Latham, still a numbers man

Mark Latham notices something in the Super Saturday results:

You won’t see this number in the mainstream media or in spin from the major parties. But across the five by-elections yesterday, the combined major party vote (Labor plus Liberal), on average, was just 55.8%.

True, the Liberal Party didn’t field candidates in Perth or Fremantle, but taking the average for the other three seats (Longman, Braddon and Mayo), the combined Labor/Liberal vote was 62.5%.

This was down from 78.3% at the 2013 Federal election in those three electorates…

… Have no doubt, due to their failures over the past decade, the major parties are on the nose. In two significant cases, the Liberal primary vote has collapsed.

In 2013 under Tony Abbott, the Liberals had a primary vote of 44.8% in Longman and 53.8% in Mayo. Yesterday under Malcolm Turnbull, these figures were 28.6% and 36.3% respectively – in both cases, a drop of 16-17%.

Latham’s full Facebook post can be read via this link or the one below.

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