Eden-Monaro by-election: ALP simply doesn’t speak to enough Australians

Labor candidate Kristy McBain and Labor leader Anthony Albanese at the 2020 Eden-Monaro by-election voting day at Merimbula Public School. Picture: Sean Davey.

No matter what the result, or when it is known, for the Eden-Monaro by-election the vital message for Labor has not changed for the last six years — no matter what the circumstances the strength of the result of elections are decided by the primary vote.

At the last federal election Labor was misled by two-party preferred calculations which showed the ALP beating Scott Morrison and the Coalition despite having a primary vote in the polling that was too low.

Bill Shorten was deceived by two-party polling predictions, as were many pundits, who ignored the so far iron law that a party can’t win government in Australia in its own right without at least 40 per cent in the primary vote. Roughly 40 to 41 per cent for Labor and 42 to 43 per cent for the Coalition.

Anthony Albanese, for all his campaigning in the bushfire-grievance areas of the south coast, knew going into this by-election that the larger population areas, specially Queanbeyan would decide the result.

Labor’s primary vote on the count tonight has gone backwards and the ALP’s fate will be decided — as it was in 2019 — by preferences.

This means a close result and, even if Labor wins it will be a status quo result which means no gain for the ALP and the Opposition Leader.

Albanese can point to the public reaction to COVID-19, which is overwhelmingly positive towards the Prime Minister, as an excuse but it still doesn’t answer the question as to why Labor’s primary vote remains so low.

Whether it’s in Eden-Monaro or elsewhere the answer would seem to be that the ALP simply doesn’t speak to enough Australians and concentrates on grievances and retails stories which don’t sit with the lived experience of the majority of people.