A psephologist studies elections. The word comes from the Greek psephos (pronounced sea-foss) meaning stone. The ancient Greeks cast their votes by putting a stone in a container bearing the name of their preferred candidate.
A couple of millennia on, Malcolm Mackerras is, in my view Australia’s foremost psephologist.
Incidentally, Mackerras insists the word should be pronounced as “sea-follogist” because the Greek e is an eta not an epsilon. For the best part of three decades he has crunched the numbers. He has explained the swing necessary to change government in every state, territory and federal election and invented the Mackerras pendulum which shows the point at which governments change.
Over that time he has worked out the effect of every boundary change, diligently poring through the voting results at every polling booth and extrapolating the consequences if that booth is moved to another electorate. He has an amazing knowledge of electorates and voting patterns.
All of this can be utterly relied upon as being fair and untainted with any political bias. A fine example of Australian academia at its best.
But.
Mackerras cannot help himself from moving from that sound base into the world of conjecture. He likes to make predictions. That’s fair enough. The point for having enormous knowledge of the past is to pontificate upon the future.
The trouble is, when it comes to predictions, over the years, Mackerras has made a few howlers. He has probably made no more or fewer than any other political commentator, but he has made his predictions with such certainty that when they do not come to pass many people remember them and are quick to remember them.
In short, if you want to know what IS with respect to any Australian electoral matter, go to Malcolm Mackerras. He is the best. But if you want to know what WILL BE the average tarot card reader has a better record.
And so it was a fortnight or so ago that Mackerras wrote a piece in The Canberra Times saying Kevin Rudd will be in the Lodge by Christmas.
My Labor mates were aghast. The kiss of death, they thought. Oh god, not another three years of John Howard.,
They turned to me. Incidentally, most of my Labor mates think I am a small f fascist, Coalition-supporting tory just because I suggest that Peter Costello has done a sound job managing the economy and that John Howard has done some sensible things on industrial relations.
Surely, this cannot be, they said. If Mackerras says Rudd will win the election, the game is up. Howard will win this year’s election, they bemoaned.
Steady on, I consoled.
Mackerras made a very solid point in the article that predicted that Rudd would be in the Lodge by Christmas. He rightly chided various commentators who said that it would take a 5 per cent swing to unseat Howard. More like three, he wrote.
The guts of it was that Labor’s task to win government is easier than most think. Most people think the Coalition will win. But Mackerras’s analysis is spot on. It will not take very much to unseat Howard. But to jump to a prediction that Rudd will definitely beyond any doubt be in the Lodge by Christmas is another matter.
As it happens, I think a Labor win is more likely than a Coalition win, but that Mackerras’s prediction must be very heartening for the Coalition.
What is to happen? How are we to reconcile these seemingly contradictory great likelihoods: that Mackerras is wrong and Labor will win?
The answer lies in the Billy McMahon factor.
In 1972, staring down the barrel of defeat, Billy McMahon postponed the election for as long as possible. The 1972 election was held three years and five weeks after the 1969 election.
Howard (even though I hesitate to make any comparison with Billy McMahon) could go longer.
The Constitution provides: “Every House of Representatives shall continue for three years from the first meeting of the House, and no longer, but may be sooner dissolved . . . “.
After the 9 October 2004 election, the House of Representatives did not meet until 16 November.
This means that the House of Representatives is not to meet after 16 November 2007 without an election. The Constitution provides that writs for that election must issue within 10 days of three years from the last sitting, making the writ issuance on 26 November, 2007, at the latest.
Under the Commonwealth Electoral Act, nominations must be called not less than 11 nor greater than 28 days after the writs (December 23 at the latest) and the election itself must be not less than 22 and not greater than 30 days after the nominations. This comes to January 22, but it has to be a Saturday so the latest possible election date is January 20.
So the election could be on 20 January, 2008, at the latest. Labor could win and Rudd be in the Lodge by Australia Day, but not Christmas.
But this late election date not likely, because Governments do not like elections in school holidays.
More likely is that the McMahon factor will still apply and the election will be held beyond three years after the 9 October 2004 election, probably in December, but not as late as January 20.
And yes, Labor has a good chance of winning because there is a limit to the number of rabbits Howard can pull out of the hat before elections.
But Malcolm Mackerras the great psephologist and benighted predictor of electoral matters will still be wrong because Parliament does not have to sit for 130 days after the issue of the writs – sometime in the first week of April.
Even with extremities aside, if the election is in December. Parliament will not meet till February. If that is the case, the Rudd family might not move into the Lodge till late January.
So there you have it. All you Labor groupies who thought that the Mackerras prediction of Rudd being in the Lodge by Christmas was the death knell, think again.
Mackerras can be right and wrong at the same time.