Liberals most likely to win in quiet, contradictory poll

You’d barely know Tasmania is having an election tomorrow. I’ve not encountered a single canvasser for any party or candidate on the streets of Hobart in the last week, though on Friday morning I did pass Liberal candidate Simon Behrakis and friends on Macquarie Street, shaking his sign at passing cars like there’s a garage sale on.

I passed far more corflutes on the way to Port Arthur than I encountered in the city. The only high-profile federal politician to campaign on behalf of anyone appears to be Clark independent Andrew Wilkie, who conducted a couple of press conferences on behalf of the indies running in his state equivalent.

In fact, this miniscule target approach may have been working too well — polling of the readership in the local Murdoch paper The Mercury (generally regarded as pro-Liberal) early this week showed a big swing towards independents and the Greens. The reader poll supplemented a uComms poll for the Australia Institute, which gave the Liberals 41.4%, Labor 32.1%, the Greens 12.4% and independents 11%. Sure, there are many reasons to think that overstates the progressive vote, but even local psephologist Kevin Bonham (with all the usual caveats) found it all “a little eye-opening”.