The 2004 Federal Election: Why Labor Failed

Abstract

The federal election of 9 October 2004 to elect Australia's forty-first parliament had its roots in unusual circumstances and yielded even more surprising results. On the heels of the Opposition's potentially destructive allegations of the Howard Government's deception over the so called children overboard incident of late 2001, the Liberal-National Party (LNP) Coalition snared 46.7 per cent of the primary vote and 87 seats in the House of Representatives, or a net increase of five.1 The Coalition attained a 2.2 per cent swing to receive 52.8 per cent of the two-party-preferred (2PP) vote. The Liberal Party scored 40.5 per cent of the primary vote (an increase of 3.4 percentage points) to bring it to a near-majority in its own right of 74 seats (a net increase of six). The Nationals, with the loss of a single seat (Richmond, NSW), saw 12 members returned on 5.9 per cent of the primary vote: a tiny increase of 0.3 per cent. For many, the greatest surprise came when the Australian Labor Party (ALP) managed to take just 60 seats (a net loss of five) with just 47.2 per cent of the 2PP vote. Moreover, Labor's primary vote declined by 0.2 percentage points to just 37.6 per cent, its lowest total since 1931, the year Lang Labor split from the ALP. Indeed, if the 1931 vote totals of the two Labor parties are added, then the ALP's 2004 result is, in fact, its worst since 1906, since before the birth of the modern party system.2 The unusualness of the 2004 result is further underscored by the Coalition's securing of a narrow majority, of 39 seats, in the Senate, the first won by any government since the 1977 election. Indeed, the Coalition returned four Senators (three Liberals and one National) in Queensland alone, and three in each of the remaining states. The Greens won two extra seats (Tasmania and Western Australia), while Family First (Victoria) secured its first federal representation. By contrast, the Australian Democrats lost all three recontesting Senators (Queensland, New South Wales,Western Australia), while One Nation (Queensland) lost its sole representative. The Coalition's victory was even more remarkable given the Government, seeking its fourth term, was pitted against a reinvigorated ALP Opposition led by a youthful - and seemingly popular - leader. But this poll was unusual for other reasons. First, the six week campaign was the longest since 1984 and, second, not since 1966 has a government secured a net increase of seats at two successive elections. These circumstances prompt an obvious question: why did the ALP perform so poorly at this point in the electoral cycle and in the wake of its potentially damaging allegations as to the Coalition's integrity? This article argues that four sets of factors were at play: first, the pre-campaign period in which the Coalition laid critical economic preparations and the ALP made significant policy blunders; second, electors' positive perceptions of John Howard's leadership and less favourable perceptions of Mark Latham's; third, the campaign agenda itself in which the Coalition paraded its credentials on management of the economy and, more specifically, on interest rates; and, fourth, the