Crikey

There’s been a fair bit of commentary around lately about the difference between the “national swing” and the “seat swings”. In a way that’s no surprise. It’s not news to say that the uniform swing is a thing of the past.

However, this narrative has been seized upon by conservative commentators such as Christopher Pearson and David Flint to argue that Howard could hang on in the face of a national swing through a good marginal seat campaign. That’s of course possible, but there’d have to be a big shift in momentum for it to occur, and the 2PP vote would have to be a lot closer than the polls suggest. The invaluable Possum has all the graphs and pseph wonkery you need over at his blog to explain why it’s most unlikely to pan out that way.

There is one aspect to this argument that’s spot on, though. A lot of the reporting in the national media misses what’s happening on the ground.

I argued on Crikey last week that we needed to look at where the parties were putting their resources, and what was happening with preference negotiations. I was the happy recipient of a couple of leaks then, but sometimes you don’t need leaks to know which way the wind is blowing.

Just a map.

Yesterday saw an announcement from John Howard about aid to autistic kids. It was quickly matched by Kevin Rudd. Ho hum, you might say. There are probably few votes in these announcements, and they’re mostly made just to position the leaders as caring and in touch with voters’ real lives. The usual spin was about one party nicking the other’s policy.

As far as I can tell, only Fairfax ran a story which noted where the announcements were made. On the TV grabs you just see the backdrop to the soundbite, visuals which reinforce the message. But where the leaders actually are is also very important.

Both announcements were made in regional Queensland seats with no sitting member contesting the election. Rudd was in Gladstone, the heart of the new electorate of Flynn, notionally National but eminently winnable for Labor. No great surprise.

But Howard was in Forde in the Gold Coast/Brisbane hinterland. Forde is held by the Libs with a margin of 13% but sitting member Kay Elson is retiring. As well as making the autism announcement for the national media, Howard also campaigned with the Liberal candidate, Wendy Creighton.

It’s not rocket science to infer that the Libs might have some polling similar to the research in the South Australian seat of Grey, which showed a tight race under similar circumstances, and which prompted an attempt to get the incumbent MP to re-contest. I know the Libs are worried about the open seats in Queensland. And Labor are running hard in places like Beaudesert, increasingly urban sprawl mortgage belt territory rather than rural towns. So John Howard’s movements on the ground are literally well worth watching.