Getting the facts right

Clive Palmer on Q&A (ABC 1, 9.30 pm) on Monday night made the claim a couple of times that “Tony Abbott received a record swing for an Opposition Leader at this election.” I’ve heard similar claims before and they are made with the idea that this somehow gives Abbott the right to claim victory.

But what record swing? According to the Electoral Commission the Coalition received a swing of 2.6% on the two-party preferred vote. Now I’m not some kind of elections nerd and I’m not going to go back through every single federal poll to find out when this “record swing” was exceeded, but…for the record an Opposition party received a bigger swing than this in 2007, 1998, 1983, 1980, 1975 and 1969. I’ll stop there. I won’t mention 1961 and 1954…