Leading political analyst Kevin Bonham says Saturday’s election result is a huge mess, and Australia may have to wait weeks to determine who will govern it.
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The polling of Tasmania at this election was systematically wrong
- Kevin Bonham
Dr Bonham, a psephologist, said polling in Tasmania had been “systematically wrong”.
Lyons was the only seat predicted to be in doubt for the Liberals, but Tasmanians overwhelmingly rejected the party, voting out Andrew Nikolic, Brett Whiteley and Eric Hutchinson.
Nationally, the result is undetermined but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he is confident the Coalition can form a majority government.
“It’s an absolute mess,” Dr Bonham said.
“There’s a higher than usual number of unclear seats, we’re not going to know about them for a long time.
“You can see everything from the Coalition still getting the majority expected to the other end where you can see numbers lining up exactly the same as 2010.”
Dr Bonham said the Greens would be powerful in the Senate, joined by all kinds of crossbench senators.
“There’s a few micro parties we can’t even guess at yet,” he said.
He said Tasmanian Greens Senator Nick McKim’s future was uncertain, but he would likely receive preferences from micro parties.
“He might get squeezed out by the major parties, but I think he will probably get back in,” he said.
Polling in Tasmania only predicted Lyons to change hands, and Dr Bonham said it had turned out to be very wrong.
“In fact, the polling of Tasmania at this election was systematically wrong,” he said.
Bass was polled four times by two different companies, and predicted Mr Nikolic would hang on – but he experienced a 10 per cent swing against him.
“None of them got a swing even half of what happened,” he said.
He said Denison independent Andrew Wilkie could end up in a powerful position if there was a hung Parliament again.
