Political geography

Another aspect of the end of the Cold War is that the two major parties have moved closer together and are Pepsi and Coke in the minds of many voters. One Nation propagandists have summed this up by calling the political establishment the "Laboral Parties". This has given rise not just to an indifference to who gets in, and so lower voting turnouts, but tactical voting.

This is a different phenomenon from Reagan’s winning of the "Blue Collar Conservatives". That was a group that defected because it believed that Reagan was more closely ideologically aligned to its beliefs than the Democrats, a similar tectonic shift as occurred in Australian rural areas after the ALP split. These defections occurred because the voters concerned cared. Strategic voters don’t so much care, as figure they can wangle a better deal by giving the other side a turn on the swings. They are engaged only insofar as their personal interest is concerned.

They are more likely than the average voter to vote against something. Governments tend to make decisions and so give them issues to vote against. The existence of this type of voter has given rise to greater electoral volatility than Australia has seen for 50 years, and a tendency for governments to have shorter terms. They favour an Opposition rather than the Government.

The remnants of One Nation will also feature in the next election, just as they did in the last. But it is simplistic to view them as a bloc that somehow backs one side or the other. In fact, because of the preferential voting system, their votes at the last Federal election ended up being cast and split reasonably equally between both Labor and Liberal candidates. Perhaps the rise and rise of tactical voting might make a change in this behaviour, but again I think this is simplistic. The One Nation vote derives from a number of demographic groups as well as people who vote "none of the above", and is likely to continue to split between both parties.

One issue deserves a special mention at this stage, and that is Indigenous affairs. While the One Nation vote is not a monumental whole, there are some issues that motivate it across the board. One Nation voters are uniformly hostile to giving Indigenous Australians what they see as greater rights than other Australians. This is an issue that is poorly handled by most Indigenous politicians, and some of the likely activities of a number of Aboriginal groups during the Olympic games will not improve the situation. While neither party will run a racist campaign, if these issues gain too great a prominence they will damage the Labor Party with these voters and result in a greater propensity for them to vote for the Coalition.

Reform Fatigue

There is a belief among observers of politics, and a lot of politicians, that the public is worn out with reform. This is both false and true. Yes, electors say they are tired of change, but change has been a strong constant of Western Civilisation since the Renaissance, and belief in that change expressed as "Progress" has been an article of faith since Victorian times.

Voters say that they are fed up with change but go to an election telling them that "Things will be no better tomorrow than they are today under our policies" and they won’t see any reason to vote for you.

The trick is to find improvements with no clearly identifiable winners or losers. The issues that tend to allow for these sorts of promises are the softer issues like health, education and welfare. Economic issues are easier to quantify and tend to be more obviously redistributive.

That is not to say that economic issues cannot be winners. A timely tax cut can win votes, as can a scare campaign on potential tax hikes. However, tax cuts are easier to achieve in times of high inflation when bracket creep (wage earners moving into higher tax brackets as a result of higher nominal wages) makes it easy to restore what has just been taken from voters, giving the illusion that no-one has lost. Budget surpluses can also provide an opening, although an independent Reserve Bank, which might jack up interest rates, seeing this as inflationary, and an Opposition that can access the same surpluses, make it a small opening.

This election a campaign based on the soft issues will have an advantage. In any event, most of the headline economic reforms have now been achieved, leaving little to promise in this area apart from industrial relations reform, which does not rate highly in terms of potential to change votes.

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