the AEC to make sure ballots are available to all Australians, even if they are outside of their seat, their state or even the country on polling day. In the U.S., by contrast, many people did not get the opportunity to vote in the 2012 Presidential election because they were outside their states helping to deal with the Hurricane that smashed much of the East Coast, and there was no real system to deal with people from some states being outside of that state.

Compulsory voting also ensures no one is prevented from voting by work commitments, pressure groups or the like since voting is required and secret. Our electoral commission does a fantastic job setting up booths, maintaining the checks and balances and giving us a level of secrecy almost unparalleled in elections anywhere else in the world. It also forces people like me to get out of the house one Saturday every few years. These are all positives, although the extent of Australians denied their vote while travelling, or the rate of election-day kidnappings without these measures might not be all that high in a voluntary voting system anyway.

The main gripe I have with compulsory voting is that it encourages the politically uninterested to sway the election results. In the U.K. the average voter turnout since World War Two is just under 74%. In Canada it is just over 65%. Voter turnout in the U.S. only exceeded 60% five times in the last century. Click here to check up on many other countries.

Even if we assume only a quarter of Australians don't care about voting, it is important to remember that in Australian psephology "very safe" refers to seats with a margin of 20% or more. Only a few seats are ever won by more than 25% of the voting public. In theory, the "I don't care" vote could make safe seats for one party become safe for another.

In reality the votes are more evenly divided, but not so evenly as to make no difference. A "Donkey Vote" is probably the most simple means of filling in your ballot, normally filling the boxes 1, 2, 3, 4... from top to bottom. Because this is a valid vote it is difficult to determine how prevalent this is (although I hope to try and get some estimates on this in a later post), but it does give the first name on the ballot a boost.

Also, because of the redistribution system, a small change in a close run fourth-place contest could drastically affect the flow of preferences and determine the outcome. A minor candidate might, for example, advise her or his supporters to preference the Nationals, then the Labor party, then the Liberals. In some cases this could be enough to overtake the Labor Party, result in a Lib vs Nat contest and give the seat to the Coalition. If the donkey voters and "I don't care" participants manage to nudge the minor candidate above the Nationals, the Nats will drop out and the majority of their votes would presumably flow to the Libs or (to a lesser extent) the ALP. The minor candidate would fall next, and the majority of those votes would go to the Labor party too, possibly taking the seat out of Coalition hands.

Of course many people forced to vote still exhibit some independent preference between parites which, because of the enduring Labor vs Liberal dichotomy, normally sees votes for the two major parties swell while minor parties and independents stay relatively unaided.

Now I am not suggesting there should be some kind of minimum standard of research imposed on voters; anyone who wants to vote should be allowed (excluding, of course, those too young to understand the issues). And I am not advocating that anyone submit an informal ballot, partly because this just clogs up the system and partly because I once read that it was illegal to advocate invalid voting though I cannot find anything to back that up now.

There is an argument that a government elected by everyone is somehow more democratic. Ignoring the fact that compulsory voting drowning out the votes of people who actually give an expletive arguably makes such a government less democratic, it also gives less credibility to any government's mandate to rule. In voluntary voting systems there is a simple rule of thumb - if you didn't vote then it is inconsistent to complain about the government. You had your chance to cast an opinion and didn't. In Australia it is easy to shrug off any responsibility for your vote since you had to vote for someone. Peter Singer, being the controversial thinker he is, argues that this rejection of responsibility for the government could lead to a rejection of the law altogether. I don't fully accept that myself, but I do think that forcing people to vote leads to many people feeling disconnected from the government. When people are forced to support some party or another there is no choice to actively participate in elections and less sense of getting behind a government.

