6:13pm – Okay I am now signing off.
As previously discussed, every seat has stayed in the hands of the party that already held it. The Liberal seat of Stirling has been abolished and the Labor seat of Hawke has been created with a 10.2% margin.
Apart from the seats created or abolished, the biggest changes were in Hotham and Bruce in south-eastern Melbourne. Labor’s margin in Hotham increased from 5.9% to 11.3%, while in neighbouring Bruce it declined from 14.2% to 7.4%. The Labor margin in Fraser increased by 3.9% from 14.2% to 18.1% and the Liberal margin in Christian Porter’s seat of Pearce declined from 7.5% to 5.2%. No other seat shifted by more than 2%.
Overall you’d be pleased with this result if you were Labor.
I’ll take some time to make the new boundary files before returning with more analysis.
6:00pm – Okay all the data problems appear to be fixed now. I will update my estimates shortly, but it looks like the margin in Hawke is back to 10.2%.
I will be spending the next week or so producing maps for both Victoria and Western Australia and I will return at the end of that process with more discussion about what the actual changes are, rather than just the margins. Thanks for joining me on this messy trip.
4:28pm – It appears that the La Trobe SA1s (and mostly if not entirely just La Trobe) are based on the 2011 census, not 2016. But then there is also some mysterious problem with Ballarat. Right now I’m thinking of switching back to the non-AEC data source which, while not perfectly, largely made sense and added up to roughly the right number of voters. Hmmm.
3:54pm – There’s something weird going on with the data which means that all of old McEwen is being transferred into Hawke. I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of it but Antony has not posted margins for those two seats so I suspect there is something weird with the AEC’s data.
2:54pm – I’m going to take a short break and then come back to continue summarising the changes.
2:50pm – Margins and vote shares for Victoria have been updated based on official AEC data now.
The other changes have mostly stayed the same but my estimate for Hawke has now dropped from 10.2% to 5%.
2:13pm – No seats have changed hands.
The new seat of Hawke is a Labor seat with a notional margin of 10.2%.
The Labor margin in Hotham has expanded from 5.9% to 11.3%, while the Labor margin in Fraser has expanded from 14.2% to 18%.
Labor has done worse in Bruce, where their margin has been slashed from 14.2% to 7.4%.
That’s about it for significant changes.
2:11pm – And here are the estimated margins.
| Seat | Old margin | New margin |
| Aston | LIB 10.1% | LIB 10.1% |
| Ballarat | ALP 11% | ALP 10.1% |
| Bendigo | ALP 9% | ALP 8.9% |
| Bruce | ALP 14.2% | ALP 7.4% |
| Calwell | ALP 18.8% | ALP 19.6% |
| Casey | LIB 4.6% | LIB 4.6% |
| Chisholm | LIB 0.6% | LIB 0.2% |
| Cooper | ALP vs GRN 14.6% | ALP vs GRN 14.8% |
| Corio | ALP 10.3% | ALP 10.3% |
| Deakin | LIB 4.8% | LIB 4.7% |
| Dunkley | ALP 2.7% | ALP 2.7% |
| Flinders | LIB 5.6% | LIB 5.6% |
| Fraser | ALP 14.2% | ALP 18.1% |
| Gellibrand | ALP 14.8% | ALP 13% |
| Gippsland | NAT 16.7% | NAT 16.7% |
| Goldstein | LIB 7.8% | LIB 7.8% |
| Gorton | ALP 15.4% | ALP 14.2% |
| Hawke | New seat | ALP 10.3% |
| Higgins | LIB 3.9% | LIB 3.7% |
| Holt | ALP 8.7% | ALP 8.5% |
| Hotham | ALP 5.9% | ALP 11.3% |
| Indi | IND vs LIB 1.4% | IND vs LIB 1.4% |
| Isaacs | ALP 6.4% | ALP 6.2% |
| Jagajaga | ALP 6.6% | ALP 5.9% |
| Kooyong | LIB vs GRN 5.7% | LIB vs GRN 5.6% |
| La Trobe | LIB 4.5% | LIB 5% |
| Lalor | ALP 12.4% | ALP 12.4% |
| Macnamara | ALP 6.2% | ALP 6.3% |
| Mallee | NAT 16.2% | NAT 15.7% |
| Maribyrnong | ALP 11.2% | ALP 10.6% |
| McEwen | ALP 5% | ALP 5.3% |
| Melbourne | GRN vs LIB 21.8% | GRN vs LIB 21.8% |
| Menzies | LIB 7.5% | LIB 7% |
| Monash | LIB 7.4% | LIB 6.9% |
| Nicholls | NAT 20% | NAT 20% |
| Scullin | ALP 21.7% | ALP 21.7% |
| Tucker (Corangamite) | ALP 1.1% | ALP 1.1% |
| Wannon | LIB 10.4% | LIB 10.2% |
| Wills | ALP vs GRN 8.2% | ALP vs GRN 8.5% |
2:01pm – Thanks to Shen Black, who has made his own estimates of transferred SA1s in Victoria, I have been able to calculate vote shares. Margins will be on their way shortly.
