Well, the results are now in for the 2007 best libertarian solo-blogger. Among allegations of electoral fraud, rapid fluctations of fortune, selling sex (pommy) and drawing on our racist fears (fleeced), we have received an unprecidented 1191 votes.
And the winner is… Andrew Norton. Both Andrew and Pommygranate received 13%, but Andrew had a handful more votes. Fleeced finished in 3rd with 12% and Jennifer Marohasy came in 4th with 11%. All very worthy contenders.
And for the next poll we will look at the voting intentions of the libertarian blogosphere. There is a federal election expected around October/November this year and most current polls are predicting a victory to the social democratic Labor Party. But five months is a long time in politics and Howard’s conservative Liberal party has come from behind to win before.
Despite their slow-motion decline, the rural conservative Nationals will expect to remain the 3rd party in Australia. Australia’s most left-wing serious party, the Greens, have a chance of taking Senate control at this election, while the centre-left Democrats are fighting to stay alive.
This will be the first federal election where the moderate-libertarian Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will be standing candidates, competing for a final Senate spot. The Christian conservative Family First Party also will be trying to repeat their 2004 success. Finally One Nation (and/or Pauline’s new United Australia Party*) will be trying to bring the nationalist-conservative fringe of Australian politics back to life. I’ve also given the option of “other” and for people who don’t vote.
* If you want to vote for Pauline’s United Australia party, please tick the “One Nation” box.
UPDATE 02/06/07: When I declared the voting outcome I forgot to turn off the poll… and in the past few days we have had another 350 mystery votes. I have now turned off voting. Andrew is still coming first and Pommy second, with Fleeced and Jennifer Marohasy tied for third.
Australian Libertarian Society (old site) 
Perhaps, where you wrote ‘blosophere’, you meant ‘blogosphere’? And it’s good to see the LDP is out in front, with all two votes cast going to it!!! And all before the advertising blitz!!
As a relative newcomer to these shores, what exactly is the point of the Nationals and the Democrats?
Who do they appeal to?
If you put LDP in there, isn’t the poll going to be a bit predictable given the preponderant readership? What would be more interesting is who libertarians will preference as the lesser evil
Please tell me, what is a ‘blogosophere’? Is it a new type of blogosphere?
OK nicholas “spelling nazi” gray… are you happy now?
I hope so Jason. 🙂 We’ll have lots of time before the next election & I’m sure I’ll run several different political polls — including a “best of the rest” poll.
Pommy — the Nationals are generally considered the pro-rural “redneck” conservative party and are nearly always in coalition with the (more city based) Liberal party. They have flirted with the idea of merging (especially in Qld) but the idea has been vetoed by federal Lib & Nat parliamentarians.
The Democrats were originally formed by a group of “small-l liberals” and disaffected Liberals and they positioned themselves as centrist arbitrators between the Libs & Labor. They generally got a protest or the “I don’t know” vote — and had a dozen or more Senators.
During the 1990s Democrat members and parliamentarians drifted left. Unfortunately for them, the Greens beat them there. They have since lost their centre-right vote, but not picked up any left-wing vote and are now facing political extinction. They will probably poll around 2-3% (perhaps similar to Family First, Pauline and hopefully LDP) and then it will come down to preference flows.
My original middle name was “David”, NOT “spelling nazi”, but I now call myself Nicholas Nice-Guy Gray. That’s my Semihero name, Niceguy. I found that I could convert ordinary girls into lesbians just by talking to them for a few minutes. Don’t worry! I only intend to use my ‘Nice-Guy’ effect for GOOD! Semiheroes have mutant powers that won’t make it to a TV show, but have a real effect on the world! I promise not to go near any models or actresses or MENSA members.
John – is the LDP really in with a realistic chance of a senate spot? I doubt many people outside the blogs have even heard it so you’ll need some pretty sweet preference deals to swing this one…
It’s unlikely, but possible. The LDP got 1% and 1.3% in two previous ACT elections (2001 & 2004 respectively) and that was against a relatively large field in an anti-libertarian jurisdiction and no “above the line” voting. I think 1-2% is a reasonable expectation for the Senate vote. Hopefully more.
In comparison, in the last federal election the Democrats got 2.1%, Family First got 1.8%, One Nation got 1.7% and the Christian Democrats got 1.2%. All had a chance of getting somebody elected with preferences, though it only worked out for Steve Fielding (Family First) who got 1.9%.
One small issue in our favour is that new small parties find it easier to make preference deals as they are seen as harmless. For example, the Democrats/Greens will likely put us before Family First/One Nation, and vice versa.