There is another argument that compulsory voting leads governments to consider the entire voting public in their policies, since being too harsh on any one  sector will backfire when they inevitably vote. On the contrary, I would argue that voluntary voting will lead to wider consideration of the public, since any policy that negatively affects a group is liable to turn any non-voters in that group into voters for an opposing party - effectively recruiting for the opposition

It is probably true that less time and money will be spent by candidates, since they simply need to convert wavering voters to support them over any alternative, without enthusing them to actually turn up in the first place. Of course, if they had worthwhile policies the public would normally be enthused anyhow, except for people who just don't care. Trying to get these people to vote would probably be a waste of resources anyhow, and they would only skew the results away from the will of the people who actually care.

The AEC also suggests that "[v]oting is a civic duty comparable to other duties citizens perform e.g. taxation, compulsory education, jury duty".

I'm going to skip right on past the bit where things like education are listed as "duties", and focus on the core claim that we somehow owe our societies our vote. Beyond my legal obligations I don't consider my vote to be "required". If I genuinely did not care one way or the other (or the other (or the other)) this election, I wouldn't want my randomly allocated vote to skew the result. I don't see how that benefits my local or national community in the least. If anything, I'm doing a disservice.

Then, of course, there is that incredibly patronising line of argument that says that compulsory voting is educational and teaches voters about the political system. Its as though anyone who would opt not to vote must be as ill informed about our political system than a third-grade student. Don't forget to make sure your parent(s)/guardian(s) sign the consent form before you go on the field trip to the polling booth, children!

It is actually possible to be intelligent and politically aware and still not care to support a political party (or independent) in a given election. In fact some would probably say that those who follow politics the closest are the most likely to be fed up with the whole business.

All I am really advocating is a box on the ballot that says "none of the above", or "frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

In The Land of Danistan

I think we know that many things would be better if I ruled the world. Equal rights, free tertiary education and compulsory beards would be well established. And, of course, we wouldn't need elections, since I would be the obvious choice for supreme and glorious overlord. But if we were going to hold elections, just for the fun of it and to give me something to blog about, this would be my system:

Within the month between the issuing of the writs and the election anyone would be able to attend a post office or other registered place with valid photographic identification and either enter an early vote or announce their wish to not vote at all.

Anyone who has not announced their wish to not vote in advance will still be expected to turn up at a polling booth on election day. There is another little gripe I have with our system where you can dislike two parties equally, yet be forced to prefer one over the other. A 1,2 vote for the X-Wing and Chicken Wing parties respectively could indicate you like both parties a lot, or that you hate both but not as much as the others, or that the X-Wing party is your idea of perfect government while the Chicken Wing party lags well behind.

My ballots would look something like this:

The voter places a mark next to some or all of the candidates, in boxes marked from 3 (strongly approve) to -3 (strongly disapprove). The totals for each candidate are totalled and the highest-scoring candidate wins. There would also be an option for a little perforated circle in the corner. If you fail to punch it out the vote is invalid. This means it is possible to submit a ballot that you have marked but still choose not to vote. It also means that incorrectly filled out ballots can be returned and destroyed while still being able to prove they were never valid votes. Because the vote is validated by the removal of the circle, rather than invalidated, it is not possible to invalidate valid votes.

In this system there are, then, three ways to not vote: declare that you do not wish to vote, take a card and do not fill it in (or only mark the 0 circles for each candidate), or (optionally, if the system is deemed to require it,) do not punch out the validation circle.

But until the glorious revolution installs me as a benevolent yet totalitarian dictator, we have compulsory voting. So, I guess, enjoy your legally enforced right to choose.

Advance Notice

This weeks post may be a little late due to various personal commitments over the Easter weekend and throughout this week. While I will try to meet the traditional Friday-night deadline, expect an update sometime Saturday.

Unless something drastic happens politically, the topic will be the Australian electoral system - specifically how voting works for those who don't know, and why I want to punch compulsory voting in the face. Apart from allowing me to continue my rant about false dichotomies, this should be a suitably academic topic to allow me to use a few info-graphics (which have been a little sparse of late, especially considering the title of this blog) and I figure most people won't mind waiting a few more hours for that topic. It's not exactly edge-of-the-seat stuff (unless you are like me).

Enjoy!

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.