What really happens in byelections?

It’s political dogma that byelections always result in a swing against the government. But like most dogma, this bears little resemblance to fact. Of 25 byelections in the last 20 years, there have only been 7 where the two major parties went head to head, and one where Labor and the Nats faced off.

It’s hard to read a byelection result where the government of the day didn’t field a candidate as a swing against the government of the day.

In the seven where the government did field a candidate, there were wildly inconsistent results – from a swing of –23.6% against the government, to a swing of 4.97% to the government. It’s not possible to generalise from figures like that. You could claim that was an average of –9.3% against the government – but would that give you an accurate idea of what would happen in a byelection next week?

If we look a little harder at the more recent figures, without merely reciting the article of faith that byelections swing against governments (and I’m leaving out Gippsland because Nationals seats are Nationals seats, world without end, amen) we can see that actually, they follow the polls:



When the polls were disastrous for the government, so were the swings in the byelections. When the polls were great, so was the result. And what’s the latest? The latest Morgan poll has the Rudd Government ahead on 58.5 to the Opposition’s 41.5.

Looking at the table above, what could we have possibly expected to see in a byelection? A swing to the Government of around 5%.

Screw you, STA travel, and the horse you rode into town on

I've booked holidays with STA travel before. But I can tell you, I won't be again since they published this stomach-turning anti-woman list of things we need to do before summer.

Apparently, it's essential that we have pretty toes, a "base tan" (have you ever heard of skin cancer, you ignorant arseholes?) a gym body, and no body hair (arrgh! Hairy pits! run for the hills!), and that we run down the beach like "baywatch babes". Oh, and make sure it's not in last year's wardrobe, because that would be totally unacceptable. Fuck you, STA, a woman's purpose in life is not to be "hot" according to your arbitrary and fucked up standards.

Oh, and skin cancer? Not actually fun and sexy.

Idiots. You know who buys holidays? Women. And you know who you've just pissed off completely with your arsehole list? Yes, that's right, women. You do the maths.

Tell them to go fuck themselves here.

The devil or the deep blue see? Or the guy who wants to build a bridge over the deep blue sea?

On Saturday I'm going to have to vote for someone other than a Labor candidate for the first time in my life. Since the first federal election after I turned 18, where I cast my vote for the Keating government (which shows my advanced age), I've voted for a Beazley government, a Latham government, and Rudd government, through a variety of local Labor candidates both good and, er, ungood (to steal a line from Nick Cave).

So you'd think the Greens would be making like bandits in this byelection, right? Not really - thanks to a quaintly amateurish campaign which seems to centre on bashing the media, and whingeing that the Liberal candidate won’t fall into their clever trap by appearing at a climate change “forum” stunt to make a fool of herself.

The Liberals deciding not to play silly games with the Greens? Well, whodathunk that!

The Greens have chosen a blow-in from Canberra, climate change guru Clive Hamilton, as their high-profile candidate. His election blog has been essentially a sterling how-not-to guide on political communications. Here he is bagging the Age and the local Leader newspaper (in a post that he has now had the sense to edit – slightly – but which you can still find here):

“The national daily has devoted more space to Higgins than the Melbourne daily. Mind you, even The Age’s nugatory coverage beats that of The Stonnington Leader, the local rag that puts advertising revenue before any sense of civic responsibility or, for that matter, any regard for its readers’ interest in who represents them in federal parliament.”

Nugatory?!?

As I posted earlier (but am reposting so we can link from New Matilda), basically, Candidate Clive commits the seven deadly sins of political communication on his folksy blog page:
1. using words like nugatory. If your audience needs to dust off the dictionary you've lost them. John Howard, much as we loathed him and everything he stands for, used a vocabulary of about 200 words. This is about right.
2. reproducing your opponents' campaign materials. Hey Clive, why would you think that was a good idea?
3. sentences four lines long. This is never a good idea in any context.
4. repeating your opponents' points against you so as to reinforce them: "smelly, feral, dole-bludging tree-huggers".
5. criticising the media.
6. sledging the local paper. This is like criticising the media x 100. Or possibly even x1000.
7. comparing your political opponents to disabled kids: “With a CPRS compromise, will Kevin and Malcolm be the Krishna and Trishna of Australian climate policy? Joined at the hip.(sic)”

He also seems to be developing a bad case of candidatitis. Check out the last two pars on his latest post. “If we do manage to pull off the unexpected…” Dr Hamilton, you cannot win Higgins. No matter how polite the voters are to your feral doorknockers (and our Higgins locals are almost always polite, even when they're looking at you and thinking they wouldn't vote for you if you were the only candidate), you are not going to win. It's not "unexpected", it's Not.Going.To.Happen.

