Dunking on Dunkley
As voters in the southeast Melbourne electorate prepare to go to the polls on Saturday, the major parties have been aggressively talking down their prospects.
This Saturday voters in the Labor-held seat of Dunkley will go to the polls in what is expected to be a tight contest between the ALP's Jodie Belyea and the Liberal's candidate, local mayor Nathan Conroy.
Normally, both sides in byelections understate their positions to avoid raising expectations.
In the Aston byelection last year, Labor was insisting it wouldn’t win the seat and the Liberals were talking up a devastating loss. When Labor did win, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese looked all the more triumphant because of his side’s aggressive expectation management leading up to the vote.
It was curious, then, that Labor decided three weeks ago to leak a poll to Sky News that showed it was ahead in Dunkley by 52-48% two-party-preferred, which would represent a 4.3% swing. A 4% swing was exactly what the Liberals were briefing to journalists at the time — well short of the 6.3% swing needed to win the seat.
What explained this unusual convergence of interests between Labor and the Liberals to be briefing the same thing? It likely had a lot to do with the Albanese government’s changes to the stage 3 tax cuts, including the need to reinforce that they weren’t panicked into the move by the fear of losing Dunkley.
