Back on 20 February the following words of mine were printed in Crikey: “Let me be the first pundit to predict that the Liberal Party will lose this year’s general election as a whole, and Bennelong in particular.” Those words were the result of my reading of a Morgan Crikey poll showing Labor ahead in Bennelong by 55-45. That was before it was known Maxine McKew would be Labor’s candidate. Now, seven months later we have a poll in today’s Melbourne Age. It Shows the division is now 53-47 Labor’s way, a swing of seven per cent from 2004.

I write to say that I am not impressed by Howard gaining two points. I am still confidently predicting Howard’s defeat in Bennelong. Indeed I have predicted that many times and in many places over the past seven months. Nor am I impressed with his non-core promise to serve out his full term in Bennelong, if elected. The promise is made only subject to the Coalition Government winning a fifth term. If the Coalition goes down but Howard wins Bennelong he will immediately resign his seat. Or rather that is the inference I draw. While it is probable that Howard will lose Bennelong as well as his Government there is a rough outside chance he will win Bennelong while the Government goes down. That is suggested by the fact the betting odds for the election nationally are stronger for Labor than those for Bennelong. Undecided electors considering their vote should take these betting odds into consideration.

I should mention that I have been following Bennelong for a long time. Back on December 13, 1999 I wrote in The Australian that “In the not-too-distant furure, Labor will win the Sydney federal seat of Bennelong.” Then in the Australian Financial Review for March 22, 2005 I had an article published under the title “PM’s Bennelong dilemma”. In that article I pointed out that Bennelong was not merely marginal it was actually the median seat on the then Mackerras Pendulum. I wrote that it needed “only a swing of 4.4 per cent to fall to Labor”. I went on: “Of the 12 seats in metropolitan Sydney held by the Liberal Party, Bennelong is the second most marginal, next only to Greenway. If we rank all 150 seats in order of Labor’s share of the two-party preferred vote on the 2004 figures, Bennelong comes in at number 75”.

I also wrote that the forthcoming redistribution was more likely to weaken Bennelong for Howard than to strengthen it. Sure enough that is what happened. To the existing Bennelong there were added 7,317 electors, reducing the buffer from 4.4 per cent to an even four per cent. It is still the median seat on the Mackerras Pendulum. In that article I also urged Howard to retire from the office of Prime Minister in April 2006 but to sit out the remainder of his term as the backbench member for Bennelong. He should have taken my advice and would then have gone out a hero in the Liberal Party. Foolishly he ignored me and now he is going to be humiliated.

George Megalogenis of The Australian has also written some good articles on Bennelong recently. He has pointed out that, in addition to five boundary changes under Howard’s tenure, demographic trends have turned it into a natural Labor seat. Megalogenis has ranked all 150 electorates according to the percentage of the population born in non-English speaking countries. He has found that the top 20 consist of 19 Labor seats and Bennelong. He has also pointed out that Bennelong is one of two seats (the other being the safe Labor seat of Watson) with an ethnic Chinese population above ten per cent. He has also pointed out that there have been 30 electorates in which property values have fallen since the 2004 general election. Bennelong is one of those 30 electorates.

Megalogenis is still predicting that Howard will win Bennelong, but with a greatly reduced majority. However, when I discussed this with him back in May he told me he would not be at all surprised if my prediction turned out to be correct.