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<TITLE>Re: [csaa-forum] Re: wanting to be effluent</TITLE>
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Jon remember that PHON vote was largely made up of disaffected ALP / Lib voters looking for some form of third way, the concern for Labor is they did not return in their implosion. Working class conservative voters have imho gone looking for solidity, and as much as it hurts me to say this, the forests policy revelations of the last week of the campaign reveal the assumptions of the parties and the preeminent position John Howard has cultivated.<BR>
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Though I don’t want to overemphasise the role of forest policy, I think it highlights the difficulty Labor had in breaking through the torrent of cash being offered by two sides of politics. Labor chased a progressive mainland policy on forests that marginalised urban labor voters at the expense of threatened jobs in Tasmania, John Howard played the same game but by half, presented a smaller target and the offer of less disruption. The paradoxical nature of these policies coming so soon after discussion of the USFTA is astounding. Many industries will be going through major restructure over the next decade as a result of the captive Senate and the adoption of the fta.<BR>
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In WA the Libs copped a 9.52% swing in the Senate, Green 7.69% and Labor –1.1% <BR>
The Democrats vote collapsed everywhere according to the AEC website.<BR>
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Standing on a polling booth from 0700 to scrutineering until 2030 afterwards I was struck by how my preconceptions of the political process were upset and in some cases reaffirmed.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><OL><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Golf course estates in the northern suburb sprawl of Perth are remarkably treeless, and so are the number of Greens voters, not many votes in a forest package when your McMansion is sitting where tuart forest and banksia woodland once was.
</SPAN></FONT><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Those that did vote Green sent their preferences 50 / 50 ALP /Lib. No clear direction of preferences on their HTVs.
</SPAN></FONT><LI><FONT FACE="Verdana"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Only two political parties bothered to have the booth staffed (was a small booth of ~1700 expected electors), the Greens staffer showed up at 0830 dropped the HTV’s and left. One Nation set up a nice converted orange crate with streamers and left, which is a nice political analogy, as the crate was still there when I left the booth, obviously lost the keys/road map/impetus to retrieve said object, the piccie of Pauline did look perverse when photocopied onto yellow (peril) paper.<BR>
</SPAN></FONT></OL><FONT FACE="Verdana"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Steven McKiernan<BR>
PhD Candidate<BR>
ECU<BR>
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On 14/10/04 11:55 AM, "Jon Stratton" <J.Stratton@curtin.edu.au> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'><FONT FACE="Arial"> Hi Everybody,<BR>
While I am finding the general discussion of what happened in the election fascinating and I, too, feel pretty upset, many people are writing as if the Labor vote collapsed. It didn't. If you look at the ABC News website where they have the total polling figures what you will see is that the Labor vote actually increased by 0.3 per cent to 38.2 per cent of the total vote. What has happened is that One Nation's vote collapsed and so did the Democrats vote. One Nation's vote is down 3.2 per cent and the Democrats down 4.2 per cent. The Greens vote is up 2 per cent. The Liberal vote is up 3.4 per cent. Thus, imho, what seems to have happened is that the One Nation votes went to the Libs as did some of the Democrat vote, the Greens picked up some of the Dems vote as well. The remainder of the votes seem to have gone to 'Other Parties' which most probably means the Family First party mostly. Probably this is where those far right voters have gone after One Nation's implosion. Thus, what appears to have been most destructive for Labor in the election was the realighnment of the conservative vote, concentrating it in two major parties--the Nats vote was up .3 per cent. I also suspect that the Greens preferences didn't flow solidly towards Labor.<BR>
If the above analysis is correct the problem for Labor is not the collapse of its vote but Labor's inability to increase its vote. Now, what the above also suggests is that all those 'swinging voters' (how '70s) were actually One Nation and Dem voters looking for somewhere else to go. From this base point the question for Labor becomes how to attract more conservative voters--in a country that has a strong conservative history and where, up until Latham, Labor had been increasingly prepared to sell out its status as the major party of moral standing in order to compete pragmatically for the votes of an increasingly self-interested population, something that has been well-pointed out (though not this bluntly) by a number of postrings. <BR>
cheers,<BR>
Jon <BR>
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