Assessing vote trends in the Mayo by-election

It is tempting to see the above rise as the transfer of ALP votes to what is essentially a more leftwing political party, although one with many similar concerns to the ALP. The rise in the Green vote did approximate to the fall in the ALP vote, with the failure of the ALP to endorse a candidate.

The Family First Party gained 28 per cent of the mean first preference vote share in the 2007 federal election. However this jumped to 137 per cent of the mean first preference vote share in the 2008 Mayo by-election.

Where did these Family First votes come from? It is interesting to speculate that these were, at least in part, rightwing ALP voters who were unwilling to identify with the more extreme leftwing agenda of the Greens.

The Conservatives for Climate and Environment are one of the new environmental parties, and in 2007 federal election the party garnered 9 per cent of the mean first preference vote share. In the 2008 Mayo by-election, this rose slightly to 11 per cent of the mean first preference vote share.

It is difficult to ascertain why there was only such a modest rise for this party, given the profile of environmental concerns. One could speculate that environmental concern tends to be closely identified with the Greens, whose marketing and branding has been extremely effective.

The Australian Democrats garnered 11 per cent of the mean first preference vote share in the 2007 federal election, and this rose to 15 per cent of the mean first preference vote share in the 2008 Mayo by-election.

This is indeed the first rise in percentage vote share for the Democrats in nearly a decade, and may give some encouragement to the party. However it is still a long way from the days when the Democrats came close to winning the seat of Mayo in 1998, and the party still has a long way to go to regaining the profile it once held.

This assessment has been limited to parties/candidates who contested both the 2007 federal election and the 2008 Mayo by-election. It could be argued that a central variable overlooked in the above analysis is the tendency for voters to see a by-election as an opportunity to be more adventurous in voting, that is, in voting for a minor party, without this impacting upon who rules the nation.

The results for Mayo don’t seem to support this hypothesis. The seat nearly changed hands to a minor party (Democrat) candidate in 1900 and again in 1998, and in both instances these were general elections, rather than by-elections.