Worth noting that the gap between Labor and the Greens in Macnamara has narrowed from 7.5% to 4.9%. Not as dramatic as expected.
| Seat | ALP 2PP | LNP 2PP | ALP prim | LNP prim | GRN prim |
| Aston | 39.9 | 60.1 | 29.8 | 54.7 | 8.9 |
| Ballarat | 60.1 | 39.9 | 46.8 | 31.8 | 9.0 |
| Bendigo | 58.9 | 41.2 | 43.6 | 31.8 | 10.9 |
| Bruce | 57.4 | 42.6 | 48.1 | 35.5 | 7.6 |
| Calwell | 69.6 | 30.4 | 54.4 | 24.3 | 6.7 |
| Casey | 45.4 | 54.6 | 28.7 | 45.2 | 11.0 |
| Chisholm | 49.8 | 50.2 | 36.5 | 43.8 | 10.8 |
| Cooper | 76.2 | 23.8 | 46.9 | 19.6 | 20.9 |
| Corio | 60.3 | 39.7 | 47.6 | 33.9 | 13.1 |
| Deakin | 45.3 | 54.7 | 32.4 | 47.7 | 9.3 |
| Dunkley | 52.7 | 47.3 | 38.5 | 39.9 | 8.4 |
| Flinders | 44.4 | 55.6 | 24.7 | 46.7 | 6.8 |
| Fraser | 68.1 | 31.9 | 50.8 | 23.9 | 13.9 |
| Gellibrand | 63.0 | 37.0 | 49.1 | 30.8 | 13.9 |
| Gippsland | 33.3 | 66.7 | 23.2 | 54.0 | 6.0 |
| Goldstein | 42.2 | 57.8 | 28.3 | 52.7 | 14.0 |
| Gorton | 64.2 | 35.8 | 51.4 | 28.0 | 7.4 |
| Hawke | 60.3 | 39.7 | 44.3 | 29.3 | 7.4 |
| Higgins | 46.3 | 53.7 | 26.3 | 47.8 | 21.2 |
| Holt | 58.5 | 41.5 | 50.5 | 36.0 | 7.1 |
| Hotham | 61.3 | 38.7 | 51.0 | 33.2 | 8.9 |
| Indi | 37.3 | 62.7 | 12.1 | 44.5 | 4.2 |
| Isaacs | 56.2 | 43.8 | 44.6 | 35.6 | 11.1 |
| Jagajaga | 55.9 | 44.1 | 40.9 | 39.2 | 14.4 |
| Kooyong | 43.4 | 56.6 | 17.1 | 49.3 | 21.3 |
| La Trobe | 45.0 | 55.0 | 33.8 | 45.6 | 7.6 |
| Lalor | 62.4 | 37.6 | 51.6 | 30.1 | 8.0 |
| Macnamara | 56.3 | 43.8 | 30.7 | 37.2 | 25.8 |
| Mallee | 34.3 | 65.7 | 16.5 | 46.7 | 3.7 |
| Maribyrnong | 60.3 | 39.7 | 44.7 | 34.8 | 15.7 |
| McEwen | 55.3 | 44.7 | 39.8 | 35.0 | 9.5 |
| Melbourne | 67.8 | 32.2 | 21.1 | 21.2 | 48.1 |
| Menzies | 43.0 | 57.0 | 30.5 | 50.9 | 10.1 |
| Monash | 43.1 | 56.9 | 29.9 | 46.0 | 7.2 |
| Nicholls | 30.0 | 70.0 | 19.4 | 51.3 | 4.2 |
| Scullin | 71.7 | 28.3 | 60.4 | 22.3 | 6.7 |
| Tucker (Corangamite) | 51.1 | 48.9 | 35.8 | 42.3 | 8.7 |
| Wannon | 39.8 | 60.2 | 26.0 | 51.1 | 6.8 |
| Wills | 75.7 | 24.3 | 44.3 | 18.1 | 26.3 |
1:35pm – The AEC had proposed to rename Corangamite as Cox in the previous redistribution, but cancelled those plans in the final decision. Part of the motivation was that the seat has moved further away from the Lake Corangamite area and close to Geelong. The AEC normally avoids renaming federation electorates, but had decided that Corangamite no longer represented the area referred to in the name.
