Anyone want to place bets on how this postal plebiscite thing is going to shake out?
FinchChunk, August 12, 2017, 08:40:22 am
OKAY SO
What we've got so far:
-No real idea if the High Court challenge is going to have wings or not, from what I know the question is entirely if Whitlam's postal vote on the national anthem holds up as precedent or not.
-Postal votes tend to skew overwhelmingly towards older demographics, who tend to be more conservative.
-The ACL's propaganda machine is already revving up, as are a number of pro-marriage equality rallies.
-'Morally abstaining' appeared to be an idea gaining traction pretty early, but is getting pretty resoundingly shouted down through various high-profile social media posts. Chances are there'll be some of it, but...
-Transactions with the AEC jumped HARD on Friday, with over sixteen times the usual amount of people enrolling or updating their details. A vast majority of these people are likely doing this specifically to ensure they can vote 'yes', because conservatives tend to be pretty on the ball with updating their details and don't have a whole lot to fight for here.
-Looks like the ABS have no idea what they're doing with this, but that's something that could be resolved in the future.
So in summary, it's probably going to happen, it's gonna be an ugly as hell few months, and we have
no idea how it will shake out since it's essentially a phenomenally conservative-skewing polling method clashing against exactly what gets liberal-leaning voters incensed.
Now, what'll happen after that we can't say for certain. If it comes back 'no' it's likely to just be a big depressing fight for nothing, and Labor will just pass it if they win the next election (which they probably will, barring some cataclysmic disaster). If it comes back 'yes' things get really interesting, as we don't exactly know how it's gonna shake out; Labor's most likely going to be almost all in favor, and the Greens definitely will be, but we legitimately have no idea how many are going to abide by the plebiscite, who's going to vote no regardless, and who might be swayed by more minute details. It's not something that breaks down very easily; fucking
Hanson has said she'll vote in accordance with the plebiscite. So if it comes back 'yes' either we'll see it win by tooth and nail, or get knocked down by a bunch of people going against the public response, and it's pretty much all going to come down to the really esoteric Liberal backbenchers you never hear about.
...And if it gets knocked down after a 'yes' the LNP are going to struggle hard to recover from the fact they went rather specifically against the will of the people and wasted a bunch of money for nothing, meaning Labor win the next election by a landslide. And then pass it in like, the first month.