Morrison’s great Wentworth hope: Greens’ anti-Phelps ticket

Scott Morrison’s majority in parliament will depend on Greens voters in Wentworth.

Scott Morrison’s majority in parliament will depend on Greens voters in Wentworth and their faithfulness to the party’s direction on how-to-vote cards to give their preferences to Labor.

If Green voters follow the party’s how-to-vote at the Wentworth by-election tomorrow, they will likely push Labor candidate Tim Murray ahead of independent Kerryn Phelps.

Yet election pundits say a large percentage of Greens voters do not follow the party’s how-to-vote guide, and if they ignore the direction to preference Labor and instead preference Dr Phelps, she will collect Mr Murray’s preferences and overtake the Liberals’ Dave Sharma in the final count to win the seat.

According to an independent ReachTel poll commissioned by Greenpeace this week, which surveyed only first-preference votes, Mr Sharma is tipped to get 32.7 per cent of the primary vote, with Dr Phelps behind at 25.8 per cent followed by Labor’s Mr Murray at 21.6 per cent and Greens candidate Dominic Wy Kanak at 9.1 per cent.

As the counting process eliminates candidates with the least support and distributes preferences, the top four are likely to remain in that order. At that point, preferences for Mr Wy Kanak will be redirected.

ABC election analyst Antony Green told The Australian that while 80 to 85 per cent of Greens preferences would ordinarily end up with Labor in Wentworth, this percentage was likely to diminish with Dr Phelps running.

“Greens voters might use (the party’s how-to-vote card) as a destination map to getting there, but they’ll use their own route on the way,” election analyst ABC Antony Green said.

“I expect a strong leakage from Greens vote to Phelps, ahead of Labor.”

If Labor is then eliminated, Dr Phelps would likely beat the Liberals on Mr Murray’s preferences.

However, if Greens voters’ preferences push Labor ahead of Dr Phelps, Mr Sharma could be in for a comfortable victory — ­because Dr Phelps is preferencing the Liberals ahead of Labor.

Mr Green estimated that according to the ReachTel poll, Labor would need about 75 per cent of preferences from the Greens to flow to their candidate to overtake Dr Phelps, which he believed unlikely.

Dr Phelps has campaigned on stronger climate change action and called for “an end to mandatory detention and the immediate removal of children and families off Nauru”, policies that would appeal to a Greens base.

However, the Greens decided to direct their preferences to Labor in retaliation for Dr Phelps’s decision to direct her preferences to the Liberals ahead of Labor.

With 16 candidates running in the by-election, the fact that the Greens are in second position on the ballot paper could increase their vote among disengaged electors.

Independent candidate Licia Heath, who was in fifth place with 5.6 per cent of the primary vote in the ReachTel poll, has chosen to not list preferences on her how-to-vote card. This move further clouds the predicted vote share in the lead-up to the Greens preferences being redirected.

Additional reporting by Sascha O’Sullivan