Australian Elections 2013

[Australasia]

The myth you're peddling - that Abbott was naturally "entitled" to form government because of.....some reason I've never been able to figure out....is supported by neither the rules (which stipulate that the only majority that matters is on the floor of the House, or else Howard would have been a one-term PM) or the reality (in which the Coalition and Labor won equal numbers of seats, and none of the Independents who supported Gillard were in any way bound to support Abbott).

Not to mention the fact that the ALP received a majority of the nationwide two-party preferred vote (as calculated by the AEC) in Australia's last election.

[Australasia]

Polls, schmolls the ALP are still on track to win this election. Anyone who thinks they are out of the race even when Gillard was leader rely to much on the media.

The Republican Party thought that the polls didn't mean anything either, last year, and that, despite polls showing a bleak state-by-state picture for the GOP, they'd win on Election Night.

Remind me: how'd that work out for President Romney?

It's only Newspoll and Murdoch media affiliated polls which show the Coalition in the lead. Other pollsters (importantly ones which include cellphones and internet) show a slight Labor lead or neck-and-neck.

So the comparison is the other way around. Gallup (and even more notoriously Rasmussen) for example showed Romney winning, but pollsters with more up-to-date methods showed Obama winning. In the end the latter prevailed of course.

http://essentialvision.com.au/documents/essential_report_130819.pdf
http://www.amr-australia.com/asset/cms/AMR_Federal_Election_Poll_19.08.2013.pdf

Another important point is that Labor as party and Rudd as leader are favored above the Coalition and Abbott when it comes to the majority of individual issues (i.e. questions on who would handle a particular issue better). And even Newspoll continues to show Rudd as preferred Prime Minister.

[Chelta]

All things taken into consideration, the ALP is indeed on track to win the election, but it is on a knife edge. The Coalition is likely to lose so as long as mad Abbot stays as their leader.

Do you think so? It feels like the Rudd honeymoon is over, or will be over by the time election day comes round. I can't see Labor gaining seats at this election.

[Australasia]

All things taken into consideration, the ALP is indeed on track to win the election, but it is on a knife edge. The Coalition is likely to lose so as long as mad Abbot stays as their leader.

Do you think so? It feels like the Rudd honeymoon is over, or will be over by the time election day comes round. I can't see Labor gaining seats at this election.

Oh, no one's saying it's going to be easy going for Labor, but they truly have a great chance. As for seats, in a word: Queensland (which is of course Kevin's home state), and possibly a few in NSW and WA (it will be tough going though, no doubt).

[Vitaphone Racing]

Things were going okay for the ALP.

And then Rudd abused a makeup artists and ridiculed a trainee journalist in the space of two days, firmly stamping himself as the biggest cunt on the ballot. What an angry, arrogant and deluded little turd this jumped up shit is.

[Australasia]

Things were going okay for the ALP.

And then Rudd abused a makeup artists and ridiculed a trainee journalist in the space of two days, firmly stamping himself as the biggest cunt on the ballot. What an angry, arrogant and deluded little turd this jumped up shit is.

And when you compare him with Tony Abbot?

[Vitaphone Racing]

Things were going okay for the ALP.

And then Rudd abused a makeup artists and ridiculed a trainee journalist in the space of two days, firmly stamping himself as the biggest cunt on the ballot. What an angry, arrogant and deluded little turd this jumped up shit is.

And when you compare him with Tony Abbot?

He's really no better. I'd actually love to see someone try and argue that no matter what Rudd does, Abbott will always be worse, but this makes it three times Rudd has angrily confronted female staff and now he's moving onto trainee journalists as well (also female). Rudd's actions are just as misogynistic as Abbott's words three years ago, you'd have to be deluded or dishonest not to accept that.

[Australasia]

And when you compare him with Tony Abbot?

He's really no better. I'd actually love to see someone try and argue that no matter what Rudd does, Abbott will always be worse, but this makes it three times Rudd has angrily confronted female staff and now he's moving onto trainee journalists as well (also female). Rudd's actions are just as misogynistic as Abbott's words three years ago, you'd have to be deluded or dishonest not to accept that.

Don't be silly. Rudd's not as crazy as Abbot. Abbot has made explicit racist, sexism, and homophobic comments. Rudd has not.

