John QuigginWith compulsory full preferential voting, Australia should be the perfect example of Hotelling's Law (two parties converging to the centre). But Labor overshoots and pitches right of centre, Libs move even further right.
Russell Degnan@johnquiggin Two things I'd argue on this. 1) With a reliable preference flow from the left wing (Greens) Labor optimises its vote by going further right as long as the gains right of centre are larger than losses on the left. 2) This assumes Liberals are optimising for the country and not for caucus. In the latter case they will continue to move right even as they lose seats to chase the centre of the tail.