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The latest Coalition scare campaign about Labor may scare itself more than voters (www.abc.net.au)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

You need to only look at the modern crossbench, and the teals in particular, to see the prospect of a 2010 repeat is unlikely.

These modern independents aren't former Nationals blokes who have turned their back on their party.

They're modern women who couldn't see themselves in the party that once took their seats for granted.

"While the 2022 election might be heralded as a ‘breakthrough’ for the independents, the conditions for their election have been building over several decade," the Australian Election Study noted in 2022.

"Many of these changes are associated with voters being ‘less rusted on’ to the major political parties and becoming more independently minded in their political choices."

That's the problem with scare campaigns like the Coalition's. When you threaten voters with a minority government, that would require crossbench negotiations, some in the seats you're trying to win might be left thinking: "Oh, that sounds more preferable than you."

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don’t know if ranked choice voting really works with “tactical voting”.

So, completely ignoring the reality on the ground and just talking about it hypothetically, yes, it is possible for tactical voting to play a part.

If we imagine Greens and Labor voters would (in an honest vote) preference each other, followed by Teal, followed by the LNP (and we'll ignore any 5th parties as irrelevant), and that many of the Teal voters you describe would have begrudgingly voted LNP 2nd rather than jump ship all the way to Labor or the Greens, then supposing native Teal votes are low enough, it is sensible for Labor and Greens voters to vote tactically.

If we imagine the first round of voting comes out as:

Greens 10% (a bit less than their national average)
Teals 20% (an easier round number, close to that 18% figure quoted below)
Labor 30%
LNP 40%

With honest voting distributed as described above, the Greens are eliminated first, taking Labor to 40%, and then the Teals are eliminated, giving the LNP a win with 60%.

If instead some portion of Greens and Labor vote tactically, the first round might end up as

Greens 5%
Labor 20%
Teals 35%
LNP 40%

Which sees first Greens, then Labor, eliminated, resulting in 60–40 Teal win.

It's an edge case and may or may not reflect the reality of how voters felt at the election. And tactical voting in IRV is very unreliable and requires much more specific knowledge of how other voters are going to vote in order for it to pay off than in FPTP. That same tactical voting could have hurt their more-preferred option if, say, the actual honest percentages had been

Greens 12%
Teals 15%
Labor 33%
LNP 40%

And 6% points of those Teals chose Labor, resulting in Labor getting 45% after Greens are eliminated, and then 51% after the Teals are. The strategic voting of Labor and Greens if this were the true preferences would have given it to the Teals despite Labor being the winner in an honest vote. Despite only a fairly small and difficult-to-predict change in the honest intentions.

Tagging @[email protected] for interest's sake, as well as @[email protected].

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for the awesome analysis. To try and put what you said intuitively, I guess the "strategic" voting is to compromise as early as possible with a group whose "second choice" would be your last choice (and that is also a very popular first choice but only just popular enough to win). Does that sound correct?

So in your political compass, instead of picking the closest option to you on the compass with a Greens/Labor vote, you would pick a spot closer to the overall vibes of the electorate with a Teal vote to solidify that choice against an even further to the right choice which would win by a narrow margin?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Potentially, yes, especially in a seat like the Teals' ones. But as I said, it can also hurt you if you do it at the wrong time.

A great example of that would be the 3 seats in Brisbane that went Greens last election, which were extremely close races between Greens and Labor, and any Greens or Labor voter would have been wrong to try to compromise early to avoid the LNP winning.