Who would you prefer as Prime Minister of Australia?

[Vitaphone Racing]

He's really no better. I'd actually love to see someone try and argue that no matter what Rudd does, Abbott will always be worse, but this makes it three times Rudd has angrily confronted female staff and now he's moving onto trainee journalists as well (also female). Rudd's actions are just as misogynistic as Abbott's words three years ago, you'd have to be deluded or dishonest not to accept that.

Don't be silly. Rudd's not as crazy as Abbot. Abbot has made explicit racist, sexism, and homophobic comments. Rudd has not.

No, he's just abused three women in public situations... I totally see the difference... Rudd must be a great guy... and they probably asked for it anyway...

[New Chalcedon]

I would support greens, but they are still like early days labour, a minority party, though they can win a election for Labour

The wonderful thing about Australia's Single Transferable Vote is that you can, if you please, vote for a minor party without fearing that you've inadvertently given the major party you loathe most a victory.

Consider a parallel between the UK and Australia.

In the UK, there are three major parties - Tories, LibDems and Labour. LibDem voters tend, these days, to be disaffected ex-Labour voters who don't like the Labour Party's current policies and leadership, but loathe the Tories (incidentally making the LibDem-Tory coalition government all the more ironic). In the UK's first-past-the-post system, each and every such voter in a marginal seat is feeling two conflicting pressures: their disdain for the recent direction Labour's taken (which prompts them to vote LibDem) and fear of a Tory government (which prompts them to vote Labour).

In Australia, such a voter can fill in the boxes as follows in the booth: LibDem 1, Labour 2, Tories 3. That way, if their preferred candidate (LibDem) doesn't win, their votes will still get counted against the party that they really don't want to see in government.

The myth you're peddling - that Abbott was naturally "entitled" to form government because of.....some reason I've never been able to figure out....is supported by neither the rules (which stipulate that the only majority that matters is on the floor of the House, or else Howard would have been a one-term PM) or the reality (in which the Coalition and Labor won equal numbers of seats, and none of the Independents who supported Gillard were in any way bound to support Abbott).

Not to mention the fact that the ALP received a majority of the nationwide two-party preferred vote (as calculated by the AEC) in Australia's last election.

That's as irrelevant now as it was in 1998, when Howard won 80 seats out of 150, despite losing the TPP vote. It wasn't the result of gerrymandering (boundaries are drawn independently here); it was caused by Howard's strong marginal-seats campaign. His government was not by any means illegitimate thereby, even as far as Labor was concerned (although there was some bitching about winning the popular vote but still losing the election).

The only count that matters is the floor count on the floor of the House of Representatives.

It's only Newspoll and Murdoch media affiliated polls which show the Coalition in the lead. Other pollsters (importantly ones which include cellphones and internet) show a slight Labor lead or neck-and-neck.

So the comparison is the other way around. Gallup (and even more notoriously Rasmussen) for example showed Romney winning, but pollsters with more up-to-date methods showed Obama winning. In the end the latter prevailed of course.

Per The Poll Bludger, an independent (if anything, William Bowe leans slightly left of center) poll-aggregation blog - I'll remove the Newspoll/Murdoch polls altogether:

AC Nielsen (20/08-22/08): Coalition 53, ALP 47.

Galaxy (prior to 11/08): Coalition 52, ALP 48.

Essential Research (09/08-12/08): Coalition 51, ALP 49.

Besides the overall nationwide averages, polls in marginal seats consistently show large swings against Labor - far larger than the nationwide average, and (worse) particularly concentrated in NSW.

Basically, Labor looks like winning a few seats in Queensland, losing a few in Victoria and losing a whole raft of them (8-10 or so) in NSW.

Where will those seats be made up? Outside NSW/Qld/Vic, there's less than three dozen seats in the House left (15 in WA, 11 in SA, 5 in Tas and 2 each for ACT and NT). WA hates Labor with a passion - the polls are showing that the Coalition may well top 60% (!) of the two-party vote in my home State (thank you, mining tax), Labor's bleeding support (although less so) in SA and all the seats in Tasmania are already Labor or Independent - nothing to gain.