It appears they have decided to have a second go with Tucker, and this version of Corangamite/Tucker has moved even close to Geelong, with Wannon taking in towns as close as Anglesea and Winchelsea.
1:33pm – As mentioned before, there has been significant population transfer between Higgins and Macnamara in the inner south-east. Beyond that the changes all appear relatively modest, with no great movements of seats.
1:31pm – Looking at the Melbourne area, the seat of Fraser has been pulled closer to the city, pushing Maribyrnong out of the City of Maribyrnong and further into the north-west.
The new seat of Hawke has been created on the north-western fringe of Melbourne, covering Sunbury, Melton, Bacchus Marsh and Ballan. This has had significant knock-on effects throughout the western suburbs.
1:25pm – Bennee in comments has pointed out that the booths transferred from Macnamara into Higgins are much better for Labor relative to the Greens, and the booths transferred in the opposite direction are much better for Labor. This might make Macnamara a notional Greens seat.
1:20pm – Alright it seems like neither the Parliamentary Library nor Antony Green have the SA1 figures for Victoria so I will focus on describing the changes until we get that data.
1:18pm – I’m not entirely sure how you can have only four seats shift towards the Liberal Party (with three shifting significantly to Labor) while a Liberal seat is abolished but Antony’s calculations look the same as mine. Anyone have any theories?
1:16pm – Here are the links to the maps at the AEC:
1:12pm – The AEC website is lacking the SA1-level data for Victoria which will prevent me from calculating vote shares and margins. If you find it, shout out.
12:58pm – I’m going to take a short break then be back with Victoria.
12:57pm – The main changes are in the Liberal seats of Pearce, Tangney and Durack, where the margin has shrunk by 2.3%, 1.9% and 1.3% respectively, and in Perth where Labor’s margin has shrunk by 1.7%.
12:56pm – And here is a comparison of the WA margins before and after the redistribution:
| Seat | Old margin | New margin |
| Brand | ALP 6.7% | ALP 6.7% |
| Burt | ALP 5% | ALP 5.4% |
| Canning | LIB 11.6% | LIB 11.3% |
| Cowan | ALP 0.8% | ALP 0.9% |
| Curtin | LIB 14.3% | LIB 14% |
| Durack | LIB 14.8% | LIB 13.5% |
| Forrest | LIB 14.6% | LIB 14.6% |
| Fremantle | ALP 6.9% | ALP 6.9% |
| Hasluck | LIB 5.4% | LIB 5.9% |
| Moore | LIB 11.7% | LIB 11.6% |
| O’Connor | LIB 14.5% | LIB 15.4% |
| Pearce | LIB 7.5% | LIB 5.2% |
| Perth | ALP 4.9% | ALP 3.2% |
| Stirling | LIB 5.6% | Abolished |
| Swan | LIB 2.7% | LIB 3.2% |
| Tangney | LIB 11.5% | LIB 9.5% |
12:49pm – Here’s my estimates of the vote share for each party in Western Australia’s 15 new electorates:
| Seat | ALP 2PP | LNP 2PP | ALP prim | LNP prim | GRN prim |
| Brand | 56.7 | 43.3 | 40.42 | 29.81 | 11.1 |
| Burt | 55.4 | 44.6 | 41.01 | 32.48 | 9.6 |
| Canning | 38.7 | 61.3 | 27.72 | 48.89 | 7.6 |
| Cowan | 50.9 | 49.1 | 37.85 | 40.02 | 11.1 |
| Curtin | 36.1 | 64.0 | 18.58 | 54.01 | 15.3 |
| Durack | 36.5 | 63.5 | 22.71 | 52.27 | 8.0 |
| Forrest | 35.4 | 64.6 | 21.26 | 52.47 | 12.7 |
| Fremantle | 56.9 | 43.1 | 38.02 | 34.97 | 16.0 |
| Hasluck | 44.1 | 55.9 | 30.34 | 44.15 | 10.8 |
| Moore | 38.4 | 61.6 | 24.74 | 51.52 | 12.1 |
| O’Connor | 34.6 | 65.4 | 20.61 | 55.6 | 8.2 |
| Pearce | 44.8 | 55.2 | 31.72 | 43.76 | 9.8 |
| Perth | 53.2 | 46.8 | 33.6 | 38.97 | 18.4 |
| Swan | 46.8 | 53.2 | 32.91 | 44.74 | 12.0 |
| Tangney | 40.5 | 59.5 | 27.93 | 51.34 | 10.9 |
12:23pm – I’ll go quiet for a bit now while I compile the data to calculate the margins.
