March 08, 2011

Horse 1160 - NSW Election 2011 - The Safest Seat In The House

On the streets of Mosman today, I met Jillian Skinner the incumbent Liberal member for the NSW seat of the North Shore. Surely she has to have the easiest gig in the world.

The electorate of North Shore has the lowest lowest proportion of low income households in the country; the highest proportion of voters working in Finance, insurance, property and business; the lowest proportion of tradesmen and labourers and 62% of all children attend private schools.
To put it simply you can not even get a more obvious seat which would vote for the Liberal Party.

In fact for the 2011 NSW State Election on March 26, only three candidates have been put forward and those are Ms Skinner from the Liberal Party, a Greens candidate and a Christian Democratic Party candidate. Labor haven't even bothered in this election to field a candidate at all.

I wonder on the swing calculators what happens in such a situation. On a two-party preferred basis, does that mean that the ALP scores 0%? If so, what is the point of Jillian Skinner actually being on the streets in the first place? If she wanted to, she could probably spend the whole campaign in Saint-Tropez sipping Pernod and listening to Didier Lockwood whilst reading Le Monde...

...at least that's what I'd do if I was in such a safe and virtually uncontested seat. Where do I sign up for the gig?

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