Basically, what's going to kill Labor is the fact that people in Sydney are waiting for the PM to drop by....with cricket bats in hand in case he does.

[Australasia]

Don't be silly. Rudd's not as crazy as Abbot. Abbot has made explicit racist, sexism, and homophobic comments. Rudd has not.

No, he's just abused three women in public situations... I totally see the difference... Rudd must be a great guy... and they probably asked for it anyway...

A tad bit of an exaggeration perhaps?

Besides, who would you prefer as Prime Minister having to choose between those two?

[Vitaphone Racing]

No, he's just abused three women in public situations... I totally see the difference... Rudd must be a great guy... and they probably asked for it anyway...

A tad bit of an exaggeration perhaps?

Not at all.

Besides, who would you prefer as Prime Minister having to choose between those two?

That's like asking if I'd rather be burned to death or drowned. I don't like either of them and I don't like the parties they represent.

[Australasia]

Besides, who would you prefer as Prime Minister having to choose between those two?

That's like asking if I'd rather be burned to death or drowned. I don't like either of them and I don't like the parties they represent.

Assuming you're Australian, and are voting in this election, which major party are you going to preference?

[Vitaphone Racing]

That's like asking if I'd rather be burned to death or drowned. I don't like either of them and I don't like the parties they represent.

Assuming you're Australian, and are voting in this election, which major party are you going to preference?

Who knows. Probably whoever is closest to the top of the ballot and work my way down in that order.

[Blouman Empire]

Um, what?

Keating actually did the impossible in 1993: people didn't vote for Labor (the government), they voted against the Liberals (the challengers). This was largely due to the shambolic campaign run by Hewson, and his utter inability to give simple answers to (at least superficially) simple questions, such as "how will your proposed GST affect the cost of a birthday cake?" Basically, Keating maneuvered Hewson into losing his credibility as an alternative PM.

As for 2007, I may remind you that that Howard was angling for a fifth term, despite the monumental unpopularity of WorkChoices and constant leadership dissension within his own ranks, not a second.

There was still a large swing of Howard's battlers against the ALP in 1993 but still preferred the ALP despite knowing that they won't the best and fear of the unknown. I am well aware of the Birthday cake interview, however, talking to a couple of political scientists including Dr Haydon Manning and Dr Andrew Parkin it really wasn't as big of an influence as the media like to think it was.

As for 2007, that is my point, the Hoawrd government wasn't given one more chance after doing a number of things that were unpopular with the electorate.

Frankly, Howard is lucky that 9/11 and the Tampa Incident happened just weeks before the 2001 election - his second as Prime Minister. Kim Beazley, who'd plan to run Labor as the humanitarian alternative to the Liberal incumbents, was forced to backtrack and instead try to out-compete the Liberals on "tougher than thou" policies regarding border control and the like. Beazley being who he is (a basically decent guy more interested in "what works", rather than ideology), that didn't work out all that well.

Ah, Beazley the best PM Australia never had, met him once good bloke to talk to and I know someone who works for him and she reports that he is a good person to work under.

I honestly don't believe they'll win this election. KRudd as leader will "save the furniture" (read: he'll bleed 5-10 seats to the Liberals, giving Abbott between 80 and 85 seats, rather than going down in flames a la Keating 1996), but nothing in the polling I've seen indicates a Labor win.

Perhaps you're privy to some info I'm not?

Gut feeling and based on what happened during the last SA state election, a number of people will swing back to the ALP because they lean to that side and they might as well vote for the underdog, the incumbency factor and with two weeks to go the ALP's scare campaign starts to mount up over time.

Also remember the Coalition won more seats then Labor did

Incorrect. After the 2010 election, the House of Representatives looked like this:

ALP-72
Coalition-72

Out of the remaining six seats, here's how they broke down (blue indicates an independent who supported Abbott, red one who supported Gillard):

Bob Katter (IND-Kennedy), Tony Crook (IND/NAT-O'Connor), Tony Windsor (IND-New England), Rob Oakeshott (IND-Lyne), Andrew Wilkie (IND-Denison) and Adam Bandt (GRN-Melbourne).[/QUOTE]

Oops I misremembered, I though Coalition had 73 for some reason, maybe it was the Crook thing or maybe it was that I recently read an article that misinformed me.

