Greens get 15.4% of primaries in Windermere ... OVERWHELMING response !

Most of what I have to say about this is over at pollbludger, but just to let people know (as I did there) that there should be a provisional distribution of preferences for Windermere tomorrow afternoon/evening so by tomorrow night we will hopefully know which of Dean and Hay has won, or whether it is so close we have to wait for the last few postals should trickle in.

Interesting results ... Derwent and Windermere were not greatly different to what I expected (Aird somewhat lower but he did have a bad last few days) but Mersey was very surprising.

The end result will be known soon, but it appears Dean will be across the line.
Apathy, a recent heavy dose of “foody” and the old chestnut “jobs” mantra have inched the incumbent along.
Ex? Labor Hay, is right up there without anything more than one short rehearsed video recording and some pretty posters.
Whish-Wilson has shown a massive swing and the other two anti pulp candidates have done well all things considered.

All in all, it’s to be expected.

Personally I’d like to say thanks to Pete for his tireless work to try to help ALL Tasmanians and his work to save our environment from the unmitigated disaster that has been foisted upon our community.

Ivan if you do get in, wake up and grow up and stand on your own feet if you can…..hope that your children and grandchildren avoid lung conditions from our woeful air and avoid cancers from our poisoned water that you seem so blissfully unaware of.

I caution fellow anti-millers to avoid spinning these results too positively. Sure there are some good signs and a better than usual Green vote but overall its a victory for the status quo. Results such as Windermere are why triazines are being sprayed into catchments, forest “regen” burns persist, the PMAA was passed, PAL legislation etc. At the moment not enough people are worried about these issues, simple as that. Not sure I can see any change of attitude in the electorate in the near future. Unfortunately pro pilp mill forces will see this result as a victory whichever way we try and paint it.

A taste of things to come

(1) “Greens get 15.4% of primaries in Windermere ... OVERWHELMING response !”  HOW CAN ANYONE SERIOUSLY SUGGEST THAT 15.4% OF THE PRIMARY VOTE IN THE SEAT THAT WOULD SEE THE PULP MILL BUILT IS OVERWHELMING IF IT IS WHAT CONSTITUTES A LOSS IN FOR THE GREENS?
(5) “A taste of things to come” YOU MAY WELL BE RIGHT ON THESE FIGURES A PULP MILL IS MORE NOT LESS LIKELY - BUT I DOUBT YOU MEANT THIS.

OK so every loosing candidate puts a positive spin on their loss this is understandable but these comments really show is a triumph of hope over reality. 

The only possible good to come out of this election for the environmental movement is that Kim Booth looks safer in Bass than his opponents might have liked.

Politics is in the end about votes not hopes and the votes were not there and won’t be between now and March 2010 how ever high you raise your hopes.

David Hobart

Great result in Windermere.
A vote for democracy and commonsense.
Why some people tried to push Dean into a corner I cannot understand.
A simple ‘you people have been misinformed’ was turned into you people are misinformed.

Interesting the vote went up in Georgetown.

Tasmanian Times must take note and not let this site be turned into anything but a bastion of truth and honesty.
TT is after all the only site that the common person has of reliably being able to express their views in an easily accessible forum.

Thanks to the Tasmanian Electoral Office, analysing the results is almost child’s play.

On this site, Windermere is most interesting due to the influence (supposed or otherwise) of the pulp mill and the incumbent’s support for that controversial (to say the least) project.

Clearly that support has not claimed Dean’s seat and, indeed, the preference distribution looks odd.

Sands was an anti-mill candidate and yet his preferences were split roughly equally - a slight favourtism for the Green candidate - between his opponents.

Then look at Kaye - another anti-mill candidate. Three-quarters of his prefences went to pro-mill candidates - assuming we can apply that tag to a Labor member as well as Dean. The latter picked up the largest slice - over 200 more than the Green candidate!

Finally, the Green candidate Whish-Wilson. His primary vote was roughly in line with the long-term average Green vote. That was a good result compared to the previous Green candidate - but he did campaign hard from what I could tell. And where did his preferences go? More than two-fifths to Dean!

Hard to say what was in the voters’ minds, but Dean’s mill support was not a problem for him. Do anti-mill voters look beyond that one issue and make a weighted judgment on their preferred candidate? 

