The State of State politics in Victoria-a historical perspective, and why the Nats are cactus longer term.
Traditionally, Victorian politics came down to just the 3 parties-Labour, Liberal, and the Country party or Nationals. Occasionally an independent would stand but until around 1980 onwards, it really was just the two groups, red and blue.
In 1985 independents started to grow their percentage share of the election result going from 0.8% in 1985 to 6.3% in 1992, the year the Greens also registered a score of 1.2%. Over the next 28 years the Greens increased their result to 11.7% and the independents continued to grow to 11.2%
Over this time period the two main groups had a reducing share of the vote. Labour went from 50% to 43%, Liberals went from 42% to 30%, and the Nationals went from 7.3% to 4.8%.
The shift during this period can best be described as moving away from the two main groups that led the way in politics the previous 80 years to other groups. These other groups may have represented special interest groups or just people who gave up on the red and blue branches of politics after years of failed promises and disappointments.
The following graph shows how the Nationals vote has dropped compared to the other groups (excluding Labour and Liberal), which shows a constant rise over the time period.
The following chart shows all groups share of the vote during the period.
How all this is reflected in the parliament is interesting. In 1985 when the two groups red and blue held nearly all the votes, one party group won the election and their share of the seats won matched fairly closely to the share of the votes obtained. So, in 1985 when Labour won 50% of the votes, they ended up with 56% plus of the seats. In 2018 however, they ended up with 63% of the seats with only 42% of the vote.
So as the system moves away from two main groups to more and varied groups standing the two main groups end up with more seats for less votes. The end result of a two-party system of voting. It takes time as these moves slowly occur but eventually a tipping point is reached in the two-party preferential system when the third placed group leapfrogs the second placed group and takes the seat. This is what occurred which ended up in the Greens taking seats in Parliament. Once critical mass is achieved in a seat this becomes possible.
As voting share increases for independents and reduces for the red and blue groups this shift will continue. It is seen more easily in the upper house in Victoria where the independents gain seats in proportion to their vote and they now command 25% of the seats. If this system was in the lower house also, the share of the last election seats would be as follows.
Labour 37, Liberals 27, Nationals 4, Greens 9, and others 10 instead of what we have now in Labour 55, Liberals 27, Nationals 6, Greens 3, and others 0
Other aberrations are that the Greens party have more than twice the votes of the Nationals, yet the Nationals have twice the number of seats. This is assisted in that the Nationals seats are in rural areas with their voters concentrated in a small number of seats. That gives them the critical mass in votes to win those seats giving them a much higher representation in Parliament than their share of the popular vote justifies.
Going forward the two main groups red and blue do not seem to have anything new to offer those who are steadily but surely drifting away from what they offer and signing up with alternative options. The two groups have fairly consistent policies that they represent unlike the Nationals which appear to have a unique problem of policy shift by location and as was seen with the now defunct Democrat party, when a group can’t stick to its own policies or have policies that make sense, they lose out in the voters’ mind and can even become extinct as a party.
The Nationals are showing state variance-the Qld Nats don’t know if they support or not the coal industry. In NSW they seem stuck on supporting land clearing in the vain belief that farmers don’t care for the environment, and in Victoria at least in South Gippsland representatives, the support seems to go for the same groups as happened 100 years ago. Basically, if you can dig it up, shoot it, or chop it down type industry the Nationals seem to support but seem inflexible to accommodating the word sustainable into their behaviours.
Going forward.
The two main groups will continue to lose voter share and the Greens and then other groups will start to make an inroad into the lower house of the Victorian Parliament. The two groups could lose power in the senate well before that occurs however as the senate continues to represent a fair share of the popular vote to those who win the seats.
The Nationals are probably going to lose more of what little vote share they currently have and, in this area, after the coalition lost Bass to the Labour party at the last election, could find the seat of Gippsland South comes under threat at the next election.
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