12:22pm – Every seat in Western Australia will be redrawn. The AEC specifically mentioned the expansion of Pearce into rural areas further north.
12:21pm – The AEC has proposed to abolish the Western Australian seat of Stirling, and has changed the basis for the naming of the seat of Canning to include Sadie Miriam Canning, Western Australia’s first Indigenous nurse. The seat is already named after Alfred Canning, an early Australian surveyor. It’s not clear to me if there are links between the two.
12:17pm – A new Victorian seat of Hawke has been created, named after Bob Hawke.
29 out of 38 current Victorian electoral boundaries have been modified. I think this means that nine other seats have been left unchanged (although it’s possible they mean that 29 of the new seats are newly drawn, and ten left unchanged).
The seat of Corangamite has been renamed Tucker, after Margaret Tucker, a founding member of the Australian Aborigines League.
12:13pm – The draft electoral boundaries for Victoria and Western Australia for the next federal redistribution have just been released. I’ll be liveblogging a summary of the changes as well as estimates of the vote share in the new electorates.
The new boundaries are required due to Victoria gaining a 39th electorate, and Western Australia losing one of their 16 electorates.
Where is the link to the actual maps at the AEC website? I can’t see one.
Ahah! At last, a straight boundary down Hotham Rd and Williams St between MacNamara and Higgins, as several people suggested last time. Good – down with peanut-shaped electorates!
Jack Aranda, looks to me like that change shifts the bulk of 7 booths where Labor lead the Greens on primary votes by +10 and replaces them with 6 booths where the Greens are +10.
Macnamara could be notionally Green seat.
The Victorian one looks very good overall, and quite close to what I suggested, although some of the individual proposals are a bit weird. The Menzies/Deakin/Chisholm interface is one that looks strange, with the boundary driven right through the central shopping districts of several suburbs…..
Hmmm, I hadn’t been thinking of what booth votes for whom – but if that’s the outcome so be it. The Green vote in Melb Ports/MacNamara has been growing steadily for decades, so it looks like they’ll win it sooner or later on almost any boundary. But from my childhood memories of the innerish east of Melbourne (catching the train from Hawthorn to Prahran and back, jogging on the platform at Richmond to keep warm while waiting for the connection, for a couple of years) it certainly makes more sense to put South Yarra and Prahran in that division than to stretch a loopy boundary out around Elsternwick and Caulfield.
Adam, if you’re still looking, try https://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/2021/wa/proposed-redistribution/ for WA and https://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/2021/vic/proposed-redistribution/ for Victoria. The AEC front page certainly doesn’t make it clear!
The AEC hasn’t published SA1 data for Victoria, but I have done a quick match based on the shapefiles they released, matching to the 2016 SA1 shapefiles. It’s not perfect, but if they take a while to publish it’ll be 99% right. Let me know if you want it Ben.
By my maths, Macnamara is not quite a Green seat but the margin narrows a lot.
MacNamara will probably remain an ALP vs Liberal seat. The strongest Green booth in that area (Windsor) was added last election and it made minimal difference.
“I’m not entirely sure how you can have only four seats shift towards the Liberal Party (with three shifting significantly to Labor) while a Liberal seat is abolished… Anyone have any theories?”
I’m no expert, but I’m guessing the the reason that Stirling was a Liberal electorate was mostly its western end (while the eastern component was essentially neutral, and the central somewhat Labor).
As a result, the extra Liberal vote from Stirling was absorbed into Curtin and Moore, but as both of those were already very safe Liberal, it was like dropping a pebble in the ocean. The ALP vote landed in Cowan, but it then on-pushed similarly ALP areas into Pearce.
It has had a solid impact on Perth though. Certainly would make it a possible Liberal pickup in the right elections as it once was. The Yokine area flips around a bit but falls slightly toward the Libs IIRC.