As to why Crook isn't correctly counted as part of the Coalition, that's because the WA Nationals and Liberals aren't in coalition. The Nationals being a federated party, WA National MPs aren't automatically coalition members - indeed, the WA Nationals campaigned on the idea that WA Nationals wouldn't take their marching orders from (Australian Nationals leader) Warren Truss. Hence Crook's designation of "Independent National".

Adam Bandt is, of course, a member of the Green Party, and hence entirely unlikely to support any Coalition government.

Indeed, I remember there being quite a bit of discussion about Crook three years ago. As for Brandt well of course anyone who thought he might vote for a liberal leader three years ago were delusional

Neither Tony Windsor nor Rob Oakeshott won election to their seats (New England and Lyne, respectively) as Nationals - ever. They won election and re-election as Independent MPs, and as such were not, and are not, morally or ethically bound to support a given party's leader as PM. In fact, Windsor won the seat of New England by running against and defeating a sitting Coalition MP, back in 2001!

Did I say they had to back them up? And were both not at one point members of the National Party? I know Oakeshott was a member of the National Party when he was in the NSW Parliament.

What's more, neither of them are what I'd call "left-leaning" - Tony Windsor's a conservative who left the Nationals in 1991, supported the Greiner minority government in the wake of the 1991 election which saw a hung Parliament and only withdrew his support for Greiner after he was found to have engaged in corrupt behaviour. He supports relaxation of gun control, reintroduction of the death penalty (subject to referendum) and is generally moderately conservative.

Never said they were left leaning that was directed at Brandt, now surely you won't argue that.

Rob Oakeshott was a National - until 2002 - but left the party because he was in fundamental disagreement with the NSW Nationals (who've drifted further to the Right every election, win or lose), won re-election as an Independent in 2003 and 2007, then won election as an Independent to the Federal Parliament in 2008 after Mark Vaile (NAT-Lyne) resigned his seat. He, much like Windsor, is generally moderately conservative, being much more like the old-fashioned Nationals of a generation ago (live-and-let-live social policies, combined with a healthy dose of government spending in rural Australia) than today's Nationals are.

So I was half right out of the two one was an Ex-national.

The myth you're peddling - that Abbott was naturally "entitled" to form government because of.....some reason I've never been able to figure out....is supported by neither the rules (which stipulate that the only majority that matters is on the floor of the House, or else Howard would have been a one-term PM) or the reality (in which the Coalition and Labor won equal numbers of seats, and none of the Independents who supported Gillard were in any way bound to support Abbott).

Don't make shit up, I never said that he was entitled to win nor did I imply it. The only myth here is that I think Abbott should've been PM. I am well aware on how it works and I take offense sir and am indignant that you think that I don't and then dare to say that I am now saying that Abbott should've been PM.

[Blouman Empire]

Polls, schmolls the ALP are still on track to win this election. Anyone who thinks they are out of the race even when Gillard was leader rely to much on the media.

The Republican Party thought that the polls didn't mean anything either, last year, and that, despite polls showing a bleak state-by-state picture for the GOP, they'd win on Election Night.

Remind me: how'd that work out for President Romney?

I don't really know why they thought they would win it was always going to be Obama's.

[Blouman Empire]

It's only Newspoll and Murdoch media affiliated polls which show the Coalition in the lead. Other pollsters (importantly ones which include cellphones and internet) show a slight Labor lead or neck-and-neck.

So the comparison is the other way around. Gallup (and even more notoriously Rasmussen) for example showed Romney winning, but pollsters with more up-to-date methods showed Obama winning. In the end the latter prevailed of course.

http://essentialvision.com.au/documents/essential_report_130819.pdf
http://www.amr-australia.com/asset/cms/AMR_Federal_Election_Poll_19.08.2013.pdf

Another important point is that Labor as party and Rudd as leader are favored above the Coalition and Abbott when it comes to the majority of individual issues (i.e. questions on who would handle a particular issue better). And even Newspoll continues to show Rudd as preferred Prime Minister

Well the Guardian did their own polling the other day and reported bigger swings then Newspoll including a big swing in the seat of Griffith against the ALP leader. I don't think Murdoch had a hand in The Guardian.

