Vic Libs smart anti-Greens preference strategy

The problem for the Libs is that they need some of this protest vote to come to them to get the extra that they need to turn a near loss into a win.

And how can they do this? They have to take away the potential for the Greens to hold the balance of power in the next parliament. As the Greens need Liberal preferences to win any seats, denying them those preferences has that effect.

Not only does this make would-be protest voters reconsider how they will shape the next government's agenda but it also directs the media coverage of the election back onto the battle between the two major parties, so giving the Liberals a better chance of getting their message across.

Some might object that most of these Greens voters will return to Labor because they are too far removed from the Liberals. That is a valid objection, but it fails to take into account that while the public opinion polls show the Liberals close to winning, most voters expect a Labor win.

As can be seen in the table below, even amongst Liberal voters, only 22% expect a Liberal government after the next election, while for Greens it is only 3%. So a Greens voter could safely vote Liberal to send the government a message, because they "know" that the Liberals aren't going to win.

So needing an additional one or two percent of the total vote and with seven percent having shown some tendency to want to protest by going Greens, the Liberals have done the smart thing.

Barrie Cassidy might be right. Ted Baillieu may be motivated by principle, but happily for Baillieu, in this case principle and pragmatism come to the same conclusion.