On Mersey, there will be a lot of talk about what it says about Labor v Liberal but the reality is it came down to profile and name association.

Gaffney has a strong one on the Coast and generally is thought of positively. Laycock has a relatively low profile for a Devonport mayor and many of those who do know her would attach some negativity to the fact her council is hardly seen in a positive light. Think of the Spirit of the Sea debacle. Then there was Steve Martin - good profile as a regular candidate, Mersey hospital campaigner, restaurenter, and community volunteer - but possibly seen as a one-trick pony, i.e. the Mersey.

The result says little, if nothing, about Labor v Liberal since none of the candidates made anything of their political affiliations.

Finally, Aird and who cares? What was interesting was the vote Jenny Branch got - makes her a good Liberal candidate for the next state election perhaps.

#4 and especially #5….. if you don’t like the result, you can always leave.

With George Town, Rocherlea, Mowbray, Mayfield and Ravenswood all in ‘Windermere’ the resulting unthinking endorsement of traditional party loyalties comes as no surprise. Hay had no mention of ‘Labor’, or ‘Independent’ anywhere on her posters. However, she’s a Ravenswood girl, and pretty and was associated with Jim Bacon and that’s enough for many.
Ivan Dean proclaimed himself ‘Independent’ and in many of the roles he’s taken as a Legislative Councillor has been so, however, his support for the mill and its ‘jobs’ and his reputation, if not the actuality, of being strongly for law and order served him well in his tilt for mayor and for his first election to the LegCo.
The others all did well given their appeal to minorities. There is no way other than the climate change disasters looming on the horizon that the ‘Windermere’ electorate is ever going to change and given the level of functional illiteracy around the place, nothing written either here or elsewhere is going to change that situation.

It’s interesting that Kathryn Hay has been described almost universally as an ‘independent Labor Candidate’ despite, as Mike Adams rightly points out, not having any mention of her ALP affiliation on her posters.

Isn’t there something in the Trade Practices Act about this sort of thing?

Cameron # 11 I would also ask your question.
But remember this is Tasmania.
Mike # 10. This the reason things work the way they do in- This is Tasmania.
The general apathy,no interest and adhering to the old ways no matter what is why we are where we are.
It could only work in Tasmania.
Numbers in the house mate,that’s all that counts.
Until it all changes nothing will change.

This is undeniably a shit results for the Greens, and I would just like to rub that in….
No matter which way you would like to spin it, it is a shit result for the Greens!

The Greens would have done much better had they nominated Whish-Wilson for the November 07 federal election when the pulp mill looked like it would get up. But they didn’t, and the GFC has blunted the danger of the mill becoming a reality for many voters.

Also the tactical trend for candidates opting for the ‘independent’ title (Dean, Hayes, Gaffney etc) is one the Greens will have to contend with in future elections, as voters tend to discount candidates’ earlier affiliations.

With this reality check the Greens seriously need a radical plan so as to break above the 20 percent voter threshold or else resign themselves to becoming the perennial fairies at the bottom of the garden of Tasmanian politics.

Everyone wants to put their own interpretation on election poll results but as a person who has analysed and commentated on Tasmanian elections since 1982 I caution against extrapolating the results from Legislative Council elections onto possible State election outcomes, even when party-aligned candidates are involved.
Legislative Council elections, more often than not, are policy-free zones. The electoral systems are different. It is more about the profiles of the individual candidates and statewide issues rarely come into play. Tasmanian voters seem quite capable of differentiating between lower house and upper house elections.
The small, single-member upper house electorates bear no resemblance to the the multi-member Hare Clark system used in the lower house.
If the anti-pulp mill/Greens want to label it a referendum on the mill then they have a real problem. It seems to me that in the local region (George Town, GT South etc) 72% of voters either voted for Dean or Hay who were identified as supporters of the mill. Even in the inner Launceston suburbs of Newnham and Norwood the pro-mill candidates scored around 60% or above. Moreover, when the two anti-mill candidates were elmininated from the count 71% of their preferences went to Dean or Hay rather than the Greens’ Whish-Wilson. If I were the Greens I wouldn’t be inviting this sort of analysis because it is actually telling Labor and the Liberal party that the mill may not be as big a voter turnoff as has been suggested.
Putting aside Mersey where the former Labor-come-independent Mike Gaffney won, the result for Aird in Derwent wasn’t all that bad. It could be interpreted as a slump in support for Labor (as some have done) but then again, if translated to all of Denison, it would still probably deliver the ALP three seats (52.6% in Abbotsfield, 46% in Austins Ferry, 56% in Roseneath when 49.8% delivers three seats outright under Hare-Clark and usually the third seat is gained well short of that). So, again, if I were the Liberals or the Greens I wouldn’t necessarily want people to draw conclusions about cause and effect from this election. More likely than not it is just a reflection on the individual candidates. Jenny Branch did well for a first-time candidate against an entrenched, well-known member and the Greens’ candidate was pretty much unknown.
The end result, no matter which way you interpret cause and effect, is that Labor won one seat, a person with strong Labor ties won another and in the third, the Labor candidate delivered a credible 45% result. On face value, Labor’s position in the State Parliament is thus strengthened, not weakened.

