‘17 MPs on the crossbench’: shock prediction
Campaign Confidential: Pollsters usually play it pretty safe with their predictions, but this so-called ‘Election Whisperer’ has gone way out there with what she says will happen on Saturday.
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She’s apparently billed as the “Election Whisperer,” but on Friday morning data strategist Elisa Choy from Maven Data made the loudest, shoutiest predictions we’ve heard yet during the campaign. Among other shock projections, she said independents would pick up 13 new seats on Saturday, including the seat of Fowler in Western Sydney being contested by Labor’s star candidate Kristina Keneally, and the seat of Grey in South Australia, held by Rowan Ramsey for the Liberals on an extremely comfy 13 per cent margin. Ms Choy reportedly used “big data and artificial intelligence” for her projections, which followed “24 hours of intensive analysis of voter sentiments”. Ms Choy reckons eight Climate 200-backed independents will win their seats on Saturday, the Greens will pick up the seat of Brisbane, Labor will win 11 seats off the Coalition, and the LNP will in turn take three off Labor. All up, she projects 17 independents will sit on the crossbench after the election: an extraordinarily bold claim that runs counter to other polls. Unfortunately for Ms Choy, an update to her predictions had to be issued on Friday afternoon after recipients found not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR errors in her list, including getting the names of candidates wrong. It’s not a great look, but if Ms Choy ends up being right with her predictions … she’ll have the entire nation’s attention, guaranteed.
Watch for the sneaky poll
At the other end of the spectrum, Australia’s polling companies are sweating on the election outcome, knowing that after the 2019 debacle, they need to be seen to get it right this time. ANU Politics Professor John Wanna said one practice he had noticed in the past was the tradition of the sneaky election day poll, ready to be produced in the aftermath of the count to prove the firm had got it right all along. “They’ll do a poll that comes out on the Saturday lunchtime on the day we vote, and they’ll claim the one is the most accurate. Nobody reads it, but it’s in the system, it’s date-stamped on the website, and that’s the one they use to prove how accurate their polling is … and it tends to be a lot closer,” Prof Wanna said. Pollsters: consider yourself on notice.
Vote one, Budgie Smuggler
Voters and AEC staff at Darwin’s Eaton polling station copped an eyeful on Friday morning when a bloke wearing nothing but a pair of budgie smugglers turned up to exercise his democratic rights. The young bloke seemed pretty unperturbed about the amount of skin he was showing, but eyewitnesses told the NT News the man’s arrival was greeted with surprise and laughter. It’s unclear who he voted for, but it gave the paper a great headline: “Cracks in our voting system”. Was it a dare, a political statement, or just one of those “only in Darwin” things? Maybe all of the above?
Boxed in
The battle for Wentworth has been one of the hardest-fought of the campaign, and there’s not been a day when locals have not had political propaganda shoved in their letterboxes to remind them of it. Our favourite was the “Independents Bingo” maxi scratchy card put out by the Liberals, though it was disappointing there were no jackpot prizes on offer. It’s all a shocking waste of paper, of course. Still, what price democracy, eh?
Mixing business and leather
Always one for a well-timed arrival, Julia Gillard left her 2022 election debut to the last full day of the campaign, joining Anthony Albanese on the hustings in Adelaide in a conspicuously fabulous pair of leather pants. Campaign Confidential was reminded of the only other time we saw Gillard in leather, back in 1993, when she joined former Victorian premier Joan Kirner on the set of the The Late Show to belt out Joan Jett’s I Love Rock’N’Roll. One word, folks: iconic. Then and now.
Originally published as ‘17 MPs on the crossbench’: shock prediction
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