Liberals win by default in Victoria

So Brumby galvanizes both supporters and opponents. In a climate where voters want to vote a particular party in, this can be an advantage. In an election where voters would be happy to vote all parties out, it works against you.

If Baillieu doesn't want to run a one-term government his public perception is an issue he has to fix. Undoubtedly as his government starts to implement policies, public opinion will harden, but when it does he wants it to harden in ways that support him.

So the relatively uncommitted view of voters gives him an opportunity. He can use the considerable resources of government in the honeymoon period to create an image of himself that will make voters want to re-elect him so that he does energise his base at the next election, and perhaps increase his majority.

He also needs to produce an honest appraisal of what the last election was about. Government shouldn't be based on myth because it ultimately leads to them living within the cocoon of partisan self-indulgence and falling quickly out of touch with the voters.

It wasn't a referendum on increases in the cost of living, as some Liberals were claiming during the week. Our polling respondents might be better-off than most, but you'd think someone would have mentioned rising prices if that was a determinant in how they would vote.

It doesn't mean that higher costs of living weren't making some voters grumpy, but it wasn't directly on their list of complaints. Rather the complaint was that Labor had been in for so long and had not achieved anything apart from mastering the art of spin.

This table shows you the issues that voters nominated unprompted as shaping their vote. Note that "Public transport" was the biggest one for Greens and Liberals, and that Liberals were also concerned about "Law and order".

Now, it's unlikely that most Liberal voters rely on public transport, but underlying the public transport issue was a problem with Myki, an electronic ticketing system that Labor has introduced where the implementation has been a public relations disaster.

So what I think we are seeing here is not so much an issue of public transport itself, but of managerial ability.

I certainly don't think that issues were that important in the result because when you asked people why they were voting for a particular party the reasons were very frequently negative about the alternative, not positive about their choice.

When asked why they were casting a first preference for either Labor or Greens, voters said things like: