Greens commission polling comparing Nick McKim, Lisa Singh
The Greens have commissioned a poll comparing Senator Nick McKim and Labor Senator Lisa Singh, with a political analyst warning the minority party’s vote could slide further south in the upcoming federal election.
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THE Greens have commissioned a poll comparing Senator Nick McKim and Labor Senator Lisa Singh, with a political analyst warning the minority party’s vote could slide further south in the upcoming federal election.
The Greens surveyed 2000 Tasmanians late last year on issues including whether Senator Singh or Senator McKim had a stronger stance on closing offshore detention centres Nauru and Manus Island and who was better at holding Labor and the Liberals to account.
It also floated statements to test how they would impact Senator McKim’s vote, such as pointing out he came within 140 votes of losing his Senate seat to One Nation and comparing his voting record on Adani and mandatory offshore detention to Senator Singh’s stance.
Greens state convener Scott Jordan confirmed his party had commissioned an online poll, with Senator McKim this week acknowledging Senator Singh’s push to get Tasmanians to vote below the line in the 2016 federal election drew from his voter base.
“There is no doubt that Senator Singh impacted on the Greens’ vote at the last election, which is part of the reason we only held the seat by 141 votes from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation,” Senator McKim said.
“We simply can’t afford to take the risk this time that we lose a strong Green voice in the Senate to keep the major parties honest.”
Political analyst Kevin Bonham said booth-by-booth analysis showed Senator Singh attracted “inner-city, middle-income” Green votes that had her re-elected from the bottom of Labor’s Senate ticket in 2016.
The unaligned Senator Singh again fell prey to factional deals at last year’s Labor conference and was once again relegated to the bottom of the party’s Senate ticket.
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Dr Bonham said it was possible that Senator Singh could be re-elected if she attracted enough below-the-line votes to pull ahead of third-placed John Short and Labor attracted enough above-the-line votes to have her sworn in.
“She can’t survive if it’s a once-off thing and the novelty’s worn off,” Dr Bonham said.
“If she gets the same sort of below-the-line vote again, it’s possible for her to win.”
On the Greens, Dr Bonham said: “If Labor did really well and [Jacqui] Lambie did really well and the Greens suffered further losses compared to last time, it becomes possible then that the Greens could miss out.
“I think that the Greens vote just about bottomed out last time, but with the poor state election result you might wonder if it might go down a bit further — that would be the concern, the vote they got in 2016 wasn’t quite rock bottom.”
The federal election is expected to be held in May.
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