Just curious about how you plan to get 1-2% of the vote federally?
As you say, FF managed 1.8% after a campaign that included TV advertisements and plenty of exposure in the press.
I’d say getting 1-2% of the vote in the ACT is much easier than doing it federally.
– The state is small so voters don’t face a table cloth senate paper where your party gets lost.
– It’s socially liberal as evidenced by the thriving porn and prostitution industries as well as decriminalised marijuana. Remember Kate Carnell championing a heroin injecting room? I can’t think of anywhere else in Australia where a Liberal incumbent would push such a thing over the wishes of the federal party…
Regarding the ACT — as I said, that contest was against a large field. The federal contest may have fewer opponents, especially given the recent deregulation of all non-represented minor parties.
Second, I don’t think it is true to say that the ACT is a natural constituency for the LDP. We had policies including signficant tax cuts, school vouchers, privatising the bus company, deregulating taxis, voluntary voting, reducing the public service etc. We went to church groups to talk about drug legalisation and abortion. We went to smoking groups to talk about allowing smoking in pubs.
Third, we did very little advertising (none in 2004), got our message out through press releases & the internet… and still had a fairly low name recognition — and yet picked up 1 & 1.3% of the vote.
The reality is that there is a pool of votes out there for minor parties — which explains why the Democratic Labor Party constantly gets more than 1% (and consequently got a Vic upper house seat), the Christian Democrats & Shooters constantly get over 1% and various others get around 1%. With the demise of the Democrats the pool of people looking for a minor party is increasing and we’re perfectly positioned to pick up some of that vote.
I don’t think it’s true to say that the ACT is a natural constituency for the LDP
I didn’t say that. I said that it’s less hostile than most other places. I also doubt the ACT ballot paper was half the size of the NSW senate paper.
Third, we did very little advertising (none in 2004), got our message out through press releases & the internet… and still had a fairly low name recognition — and yet picked up 1 & 1.3% of the vote.
I just checked the AEC records, in 2004 the libertarian independents who ran for the NSW senate got 540 votes, or around 0.01% of the total…
Patience… I must have patience. 🙂
My point about the ACT not being a natural constituency for the LDP was that I think they are the worst constituency for us. Public servants, politicians and pro-government people.
The 2001 NSW Senate “tablecloth” ballot paper is a thing of the past. They have changed the rules several times since then to prevent it happening again. And as I said already, the government recently deregistered all non-represented minor parties. And as I said already, the ACT election was against a fairly wide field. And we will be running in more than just NSW.
Finally, of course the libertarian independents got near 0%. They were below the line (and 95% of people vote above the line) and they had no party name. I predicted they would get near 0%. In the 2001 ACT election I predicted about 1%… in the 2004 ACT election I predicted just over 1%. We can’t see the future — but my judgement on these issues isn’t totally lacking.
I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on the ACT – I lived there for 10 years before moving to NSW and there is a huge difference between ACT politics and NSW politics, public servants notwithstanding.
My recollection of the 2004 ballot paper was that the candidates showed up in their own column as “Libertarian independents”, so they had as much exposure as a real party would.
Granted that you had to vote below the line, but I just can’t see how above the line voting will increase the vote by anything more than an order of magnitude – let alone 10 orders of magnitude.
There should be a betting market on the likely LDP vote. Unless there’s money for advertising in the MSM, my bet is for between 0.05% and 0.2% of the NSW senate vote.
One a more positive note – what campaigning will the party be doing outside the blogosphere for the upcoming election?
Advertising in MSM makes little difference for a minor party. The most important thing you can do is run in many seats with a good party name — that will get you about 1%. The second most important thing you can do is get media coverage of your press releases — moving you up to perhaps 1.5%. After that, mass advertising will probably make the difference between 1.5% and 1.6%. Note that we did advertise in 2001 but not in 2004 ACT election. We haven’t made our plans for campaigning yet.
You estimate of 0.05-0.2% is a poor guess. To put it in perspective, “liberals for forests” (with libertarian candidates who did no campaigning) got 0.53% of the NSW vote. The same party (again with libertarian candidates) got 1.0% and 1.8% in Qld & Vic respectively. Remember that Fielding was elected in Vic with 1.9%.
For more perspective, the Lower Excise Fuel & Beer party and the Fishing party both got 0.5%, the No GST party got 0.24% (this is 2 elections after the GST election), Outdoor Recreation Party got 0.33% and the Ex-service, service & veterans party got 0.32%. We will do better than all of these parties. No party got less than 0.05%.
