Wednesday 13 December 2017

It's Bennelong Time Comming

Tomorrow is the Bennelong By-Election, which promises to be much closer than Barnaby Joyce's run in New England a few weeks back. For one thing, the Liberal (former) incumbent is up against Labor's super-candidate Kristina Keneally. For another, the expected Liberal victory has been eaten away by numerous scandals and faux pas.

In 2016 John Alexander won (just) on the primary vote alone at 50.4%. Latest polling has his primary vote now at 41.3%. When asked to allocate preferences, the two-party-preferred result was a Liberal win of 53:47.

This leaves very little number crunching for the rest of us to do, but I will note that a lot has been made of the influence Bennelong's Chinese community will have in swinging this vote. It is possible that this community will have a different preference flow ratio to the general public which may be underrepresented in the polling. But, equally, if ReachTel have done their job, this might be over-represented too.

All that can reasonably be done is to sit and wait, while expecting a narrow Liberal victory and the Government to retain its one-seat majority.

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