With the federal election now done and dusted, the attention of voters in NSW will be on the state election to be held next year.
Opinion polling has been absolutely horrid for NSW Labor for most of its current term in office, as you can see from the wikipedia website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales_state_election,_2011
As you can see, at the last election Labor won exactly 39% of the primary vote. Despite how unpopular the state government was, the coalition could only scrape together 37% (with 26% belonging to the liberals and 10% belonging to the Nationals). The greens polled about 8%, and there was a high vote for independents, reflecting the six that currently sit in parliament.
(One thing before we continue - newspoll has the nationals vote on 5%, even though they got double that at the last state election. this is probably a reflection of the places newspoll call - which would most likely be urban seats where the liberals are running. The combined coalition vote, however, should still be reasonably correct. The nationals are hardly going to lose 5% of their vote compared to last time - if anything it will increase).
The beginning of the rot began to occur in around about May 2008. This was the time where anger about electricity privatisation was at its highest. Around that time, NSW Labor conference was held, and there was much public bloodletting on display. Labor's primary vote in polling fell down to around 32% - a 7% swing away from labor, which washed out into a 52-48 lead for the coalition. At this stage, the situation was bad, but not unsalvageable.
The real damage began in September 2008, when privatisation fell over and Morris Iemma was replaced as premier by Nathan Rees. Immediately, Labor's primary vote fell to 29% - a 10% swing from 2007. The coalition's combined primary vote rose to 42% - an increase of 6%. The greens vote also spiked up 4 points. This meant that Labor was bleeding voters both ways - 40% were disaffected Labor voters going to the greens, and the other 60% were going to the coalition. In december 2008, Labor's vote went to 26% - a record low.
During 2009, the Nathan Rees experiment seemed to have settled things down. labor's vote rose again and hovered around the low 30's for the rest of the year. The coalition's vote was up to around 41%.
Such polling would still have seen Labor headed for a solid defeat. But worse was to follow later.
In december, Rees himself was knifed. Immediately Labor's vote plummeted back to 26%. It would briefly revive in the new year to back around 30%, but it has since falled back to 25% in the past two newspolls (taken over the past 4 months).
Since Keneally took over as premier, Labor's primary vote has been between 25%-30%. If we take the average, that's about 27%. The last two polls have had Labor at 25-26%.
That result represents a whopping 12-13% swing away from Labor on the primary vote. About 8-9% of it seems to be going straight to the liberals. And the rest has gone to the greens, up about 4-5%.
What does that mean for the election?
Given how awful these polls are, how bad can it really get for NSW labor?
Obviously, if this polling was reflected on election day 2011, Labor would be devastated. Exactly how bad would it get?
Well, firstly we need to consider a couple of variables.
Federal election
In metropolitan Sydney, Labor suffered absolutely enourmous swings at the federal election. In many safe Labor seats, there were primary vote swings away from Labor of anywhere between 7-11% - and some were even bigger. Labor could not perform well anywhere. The reasons for it are complicated and varied. But I honestly believe that if people were willing to kick the federal government by that much, they must also be willing to kick an even more unpopular state government.
The Greens vote - where will it increase?
It will be important to also make a distiction in the polling. The high greens vote may very well be a reflection of a state wide trend. Or it may not. One thing we have to take into consideration is that the greens vote is likely to increase hugely in the inner city - especially in seats like Balmain and Marrickville.
The big question of this election won't be how big the anti-labor swing will be on the primary vote. We now know that consistently there has been a 9-14% away from the ALP in polling since Keneally was premier. During Rees's reign, the swing was anywhere between 7-14%.
The big question will be - if Labor's vote drops by that much, where will the swing go? How much will go to the liberals, and how much will go to the greens? And in what seats will there be differences?
Balmain and Marrickville
One reason why we need to be cautious about the higher greens vote in polling is that these two seats are likely to fall to the greens. This could be skewing the current opinion polling. The liberal vote may in fact be even stronger than that in some areas.
At the last state election, there was a swing against Labor, but the vast majority of it in both seats went to the greens. If the same ratio was reflected this time, a 12% swing against Labor would go to the greens by about 8%. The rest would go to the liberals - but given the liberals will likely preference labor behind the greens, and the greens will likely finish ahead of the liberals, any preferences will go from liberal to green. An 8% swing to the greens would see them easily unseat Verity Firth in Balmain and would put Carmel Tebbutt in big trouble in Marrickville.
Immediately Labor loses 2 seats and would only need to lose 2 more to see it's majority gone.
The Rest of NSW - Coalition sweep
However, what we might find in the rest of Sydney is that the swing to the greens is much smaller - perhaps even less than the uniform swing the current polls predict. The liberals could get a much bigger ratio of the swing.
In the recent penrith byelection, there was a 25% swing away from Labor on primaries - double the current swing in polling (probably reflecting the scandal surrounding Karen Paluzzano). Interestingly though, although the swing was double current opinion polling, the actual ratio of where the anti-labor swing went wa very reflective of opinin polling. 18% of it went to the liberals. Most of the rest went to the greens. That very accurately reflects polling, where 3/4 of the anti-labor swing seems to be picked up by the coalition with the rest going to the greens.
But tere is another problem for Labor - optional preferentia voting. In penrith, 65% of greens voters decided not to direct preferences - what's called "exhausted preferences". Only 21% of greens voters preferenced Labor. 14% preferenced the liberals. This made the anti-labor swing worse.
What's the scenario?
If we consider the ratio - the liberals got about 75% of the anti-labor swing in penrith. Incidentally, this also happened in quite a few sydney seats at the federal election. And it's being reflected in current opinion polling.
If the anti-labor swing on the primary vote is 13%, we would see almost 9.75% of that swing belong to the liberals, with 3.25% of the swing going to the greens. (note: in Balmain and Marrickville this would be the other way around).
If greens preferences exhaust at the same rates as Penrith, Labor would be in a world of hurt.
If we remove Balmain and Marrickville - a uniform swing of that magnitude (9.75% to the libs and 3.25% greens) across the state would see Labor lose 25 seats - that is - every seat on the pendulum up to (and possibly including) the seat of Oatley (but not including Macquarie Fields, which has already had a big byelection swing in 2008 and probably won't happen again - and a few other seats where Labor went up against independents last time), plus balmain and marrickville to the greens.
Under the above scenario, Labor would lose the following seats:
Miranda
Menai
Wollondilly (Phil Costa)
Camden
Gosford
The Entrance (Grant McBride)
Monaro (Steve Whan)
Londonderry
Wyong
Coogee (Paul Pearce)
Drummoyne (Angela D'Amore)
Heathcote (Paul McLeay)
Riverstone (John Aquilina)
Rockdale (Frank Sartor)
Swansea
Blue Mountains
Granville (David Borger)
Mulgoa
Kiama (Matt Brown)
Cessnock
Bathurst
Parramatta
East Hills
Balmain (Veity Firth) - to the greens
Marrickville (Carmel Tebbutt) - to the greens
Labor would lose 25 seats and most of its ministerial talent.
That would leave it with 25 seats in the lower house. The coalition would have 60 (+23), te Greens would have 2 (+2) and Independents would retain 6 (unchanged).
A slightly bigger swing in some individual seats towards the liberals could also see Labor lose:
Oatley (Kevin Greene)
Toongabbie (Nathan Rees)
Strathfield (Virginia Judge)
Smithfield
Wallsend
Maroubra (Michael Daley)
Kogorah (Cherie Burton)
So when the media have been saying Labor could lose 20 seats - that scenario is actually believable on all polling done in the last 9 months - and even beforehand.
Look out, NSW Labor.
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