Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie won last weekends Canning byelection despite an expected 6.5% swing to Labor.

Liberal pollsters had predicted the swing could be as much as 10%, and had claimed that the actual lesser figure was down to Malcolm Turnbull’s seizing of the Liberal party leadership from Tony Abbott.

However this claim has been weakened by figures from the completed count of postal votes. Most of these were submitted before the leadership change.

The postal votes show only a 2.3% swing to Labor. Far less than the overall swing on election day (and after the coup) of 6.5%.

Let’s just do those maths again.

Postal votes submitted before the leadership change showed a swing of only 2.3%.

Votes submitted after the leadership change on election day grew that swing to an average of 6.5%.

These figures suggest that rather than boosting the LNP vote in Canning, Malcolm Turnbull actually added to the swing against the Liberals!

Confirming the view of some pundits that Turnbull’s so called popularity is nothing but an exercise in wishful thinking at best and left wing agiprop at worst.