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Why minor party voters preferenced against the LNP
Wednesday, 04 March 2015 15:07 | Written by Graham Young

What our quantitative polling told us was that the minor party preference vote was crucial to this election and it eventually settled with Labor. What I'm going to attempt to answer in this post is why that happened.

This is a table that compares how significant the important words were at the beginning of the campaign compared to at the end.

Comparison Concepts Table 15 02 04

So we see the words "Economy" and "Economic" decrease significantly in importance, while Government almost doubles to become the most significant concept. Other words, supposedly those the election was being fought over, barely move in importance. "Assets" is slightly more relevant, "Health" slightly less, "Debt" slightly more.

"Unemployment" and "jobs" fall over the course of the campaign, although they were Labor's "number one priority". Conversely, while the Liberals pimped their "Strong team, strong plan, stronger Queensland" slogan, "plan" improves, but not to a particularly high level. "Management" which relates to this slogan also improves, but not to a particularly high level.

The term "government" most often relates to the Newman government and it's alleged governance failings, particularly in the second sample. That integrity issues took off is demonstrated by the fact that governance is less frequently associated with "government" in the first sample. Greens voters only take the term up in the second survey, indicating that integrity issues grew in importance for them during the campaign.

The two Leximancer Maps below give a visual indication of how the issues moved around between polls.

 

Exit Election Issue Thumb 15 02 04

First sample

Exit Election Issue Exit Thumb 15 02 04

 Second sample

 The most noticeable thing is how "assets" has moved around between the two, and taken the Katter vote with it up much closer to the ALP where it also attracts support from One Nation and Family First voters. The second most noticeable thing is how this also comes a lot closer to the term "government", which includes notions of the arrogance of the LNP as well as possible corruption.

So, as per previous comments on some of our quants, asset sales weren't the deciding factor, but they were influential, and to a certain extent validated concerns about style of government. In an election where the flow of minor party and independent voters' preferences made the difference, it explains why they changed during the election period from favouring the LNP to favouring the ALP.

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