The ALP is comfortably ahead in the Federal seat of Canberra which faces a by-election on March 25 to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Ros Kelly. However, there is still a large undecided vote and the poll indicates that Labor is slightly behind its vote at the 1993 election. Surprisingly, the Green vote is lower federally than it is locally. The poll had Labor on 38; Liberal 29 and undecided at 26. After splitting the undecided, Labor would have a result not dissimilar from 1993: a reasonably comfortable win after the distribution of preferences.
Political analyst Malcolm Mackerras has argued that a by-election caused in these circumstances would cause a large swing away from the sitting party. That does not appear to have happened, though there are too many undecided to draw a firm conclusion. The poll was taken before candidates have been formally pre-selected, though the Liberals’ John Haslem, who held the seat from 1975 to 1980 had declared his candidacy. The poll was taken at the same time and with the same respondents (where geographically appropriate) as the poll on the February 18 ACT election. The result showed Federal matters were much clearer for voters and voters were more polarised than in the local election. The undecided vote was 10 percentage points lower and the vote for minors and independents combined was seven percentage points lower. And the same respondents in the seat of Canberra were used for both polls.
The Green vote is interesting. Despite the Greens getting a lot of publicity over the Federal logging issue, they are polling more strongly in the ACT election than in the Federal by-election, where you would normally expect any protest vote to be registered. Federally the Greens are polling in the seat of Canberra at 3 per cent; in the ACT election (with the same poll respondents) they are polling between four and seven per cent (the seat of Canberra embraces all of Brindabella, where the Greens rate 4, and half of Molonglo, where they rate 7).
It indicates that the Greens locally are running high on more than a spin-off from the logging debate, though they are small percentages and must be treated with caution. But the ACT Liberal and Labor Parties get little joy. Federally, Labor is at 38 and locally between 26 and 29 and the Liberals are at 29 federally and between 19 and 25 locally.