Mike Lester

Thanks Kevin. I followed proceedings via ‘Poll Bludger’. Good reporting.
Windermere is a curious result. Both Sands and Dean conducted an extensive door knocking campaign.
Hay and Whish - Wilson also door knocked but in a smaller area.
Peter Kaye maintained a website but I am unaware of any other campaigning other than a few newspaper ads.

Kaye’s main campaign focussed on the LGH, no signage, virtually no media. Extremely low profile.
Sands had signs everywhere, campaigned as early as possible. Had platforms on the Tamar health, LGH, No Mill, policing. He was let down on a visual media level, (TV), and did little on radio.

Given the differences, both primary percentages were close between the two. Why?

Dean made himself the ‘man in the news’. Each week, after door knocking, he would have a ‘populist’ concern making the Monday news. It didn’t matter if he was unable to do anything about the issue, (or would do anything), he appeared concerned and his name was burnt into the public psyche.

Many of the working class in Windermere, with no interest in politics, at least knew one name - Dean.

Perhaps the memory of the ‘fast tracked’ mill process and its inherent evils have dimmed for many in the electorate or the public has become apathetic to ‘pulp mill overload’.

It is interesting the large swing against Dean, (and Aird). When you are ready, would you have an analysis Kevin?

Over 60% of the electorate did not vote 1 for Dean. Surely that will knock some sense into his thick head as the electorate is more than disenchanted with his inabilty to represent the majority view in Windermere and the Tamar Valley.

Again Ivan, in case you haven’t received the message loud and clear…we do not want Gunns to build a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley.

We do not want our roads blocked with massive trucks putting our lives at risk.

We do want clean, green, sustainable development along with clean air, clean water and the opportunity for jobs in those areas.

A noted journalist phoned me on the Thursday before the election and asked me if I thought the pulp mill was the major issue in Windermere. I said I didn’t think it was. We are talking about the East Tamar not the West Tamar, I replied, an entirely different demographic in the main. (Cast your mind back to the Rosevears election on the West Tamar in which notable anti-mill Independent Kerry Finch scored over 70% in a two horse race with a pro-miller. That Kerry was also the sitting member counted very much in his favour.)

So what did I think was the main issue in Windermere? Social issues? Law and order? More likely something along the lines of ‘Why do we have to f’ing well vote again?’ I suggested. I was communicated this perceptive insight from one of the five candidates in Windermere several weeks before the election.

Who did I think would win the election? I said it was hard to go past the incumbent. The history of Tasmanians re-electing sitting members, regardless of their performance,  in a house the public tends not to take seriously, is long. I also said I was a sufficient political realist not to indulge in the hope or the expectation that it would not be so.

Some comments on the Comments:

~  if 15% (see Comment 1) is an “overwhelming” vote, what word remains for, say, an 85% vote? Comment 4’s advice “I caution fellow anti-millers to avoid spinning these results too positively”  seems grounded. Still, as Brian memorably sang in extremis, always looking on the bright side has its benefits, as does dismissing setbacks as mere flesh wounds.

Besides, lots of people have a deep, and probably well-founded, suspicion of single-issuers, especially when one recalls whom such narrowly focused activists have, or have had, for company: Padre T de Torquemada, Sgr B Mussolini, Herr A Hitler, Tov. J Stalin, M. Pol Pot, Comrade Mao Z, and O bin Laden.

