Liberal Preferences and their Impact on Green Prospects in Melbourne ( Antony Green )

Life for the Greens at the 2013 election just got tougher with the Liberal Party’s decision to change its policy on preferences.

In the past the Liberal party has ignored philosophical differences and taken the entirely strategic decision of recommending preferences for the Greens ahead of Labor.

It was a policy of using my enemy’s enemy as a useful tool in the heat of political battle.

Labor was forced to direct resources to fighting the Greens in its own seats because of the Liberal decision.

Now that the Greens win seats from Labor on Liberal preferences, but the Liberal Party has never received a Green preference recommendation in return, the Liberal Party has chosen to make preference decisions based on philisophy rather than strategy.

The Federal Liberal Party will now follow the policy of its Victorian branch at the 2010 state election of treating the Greens as a party ideologically to the left of Labor, and therefore recommend preferences to Labor ahead of the Greens.

It is the only logical position the Liberal Party can take if it wants to argue that the Greens are a bigger danger to the Australia than Labor.

The consequence of this decision is that Greens MP Adam Bandt will find it much harder to retain his seat of Melbourne, gained from Labor on Liberal preferences in 2010. On my estimates, Bandt will need to increase his first preferences vote from the 36.2% he won at the 2010 election to above 40% if he wants to win re-election.

The deision also rules out any remote chances the Greens had of winning other inner-city seats such as Batman in Victoria and Grayndler and Sydney in New South wales.

Why this is the case is easily shown by the following table of Liberal preference flows in Labor-Green contests at the 2010 Federal election, and under the reversed Liberal preference recommendations at the 2010 Victorian election.

On a technical note, the Federal preference data is actual preference flows derived on from ballot papers with a Green first preference, where the Victorian data is extracted from the formal distribution of preferences, and so includes some other minor party votes in the totals. However, the data is still broadly comparable.

In Melbourne at the 2010 Federal election, Labor led on the first preferences with 38.1% of the vote, Bandt finished second with 36.2%, the Liberals third on 21.0% and four other candidates had 4.7% between them.

This translated into the Greens on 56.0% after the distribution of preferences to Labor 44.0%.

But if the Liberal preference flow had been only 33.6%, the figure in the state seat of Melbourne later in the year, then the 2010 Federal result after preferences would have been Labor 53.7%, Greens 46.3%.

That is a 9.7% swing from Green to Labor generated entirely by the switch in Liberal preferences.

Let me assume the above change in preference flows, and also assume that the Liberal Party poll the same vote as in 2010.

If this is the case, then the only way Bandt can overcome the switch in Liberal preferences is to increase his first preference vote by at least 3.7% at the expense of Labor, effectively to poll above 40% on first preferences.

Only once have the Greens ever polled above 40% in a state or federal election, and that was the 2009 Fremantle state by-election when there was no Liberal candidate.

Polling above 40% will be tough for Bandt at an election where the general Green vote is likely to fall. Given the strong concentration of Green support in inner-city seats, a national change in first preference vote against the Greens of 1-2% is likely to be amplified into a larger change in electorates with a high Green vote like Melbourne.

In Bandt’s favour, he has has the advantage of building a personal profile, the incumbency factor that works in the favour of sitting members. He can also tap into resentment amongst left-wing Labor voters of the government’s shift to the right on policies such as asylum seekers.

The Liberal decision has ended Green prospects elsewhere in Australia, and made life much tougher for the Greens in Melbourne.