Howards way

Here are my brazen, self-defeating predictions on Australian politics:

1) Labor will have a leadership challenge, probably being won by someone other than Simon Crean or Beasley.

2) In a similar fashion, after Howard fails to retire gracefully, a successful leadership challenge is made by Peter Costello (Keating style) for leadership of the Liberals.

3) In the run up to the election, the electorate will be fairly polarised (ie. Bi-polar as against multi-polar) because of the new faces being offered for PM, will avoid the minor parties somewhat.

4) The election will not be a landslide either way, with neither major party proposing a raft of popular policies - rather, both will have a mixture of popular and unpopular policies.

5) Protest votes will be fairly rare, though there will be a reasonable block of votes swinging away from the incumbents due to the "It's time" view, that comes around after a few elections.

6) I will not predict the actual outcome of the election, other than what I've already mentioned, because the deal between the major parties is to avoid landslides and keep down the minor party votes, not as to actually which side gets in: that is left up to us:- This is the beauty of the two party-preferred compulsory voting system we have. Evolution of politics under our voting principles bring us inevitably to this equilibrium of two major parties/coalitions taking turns in power.