~  perhaps, therefore, as suggested in Comment 8, “anti-mill voters look beyond that one issue and make a weighted judgment on their preferred candidate”, which is what you’d expect real people to do. People with jobs to go to, real jobs, not make-believe ones, with families to house, feed and clothe, do not spend 90% of their waking hours worrying about The Pulp Mill; perhaps, even -  and I realise that much of the TT collective will decry this as heresy -  there are some people who have things to worry about which are even more important to them than the latest round of Gunns v Greens.

~  and, rather than slagging off at “the level of functional illiteracy^ around the place”, those who think like Comment 10 might consider the ironic sentiments in this Bertolt Brecht poem, penned after the June 1953 workers uprising against the East German government -  you know the one, the mob which had to fence in the denizens of its Workers ‘n’ Peasants Paradise behind the Berlin Wall:

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalin Allee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
 
Get out of politics if you are pining for a New People.

~  finally, Comment 9’s retort “if you don’t like the result, you can always leave” has its surface attractions, recalling that bumper sticker of US conservatives: ‘America: love her or leave her’. But does defeatism do any one any good?

^ as for “functional illiteracy”, it’d be a fair guess that many whose educational theories contributed to this alarming condition would support green politics.

A clear case of blaming the victims if ever there was one: a report this week to the Queensland Government is calling for teachers to be tested for literacy and numeracy before being lawfully let loose on that State’s primary schoolchildren. How unutterably sad is this, and WTF have schools and colleges been doing to these unfortunate graduates for their last 20 or so years?

Link - http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25415795-2702,00.html

There are a lot of perceptive comments from a number of different posters here.  I have submitted a lengthy (perhaps for some too lengthy!) statistical analysis of the results, especially Windermere but also quite a lot re Derwent. (publishing at 12:15am: Ed)

Cautionary note for Labor re points covered by Michael Lester in #15 - while I generally agree there is not much for them to be scared of out of this, Labor usually polls mid-60s to mid-70s in the Denison booths that overlap with Derwent.  So if they were only polling 40s-50s in those booths at state elections they would be in all kinds of horrible trouble in the less pro-Labor parts of the electorate.  But as I note in my forthcoming 7-page epic the difference between Aird 2009 and Labor 2006 in the Derwent/Denison booths is largely down to Jenny Branch’s profile in those booths; it was nothing like as large in booths with similar demographics that were off her patch.

I’d love to see a breakup of where votes came from, for starters there was a hell of a swing against Dean ,however i’ll bet a dollar to a knob of goat shit that there wasn’t an individual in George Town that didn’t vote for anyone that was for the mill, after all the wind doesn’t blow the shit in their direction does it ? added to that house prices there are jack shit at present,  as for Ms Hay ! well that’s typical of Australian red necks and lets face it, they ARE in the majority , put a footy hero, or a well stacked ex beauty queen in front of them and your on an instant winner ,which is why the Labor party are wooing her at this very moment.
          anyone could of picked that one, bloody logical.
                      d.d.

I note that some including Ivan Dean himself have spun the election result as an endorsement for the pulp mill project

I am baffled by this.
Firstly elections are not referendums but if the Windermere result is to be taken that way - my analysis is that the outcome was a resounding NO vote to the pulp mill.
On the weekend Ivan Dean was down 2000 primary votes from the last election, plus the likely loss of a large amount of preferred votes.
A high profile candidate and former Northern Tasmanians commissioner of Police Mr Dean was a very popular winner in 2003 riding to over 50% of the vote on ‘law and order’ issues.  Dean himself admits this. At the time there was no pulp mill proposal. The pulp mill could not and did not underpin his success.
Now in the post pulp mill era when Ivan Dean is renown for his support of the project he loses over 20% of his voters and only manages 39% primary vote.
Dean pulled his strongest vote in areas of Launceston where Law and order is a concern but where interest in politics is low. There is no doubt that some of Dean’s vote was a pro-mill vote, but not as much as the geniuses at Woodchip Communities Australia and in the Labor party would have us believe. Those of us who live and move around this region understand that better those are analysing this election from afar.
That people can spin the Windermere Election result as an endorsement for the pulp mill project is beyond me.
As for Kathryn Hay being a pro-mill candidate. Far from it. Kathryn Hay is another of growing band of recent political candidates who have developed the Gunns Pulp Mill cringe.  One of the Hallmarks of Kathryn Hay’s low profile Campbell-esque campaign was that she carefully avoided any forum including the ABC pollies forum where she might have to declare her support for the pulp mill and for this Labor government.
Hay seemed to do this out of fear it would hurt her vote. Smart girl.
Ivan Dean himself certainly pushed the issue of the pulp mill issue to the background and was at pains not to allow himself to be pigeonholed as “the pro-mill candidate”.
Peter Whish-Wilson’s vote was better than he could have hoped for.  I hope that in time he will appreciate how well he polled.