We enjoyed reading Dr Hamilton’s books, Growth Fetish and Affluenza. But as for his blog… well, let’s just say Clive must have had a really good editor down at Penguin Publishing.

Not that you’d read all those nasty words from Candidate Clive about the meeja now. Funnily enough, Candidate Clive has tried to tidy himself up over the past few days, deleting his harsher words. Thanks to the wonders of the interwebs, we can compare and contrast Angry Clive with new, Reasonable Clive.

Just compare what he originally said about nugatory coverage and a local rag deeply interested in advertising revenue and not much else (still on line here) with what his blog says now: “The national daily has devoted more space to Higgins than the Melbourne daily. Even the local paper, The Stonnington Leader, has failed to show any regard for its readers’ interest in who represents them in federal parliament.”

So having established that Tony Abbott is not the only politician who only wants us to consider what he says today, and definitely not what he said last week, and that the Greens are capable of a bit of greenwashing themselves, how close can they get to seizing Higgins on Saturday?

That is up to the electors, not that Dr Hamilton shares the view that the voters should decide:
He cheerfully tweeted after the leadership spill: “Abbott's ascendency leaves Greens as Higgins & Bradfield voters' choice” http://bit.ly/5hWw4u #spill #higgins

Malcolm Mackerras reckons the Greens are going to steal the seat. I want what he's smoking.

Run for the hills! It's compulsary feminism for kids!

You've gotta love the screaming hysteria that accompanies any whiff of feminism caught by the Murdoch media. This sounds like a perfectly sensible program in schools in which kids role play scenes involving sexual coercion and then find alternative, less, er, criminal ways of behaving by, you know, discussing the stuff.

"Compulsary feminism!", "Feminised education", "falling number of male teachers in schools", "Strident feminist propaganda won't wash with boys", "We need to ... [be] careful and respectful and don't make boys in particular feel blamed and demonised for the problem", "shoving capital 'F' feminism down their throats".

So boys shouldn't feel "blamed" for sexual violence against women? Because of course it's all the fault of those demon slut teenage girls. *headdesk*.

hnnnnnnnuuurgh

This was the sound I made last night when, after walking around the whole of Ikea, I discovered they were all out of the bookshelf extensions I went there to get.

Also, do you like my new blog banner? For ages I've thought if we're going to have genetic engineering, why the hell aren't they using it to make REALLY COOL THINGS. Like tiny mutant hippopotamuses or pigs the size of rabbits or a horse the size of a toy poodle. You know, small things.

Speaking of which, I met a Boston Terrier this morning on the way to the train station. They're like French Bulldogs (or le bouledoge francais, as the French call them, no shit), only smaller. IF THEY CAN DO IT WITH DOGS WHY NOT A HIPPOPOTAMUS, ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.

I nearly died of cute. It was so soft. And teeny. And it jumped up and licked me. This last is only cute when soft teeny things do it. When our pug licks me, not so much. And if a St Bernard licks me, even less so.

And things that are less cute brings me to Clive Hamilton's election blog, on which he provides sterling examples of how not to do political communications. Dude, nugatory? Bascially, he commits the seven deadly sins of political communication:
1. using words like nugatory. If your audience needs to get the dictionary out, you've lost them. John Howard, much as I loathed him and everything he stands for, used a vocabulary of about 200 words. This is about right.
2. reproducing your opponents' campaign materials. Dude, why would you think that was a good idea?
3. sentences four lines long. This is never a good idea in any context.
4. repeating your opponents' points against you - "smelly, feral, dole-bludging tree-huggers".
5. critisising the media.
6. critisisng the local paper. This is like critisising the media x 100. Or possibly even x1000.
7. he seems to be developing a bad case of candidatitis. Check out the last two paras on his latest post. Dude, you can not win Higgins. No matter how polite the voters are to your doorknockers (and our Higgins locals are almost always polite, even when they're looking at you and thinking they wouldn't vote for you if you were the only candidate), you are not going to win. It's not "unexpected", it's Not.Going.To.Happen.

I enjoyed Growth Fetish and Affluenza like anything. Dr Hamilton must have had a really good editor.

And tree-huggers leads me to rainbows, which leads me to a rainbow cake. It's a week and a half til my birthday. Cough*Hugostartbaking*cough.

My thought processes may be strange, but you can't deny there is a certain logic....