“Every seat in Western Australia will be redrawn”
Fremantle looks untouched.
I’ll admit, it’s a very neat redistribution. I just want Durack not to touch the Metro area, as that seems highly inappropriate for an electorate including the Kimberley.
The contraction of Corangamite/Tucker will see Anglesea-based MP Libby Coker now living in the safe Liberal seat of Wannon. With a few seats having pretty major boundary changes, I wonder how many other MPs will see this.
JagaJaga in NE Melbourne loses the ALP votes (I think) in Plenty and Diamond Creek to McEwen and gains Kangaroo Ground in the East which tends to vote Liberal. They also pick up Research and North Warrandyte (I have no idea which way those booths fall) and Eltham which leans left.
At least in Eltham the boundary seems to have returned closer to the pre 2019 alignment which saw Eltham taken from JagaJaga and put in Menzies.
Appreciate Shen Black’s analysis. I think though a bit wobbly. For example Goldstein has gone from 57.7 to 54.2 but no change to the boundaries in that electorate. Maybe I missed something?
“The AEC normally avoids renaming federation electorates, but had decided that Corangamite no longer represented the area referred to in the name.”
Kooyong (the suburb) hasn’t been in Kooyong (the electorate) for eons … but still retains it’s name as for being a 1901 seat
AEC just making it up as it goes …. let alone swapping out an Aboriginal name for an Anglo name
#SaveCorangamite
Ben, I think those initial estimates for Victorian seats are a bit ropey.
Aston, Dunkley and Flinders all show changes in margin despite their boundaries not changing at all. And there’s a few others with dramatic changes in margin, that don’t seem justified at face value (pretty sure exchanging Prahran for Caulfield hasn’t slashed Higgins’ Liberal margin!)
Ah, I see there’s a new table there now.
It seems like there’s a mistake in the vote share table, I will look at fixing that. Looks like all the issues raised don’t crop up in the margins table.
Looks like there’s a bug in my Victorian 2PP data (not 2CP). Not Shen’s fault.
You’ll find the error with Ballarat is a space after the electorate name in the SA1 file. Screwed up my calculations for a while.
Corangamite is a Federation seat with an indigenous name and should not be renamed. It would be better if either Hotham or Gellibrand be renamed Tucker as they were named after colonialists. Also Whitehorse road is not a good boundary and divides Box Hill in two. It would be better to use Canterbury Road as a boundary as it currently done at a state level.
Yes I found that problem. I also found a problem where ‘Mcewen’ didn’t match with ‘McEwen’ but I’m still finding a lot of problems with La Trobe in particular…
Alright fixed. I redownloaded the data from the AEC.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/41273#comment-752239
It will be some time before Anglesea is in a marginal seat again. At state level, it will have to wait until Polwarth is dragged far enough into the southern suburbs of Geelong and looses enough rural territory in the west.
Any chance an inner west electorate could ever be created – I’d be interested to see how Greens poll if Maribyrnong, Fraser, Gellibrand’s most inner west areas were redesigned to create a compact inner-west electorate. All three electorates currently appear to include too much territory away from the City for Greens to be competitive.
> I’m not entirely sure how you can have only four seats shift towards the Liberal Party (with three shifting significantly to Labor) while a Liberal seat is abolished but Antony’s calculations look the same as mine. Anyone have any theories?
The Canning Vale area is moderately Liberal leaning. Its transfer from Burt lifts the Labor margin there, but also reduces the Liberal margin in safe Liberal Tangney. So both trend Labor.
There must be other examples like that. The wheatbelt shires are obviously the strongest Liberal areas in Pearce, but apparently still less Liberal than Durack as a whole.
Or to put it more simply, the Liberal margins in Tangney and Durack have probably increased in absolute terms, even though they’ve decreased in percentage terms.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/41273#comment-752254
I highly doubt that such an electorate would cross the Maribyrnong. No electorate is going to cross the inner section of the Maribynong. Maribyrnong is even proposed to be redrawn to avoid crossing the Maribyrnong.
Good to see the names Cowan and Tangney are being retained, and that they’re adding in Sadie Canning for co-naming rights for Canning. The amount of men who lodged submissions suggesting Cowan be abolished was… a worry. Edith Cowan was the first woman elected to any parliament in Australia. It would be a slap in the face for women to have the seat named in her honour abolished. Ditto for Tangney, named after Dorothy Tangney, the first woman elected to the Senate.
