Liberals do a Bradbury in NSW

The result of the New South Wales election really will be "historic", but it will be almost a solo performance. NSW Labor can claim all the credit for their loss as the Liberals do little more than a Bradbury. This means that government after the election will be perilous for the winner. Bizarre as it may seem Kristina Keneally is right - the Liberals won't really have a mandate.

As the winning margin is likely to be so huge (64 per cent two-party preferred to the Libs according to Newspoll this morning), there is not much point running through much of our quants.

However, while I've based the qualitative analysis on a politically balanced sample drawn from all the responses we received, it is worth noting that in the original sample Greens were highly over-represented (33 per cent), and Labor was the most under-represented of all the parties with only 14 per cent of original respondents voting Labor, compared to somewhere around 24 per cent in the population at large.

From this response we can infer that Greens voters are energised this election and Labor voters disengaged. That should mean that the Greens pick up some inner city seats. They've got close in seats like Port Jackson before, and I think they'll probably spill-over this time.

So, given the certainty of the result most interest for me is in the issues and personalities, a story which I will tell using Leximancer maps.

Issues

Generally the issues that respondents say are important for the state are very similar to the issues that they say are governing their vote. That's not the case this time.

Figure 1. Issues important to the state.

You can see from the map that central themes are "planning", "transport" and "people", so concerns are essentially about service delivery. "Transport" encompasses within its field "hospitals", "education", "services" and "investment". "People" is a theme which suggests that electors, rather than political parties or politicians' ambitions, ought to be more central. Over on the left of the graph you can see a tussle between a Sydney-centric view of what is important and one that takes a wider view of the state.

Figure 2. Issues important in determining voting intention.

When we get to issues that will effect respondents' votes in the election the service delivery issues that dominate the centre of the previous graph have shrunk in importance and are relegated to the edge. The central themes in this graph are the political parties themselves which present as negative reasons for justifying a vote. "Liberal" is an important issue for Labor voters, and "Labor" for Liberals. A need to "change" the "government" and cure "incompetence" are also strong reasons for Liberals.

Personalities

Despite her poor approval ratings, Kristina Keneally actually comes out of the contest looking reasonably good.

Figure 3. Approval of Kristina Keneally.

Her problem is "party" which sits right in the middle of the web. She's actually seen by many as having "tried" to do a good job. It is only at this stage that the issue of the sale of state assets comes into play after having been absent from the issues graphs. This suggests that privatisation isn't so much as a key concern, but a justification. This is reinforced by the fact that it is Liberals, who would be presumed to in principle agree with privatisation, who are the most likely to cite it as a reason.

Figure 4. Approval of Barry O'Farrell.

O'Farrell's strongest point with his own supporters is that he is "honest", and that he is not Labor, however those who disapprove are concerned about his policies, that they have little idea what they are and that they will target government services.

The culmination of these two graphs is the issue of preferred premier.

Figure 5. Preferred Premier.

The two most important reasons for choosing O'Farrell are "choice" and "change" - in other words that he is not currently running the government. Supporters of Keneally see her as "strong" and "capable" with "ideas", although she is also seen as the "least" worse option.

Summary

If Labor had conducted themselves with probity and prudence in power they would probably still be looking good for this election. There is no strong desire to go to the Liberals because they are Liberals, but because they aren't Labor. This presents O'Farrell with a big challenge after the election. He needs to quickly establish a compelling agenda for change or he will flounder getting his agenda through the Legislative Council and Labor will stage an impressive come back at the next election.

While this election is their own work, and will be devastating, it is far from the end of NSW Labor.