And remember, as I’ve already mentioned a few times, the government has recently deregistered all non-represented minor parties, so there will be less competition.
Looking at the poll results, it’s pretty obvious that someone was running a bot that voted for everybody but Bird. It looks like it gave everybody but the Bird 75 extra votes.
The following is the result for the seat of Kennedy in 1980. The electorate was sick of the Frazer government at the time, and some of this would have have been a protest vote. Like now.
On a more positive note, it should be remembered that the Katter family have a dynastic hold on this seat, and the National Party was at the time very hard to displace in their homeland.
J.M.Fryar (PP) 2103 (3.7%)
S.L.Hadlow (ALP) 20194 (36.0%)
R.C.Katter (NCP) 33744 (60.2%)
Informal 1021
Estimated two-party preferred: NCP 63.1%, ALP 36.9%
I ran a pretty light campaign, as I couldn’t be spared from my work at the time, and the electorate was about 5 hours drive away.
The point I am making is that we can do it. There were no internet based comunications back then, so letters, press releases, etc were much slower.
I have to apologise for misinforming you in my Blogger Profile, It was Kennedy not Capricornia, and old Bob snuck in by about 31,000 votes. It was a fair while ago, and I lived in Capricornia at the time.
Jim
You were in the Progress Party? I presume this is the remnant of Singleton’s original Workers Party. Whatever happened to those guys anyway?
Thank you Jason.
The Progress Party formed out of the Workers Party after some sort of some sort of internal upheaval. I am not sure what it was about, but there was a lot of vitriol from the few who remained in the Workers Party. Singo was a founding member of the Progress Party.
I had been interested in the Workers Party but was persuaded to join the Nationals which was a bad mistake, as I soon realised that I had little in common with them. I resigned on the formation of the PP and joined it. I think that it was in the 77 state election Bill Runge achieved 10%+ of the vote in Gympie, and we had other high results as well.
Our main support came from Qld, NT, and WA, with NSW relevant but I can’t recall much activity from the other states. In Qld we were the main movers, with the National Executive based here, WA had some good people, but seemed to contribute mainly inspirational messages from Amway adds, while the Territory had a very active branch until two successive presidents were ruined by selective government action, after which the rest up there got the message.
When I worked in the territory I spoke to their president at the time, who told me to avoid making waves, as since he had adopted a lower profile, the Chief Minister, Porky Everingham would speak to him. We were supposed to meet, however he didn’t turn up, I think he read the paper and saw what I had said in it. I don’t hold it against them as they, not me were bearing the full brunt of state attempts to destroy them.
We folded a few years later, rather than accept that the Government had a right to register political parties. We refused to register and ceased to exist as a recognised party. We were probably in retrospect a little too idealistic for our own good.
Most members moved to other parties and I have lost touch with them, but I am still in contact with a couple of them;
Viv Forbes was National Secretary, and has a farm in the Brisbane Valley and remains a committed libertarian.
Ron Kitching we all know. A guy named Kelly Cromby and a couple of others are still around.
The left-overs of the Progress Party still existed in the late 90s… and I got in touch with their coordinator (I can’t remember his name). I received their newsletter for a little while until the party folded.
I kept in touch with John Zube for a while — who was quite active in the Workers Party. He came to Canberra for one of our libertarian dinners and shared some of the material ans stories of old workers party campaigns.
I wasn’t awware of that John, but at about the time we folded I moved out into remote areas to work and pretty much lost contact completely.
John.
The reason for post 16 was that I felt we were being a little pessimistic about our chances, given that at the next election we can expect a lot of Liberals to be looking for somewhere to go.
You young nippers are probably too young to remember Old Bob Katter, and the Nationals under Joh, – more a cult than a political party. It was difficult and sometimes hostile territory. The biggest thing we had going for us was that the regional papers more readily print press releases from minor parties, something we can probably still use.
Are you sure that we can’t do better?
Jim — the 1-2% prediction is for the NSW Senate. I’m sure we will do better than that in many House of Reps seats. I hope our vote will be competitive with the Democrats, Pauline and Family First… which would make us an important part of the political landscape. We can build from there.
The last I heard of the Progress Party was in 2001, when I visited a house in Sylvania Heights, a Doctor’s residence where they printed pamphlets, and gave out a copy of an american paper, which i think was called ‘The Libertarian’. They didn’t seem to have much of a program by then, they just seemed to have a lot of anti-this and anti-that statements.
Still, whilst they now seem to have disappeared, I feature that house in my not-yet-finished book.
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