Textor thesis fails empirical test

And it only gets worse if the Turnbull Libs got a smaller percentage of Greens preferences this election than last. If Greens preferences only flowed 78.84% to Labor, as they did in 2010, then Labor won 52.99% of the non-Greens third party vote.

Of course it is possible that the thesis was initially correct, but defeated by actions of other players, including Malcolm Turnbull himself. We will never know that, because it would require a number of parallel universes in which to run multiple simulations of the election.

However, it is unlikely because in the universe we do have, and looking at Australian, UK and US politics over at least the last 40 years, Centre Left and Centre Right parties have tended to win secure majorities when they won a significant slice of the blue-collar conservative vote. This was certainly true for Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Malcolm Fraser, John Howard, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.

In this universe we looked at the appeal of Malcolm Turnbull to centre left voters at the end of last year when he was hugely popular with the centre to left. In our qualitative polling panel he had the support of 31% of ALP and 21% of Greens voters.

We determined at the time that he was on probation, and was popular because these voters thought that he was similar to them in views on climate change, gay marriage and refugees and would also be more in tune with them on the economy. They also found him more likeable than either Abbott or Shorten and they expected him to change the Coalition’s policies.

By the time of the election the only thing that remained was the likability factor giving him a slight edge over Shorten, but with him and Shorten each having a net negative personal approval rating.

Many commentators describe the non-Greens minor party voters as being fundamentally driven by fear for their economic circumstances. In as much as this is the case then the Coalition pitch on the economy should have worked in Turnbull’s favour.

But we find these voters voice concern over cultural issues much more than economic ones (although the economy is definitely an issue). These cultural issues are to do with gay marriage, climate change, Islamic terrorism and refugees. They have a “team Australia” approach, rather than the “camping” approach of the cosmopolitans who tend to populate the inner city centre-to-left political spectrum.

Turnbull appeared unable or unwilling to address these concerns, so these voters felt alienated. Contra the Textor thesis they also have somewhere to go. As demonstrated above, somewhere around 50% of them are happy to preference Labor before the Liberals. It is only a short jump from this to giving Labor a first preference.

Three issues in the election campaign were nominated as being vote changers. They were Medicare/Mediscare, Superannuation, and the Economy. From this it appears that the LNP probably won the Mediscare debate but lost the economy debate, even though they were ranked better than Labor to deal with the economy. They also lost the Superannuation debate, although it didn’t make much difference because not many cared about it.

15% of respondents mentioned Medicare, 3.6% Superannuation, and 36% the economy of economics. We then compared how these respondents reported their first preference vote last election versus whether they cast their preference to favour Coalition or Labor this election.

On Mediscare we found that there was a relative 1.88% swing towards the Coalition from last time Labor voters, but a relative 1.33% swing to the ALP from last time Liberal voters. The relative effect with Greens voters was a relative 3 percent greater swing to the ALP. Let’s call that a dead heat.