Winning: it's right place, right time

Does a good candidate stand a better chance of winning a seat than a poor one? What is a "good" or "poor" candidate?

Take Maxine McKew in the Prime Minister's electorate of Bennelong. Does she give Labor a better chance than some party hack would? And how would we know?

And does Liberal Jackie Kelly's retirement from Lindsay, around Penrith in Sydney, hurt her party's chances of holding the seat? Or do voters not particularly care who the local candidates are?

There are two types of candidates: those who currently sit in a seat, and those who aspire to do so.

Most MPs, once they're elected, build a personal vote, which might average to a per cent or two. It comes from electors who don't have a strong party loyalty, have seen the member in the local rag and reckon they're not too bad. An MP who regularly displays independence from their party (generally by bagging the leadership) can build up a very high personal vote indeed.

Personal votes can be boosted in other ways. Consider Mal Brough in the Brisbane seat of Longman. His elevation last year from dreary Assistant Treasurer to denim-clad Action Man, a nightly news regular, fronting a popular cause, must be worth quite a few per cent.

On the other hand, you would expect John Howard's personal vote in Bennelong to be high, but after 11 years as Prime Minister it would already be built into his margin.

So it is reasonable to expect that Kelly's retirement has made Lindsay a little more vulnerable than it would otherwise be. At least as important, though, was a redistribution last year that shaved over two per cent from her margin.

But leaving them both for dead is the national mood. Opinion polls currently put the Labor Party at least 10 points ahead across the country, and if Kevin Rudd wins in a landslide, Lindsay will be part of it.

Then there are the candidates trying to snatch electorates from sitting members.

In these cases, it is difficult to know whether candidate "quality" whatever that is makes much, or even any, difference. Often such judgments are made on spurious grounds.

Kelly herself was a star in 1996 when she took the then safe Labor seat with a 12 per cent swing. Not too far away was a similar story in Hughes, with Danna Vale winning with a swing of 11 per cent.

At the time, both results were put down to excellent campaigning by hard-working, no-nonsense candidates with real life experience. But when the smoke cleared it became apparent that demographic changes, mainly increasing wealth, had produced massive swings across the south-west fringes of Sydney.

Neighbouring Werriwa had moved by 10 per cent against sitting member Mark Latham, while Macarthur, which borders all three seats, had moved by 13.

Today you wouldn't know the name of the 1996 Werriwa Liberal aspirant, because although he achieved a swing most candidates would die for, it was in a much safer Labor seat and he never stood a chance.

And the knockabout charms of Kelly and Vale only became apparent after they were elected. Winners are not only grinners; they are invested with all sorts of qualities.

Take the 2007 Labor candidate in the Adelaide seat of Boothby, Nicole Cornes. Regularly portrayed across the country as a bimbo, she recently revealed herself as ignorant about her party's industrial relations policy.

Cornes is actually similar to a Liberal candidate in the Vale/Kelly mould: little past involvement in politics, an "everyday" sort of person. We don't know how Kelly or Vale would have handled questions about the Liberal IR policy in 1996 (or indeed how they would today).

The ALP was always unlikely to win Boothby, irrespective of the candidate, but if Cornes loses, her preselection will be judged a dreadful mistake.

If she wins, it will have been a stroke of genius.

This is the problem with assessments of candidates' "quality": they are always made with hindsight.

Finally, look at McKew in Bennelong with Malcolm Turnbull in Wentworth. One is a challenger, the other an incumbent; both are smart, articulate individuals who have achieved much in life and have a touch of star quality.

But it is by no means obvious that Turnbull stands a better chance of holding his seat for his party than if the sitting member was any old Liberal foot soldier.

And over in Howard's seat, opinion polls consistently put the swing to McKew as smaller than the national one to Rudd.

In the end, most people vote for or against parties, and the swingers those who feel it might be time for a change but are not quite sure about it are more interested in the leaders than the candidates.

And most successful candidates are simply in the right place at the right time. But once they win, the bragging rights are plenty.