Why do sophomore surges happen

So should see what you could call a double sophomore surge for those fourteen Coalition MPs. This is a large part of the reason why, after an election result that delivers many new seats to one side, that party usually performs better, seat-wise, than the pendulum suggests they should.

Four years earlier the Rann Labor government had been re-elected in a landslide, taking six seats from the Liberals in the forty-seven-strong lower house. The commission did this before the election, but Labor withstood a huge swing to the Liberals, and a statewide vote loss, largely by holding, and in some cases increasing their margins in, those sophomore seats.

The result, in March, was a hung parliament and another Labor government, despite Labor only receiving At the federal level, the two biggest swing results in recent times have been the and change-of-government elections. At each of the subsequent electoral outings, in and , those incumbents both suffered swings that should have sent them into opposition — at least, according to the pendulum.

But they survived because each of them performed well in the marginal seats, and that was mainly because most of the marginals were sophomore surge seats. Losing their seat is a bruising experience for most politicians. Often they emerge from the funk to put the whole parliamentary episode behind them and move on to other careers or retirement. But perhaps more of them should consider throwing their hat back into the ring next time.

Kelly was elected for Labor in , defeating the sitting Liberal Gary Nairn. The rest of New South Wales, meanwhile, swung 4. Last year, Eden-Monaro moved to the Liberals by 4. Sophomore surge is a one-off phenomenon only. The new Liberal member, Peter Hendy, was known among political aficionados, but not, it is likely, the big majority of Eden-Monaro voters. But in , with Kelly gone and Hendy developing a personal vote, he should perform, swing-wise, above the average.

The data supports these personal vote dynamics only across seats and on average. What if Kelly were the Labor candidate again in ? He is still a known quantity, he would still pull votes. Hendy would benefit from a single sophomore surge, but not a double.

Wood ran again in and easily regained the seat with a swing larger than the state average. Wood is a former policeman and Kelly an ex-soldier. Uniforms, research suggests, can be powerful builders of personal votes. Custom-built personal votes, however, do make a difference.

Topics: elections politics. Labor, on the other hand, would need to significantly outpoll the Coalition to be likely to win a majority. This is in part because the personal vote of first-term MPs will give the Coalition a boost in many of its marginal seats.

If there were a uniform swing of 3. A majority of voters usually vote based on broad national trends — most seats within a state tend to swing in the same direction. MPs develop personal votes for a variety of reasons. Sitting MPs are prominent personalities in their community. They appear regularly in local media and sometimes in the national media, they attend events and they will do a variety of campaigning outside of election time.

The same is not normally true of their opponents. Federal MPs also benefit from a tremendous financial advantage over their opponents. The federal parliament employs a number of staff for each MP, along with a well-resourced office. Federal MPs also have large budgets for communicating with their constituents. Federal MPs also play a role in providing government assistance to constituents.

If someone has represented their electorate for a long time, you can assume that their personal vote is factored in to their electorate margin. A first-term MP is expected to have some kind of personal vote after representing their electorate for three years.

Thus, you should expect a first-term MP to do slightly better than the national or statewide trend would suggest. This effect is more substantial if they defeated an MP of the opposing party at the previous election.

Personal votes can also be a factor when a sitting MP retires. Sophomore surge is most evident when first-term governments are seeking a second term. If a government is in its first term, most of its marginal seats will be held by new MPs who are building a new personal vote.

If a sophomore surge happens in a series of key marginal seats, it can concentrate any anti-government swing in least marginal areas.