The ALP’s decision to run an open ticket in MacNamara (i.e. not directing voters how to direct their preferences on the printed how-to-vote cards) has created the usual heat around “preferences deals” and quite a bit of histrionics as well. Does it really matter?
Australia is not like Germany or New Zealand (or for that matter the ACT) where center-left and Green parties can have cordial relationships and govern together with only a normal amount of rancour. Of course, as far as Liberal rhetoric is concerned, the Greens are hardly better than Maoist insurrectionists who would reduce us to a subsistence economy, but the ALP are walking a finer line. They know that Greens’ policies are hardly anathema to many left-wing voters (and certainly not to the Labor rank-and-file, who still address one another as ‘comrade’) and so concentrate on the Greens being unfit to govern due to their general incompetence, idealism, inexperience, etc. With this as the rationale, the ALP now mark the start of any election season by ruling out any sort of power-sharing arrangement with the Greens, on the assumption that the spectre of a Greens-Labor coalition is too frightening to most of the electorate.
This is the context for HTV cards, where conventional wisdom suggests that roughly half of voters who vote for you are likely to follow the card exactly.
We’ve made a simulation of the MacNamara race, and determined that if ALP preferences are distributed, the Greens need 50% of the preferences to get over the line.
Here are some historical stats to feed into the equation. When ALP preferences were distributed at the state election in 2022 in Prahran, ALP preferences went 83% to the Greens, which was what the HTV indicated. Therefore, a third of all Labor voters would need to follow the card and change their preferences, putting the Libs ahead of the Greens.
This is within the realms of probability, but I think quite a bit on the high side. In my view, the HTV furore is more likely to be symbolic. If the worst case scenario does unfold and the Libs get >50% of ALP preferences, there will be hell to pay at the Labor branches come Monday,