The real secret of Secret Harbour

Maybe, but the WA government of Roger Cook has been falling in the polls but still records something like a 53 per cent two-party preferred vote. Did voters really want to send him a message that hard?

Or is this by-election like the Penrith one in 2010 which rang in the end of the first chaotic Rudd prime ministership?

In Penrith, a formerly safe Labor seat, the Liberal Party achieved a 25.73 per cent swing to achieve victory with 51.5 per cent of the primary vote.

Kristina Kenneally was the Premier and the Labor government was on the way to an existential drubbing at the 2011 election, which had to be one factor, but the feedback from the booths was that there was a substantial anti-Rudd sentiment.

Five days later, Rudd’s colleagues removed him. Penrith wasn’t the sole cause, but a 25-point swing in Labor territory could hardly have calmed MPs already staring nervously at their own seats.

Everyone was shocked, apart from those paying attention, because polls had Rudd ahead on a two-party preferred basis by around 52 per cent to 48 per cent, which is not too different from Albanese’s margin against the Coalition today.

There is another possibility. Elections and opinion polls don’t ask voters quite the same psychological question.

When voters have just made a decision, particularly when they have just voted for the winner, they are unlikely to change them.

This is because they have been confirmed in their choice, and because, having just made a decision, they have other more important things to worry about and are not prone to revise it.

If you’ve backed the losing side your psychology is a little different. Because there is a loss you may dig in, resolved to fix it next time, or you may be disillusioned because of the loss.

What appears to have happened in Australian politics is that Coalition voters finished the last election disillusioned, and then since Christmas, and the Bondi Beach massacre, increasingly moved from the Coalition to One Nation.

Nationally, the polls have shown Labor losing support, but nothing remotely like the collapse in Coalition support. Secret Harbour raises the possibility that the next reservoir of One Nation votes lies on Labor’s side as well.