A few months ago I put up a post looking at our little inner city seat of Grayndler. Since then we’ve had a change in Labor prime minister, a nail biting election and our first hung parliament in 70 years. (I think Prime Minister Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd literally on the day I posted that last article.) After more than three weeks of counting and recounting the AEC has published the final results of the 2010 election, so I guess that’s as good an excuse to update my electoral graphics as any.
Straight off the bat, I’m pretty sure Grayndler is the second most left leaning seat in the country. Allow me a quiet moment of reflection. Sam Byrne – former mayor and Alfalfa House secretary extraordinaire – of the Greens pipped the Liberal Party for the second spot in the two party preferred race, even giving sitting Labor MP Anthony Albanese a scare early on in the election count. The two party margin between Labor and the Greens widened to over 8% as the night wore on, but it was a great result nonetheless. After the dust settled Anthony Albanese experienced a strong 9% swing against him, with the majority of these votes heading straight to the Greens at a rate well above the national average. The Liberal candidate enjoyed a modest gain as well.
Predictably the closest battle was between the two competing socialist candidates who, to most outsiders, would be so far left as to be ideologically indistinguishable yet I’m sure see their opposing policies as being worlds apart. Indeed.
In Stanmore we had the choice of voting at two polling stations: at Stanmore Public south of the railway (where I voted), and Stanmore Baptist Church to the north. It is quite interesting to review the difference in results between the two stations. The area around Stanmore Public is dominated by more apartments and share houses than on the other side of the tracks. It therefore has a much higher concentration of younger voters, who are traditionally stronger supporters of the left side of politics. This was displayed pretty clearly in the individual station results. Stanmore North polled a much stronger vote for the Liberals, whereas Stanmore Public polled an incredibly strong result for the Greens, well above the seat average. If the Stanmore Public vote was indicative of the wider vote by my estimates the seat would have been delivered comfortably to the Greens.
On a personal note I’m pretty happy with the way the House of Reps votes fell. It’s beyond a cliche now, but the strong Green vote does send a clear message to the incumbent Labor member that a lot of us want to see less talk and more action (or more talk and more action) on a number of issues, including addressing climate change, marriage inequality, pushing sustainable living, ensuring the mining boom provides Australia with long lasting benefits and maybe even dropping this net filter nonsense. Having said that I’m also happy to see Anthony Albanese hold on to his seat. He’s a vocal member of the Labor left and seems to genuinely be a man of conviction and the best intentions. Knock him out of parliament and the Labor factional balance slips a notch further to the right, making the party look even more indistinguishable from the Coalition. In other words he’s one of the good guys and girls. (Of course a Green/Labor coalition would presumably yank the party back to the left quite effectively, but that relies on the electoral perfect storm we saw this year.)
In the Senate NSW predictably elected 2 Labor senators, 2 Liberal, 1 National and 1 Green, which is as good a breakdown of the nationwide split of votes as any. There were some Senate upsets in Grayndler. The Greens enjoyed a large jump over the 2007 results, at the expense of Labor. The Coalition held steady but dropped to third place. Interesting things were also afoot down the bottom of the list. The Democrats dropped out of the top seven completely. The Sex Party and the Shooters and Fishers Party were fresh entrants to our corner of the state. The Sex Party I can understand – its as good a place to park your cheeky libertarian protest vote as anywhere – but the Shooters and Fishers Party? Judging by its current home page a vote for the SFP seems to be a protest vote against the Greens and little else.
In line with the public mood voter turnout was down 2% from 2007 and both polling places registered a higher number of informal votes.
Stanmore and the City 
Bring back feudalism and give me the castle. Did you do pol sci in your BA?
I always thought you had an air of nobility about you. Pol Sci? No, I think it was Sheep Husb, Fascism and the Phallus, Critical Mills and Boone or something like that.