Liberals lost campaign?

Monday, 07 October 2013 22:59 | Written by Graham Young

It seems counterintuitive given what I saw during the campaign, but the figures suggest that the Liberal Party lost the campaign with their vote at the start being much higher than their vote at the end. At least according to our first preference index.

The last data point is last week, the one before it is a poll conducted on the day of the election, and the third last data point is at the beginning of the campaign.

Looking at the Liberal figures the party peaked at the beginning of the campaign, with a figure about as good as they've ever got, but this declined during the election to be still a good result, but not as good as it looked like being.

On our graph the ALP vote fell away at the same time the Liberals did, which means they didn't win the election, but we have the Greens gaining ground. The Greens figure has to be wrong because our figures are zero-based on the 2010 election. This election there was a 3.11% swing against the Greens, so the graph should have been less than 100 for them.

Some of the decline in the ALP and Liberal vote has to be due to the unexpected popularity of the Palmer Party which isn't plotted here because it didn't exist at the last election so we can't zero base it. It also suggests that Greens voters were more motivated than Labor and Liberal voters, and so dominated our election day poll more than other polls by opting in. That would explain why their vote last week had dropped back to a figure below 100, more consisten with their election result.

Still, the bottom line is that the Abbott government has maintained its popularity since the election and would still win comfortable.

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