[Blouman Empire]

Things were going okay for the ALP.

And then Rudd abused a makeup artists and ridiculed a trainee journalist in the space of two days, firmly stamping himself as the biggest cunt on the ballot. What an angry, arrogant and deluded little turd this jumped up shit is.

I don't think that is going to change much people already know he is a rude cunt and treat's his 'inferiors' in contempt.

As for the make up artist incident, how arrogant of him to say that he doesn't take offense to her comments. He was rude to her and then he has the audacity to say that he holds nothing against her. Get over yourself you pompous twat.

[Blouman Empire]

He's really no better. I'd actually love to see someone try and argue that no matter what Rudd does, Abbott will always be worse, but this makes it three times Rudd has angrily confronted female staff and now he's moving onto trainee journalists as well (also female). Rudd's actions are just as misogynistic as Abbott's words three years ago, you'd have to be deluded or dishonest not to accept that.

Don't be silly. Rudd's not as crazy as Abbot. Abbot has made explicit racist, sexism, and homophobic comments. Rudd has not.

Who would you prefer as Prime Minister of Australia?

Quite true, the leader of the ALP just treats those 'beneath' him like shit.

What is the old saying about how you can tell what someone is like by observing how they treat a waiter?

[New Chalcedon]

Um, what?

Keating actually did the impossible in 1993: people didn't vote for Labor (the government), they voted against the Liberals (the challengers). This was largely due to the shambolic campaign run by Hewson, and his utter inability to give simple answers to (at least superficially) simple questions, such as "how will your proposed GST affect the cost of a birthday cake?" Basically, Keating maneuvered Hewson into losing his credibility as an alternative PM.

As for 2007, I may remind you that that Howard was angling for a fifth term, despite the monumental unpopularity of WorkChoices and constant leadership dissension within his own ranks, not a second.

There was still a large swing of Howard's battlers against the ALP in 1993 but still preferred the ALP despite knowing that they won't the best and fear of the unknown. I am well aware of the Birthday cake interview, however, talking to a couple of political scientists including Dr Haydon Manning and Dr Andrew Parkin it really wasn't as big of an influence as the media like to think it was.

As for 2007, that is my point, the Howard government wasn't given one more chance after doing a number of things that were unpopular with the electorate.

Mostly, I suspect, because of just how unpopular WorkChoices was. A whole bunch of people who'd more or less considered Howard the "safe" choice for PM (a major theme of the Liberal Party's advertising in the 2004 election, in which they successfully painted Mark Latham as erratic and incompetent) suddenly realised that Howard wasn't a technocrat, he was an ideologue.

Basically, the Coalition majority in the Senate let Howard do what he wanted, rather than what he felt he had to do to keep the Democrats sweet.

Frankly, Howard is lucky that 9/11 and the Tampa Incident happened just weeks before the 2001 election - his second as Prime Minister. Kim Beazley, who'd plan to run Labor as the humanitarian alternative to the Liberal incumbents, was forced to backtrack and instead try to out-compete the Liberals on "tougher than thou" policies regarding border control and the like. Beazley being who he is (a basically decent guy more interested in "what works", rather than ideology), that didn't work out all that well.

Ah, Beazley the best PM Australia never had, met him once good bloke to talk to and I know someone who works for him and she reports that he is a good person to work under.

I've heard much the same about Hewson - the roads not taken, eh?

I honestly don't believe they'll win this election. KRudd as leader will "save the furniture" (read: he'll bleed 5-10 seats to the Liberals, giving Abbott between 80 and 85 seats, rather than going down in flames a la Keating 1996), but nothing in the polling I've seen indicates a Labor win.

Perhaps you're privy to some info I'm not?

Gut feeling and based on what happened during the last SA state election, a number of people will swing back to the ALP because they lean to that side and they might as well vote for the underdog, the incumbency factor and with two weeks to go the ALP's scare campaign starts to mount up over time.

Noted.

Incorrect. After the 2010 election, the House of Representatives looked like this:

ALP-72
Coalition-72

Out of the remaining six seats, here's how they broke down (blue indicates an independent who supported Abbott, red one who supported Gillard):

Bob Katter (IND-Kennedy), Tony Crook (IND/NAT-O'Connor), Tony Windsor (IND-New England), Rob Oakeshott (IND-Lyne), Andrew Wilkie (IND-Denison) and Adam Bandt (GRN-Melbourne).

