Anyone who has been looking in horror at the political upheaval in the US may welcome Western Australia’s dull and predictable election this weekend.
The Labor premier, Roger Cook, is so assured of winning a third term for his party that the state’s only newspaper didn’t release any public opinion polls until the very eve of the election.
“There is more polling in Tasmania than there is in Western Australia,” the University of Western Australia political analyst William Bowe says.
After an uninspiring and rushed WA leaders’ debate last month, the big question is how far the Liberals, led by Libby Mettam, can re-emerge from the political wilderness after losing the most-one-sided election in Australia’s history in 2021, when they were reduced to just two seats and stripped of opposition status.
Cook, while not enjoying the same rock-star status as his Covid-era predecessor, Mark McGowan, is popular enough in his own right.
On Friday the Australian published a Newspoll that showed Cook’s approval rating at 55%, compared with Mettam at 43%. A DemosAu poll for the West Australian, also published on Friday, had Cook leading 47%-32% as preferred premier, with 21% undecided.
Cook’s profile among the electorate even improved when he inadvertently provided the one breakthrough moment in the campaign – albeit one irrelevant to WA politics – by describing the US vice-president, JD Vance, as a “knob”. He subsequently apologised and acknowledged it was “an extremely poor choice of words” (but also an “extremely popular choice of words”).
The last-minute polls reinforce what analysts have been forecasting – that the Liberals might end up in a position similar to the outcome of the 2017 election, when the long-running government under Colin Barnett was swept aside and the party reduced to 13 lower house seats.
The polls put the swing against Labor in the region of 13%, which would give the Liberals about 11 extra seats – nowhere near enough to threaten the government’s majority.
Martin Drum, a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Notre Dame, says that kind of result would be “what the Liberals need to just be competitive”.
“It is scary that two election cycles have passed and we are talking about the Liberals trying to get back to the same,” he says.
He thinks they will take back nine seats in the Perth metro area, plus Blackwood, Albany and Kalgoorlie in the regions.
For the Nationals – currently WA’s official opposition, with five seats in the legislative assembly to the Liberals’ two – this election is a whole different ballgame.
For the first time, West Australians will choose 37 legislative council candidates under a reformed voting system for the upper house, instead of voting for a representative from their district.
Under the previous system, country areas would elect the same number of representatives as more populous metropolitan areas, leading to an overrepresentation of rural votes.
“The previous system was great for the Nationals because it inflated the value of their votes. There won’t be a Liberal-National majority in the future,” Bowe says.
He expects the Nationals to finish with one or two lower-house seats and the Greens to eat into Labor’s overwhelming upper-house majority by taking out four – one less than their 2001 record.
Bowe says the Liberals face a grim election night if they cannot add to their two seats by taking the neighbouring affluent inner-west electorates of Nedlands and Churchlands. The latter is being touted as a sure thing for the current Perth lord mayor, Basil Zempilas.
But the economic divide is no longer between white-collar wealthy people and blue-collar union members, Bowe says.
A decline in manufacturing industries and the number of low-skilled workers has flipped how Perth’s outer suburbs vote.
“There’s a new class … now that didn’t exist 30 and 40 years ago. These people are abandoning Labor and turning to Liberals,” Bowe says.
“Increasingly the Liberals are a party of affluent tradies rather than professionals and riverside people.”
Meanwhile, Labor has reorientated itself towards tertiary educated voters, and much of its traditional support base has been alienated. This makes space for independents both in WA and at a federal level, Bowe says.
“You have affluent people who care about climate change, with liberal attitudes towards social policy becoming alienated from the centre right parties who used to be all about them.
“The major-party system reflects that old economy that doesn’t exist any more, and that’s why a third of people are not voting [for] major parties.”
Labor may struggle to hold some seats in regional areas because of the upper house changes and the promised federal ban on live sheep exports.
Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis are also expected to pick up upper house seats, Bowe says.
“If the swing is 10%, the Liberals will be lucky to pick up Scarborough and South Perth. If it’s 15%, which is what the national Newspoll from three weeks ago seems to suggest, then they will win those seats comfortably,” Bowe says.
