It may only be an opinion poll, but this week’s state Newspoll result from South Australia must surely have been an Australian first: a poll showing a “minor” party with a primary vote higher than either of the majors.
The poll credits Nick Xenophon’s SA Best with the support of 32% of its 800 respondents, compared with 29% for the Liberals and 27% for Labor.
Furthermore, Xenophon himself — who has abandoned the Senate to contest the Liberal-held seat of Hartley in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs — was streets ahead of his rivals as preferred premier, recording 46% against 22% for Premier Jay Weatherill and 19% for long-suffering Liberal leader Steven Marshall.
Fascinating though it is to see Xenophon’s party in first place, the result is by no means an outlier — a Galaxy Research poll conducted for the Australian Bankers Association two months ago had SA Best at 30%, just one point behind the Liberals and four ahead of Labor.
To consider how such a result might play out in terms of seats under preferential voting, it must be recognised that non-radical third party candidates need only outpoll one of the two major parties to win on the preferences of the other, unless the leading major party candidate either approaches or exceeds 50% of the primary vote (notwithstanding unlikely suggestions that Labor and Liberal might direct preferences to each other, in the manner of big business oligopolists colluding against a new competitor).
With statewide voting figures such as those suggested by Newspoll and Galaxy, it’s difficult to identify more than a handful of seats where this wouldn’t happen.
The big question now is whether this can be sustained through to an election to be held on March 17.
Gambling odds are against Xenophon but this scepticism seems to be based on nothing deeper than a conservative instinct that hasn’t done the art of electoral prognostication too many favours over the past few years.
Certainly Xenophon faces challenges in co-ordinating a fledgling campaign machine and assembling a disciplined team of candidates, but he’s faced difficulties in both areas in the past (particularly the latter) without suffering lasting electoral damage.
Some may object that One Nation was unable to live up to comparable levels of hype before recent state elections, but this is actually only true of Western Australia.
Despite its failure to win more than one seat in Queensland, One Nation’s support was much as polls were suggesting it would be for months in advance, once its failure to contest a third of the seats is taken into account.
Furthermore, Xenophon has a breadth of appeal on his home turf beyond anything One Nation can touch, in Queensland or anywhere else, and he will present a far more credible public face for his party’s campaign than his already forgotten One Nation counterpart in Queensland.
It must of course be recognised that three months is a long time in politics, and a lot may indeed go wrong as Xenophon takes on the institutional power and organisational experience of the major parties.
But if the polls are even half right, Xenophon can lose a lot of skin between now and polling day and still achieve a result that demolishes a century’s worth of accumulated assumptions about the permanence of Australia’s two-party hegemony.
“Some may object that One Nation was unable to live up to comparable levels of hype before recent state elections.”
And some may point out that One nation is a rabble led by an idiot. Xenophon may end up with a rabble, but he is probably the best political operator in the country.
I had understood he so far has candidates in only 6 Liberal held seats. On paper that makes him kingmaker but surely also means the Libs would have a snowflakes of forming a minority government, giving Labor a fair bit of leverage.
If Mr X should win the up-coming election in SA…I’M LEAVING! And I’m NOT alone.
He is just a fraud and a show pony…Few policies, and those he does have just support the Liberal Party. People should be aware that he is the one who made possible the privatisation of our electricity system by voting for the second reading of the bill to be introduced into the upper house…without his support, there would have been NO vote on privatisation. More recently, he voted in the Senate to reduce the penalty rates of 700,000 poorer workers.
We don’t need his ‘help’ here in SA…I hope he disappears without trace!!
I’ll stick with Jay Wetherill, thanks very much. He is the only one trying to do something about climate change…and doing it well, despite the Feds doing everything in their power to stop him. Aided and abetted by the MSM, and the appalling reportage of the ABC in this state…fair and balanced? I don’t think so!!!!!
Nothing “unlikely” about “ suggestions that Labor and Liberal might direct preferences to each other,” they did exactly that to, barely, defeat the brilliant Janine Haines when she left the Senate as leader of the Dems in, I think… Hinkley(?).
Precisely in “ the manner of big business oligopolists colluding against a new competitor..“and the public, as noted by Adam Smith.
Not to mention when they did the same thing to Peter Garrett when he stood for the NDA.
No honour among thieves.
Janine Haines stood for Kingston in 1990. That the Libs and ALP exchanged prferences against her didn’t matter becaque she was third on first preference votes.
I quite like the thought of a Premier Nick, but the true test for Xenophon will come when he has to state which party he will support if a hung parliament eventuates and odds on it will. None of our enterprising journalists have prised out the answer to that question yet. As it stands now Nick is drawing support from traditional supporters of the two major parties. Watch how one half of that vote collapses when he makes public who he will prefer as a coalition partner.
At this stage, stating which major party to support in the event of a hung parliament is simply addressing a hypothetical. I suspect that, if asked, Xenophon will reply, “let’s see how the votes fall/how the Parliament looks”. Other Independents have done just that in recent years. Recall Windsor, Oakeshott and Katter in 2010. That also suggests, don’t expect an instant answer.