The way I see it by marrying himself to the Gunns Pulp Mill project Ivan Dean went from being the popular Mayor of Launceston and even more Popular MLC for the seat of Windermere to a disgruntled former Mayor who is merely biding his time on the LCC and hanging on by the seat of pants to a Leg Co. seat that he once owned.
The savaging of Ivan Deans once rising political star by the Launceston and Tamar Valley community is due to one thing and one thing only - Mr Dean’s peculiar blind loyalty to the project that is still very unpopular in the north.
As far as the spinmeisters from the logging industry and the government are concerned. If they are so sure of public support in the region for the mill why not lobby for a regional referendum.
Now that would be a fabulous idea.

I find people here cheering the results of the greens in this election very puzzling.
You lost.
Not even close. It like saying Melbourne morally won the Game agains Geelong to lose by only under 50 points. But they still lost.
Wilson lost by a huge amount.
Labour, running a pro-mill in the past state and federal all won quite easily,and sorry to burst the bubble but Dean won very easily.
Greens are still a minority party,and if this was about the pulp mill, guess what, the people still voted anyone but the greens!!!.

Don (#21), you can see where the votes came from at http://www.electoral.tas.gov.au/ .  I’ll have that dollar thanks; at the George Town booth 27.6% voted for anti-mill (or at least anti-mill-process) candidates and at GT South it was 27.7%.  Once again you could be alienating fellow mill opponents with such generalisations but that would not be anything new.

Pilko (#22), Hay was reported as pro-mill by the Examiner on 18 April and did nothing to correct that impression.  The swing against Dean on primaries is mostly down to a more popular Labor candidate than last time, and also the Greens making a serious effort which they did not do last time.  I cover this in my analysis which has just gone up.

I agree that the result does not demonstrate a specifically pro-pulp-mill vote (since Dean spent much of the campaign diverting to other issues) but what it does demonstrate is that voters were by and large comfortable enough with the mill issue to vote for candidates who either supported the mill or failed to clearly oppose it.  And that counts as an endorsement, because the electorate have had the opportunity to use the election to dismiss the idea and have not done so.

I also think it was not just the mill that saw Dean tossed as mayor, although that was a factor in the small swing against him there.  The two-jobs issue also hurt him, as it has hurt other mayors who have been legislative councillors.

I disagree Kev. Hay hid from the issue and I think it highly contentious to assume she is more popular than Sylvia Smith.
With all due respect Kevin, those of us who live up here and move around this town probably have a more nuanced appreciation for the why’s and wherefores of this campaign. You have to live in this town to understand just how much support Dean has lost over his support of the mill.
Look at the big picture Kev. No mill. Ivan 50.5%. Pulp Mill Ivan 39%. Thats a big drop in his vote.
The pulp mill has just about killed Mr Deans career in politics. If he stands again he wont survive next time around.
Yes, there were a lot of people hoping that Dean would lose his seat but most of us knew that was a little unrealsitic. I would say that the election outcome is probably the best anti-mill folk could have hope for and that they should be encouraged and secure in the knowledge that the project is as on the nose as ever in the region.

Forget all the rhetoric.
Dean elected, end of story.
Pulp mills,foxes,public servants…
Mission accomplished.

p.s Kev. I think you are understating the role the mill played in Dean loss of the mayors job. Yes, all the things you pointed to were issues, but 15,000 voters turned to Van Zettens and Sands because they were running against Dean as overt anti-mill candidates. Both of these blokes actively courted TAP (the organised face of anti-mill position in Launy/tamar valley) and it was very well known around the town who you should give you vote to if you were voting agaisnt the mill.

