It’s been funny watching people get worked up about “idiot swinging voters.” It seems that the concept that our democracy is based on has been evading them. If a core group of swinging voters didn’t exist, the result of every single election would be the same. If voters hadn’t have swung from Labor to Liberal in 1996, John Howard wouldn’t have been our PM. If voters hadn’t swung from Liberal to Labor in 07 we wouldn’t have had Kevin. We only really have elections to see which way the population has swung.
I guess what was different this year was that they swing wasn’t just between red and blue. Lets not kid ourselves, there was still movement between the Lib-Labs, and probably more people changed sides than the “net” swings will ever show us. But this year the movement favoured the Greens and the Donkeys. This upset the status quo and has now left both red and blue scratching their heads.
To explore this idea further, we’d best have a look at why the concept of “swinging” is so strange to so many. A lot of voters probably have a footy team and see their politics as an extension of this. There are those people who exist under the umbrella of a certain socio-economic lifestyle, and see their vote as reflecting that. There are people in dangerous jobs who are paid up unionists and use this to determine their allegiance. But no one factor ever pins an individual to a team. We all have to make trade offs of conscience and consequence to decide who is really better for us on the day.
Going into the election there were electorates where it is reported that 40% of voters remained undecided. Apparently how-to-vote cards have been shown to significantly increase primary votes – if you have a representative at the booth you’ll gain ground. Just a simple smile at a lost punter can make the difference. So while those of us who’ve been loyal to one party for years might like to think it’s clear cut, for a lot of our fellow voters it isn’t.
So keeping in mind the results only represent the overall swings, and don’t show us exactly how many people fled screaming from somewhere to somewhere else, how did we end up?
Well Labor was down 5.4%, the informal votes were up 1.7%, Liberals were up 1.9% and the Greens win the most improved player award for an increase of 3.7%. I don’t know how we read the fact that the increases add up to 7.3% and the loss from Labor is only 5.4%. I consider it a mystery of politics. (All numbers from ABC and correct on day of reading.)
At the end of the day I guess it’s safe to say people change. Not only that, but parties change too. Hopefully the way government runs will change. And all this change will be good for Australia. Because we may have gone off swinging this election, but our hearts still lie with Oz.