I live in Chisholm, and just scratch my head. At the last redistribution the AEC justified the change northward saying they didn’t want to go south beyond the Monash Freeway. Now in this one they make a strange shaped chip off in the north while extending south of the Monash again. Whitehorse Road in Box Hill seems an illogical divider, esp for those in Box Hill and Box Hill North. Eastern Freeway in the North and Monash Freeway in the South seem ideal dividers. I’d expect some objections to this one
A question … in this era of high pre poll and postal voting rates, how are the seat movements margins counted when there is a much reduced correlation between specific polling places and voting? Is it all done on assumed proportions for pre poll voting centres or some other means.
Part of this question is my being surprised by the margin for the new Higgin boundary which I would have assumed would have increased the Lib margin in Higgins but has not done so.
“The amount of men who lodged submissions suggesting Cowan be abolished was… a worry.”
I suspect any of them that would have had a problem with it being named after a woman would be the same ones who had an even bigger problem with it being held by a woman, and even yet bigger problems with it being held by a Muslim woman from the ALP. And that last bit would have been the biggest reason for calling for its abolition
redistributed, that’s an interesting question. It’s difficult to do and in unusual cases where a small area has been moved it can produce weird results. Interestingly the other example people have brought up was in the exact same area at the last Victorian redistribution, when moving some Labor-friendly parts of Higgins around Windsor improved the Liberal position in the seat, since the postal and absent votes I transferred were much more Liberal-friendly than the booth votes.
I have a different methodology for state (as well as local) redistributions and federal redistributions. For the federal redistributions, I use the AEC’s data which maps the number of people from each SA1 who voted at each booth, or who voted by each other method. That tells me how many voters from each booth went into each seat, and then I distribute the votes evenly according to those ratios. Which works great for the local booths, probably works okay for the pre-poll centres (since they are geographically concentrated) but in the case of Higgins it means we’re giving an even share of postal votes from across the electorate, even though the parts transferred are not particularly representative of the rest of the seat. In most cases this doesn’t become a problem.
On the other hand, for other redistributions I don’t have that SA1-level data matching to booth locations. So I assign booths to the seat they’ve been moved into (and have some code that identifies if I’ve moved too many or too few voters so I can manually change the assignments). Other votes are then transferred in an equivalent number matching the population shares that have been transferred, but I don’t just do it at a flat rate. If Labor did better in the booths in one part of the seat, the matching other votes to be transferred will be relatively good for Labor.
The former model is simpler and cleaner, but I am going to try and rebuild my federal redistribution model to apply the same skew based on the booth votes. I’m also not sure how to handle pre-poll votes in this hypothetical new model, which do have some geographic specificity but not as much as the local booths.
My thoughts:
New boundaries in WA look very good. Perth and Cowan more compact. Pearce and Hasluck surely have the most coherent shape and community-of-interest they’ve ever had. Interesting how they addressed the shortfall in Tangney by jumping the Canning river to Wilson; the more obvious option might have been Langford, but maybe that short-changes Burt.
Victoria:
Hawke – basing the new seat on Melton/Bacchus Marsh makes sense. I could see the Sunbury portion moved in a future redistribution.
Gorton – I’ve come to think of Gorton as synonymous with Melton, but I guess that will be Hawke now. Gorton returns to its original 2004 configuration.
Maribyrnong – Interesting new north-south alignment. Ought to be renamed.
McEwen – I though there was a case for finding a new home for the Macedon Ranges. But this was probably rejected because it would involve joining it with too much of suburban Melbourne. Fair enough.
Ballarat – Sensible to align it closely to Golden Plains LGA, places Ballarat itself more centrally in the division.
La Trobe – Pakenham now the central focus, it wasn’t even in the electorate at the 2016 election. Minor deviations with the LGA boundary in the north look odd, until you realise the numbers problem: La Trobe is right at the bottom of the current enrolment variance, and right at the top of the projected enrolment variance.
Isaacs – the strange protrusion in Dandenong replaced with a strange protrusion into Lyndhurst.
Chisholm/Deakin/Menzies – bringing three areas into the Blackburn area is a surprise. The proposal keeps Maroondah LGA together at the expense of chopping Whitehorse LGA to pieces. I wonder if some of this might be reversed at the final step. e.g. Deakin could retain its share of Mitcham-Nunawading, whilst Menzies keeps Warranwood and receives Croydon Hills.
