The decline — and fall? — of the Palmer United Party
Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party is facing electoral
oblivion, mere months from its key election test in Queensland, where
the party was established as a vehicle for Palmer’s personal vendetta
against the party he helped found and bankroll, the Liberal National
Party.
State-based polling taken over four weeks in October by Essential Research showed
that PUP had continued its freefall in public support in its home
state, down to 5% in October after consistently losing 1-2 points every
month for much of the year, having peaked at 12% in May. Nationally, PUP
has been hovering at a dire 3-4% for two months, although as recently
as August, it had managed 6%. In contrast to its performance in the 2013
election, PUP is no longer performing noticeably better in Queensland
than elsewhere.
Other polling backs up the decline of PUP. Today’s Fairfax
Ipsos poll has PUP on just 3% nationally, whereas Nielsen polls from
earlier in the year had it regularly managing 5-6%. Newspoll doesn’t
separately track PUP, but “Others” reach 16% and 17% after the budget
and are currently on 14%. As “others” tend to average around 7% in polls
with PUP, that suggests Newspoll is also picking up the fall in PUP’s
vote nationally. Similarly, in Newspoll’s Queensland state polling,
“Others” fell from 24% back to a more typical 18% between June and
September.
At that level, Palmer will barely trouble the scorers in
next year’s Queensland state election, even assuming his now-standard
late-campaign advertising blitz lifts the party a couple of points.
Indeed, Palmer has been distancing himself from PUP’s Queensland campaign, even though revenge on Campbell Newman was the principal reason for the establishment of the PUP.
What’s happened to Clive? For starters, the Palmer model has
some problems built into it. Palmer’s approach to politics has been
shark-like, not so much in terms of its ferocity as in the need to keep
moving. Clive is always in search of the next headline, making
announcements and prognostications but never sticking to one issue so
that there’s a risk of someone spotting his inconsistency or
incoherence. But this sort of approach is ultimately self-limiting — you
can only ramp up the hype for so long, you can only flit from subject
to subject for a limited period, before voters start to wonder about the
detail and the substance, even in our ADD-based polity.
“PUP’s fate
threatens to be that of other minor parties that have made an initial
splash politically but then failed to follow through …”
And the PUP has also suffered from the inevitable problems
of small but initially successful political parties: ego, cliques and
division. Palmer has lost not one but, carelessly, two state leaders in
Queensland, with Alexander Douglas and Carl Judge both walking out on
him. Then, of course, there’s Jacqui Lambie, who has been busily
differentiating her own product as a latter-day Pauline Hanson, an
impressive feat for a party that was founded on the principle of
welcoming asylum seekers. Lambie’s status as the political equivalent of
the flatulent, ranting old relative at Christmas dinner might improve
her voter recognition when she has to seek reelection in Tasmania in a
few years’ time, but hasn’t done the party any particular good among
mainstream voters.
Meanwhile, the Coalition, which initially struggled with all
this confusing “negotiation” stuff in the Senate, has worked Palmer
out, realising that the mining magnate’s vociferous and colourful
objections to its policies count for little when it comes to securing
his support — indeed, the more abusive and graphic Palmer is about
government policies on asylum seekers, financial planning regulation or
climate inaction, the more likely it seems that he will fall into line
with some token concessions. The fall in Palmer’s support appears to
have increased as he has made more deals with the government, suggesting
that dealing with the government has contradicted the essential selling
point of PUP as a disruptive force of populist political outsiders
refusing to engage in business-as-usual politics and holding the line
against unpopular policies.
Who has benefited from PUP’s decline? Like other non-maj0r
party voters, PUP voters appear to be economically Leftish — supportive
of traditional economic interventionism and opposed to
privatisation — but socially conservative. The numbers are too small to
make a sound assessment, but Essential’s Queensland polling shows the
“Other” vote declining as PUP grew, then rising again as PUP has
declined. The interventionist/conservative segment of the electorate is
still looking for a politician that can carry its standard, with Pauline
Hanson, Bob Katter and now, seemingly, Clive Palmer failing to retain
its hopes for the restoration of a golden age of 1950s economic and
social certainty.
In short, PUP’s fate threatens to be that of other minor
parties that have made an initial splash politically but then failed to
follow through on their initial success, partly because of the
impossibility of permanently playing the role of outsider, partly
because the process of actually operating effectively as a party is
difficult for small groups without formal mechanisms. And that’s even
more so when ultimately the party is centred on one individual and his
own agenda.
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