For months, the near-universal consensus has been that this week’s Victorian state election is Labor’s to lose. Even after the world’s longest lockdowns and Australia’s worst Covid performance, the statewide Stockholm Syndrome has apparently been cast-iron. Anyone who’s visited the state and witnessed the robotic chants that “I reckon’s Dan’s doing a great job!” wouldn’t doubt it.
But has all that changed?
Latest state-wide polling has the Labor government and the Liberal opposition neck-and-neck on primary votes. More ominously for Andrews personally, pre-poll voting in his own seat of Mulgrave has run at twice the state average, with exit polling suggesting that the premier is in grave danger of losing his own seat.
Certainly, Dan Andrews’ own campaigning has grown increasingly unhinged. The premier drew widespread condemnation this week, for smearing his opponents as “Nazis”. Prominent Jewish representatives were outraged that a state leader could so casually throw around the slur.
But the tied primary vote means that the preferences of minor parties will be crucial. Which might explain why Labor is frantically targeting the Greens, with whom it will be battling in key inner-city seats like Richmond.
The Victorian Labor party is taking Darebin City council to the supreme court this morning for allegedly removing candidate billboards in what it says is a politically motivated attack from the Greens-dominated council.
The sitting member is a Labor MP from a red-ribbon Victorian Labor dynasty, in what was formerly a safe Labor seat. Now, Kat Theophanous finds herself locked in a death struggle with a Greens challenger.
The Victorian Labor party alleges that in the past two months eight large billboards belonging to Theophanous have been removed from private properties by council without the campaign’s knowledge. Each billboard costs up to $1,163 to create and up to $500 to install.
Theophanous’ campaign team said they investigated and found that the signs had been taken to the tip and two had been destroyed […]
A spokesperson for Labor accused the Greens-dominated council of tampering in the election.
Northcote is, not to put too fine a point on it, Melbourne’s Lesbian Town. Neighbouring Richmond is a gentrified former working-class suburb. In other words, natural territory for the Greens.
The two-party preferred margin is 1.7% meaning the result could come down to hundreds of votes.
The Guardian
Labor is clearly hoping to split the bourgeois femme left vote by pitching the Teal vote.
In a clear demonstration of the Andrews government’s determination to help Climate 200-backed candidates beat moderate Liberals in Saturday’s poll, voters in Hawthorn and Kew, in Melbourne’s leafy east, are being shown ads featuring the faces of Liberal candidates John Pesutto and Jess Wilson.
And, of course, no election campaign would be complete without Labor dirty tricks. Just as Federal Labor lied through their teeth — twice — with the “Mediscare” campaign, Victorian Labor are blatantly lying about Liberal energy policies.
The “Lock the Gate” misinformation campaign being run on Facebook via sponsored ads from Labor claims the state Liberal Party plans to “rip up Victoria’s ban on fracking” […]
The Guy opposition’s gas policy, announced earlier this month, does not relate to fracking, but rather seeks to “turbocharge” onshore conventional gas development, which is already able to occur under existing laws.
The Australian
But Labor’s hedging its bets on the Greens and Teals may be a waste of the hundreds of thousands it is spending on Facebook promotions. Polling also shows that the Greens’ vote has dropped from 12% to 10%. Even more ominously for Andrews, the Independents — the Reason Party, the Animal Justice Party — who were so crucial to his pandemic regime are being punished in the polls. The Independent vote has halved from 12% to 6%.
The “Other” vote — groups like the Angry Victorians Party and the Freedom Party — have surged to 12% of the primary vote.
Which may well mean that Dictator Dan will have to do a lot of preference bargaining to hang on to power.
