A few people have asked us, following our slew of seat by seat predictions a couple of days ago, and the considered answer is “maybe”.
It is actually one of the great imponderables of the night.
The seat at over 8% ALP lead is outside our feeling for what the country will do as a whole (we’re thinking about a 6-7% swing – enough to deliver an Abbott landslide) and being Prime Minister should give Rudd some added kudos, but we also have a sneaking feeling people have really gone off Kevin ’13. Labor were on the nose going into the election. And they’ve gone backwards since it was called.
Why? Hard to be emphatic, but we do know this. People – especially those not “ironed on” to one side or the other – love voting to be on the winning side.
It’s been so obvious for so long that the Labor Party have lost this election that people are now busily abandoning the ship in their heads. Abbott has the “Big Mo” as the Americans call it, and Rudd now has a tag he has never really carried before. And that tag is “Loser”.
Shorn of any sense that he is a mystically successful electoral talisman for Labor who would have won easily in 2010 if he hadn’t been shafted by Gillard (a highly dubious assertion) there really doesn’t seem much reason to re-elect him personally. He’s only going to retire, anyhow.
Demographic changes contributed to John Howard losing his seat in the Ruddslide of ’07, it is true. But John Alexander’s subsequent re-taking of the seat shows that it was also very much about the people of Bennelong just being thoroughly sick of Little Johnny.
We’re guessing a little, and there is no poll data after August 22nd to back it up, but on balance we are prepared to stick the Wellthisiswhatithink neck out and say “Yes.” Rudd will lose Griffith.
People will simply be glad to see the back of the Milky Bar Kid. We think. Maybe.
Well, This Is What I Think 