From as early as his GST campaign Howard has used large scale bribery for purely political reasons. He faces now a challenge which is way beyond anything he has encountered before and clearly has nothing to lose. And Howard is not one to hold back. Voters in marginals DO respond to promises on local projects – just look at the Mersey nurses. It doesn’t have to be good policy – just give em the cash.

Howard is more desperate than any politician I can remember and I do fear for our stable political system if he pork-barrels marginals as never before and gets away with it.
It is possible for him to retain enough of his marginals to win, but massively lose the popular vote.

This could re-define Australian politics – and would be yet another grotesque first for Howard.

Nice job on dismantling the narrowing myth, which seems to be a product of the Liberals’ born to rule mentality.

I recall the Pollycide series listed some high profile ministers facing the scrapheap – do you think the true liberal revolt will hold up to polling day?

in coogee seat – which is a huge hunk of southern wentworth – the greens polled 21%, with 3% – 2pp of those going to the liberals.

in vaucluse seat – the northern half of wentworth – the greens outpolled labor with 20%….peter debnam increased his 2pp 6% off the back of labor preferences.

i can’t get my head around people who vote greens 1 and liberal 2, but they exist, and live in wentworth.

…..the very idea of the ALP representing Woollahra LGA is too funny!!

I’m with you.

I think Mal is sitting on a real margin of between about 5 and 7%.

The problem though is the Greens are apparently polling stronger there than one would ordinarily think would be the case, along with the plethora of independents taking a few points here and there.

I think Mal will have to go to preferences and it will be pretty close, but I don’t think he’ll lose the seat.

I’d actually be pretty surprised if he did.The big caveat is the high number of 18-30 year olds in the seat.Apparently both sides have been having a few problems getting a confident handle on how that group is intending to vote.Lot’s of mobile young professionals in the seat that cant be reached via the usual polling mechanisms, and a fairly large student population as well.

And the Lobs have been closely looking into what they need to do to get preferences for that seat.So it’s close, but I’m still doubtful that Mal will be turfed out.

as a wentworth gal, well phillip really, when you look back at 2001 and not 2004, – it’s more like a 5% swing required – even taking in the 3% re-distribution. on current polling anything is possible…but with malcolm’s personal vote up washing up against the national tide against him…i personally wouldn’t be banking on the voters of wentworth to help make up the 16.

i posted this at LP, what do you reckon???

……..the margins they are quoting in wentworth are fcuked up from the king split lib vote in the 2004 election – but the reality is that the ALP only polled 26.3% primary vote in 2004. the greens polled 11.2% that’s umm. 37.5% – the ALP 2pp ended up being 44.5% and libs 55.5 the combined king/turnbull primary vote was 59%.

in 2001, King got 52% primary, ALP got 29.52%, greens 9.77% dems 6.15%..- the 2PP was 57.86% for King and the ALP got 42.14%.

taking into account the re-distribution of apparently 3%, that’s still nearly 5% in some real liberal heartland.

Also 51% of the respondents in my electorate (MacKellar) are voting Labour – nothing like this hs happened before.

The ex-Minister for Caged Hair is a goner.

Why wait – let’s crack the champagne now.

But tomorrow – multiple posts! (well that’s the plan)

Kirribilli, unfortunately the only polls I can get go back to 1946.

That’s a bit too postmodern for Howards latest time warp.