Morrison, Shorten will pay heed to close-fought NSW election

We all knew Labor was going to win the Victorian election. We know it is going to win the federal election. But Saturday’s New South Wales election looks set to be the close one.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and NSW Opposition Leader Michael Daley.Credit: SMH

The final opinion polls were yet to be revealed at the time of writing, but the previous statewide polls were very tight. YouGov Galaxy and Newspoll in the past fortnight have told us that the vote after preferences is 50/50. The UComms/Reachtel poll in the Sydney Morning Herald two weeks ago found Labor ahead 51-49.

Saturday will show whether that has survived Labor leader Michael Daley’s nightmare final week. All political leaders quote the wrong number sometimes, and true, as Daley says, politics is not a memory contest. But as his verbal errors on costings piled up, and his clumsy comments on Asian migration reverberated, many undecided voters might well have concluded that he seems a good bloke but not up to the job.

The punters certainly think his stumbles have made a difference. A week ago, the bookies’ odds showed they were tipping a Coalition victory, but were more certain that, whoever won, NSW would end up with a minority government.

Now, the punters are confident that the Coalition will win, but are divided over whether it will have a majority government or govern as a minority, relying on independents and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party for support.

But in Victoria four months ago, the polls and punters got it badly wrong. They forecast a close Labor win, but it was a landslide. They had the direction right, but not the magnitude. Could they be making the same mistake in New South Wales?

In a sense, this election shouldn’t even be close. Eight years ago, the Liberals and Nationals swept into power with a crushing 16.5 per cent swing after 16 years of Labor government. The Coalition won 64.2 per cent of the two-party vote: the highest two-party vote ever recorded in any federal or state election for yonks.

Labor was reduced to just 20 seats in the 93-member Legislative Assembly, to the Coalition’s 69. A victory on that scale surely should have set them up for at least three terms in office.

Yet in 2015, most of that swing came back Labor’s way. The Coalition lost 15 seats – 14 to Labor, one to the Greens – and its two-party vote dropped to 54.3 per cent. It still had 54 seats to Labor’s 34. While this gave Labor a chance to win in 2019, no one believed it would.

But then the Coalition decided to ban greyhound racing and merge local councils. A run of by-elections saw it suffer humiliating losses in two safe seats, and narrow escapes in two others. Mike Baird resigned, and Gladys Berejiklian became the state’s second female premier. The government’s lead in the polls all but vanished.

Then Malcolm Turnbull was dumped as Prime Minister, and Michael Daley replaced Luke Foley as Labor leader. And the polls swung marginally Labor’s way.

Who will win? Will it be a hung Parliament? Let’s look at five clues.

1. The polls

The polls up to last weekend pointed to a very close contest. The statewide polls, averaged out, implied a 5 per cent swing to Labor. The seat-by-seat polls have averaged a 6 per cent swing.

But only six Coalition seats are within reach of a 5 per cent swing. Swings are never uniform, but if Labor wins six seats from the Coalition, that would give us 46 Coalition MPs, 40 Labor, three Greens, one Shooter and three independents. It’d be anyone’s guess who formed government.

Polling individual seats is unreliable, but for what it’s worth, the six seat polls published by You Gov in the Daily Telegraph on average show a 6 per cent swing to Labor. That matters, because the Coalition has 13 more seats within range of a 10 per cent swing – and who wins most of them will win government.

The message from the polls up to last weekend was: close result, probable hung Parliament, no clear winner. But remember: in Victoria in November the polls overstated the Coalition vote after preferences by a massive 4 per cent.

2. The punters

What about the punters? Surely some of them have inside knowledge of what’s happening on the ground, and can guide us on the outcome in specific seats?

Sadly, no. Australian punters are prone to backing sitting members, and Coalition candidates. In Victoria, three bookies I tracked in the final days had Labor at average odds of 4.25/1 to win Bayswater, 5.50 to win Mount Waverley, at 8/1 to win Box Hill and in Ringwood and at double figures in Hawthorn and Nepean. Yet Labor won all six seats.

Every betting website now has the Coalition odds-on to win. On average, they imply that Labor has only a one in three chance of forming government, and the Coalition two in three. They still expect a hung Parliament, but even that is sliding to a 50/50 chance.

Illustration: Jim PavlidisCredit:

It’s still close. In individual seat betting, Sportsbet’s odds early on Friday gave the Coalition just 47 of the 93 seats, to Labor’s 39. Labor would gain just five seats – Coogee (2.9 per cent swing needed), East Hills (0.4), Lismore (0.2, assuming Labor beats the Greens into third place), Tweed (3.2) and Upper Hunter (2.9). The Shooters would take Barwon from the Coalition, which would however reclaim Ballina (3.1) from the Greens.

That’s tight. One way or another, there will be some sorry punters on Saturday night.

3. The byelections

Byelections often go against governments – but not like they have under this government. Since 2016 the Coalition has faced six byelections in what had been very safe seats, mostly in the bush. It lost Orange to the Shooters and Wagga Wagga to an independent, a local doctor. It nearly lost Murray to the Shooters, and North Shore to an independent.

In all the byelections it contested, the average swing against it was 16.6 per cent. In contests with Labor alone, the swing was 12.6 per cent. These are not ordinary anti-government swings. They imply that a government is on the ropes. If it wins today, that would be some rebound.

4. The shadow of the Federal government

Victorian Liberals say the party’s support at state level dived 3 per cent when federal MPs dumped Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister, and never recovered. Quarterly data from Newspoll suggests federal coalition support has plummeted even more in NSW than in Victoria.

An unpopular federal government is lead in the saddlebags of state colleagues. As a young reporter I covered the 1975 South Australian election when the popular Don Dunstan was almost swept from office by voters busting to throw out the Whitlam government. Morrison is not as unpopular as Whitlam became, and in NSW both parties are targeting state issues, but this will have an impact.

5. History is against the Coalition

It is now almost 40 years since a Coalition state government has won a third term in office – in Western Australia in 1980. Since then, seven Coalition state government have sought a third term, but every one of them lost the election.

They were:

• Tasmania in 1989 (when Robin Gray lost to Michael Field)
• NSW in 1995 (when John Fahey lost to Bob Carr)
• Tasmania in 1998 (when Tony Rundle lost to Jim Bacon)
• Victoria in 1999 (when Jeff Kennett lost to Steve Bracks)
• WA in 2001 (when Richard Court lost to Geoff Gallop)
• South Australia in 2002 (when Rob Kerin lost to Mike Rann)
• WA in 2017 (when Colin Barnett lost to Mike McGowan).

That’s quite a record. One day a Coalition state government will win a third term again, but that history can’t inspire confidence when the contest looks so close.

Labor usually wins state elections. Since 1981 it has won 42 of them, the Coalition just 25. In the mainland states, Labor has won two out of every three elections: 37 wins to 19. Despite this week, could they be about to win another?

Tim Colebatch is a former economics editor of The Age.