Day 1: Prepoll is cooked, as always

Before I really launch into prepoll for Day One, let’s put it all in perspective. Last year had a low vote total, and about one-sixth of that came from prepoll. The only election from last year that was broken down by booth was the Prez Race – I did far worse in prepoll than I did for the rest of the election, so let’s not get too hung up about supposed wins/losses here.

Having said all of that: What. Just. Happened.

I hung around a bit in the afternoon to see the show, and ~everything was happening~. Loud fights between tickets, flying a-frames, unlikely alliances, a film crew, half the population of a residential college waiting in line to vote, and a dude in a gorilla suit. How great is student politics?

That’s not a deal, THIS is a deal 

For weeks, Power and Left Action have drawn attention to the fact that Stand Up is unequivocally and pretty vocally backing Liberals into SRC spots, through their deal with Ignite. Unity (Labor Right) shrugs it off, but certain members of NLS (Labor Left) get very angry whenever you mention that they’re actively working towards putting Liberals on the SRC Executive. I highly recommend reminding members of NLS of this as a pastime.

Just before prepoll started, however, a bombshell dropped.

Labor hacks sick of being reminded over and over again that they’d done a deal with Libs pounced on this other “Deal with the Libs”. One snag: they’d seemingly collectively forgotten that the term “deal” means two or more parties actively signing on to it. Power had never done a deal to make this happen, and a bunch of Stand Up and Ignite campaigners were told to delete a bunch of Facebook statuses about it.

Ed McCann, if you’re reading this: I told you, mate, you shouldn’t mess with me and my knowledge of the regulations.

So no, there’s no Power-Liberal deal. It’s just a bunch of Libs that really want to stick the boot into the other Libs in the race on Ignite. I’m going to say it again: How good is student politics?

Also note to everyone else: I called this happening a couple of days ago:

These boot(h)s were made for walking (and talking)

The single prepoll booth, the SRC Offices, made for an easy walk-and-talk vote-winner from the Redfern Boardwalk up to JFR and beyond. Everyone was doing it – and everyone was working with (or against) whoever they could to get those votes.

It’s quite common in these elections for similarly-minded SRC and Honi tickets to team up, with campaigners from each on each side of the voter taking turns to say why you should vote for both of their groups. It… didn’t work like that all the time. In my relatively short time observing it all, I saw Honi campaigners from Wet and Time (actually… Time isn’t that surprising) walking with Alex Fitton (Liberals for SRC), numerous voters being walk-and-talked by two SRC candidates that were also yelling at each other (especially Stand Up v Left Action), some more by two Honi candidates. Contesting votes at prepoll? Hoo boy, this will be a long week.

Not everyone won their votes through walk-and-talks though, as Time finally showed some ability to mobilise the Colleges and get crowds of them to vote. It seemed like a bit of an own goal – a bunch of their campaigners were working hard to get votes from regular students only to put them in a half-hour-at-best waiting line to vote, and many of them decided against that. Maybe they should’ve taken the day off instead – maybe take the week off, Time has certainly earned a break.

A-Frames were meant to fly

“Accidentally” knocking over Liberal A-Frames is a common pastime for many campaigners and passers-by (god I miss Jeremy Elphick), but Riki Scanlan has taken it to a whole new level. 

Legal note: SURG FM does not endorse the throwing of any A-Frames in crowded areas, Liberal or otherwise. If you accidentally bump one and it falls down, though…

In case you wanted to watch it all over again…

Remember the 2011 throwback piece, or just were here in 2011? One of the Extra ticket members was Alex McKinnon – you probably know him from his tenure as Junkee editor until just recently. For reasons only really known to him, he’s helping make a documentary of this whole embarrassing circus. There’s already so much good footage from campaigning to scared-looking students just outside the exclusion zone – can’t wait for that one to turn up in mainstream news.

This was actually the brainchild of Reece Jones, who spent the day filming as McKinnon and others provided commentary. Apparently his motivation was seeing the drama of Reps Elect last year and wanting to see it unfold himself. What an absolute madman.

I thought he was dead…?

Harambe. Yes, that name is somehow still relevant this far into 2016 at the University of Sydney. This election is a mess.

That’s 100% real. This guy is probably going to get elected to Council. Harambe lives forever in our hearts and in the SRC, it seems. We’re all doomed. 

Yes, yes, but what actually happened?

If you’re still reading this far down, you’re probably demanding some actual analysis on what happened today. Here it is: Time and Stand Up won. Probably not as convincingly as they’d like, but with all the college voters going through they both definitely got more votes than the Power bloc, or each of Wet and Sin in the Honi race.

Again, prepoll is hugely skewed by the amount of hacks (and in this case, college voters) coming in to vote – this election is far from over, and you can bet that Power, Sin, and Wet will all come out strongly tomorrow.