Those who put up election material in Orange drawing comparisons between NSW Premier Mike Baird and Germany’s Adolf Hitler have managed to get their message in the media, but have they changed the mind of one undecided voter with their crude comparison?

It’s hard to imagine so.

The Orange byelection was always destined to generate plenty of attention. 

It comes at the mid-point of the second term of a NSW Government that has taken some big decisions that might be looked back on as courageous and might be looked back on as folly.

It comes in a period for state politics when every poll is invested with added meaning and every utterance from the main by-election combatants is seen as an indication of the state of mind of their leaders.

And it comes after the monumental mess that Premier Baird managed to make of the NSW greyhound racing ban, in which he enraged those who support the industry and enraged those who don’t support the industry all in the same four months, finishing up about where the government started.

But those who reduce the byelection to simplicity do no favours to the democratic process or to the voters of Orange.

The election is not a referendum on greyhound racing and it is not an indication of Nationals voters’ support for NSW leader Troy Grant.

It is not a stick of dynamite for Mr Baird and it is not Labor leader Luke Foley’s insurance policy against any challenge.

It might be a bit of all these things, but it is not any of them alone.

Local Government Minister Paul Toole made an important point at this week’s Local Government Conference when he said the NSW Government’s local government reforms were about more than just the contentious mergers.

In an age in which there are more demands than ever on already weak attention spans, the temptation is to reduce all politics to simple questions and simple themes.

That might mean local government reform becoming mergers alone and it might mean, in the extreme case, Mike Baird becoming Adolf Hitler.

But let’s not forget the complexity or the detail.

A battle of simplicity and hyperbole is a battle in which all voters lose.