Voters not entirely ‘switched-off’ yet

On May 19 Galaxy analyst David Briggs observed “when Labor has a really good week in politics the polls don’t move. When Labor has a really bad week in politics the polls don’t move … voters are either not engaged, or even worse, are just not listening.” Post-Budget Focus group research by JWS also found that voters paid little attention to the ‘predictable jockeying and positioning’ by the opposition and Government.

That voters appear to have largely ‘switched-off’ may also be a symptom of the seemingly one-sided election contest, with the Coalition trading within the 85-90 per cent ‘chance of election victory’ range according to betting markets for almost 8 weeks now.

With less than four months until polling day, the Government would presumably welcome (almost) any event capable of re-engaging switched off voters; perhaps resting its hopes on a public stoush with the Coalition ‘big and loud’ enough to do so. But as such a strong favourite, the Opposition has no real interest in being drawn in to a public stoush, seemingly happy to remain a small target.

But data from the political markets in recent weeks suggest that voters have not entirely switched off yet.  Since the release of the budget, there has been almost a 2 percentage point increase in Labor’s re-election chances. Further, the market ‘conversation’ about the relative party prospects was also apparent in trading volumes on the betting exchange Betfair, which have picked up noticeably in the past two weeks or so. 

Despite Labor’s gains, the Coalition remains the firm favourite to take out the election. Unless a bigger, louder, and more widely visible ‘game-changer’ emerges soon, it seems unlikely that political markets will change their tune substantially.