Griffith by-election result bad news for Tony Abbott

The previous election the figures were 29.39% and 33.58% for a difference of 4.19%.

What we see when we look at Griffith is at the last election the figures were 30.36% in the senate and 40.36% in the House of Representatives – a difference of 10%.

While not all of that is personal vote, it is safe to say that somewhere around 8% to 9% is.

So, taking out the 3.01% swing Glasson needed to win, this is in effect a swing away from the Government of around 5% or 8%.

There are three things which tend to confirm this analysis.

One is that the ALP claims that Glasson was up 9% at one stage in the campaign and that they pulled it back at the end.

Another is that Glasson has refused to concede defeat hoping that postal and early votes will carry him over the top.

Early and postal votes often reflect the state of play early in a campaign, so if the default position was a 9% swing to the Libs with the loss to Labor of Rudd's personal vote, then that would have reflected in the Liberals polling, and give them some hope they could pick up the difference from these votes.

The last is the fact that the ALP ran television ads during the campaign, at least one in the middle of My Kitchen Rules (I mention this because it wouldn't have been a cheap spot).

It is very unusual for parties to do television advertising in a by-election because most of the people who watch the ad will not be voters in the electorate, and TV ads are expensive.

Labor was very worried that they were going to lose this one, and were labouring under the load of Kevin's last poisoned chalice – his personal vote.

The problem for Labor with this by-election is that most commentators don't bother to try to analyse personal votes, and so all of the coverage I have read takes the figures at face value.