We’ve have the Kennett Factor, the GST Factor and the Tired Government Factor.
Let’s add another _ the 1990 Factor. The 1990 Factor says that, leaving aside policies and personalities, the vote and seat distribution this election makes life very difficult for Labor.
In the 1990 election came down to less than 5000 votes in a total of 9.9 million.
Taking away the unemployment figure, the GST, the unappealing leaders, Medicare and the other accoutrements of the campaign, the Government’s task to get re-elected is now the most difficult of any government in Australia’s history.
Even Menzies in 1963, though defending a smaller majority, was not up against having to defend such a high proportion of marginal seats as Labor is now. In 1990, Labor got 19,000 fewer voters than the Opposition, but still won government. Now there has been a redistribution. That alone will do half the Coalition’s task of winning five seats for it.
The marginal-seat strategy of past elections has caught up on Labor. By concentrating on marginals in the 1983, 1984, 1987 and 1990 campaigns it paid less attention to other seats and lost votes in them. The result is that Labor has a higher proportion of marginals this election than ever before. Forty per cent of its seats are marginal, that is held by 5 per cent or less. Going into the 1983 campaign just over 20 per cent of its seats were marginals.
In 1993 it is defending 31 marginal seats compared to 21 in 1984. Eleven are held by under 2 per cent and 17 under 3 per cent. The 31 is 33 if you count two in Western Australia that fall at 5.2 per cent.
It is certainly true that swings are never uniform. In some states there are large swings for or against a government, and in others it is small, and there are often fairly large differences in swings in individual seats. However, swings often balance out, so the overall swing usually results in the overall change in seats that that swing would have resulted in had it been a uniform swing.
A further difficulty for Labor is that its marginals are spread through four states, whereas the Coalition’s marginals are concentrated in two. There are no marginals in the Territories.
Taking 4.3 per cent as the cut-off point to define a marginal seat, the state-by-state break-up shows the difficulty for Labor. The table shows the under 4.3 marginals but includes two 5.2 per cent Western Australia Labor marginals because it is widely recognised that Labor is most vulnerable in the West because of an aberration in the 1990 vote under which it won 47 per cent of the vote but got 57 per cent of the seats.
The table shows that Labor has vulnerable seats in all mainland states, but can realistically only make up significant lost ground in Victoria. Labor is very likely to win Franklin in Tasmania, but unlikely to win the Coalition’s other marginal there. Two of the Coalition’s NSW marginals are outside the main cities and likely to stay with the Coalition. Labor might take the other.
The essential point is that Labor can only make up for any losses in Victoria. So Labor can take little joy from the uneven swing syndrome. It has to be a very special sort of uneven swing before Labor benefits.
The spread of marginals is very unfortunate for Labor. If there is an even 1 per cent swing (which is the lowest that any poll has put it since the campaign started), then Labor has had it. If the swing is uneven, then Labor is still in trouble in every scenario bar one: that is a swing towards Labor in Victoria to make up the lost ground. A swing to Labor in other states is virtually useless to it.
Bizarrely, Labor could get a swing towards it this election, yet still lose the election.
A Labor optimist would say: we are down in the polls, but even if there is a small swing against us it could be uneven and it could be in Opposition-held or safe Labor seats which don’t matter.
Both those possibilities are fanciful. Even if a swing is uneven, Labor’s marginals are so broadly spread it will lose seats, and if the swing is more than 1 per cent, it will be enough to lose government. And on the other count, there are too few safe Labor seats to absorb a buffer of the equivalent of a nationwide swing of 1 per cent.
Further, if there is a swing, even a small one, it will sound in a lot of seats changing hands.
The distribution has been especially cruel for Labor in the event of a 2.5 per cent to 3.5 per cent swing. The abolition of a Liberal seat in both NSW and South Australia has bizarrely caused a big problem for Labor. Those Liberal voters have been distributed into what would otherwise have been safe Labor seats, making them marginal.
With the swing back to Labor in the polls in the past week, it would be fair to say that Labor can hang on to its own in NSW and Victoria. But that swing back seems to be based on the GST and not industrial relations. If that is the case, Labor cannot expect to pick up the Kennett-factor seats it had hoped for in Victoria. It can hold its own, and perhaps pick up one. It can pick up one in Tasmania (Franklin) anyway because of a local-member factor.
However, as the polls are now, that would not be enough to off-set inevitable government-denying losses in South Australia and the West.
The simple point is that Labor has a substantial geographic and demographic handicap this election which has nothing to do with personalities or policies. The handicap will be enough to translate a small swing into a big Coalition victory and enough to deny Labor Government even if the nationwide polling shows that it has held its own.
Last time I made an electoral guestimate on this page, I was miles out. I guestimated the election would be on May 8. That guestimate was made on the basis that Government’s in trouble like holding on to office and hope that thinks will get better.
Let me now guestimate an overall swing to the Coalition of between 1.9 and 2.5 per cent resulting in a Coalition majority of 14 to 22 seats. And in the Senate the Coalition will fall short of a majority by two or three seats.