Oops I misremembered, I though Coalition had 73 for some reason, maybe it was the Crook thing or maybe it was that I recently read an article that misinformed me.

Probably because most of the media insisted on counting Crook as part of the Coalition in the days immediately after the election, despite his repeated protests on the point. It's the kind of impression - Coalition 73, ALP 72 - that sticks in the mind and forms the basis for future analysis on a subconscious level.

As to why Crook isn't correctly counted as part of the Coalition, that's because the WA Nationals and Liberals aren't in coalition. The Nationals being a federated party, WA National MPs aren't automatically coalition members - indeed, the WA Nationals campaigned on the idea that WA Nationals wouldn't take their marching orders from (Australian Nationals leader) Warren Truss. Hence Crook's designation of "Independent National".

Adam Bandt is, of course, a member of the Green Party, and hence entirely unlikely to support any Coalition government.

Indeed, I remember there being quite a bit of discussion about Crook three years ago. As for Brandt well of course anyone who thought he might vote for a liberal leader three years ago were delusional

Or now, for that matter.

Neither Tony Windsor nor Rob Oakeshott won election to their seats (New England and Lyne, respectively) as Nationals - ever. They won election and re-election as Independent MPs, and as such were not, and are not, morally or ethically bound to support a given party's leader as PM. In fact, Windsor won the seat of New England by running against and defeating a sitting Coalition MP, back in 2001!

Did I say they had to back them up? And were both not at one point members of the National Party?

Don't play cute, please. The phrasing of your post indicated a belief that they should have backed up Tony Abbott.

Rob Oakeshott was a National - until 2002 - but left the party because he was in fundamental disagreement with the NSW Nationals (who've drifted further to the Right every election, win or lose), won re-election as an Independent in 2003 and 2007, then won election as an Independent to the Federal Parliament in 2008 after Mark Vaile (NAT-Lyne) resigned his seat. He, much like Windsor, is generally moderately conservative, being much more like the old-fashioned Nationals of a generation ago (live-and-let-live social policies, combined with a healthy dose of government spending in rural Australia) than today's Nationals are.

So I was half right out of the two one was an Ex-national.

Very ex - as in, nearly a decade ex.

The myth you're peddling - that Abbott was naturally "entitled" to form government because of.....some reason I've never been able to figure out....is supported by neither the rules (which stipulate that the only majority that matters is on the floor of the House, or else Howard would have been a one-term PM) or the reality (in which the Coalition and Labor won equal numbers of seats, and none of the Independents who supported Gillard were in any way bound to support Abbott).

Don't make shit up, I never said that he was entitled to win nor did I imply it. The only myth here is that I think Abbott should've been PM. I am well aware on how it works and I take offense that you think that I don't and then dare to say that I am now saying that Abbott should've been PM.

When you state that the Coalition "won more seats than Labor" but Labor were still able to form government because of a "bunch of disgruntled ex-Nationals and lefties", it leaves the impression that you think Abbott should have been the PM.

The Republican Party thought that the polls didn't mean anything either, last year, and that, despite polls showing a bleak state-by-state picture for the GOP, they'd win on Election Night.

Remind me: how'd that work out for President Romney?

I don't really know why they thought they would win it was always going to be Obama's.

Because they looked at the nationwide polls (which were generally way off the mark, showing a neck-and-neck race or a Romney win), and didn't look where it mattered - in the individual States (where the pollsters were generally more accurate, leading Nate Silver to correctly predict a 332-206 Electoral College victory to Obama using his algorithms, even as GOP prognosticators were predicting 300 EVs to Romney).

Much like this election, for that matter. As I noted in my previous post, Labor's biggest problem isn't the overall TPP nationwide (WA in particular is a coalition vote-sink, with the Liberals being almost certain to make no further gains here even with the absurd level of votes they'll probably get - Labor's just coming off too low a base here to lose much more), it's the fact that the voters in Sydney are waiting, with cricket bats in hand, for Election Day to roll 'round.

I'll be astonished if the ALP can keep its NSW losses to less than ten seats.