Re #25 I agree that Hay deliberately avoided making prominent statements on the mill but it is nonetheless the case that she was for it.  As for her popularity, her resoundingly easy election in 2002 at state level demonstrated that.  Smith had had her (mostly narrow) successes in her day but by the end of her LC term was a political semi-eccentric.

It’s ironic that you ask me to look at the big picture when what you are doing is saying Dean lost votes, the pulp mill was a difference between the two elections, therefore Dean lost votes because of the pulp mill.  This kind of focus on a single issue while ignoring the broader picture of possible alternatives is exactly the kind of small-picture thinking you seem to be asking me to avoid.  It just happens to be the sort of small-picture thinking that suits your predelictions, so you claim I’m not focusing on the big picture.  I am, but it’s a messy and complicated one that you clearly don’t want to see.

As for the claim that local knowledge gives you the edge, emotional investment in a local issue can more than reverse that advantage, especially for someone not much given to detached analysis.  Sure, you may have talked to many people who would say they would never vote Dean because of the mill.  Some of them would have voted for him or preferenced him anyway, some would not have voted for him in the first place.  Some would have genuinely changed their mind over the issue, but my analysis suggests the number changing their mind over it in the opposite direction is almost as great.  You may not know these people or have talked to them, and they may have been quieter about their views as those who disapproved - the naysayers about a proposal are often more conspicuous on a day-to-day conversational level. 

Furthermore if Hay was no more popular than Smith and was hence not taking votes off Dean but Dean was simply losing them straight to the Greens and others over the mill, then the booth by booth pattern of swings would be totally different.  The Hay vote would be very similar to the Smith vote with not much booth by booth swing between the two, and nearly all the swing would be straight Dean to Green.  This is not what happened.  There were booths where the Greens got no swing to speak of (compared to their most recent pre-mill state election result, since 2003 is not comparable due to lack of serious campaign) and the anti-mill independents did poorly, and yet there was still a substantial movement against Dean in most of those booths.  There were also booths where there were huge swings against both Dean and Hay, and in those booths the Greens did unexpectedly well and the anti-mill independents did well too.  The mill was certainly a factor for quite a few voters, but it was so in opposite directions in different parts of the electorate to the point that these almost cancelled out.

It is simply not reasonable to just say “oh Dean lost 11 points in primaries”, ignoring the fact that in 2003 there were effectively only three serious candidates (John R Wilson polling <5% doesn’t count) whereas this time there were five, and then go looking for root causes for the whole of that swing and saying that it has to be the mill.

If the pattern was that the mill specifically was causing Dean to lose votes to Hay in truckloads but Hay to then lose votes in similar truckloads to the Greens, then that entails saying that without the mill the Greens would have got a result not much better than John R Wilson got in 2003 even despite running a serious campaign.  And that’s not credible.

Had there been no mill the Greens, just by running a serious campaign in this election instead of a joke one as in 2003 would still have polled at least 12 points, and probably 14.  Ted Sands would still have polled several points simply by virtue of being known as a local alderman.  And Peter Kaye would still have polled some points simply by virtue of his past profile as a broadcaster and his campaign on the hospital.  Hay’s primary saw no increase on Smith’s even though Smith’s was unexpectedly low in that field, so if you are claiming Dean lost a huge chunk of his support specifically because of the mill then precisely who are you saying those votes went to?

Many (but not all) anti-mill posters on this site over the last few years have predicted adamantly that Dean would lose this election.  They were wrong and your confidence that he will be defeated next time is also misplaced.  This was a massive challenge for him but he still won 55-45 which is only bordering on marginal.  Unless a strong and very active campaign is run against him by a high-profile politically mainstream candidate, he will most likely be returned again in 2015, assuming he recontests.

