Picking Winners #2: Seats changing hands

There was quite a spread in 2004 as the national, seat by seat, swings show. An earlier post shows the top 20 of these.



In 2004, 70 seats had a swing less than the 1.79% average towards the government and 79 had a swing greater than the average. Yet so few seats changed hands. Those that did were all over the place. All the Coalition wins were with swings greater than the average except one. Reasons varied. Four weeks before the campaign the impact on Tasmanian seats of forest policy could not have been anticipated quite the way it panned out.

If the swing had only been the average 1.79% in the seats picked up by the government, 6 of the 8 would still have been changed hands. Had the swing been uniform then the ALP would have won 59 seats compared with the 60 they did win.

The spread seemed to even out in the end across the nation. But if you're trying to pick a particular seat to have a punt, good luck!

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