[Blouman Empire]

Mostly, I suspect, because of just how unpopular WorkChoices was. A whole bunch of people who'd more or less considered Howard the "safe" choice for PM (a major theme of the Liberal Party's advertising in the 2004 election, in which they successfully painted Mark Latham as erratic and incompetent) suddenly realised that Howard wasn't a technocrat, he was an ideologue.

Basically, the Coalition majority in the Senate let Howard do what he wanted, rather than what he felt he had to do to keep the Democrats sweet.

It probably was the undoing though some positives came out of it. I'm sure you will disagree with them.

I've heard much the same about Hewson - the roads not taken, eh?

I guess so, though I was very young way back in 1993 so I never got to see him, during the Beazley years I saw more of him and thought he wouldn't have been all that bad.

Probably because most of the media insisted on counting Crook as part of the Coalition in the days immediately after the election, despite his repeated protests on the point. It's the kind of impression - Coalition 73, ALP 72 - that sticks in the mind and forms the basis for future analysis on a subconscious level.

Possibly I knew neither had won a majority of seats but it was only recently I read this article and it mentioned they had more seats saying that the ALP had more ground to cover. It isn't important my understanding has been corrected.

Or now, for that matter.

Well certainly not now, but I hope that should the Liberal Party form government and the Senate hold the balance of power that both parties can get through some policy. The PPL would probably go through even if it is watered down and closer to the Greens similar policy. Surely Milne can compromise, I know people say she is stubborn and won't but if she wants some of her policies to go through it would help

Don't play cute, please. The phrasing of your post indicated a belief that they should have backed up Tony Abbott.

It certainly was not, it's why I labeled them as disgruntled ex-nationals (though only the one was), just because it was expected at the time doesn't mean I thought then or now that they should be backing him up. I won't deny that I would've liked them to but I did not think that they were obligated to.

Very ex - as in, nearly a decade ex.

Still ex

When you state that the Coalition "won more seats than Labor" but Labor were still able to form government because of a "bunch of disgruntled ex-Nationals and lefties", it leaves the impression that you think Abbott should have been the PM.

It is not, Vita said that they were able to win despite not doing much, I was pointing out that due to more reps supporting Gillard then Abbott even if Abbott had more of his own team on his side the ALP were able to form government (now know they were equal). So don't even try, if I had thought that I would've said it directly and a lot sooner in this thread.

Because they looked at the nationwide polls (which were generally way off the mark, showing a neck-and-neck race or a Romney win), and didn't look where it mattered - in the individual States (where the pollsters were generally more accurate, leading Nate Silver to correctly predict a 332-206 Electoral College victory to Obama using his algorithms, even as GOP prognosticators were predicting 300 EVs to Romney).

Much like this election, for that matter. As I noted in my previous post, Labor's biggest problem isn't the overall TPP nationwide (WA in particular is a coalition vote-sink, with the Liberals being almost certain to make no further gains here even with the absurd level of votes they'll probably get - Labor's just coming off too low a base here to lose much more), it's the fact that the voters in Sydney are waiting, with cricket bats in hand, for Election Day to roll 'round.

I'll be astonished if the ALP can keep its NSW losses to less than ten seats.

Well maybe, I'll be interested to see what happens. As for WA isn't Hasluck likely to swing back to the ALP?

[God Emperor Alex Salmond]

Why is there no option for Salmond?

You bloody colonists, I swear to god.

[Forster Keys]

Typical Labor.

Yes, yes doesn't mean the current crop are anything like him. Fuck we saw the current PM raise the price of bourbon and cokes as soon as he win the 2007 election.

That's my staple, just behind noodles and kebabs.

[Australasia]

Why is there no option for Salmond?

You bloody colonists, I swear to god.

The closest you'll get to a Salmond character in Australia is Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett. This, however, only goes as far as whimsical musings from time to time about how Western Australia could possibly-but-not-really-saying-it-will secede from the Commonwealth of Australia.

[Beta Test]

My prediction is that the Australian Labor Party will lose seats in Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria but could pick up some in Queensland. This would mean Labor has a net loss of seats but not enough to give the Coalition a majority, as they would also lose seats in Queensland to KAP.