LEICHHARDT… THE ‘BELL WEATHER’ ELECTORATE
Every election year we get bombarded with the concept of the “bell weather” electorate and what is happening in those electorates purportedly foretelling the outcome of the elections.
But is there really such a thing as a “bell weather” electorate or is it just a marginal electorate that over the last few elections has just followed the election trend and been of sufficiently small margin as to be affected by it only within the limits of statistical probability.
For sure we have the so-called safe seats, and the marginal seats, and in both of these classes of seats there can be a demographic change, often as a result of a boundary change. Given a general swing these seats could well follow the trend and change or remain the same but does that make them bell weather seats.
Eden Monaro in New South Wales and Brand in Western Australia are quite often described as bell weather seats, but is this really the case. I would have thought that Griffith in Queensland and held by Mr. Rudd and Bennelong in New South Wales held by the Prime Minister were the genuine bell weather seats. Now a change in those seats would affect Governmental change.
The 2007 election has had an enormous pseudo election run up and now a long official campaign. Given these things the bell weather seat could just be one of those things to prevent the public getting bored to death with the two-party system that is thrust upon us.
Perhaps if the media reported on the ability and integrity of the Leichhardt candidates instead of trying to inflict a presidential style election campaign on the voters’, bell weather seats would never have been heard of.
…………………………………………………………………………..
To send your comment on this viewpoint, simply click onto NO/COMMENTS>> at the top right corner of this post…
November 19th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Bell - weather - throw the term out and use an approprite fair dinkum australian term - the “Australian” media should be castigated for breathing life into it. No one is prepared to take them to task about it for fear of ridicule at such a sensitive time when the media is somewhat ahead of themselves.