Sorry Kevin. You havent sold me. Its not simply a matter of emotional investment. You are right I do have an emotional investment and that can cloud ones judgement. But being a local and having knocked on plenty of doors as well as working at the local hospital where the turnover of locals is enormous you accumulate a lot of anecdotal information that absentee analysts who are relying predominantly quantitative data dont have. Your analysis is suggesting that those who are against the gunns pulp mill should be dissapointed with the result. Though I repect your expertise and aurthority as a psephologist I profoundly disagree. In the end that is essentially what we disagree about. We know that polls on the mill show around 60% opposition. It is usually higher in the Tamar Valley. Only about 15% of Tasmanians vote Green. So we know statistically and anecdotally that liberal and labor voters are also opposed to the pulp mill. So I believe very strongly that many of those who voted for Hay would have done so whilst having an anti-mill position and most knowing - perhaps because they didnt care enough to find out - that she supports the mill (quietly). So to frame Hay as the other pro-mill candidate and an assume that a vote for her was a vote for the mill is highly problematic in my opinion. Kevin I never predicted that Ivan Dean would lose this election. Infact always thought it would be a bit of a stretch to expect such an outcome. However I would love to have a quiet little wager with you in six years time.

Cheers
rick

Re #27, to say that 15,000 voters *turned* to Sands and van Zetten because of the mill is effectively saying that Sands and van Zetten had virtually no support that didn’t depend on their pulp mill position.  And that’s just not true at all; established aldermen always have some support in a mayoral poll whatever the issues.  It may be that without those two issues affecting him, Dean would have beaten van Zetten more easily than he beat the previous incumbent - indeed, I think that this is likely - but Sands and van Zetten still would have got at barest minimum 30% between them, probably a fair bit more.

I agree that support for the mill sealed Dean’s fate at mayoral level (many of those who voted for him in the LC election probably don’t vote in Council at all, while nearly all the anti-mill voters would) but I do not believe the issue could have rolled him without the added impact of concern about him holding down two jobs.

Pilko, you claim that “polls on the mill show around 60% opposition. It is usually higher in the Tamar Valley.”  I am well aware of that, although we also know that in George Town, an elector poll showed a narrow majority of respondents in favour. I would actually not be too surprised to see a similar narrow majority in favour if a similar poll was conducted in certain of the poorest working and nonworking class suburbs that make up much of Windermere.  Windermere has consistently lagged behind Bass generally in support for the Greens and by implication green causes, and I don’t see why this one should be any different. 

But in any case you are confusing two very different issues.  One is the level of opposition to the pulp mill (how many people will at least say they disagree with it).  The other is the impact of opposition to the pulp mill on what voters do in the ballot box.  There has been a persistent and major disconnect between these things.  That disconnect was the basis of my pre-Federal-election prediction that despite the claimed levels of opposition to the mill, the mill would only drive a single-digit swing to the Greens with even less impact on the 2PP vote.  That prediction proved correct.  Again in this case I co-authored a specific prediction that the vote for WW and Sands combined would not exceed one-quarter plus Sands’ modest personal vote.  As it turned out it did not exceed one-quarter, fullstop.  If I am underestimating the level of hate for the pulp mill as you suggest I am, then why was my prediction actually, if anything, too generous to the anti-mill forces?

Many of those who voted for Hay had an anti-mill position?  Quite likely, and I agree with you that some who are anti-mill would have voted Hay knowing she was quietly pro-mill and knowing that if elected she would almost certainly take an active role in a pro-mill government.  I’ll go further than that - perhaps some of those who voted for *Dean* - and certainly some of those who preferenced him - had anti-mill views as well.  But the point is, it was not enough to swing their votes.  If it had been, Bass would have elected a Green at the last federal election. 

I am not saying that a vote for Hay was necessarily an expression of support by the voter for the mill at all.  I am saying that some booths provide strong evidence that a few percent of voters in those booths supported Dean and Hay because of their position on the mill, and would not have done so otherwise. 

So I am not saying that the result demonstrates that Windermere voters are pro-mill.  What I am saying is that the result showed that opposition to the mill was electorally impotent and that Windermere was insufficiently bothered by the issue to boot a sitting member over it.  Because of the way representative democracy works, Ivan Dean now has a mandate to pursue his pro-mill views for another six years - his stance on the mill was known, indeed notorious, and he was nonetheless returned. 

I’m not sure how much we’re actually disagreeing here anymore Rick - looks more like you’re disagreeing with an understandable but incorrect interpretation of what I’m actually saying.