James Campbell: Voters being asked to choose lesser of two evils
Less than two weeks until we go to the polls and there’s no clear frontrunner, writes James Campbell, with both sides simply pushing the view the other bloke is worse than theirs.
So here we are. Slightly less than two weeks to go until polling day and experts agree it’s looking increasingly obvious the winner will be … ummm … nobody really wants to say for certain.
Why? Well the obvious starting point for the mass informed-pundit reluctance to commit is that so many of us got it so very, very wrong last time.
So even though published polls suggest Anthony Albanese is going to get there, few who follow this stuff for a living are prepared to say with 100 per cent confidence it’s curtains for Scott Morrison. And you can see why: To predict one Labor victory that failed to come off might be considered a misfortune, but two?
The other reason for the hesitance is this election has more moving parts.
On one hand the government is fighting a well-funded leftoid insurgency in seats it’s not used to fighting in, while at the same time battling away in the marginal seats that usually decide who gets to live in the Lodge.
Never before this close to polling day has it been necessary to outline and weigh the probabilities of five different scenarios none of which are beyond the realms of possibility.
The first and, if you believe the polls, most likely, is a straight Labor victory.
The dream scenario here — and I should stress that’s all it is — is that without dropping anything, Albo wins Pearce, Swan and Hasluck in Western Australia, Boothby in South Australia, Bass and Braddon in Tasmania, Reid, Robertson and Bennelong in NSW, Chisholm and Higgins in Victoria and Brisbane, Ryan and Leichhardt in Queensland.
A more likely outcome, according to many insiders, is Labor doesn’t get enough to govern in its own right but can form government with the help of four of the present crossbench — Bandt, Haines, Wilkie and Steggall — plus any of the teals that get elected from Kooyong, Goldstein, North Sydney, Wentworth and Curtin.
Some Labor folk even think Albanese might get the vote of Bob Katter in far-north Queensland.
Scenario number three is Scott Morrison holds most of what he has at the moment and wins enough of Macquarie, Eden-Monaro, Dobell, Gilmore, Greenway, Hunter, Parramatta, Richmond and Shortland in NSW, and McEwen, Corangamite and Dunkley in Victoria and maybe even Lyons in Tasmania to offset whichever of the teal seats are lost. The general view here is that if it is to happen, the Coalition’s route to victory will be different to the one it took in 2019.
Scenario number four is that the Coalition loses its majority but Scott Morrison hangs on with the support of Katter, and Rebekha Sharkie in South Australia.
The last possible outcome — as I see it anyway — is the Coalition loses its majority but survives with the support of Katter, Sharkie and maybe another teal, but the price of that support is Morrison is replaced by a leader more to their taste, by which I mean not Peter Dutton.
The first three scenarios are the most likely, and since in two of them Anthony Albanese gets to be prime minister, on that basis you would have to say at this point he is more likely than not to get there.
If that sounds mealy-mouthed I plead guilty, but in my defence I would say I’ve been burnt before.
Not only that, you can’t help but be hesitant about the chance of a bloke whose biggest fans would struggle to say has set the world on fire over the past month.
Indeed the very fact that after nine years and three Prime Ministers this Government is still a good chance to be re-elected is a testimony to how underwhelming Albanese’s performance has been.
That’s not my opinion by the way, but one held by many Labor people frustrated and frightened by another election they can see getting away from them.
Their consolation at this point is the hope — belief is too strong a word — that however unimpressed voters may be with Albanese, their hesitation is more than outweighed by their deep dislike of Morrison.
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That Morrison is unpopular with a large swath of the population is true. And not just in the teal seats.
He’s also on the nose with a large swath of the voters in the Labor-held seats he’s trying to win.
Luckily for the government, from talking to people familiar with the parties’ research, this is less true in NSW where it is trying to win the most seats, than elsewhere, especially Victoria.
With two weeks to go, The Liberal Party’s job is to convince enough people to put aside their personal feelings about the PM and ask themselves whether in their heart of hearts they really think Albo is up to the job.
The Labor Party’s job, on the other hand, is to convince enough people that whatever you might think about Albanese he can’t be worse than Scott Morrison.
Most elections are usually won by the side more people have decided is the lesser of two evils.
But I can’t remember an election where both sides are so obviously asking us to look beyond the merits of the bloke they’re asking us to vote for to be prime minister.
Originally published as James Campbell: Voters being asked to choose lesser of two evils
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