Macnamara/Higgins – the South Yarra/Caulfield rearrangement is back after being aborted a decade ago. Sure to be contentious; will it hold this time?
In terms of ‘community of interest’, Wilson probably has more in common with most of Tangney than Langford does, especially on the river side of the highway.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/41273/comment-page-1/#comment-752323
I think it is possible that Sunbury might move after the objection period for this redistribution, if there is a push for separate separate Ballarat line/Western highway and Sunbury line/Calder highway electorates in the objection period.
Amazing how similar the new boundaries in WA are to your suggestion David.
I really like the compactness of Perth and Cowan, It will be really interesting to see how they end up voting. I expect Cowan is a lot safer for Labor than the margin suggests and Perth looks a lot more marginal. I wonder if Perth would have been won by the Liberals in 2016 with these boundaries.
I think Tangney is getting a little messy, I would like to see the boundaries realligned between Tangney and Fremantle at some point.
It looks like the trend of population growth has been changed by the pandemic/border closure, Victoria would no longer gain the extra seat on the latest population figures, WA is getting closer to 16 again. If the iron ore price stays strong for the next few years I guess WA could get its 16th seat back.
The Liberals are dead in Chisholm. Labor gain even if the coalition win again. The controversies last time won’t sail well with voters in Chisholm with that fraudulent AEC poster but also the fact Victoria, Particularly Melbourne is trending further to the left.
As for Macnamara (formerly Melbourne Ports prior to 2019) I don’t think the Greens can claim they would win on the new boundaries. The Greens still trail the Libs and Labor on the primary so I don’t see why the Greens think they overtake Labor on those numbers. I highly doubt it.
The division of Hawke is surprisingly close, 10% Wonder what the margin would have been post 2013 if anyone knows? I doubt the seat will flip unless you see a 1975 result but even then Labor might just barely hang on.
As for the seat of Stirling I am honestly surprised about the abolition. I didn’t think it would be Pearce but I felt Cowan or Hasluck would have been it. Poor Vince Connelly what does he do now? Run for Cowan? or challenge Porter or run in Pearce should Porter retire or does he move to state politics?
@Daniel, some strong Liberal areas from Stirling have been shifted into Perth. I won’t be surprised if Connelly runs for Perth. The Libs got 37% in Perth last time despite running absolutely no campaign. And now the proposed redistribution makes Perth more competitive for Libs.
Connelly if you ask me should challenge Ian Goodenough for preselection in Moore – Goodenough is useless
You might say Goodenough is Notgoodenough
I assume Connelly will run in a Labor seat. Probably Cowan, possibly Perth. I doubt he’ll make a decision until the boundaries are final. I think the last contest to pit a sitting Labor MP against a sitting Coalition MP was Bruce in 1996.
Daniel, 60-40 is far from “close” and the Labor 2PP in Victoria only improved three points from 2013 to 2019; Hawke is a safe Labor seat. Speculation that the Libs are “dead” in Chisholm is wishful thinking; nobody is basing their vote on a few dodgy signs from three years earlier.
The Northern suburbs of Perth Liberal branches have been totally taken over by the Churches and they are Goodrnough’s base, so I reckon he is safe there.
Perth and Cowan would make more sense. And I have noticed that Vince Connelly have been given more and more Dixer questions in Parliament in an attempt to raise his profile.
I think the Higgins/Macnamara swap will hold this time for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, most objections came from Michael Danby whose base was in Caulfield so he felt like his preselection would be threatened by a redistribution. He’s gone already and while Josh Burns is an ally of his, he doesn’t have the same long standing ties there. Couple that with big Labor swings in Prahran and South Yarra (maybe moreso than in Caulfield?) in 2019 and Labor have less reason to object so strongly.
Secondly, if I recall the strong physical boundary of Dandenong Rd was a justification to not change the boundaries in the past, but that boundary has already been breached now when Windsor was redistributed. Couple that with the proposal actually pointing out Williams/Hotham being a strong boundary.
Finally, the “communities of interest” came up in the past as an objection against the change due to the ties between Balaclava and Caulfield North, but this proposal highlights that communities of interest in a suburban vs inner city context being a main driver for the change, no doubt more relevant than keeping rapidly gentrifying Balaclava with Caulfield.
Word in the Frankston based seat of Dunkley is that former Liberal member Chris Crewther is in a tough preselection race with new Frankston Councillor Nathan Conroy and well-known former State MP Donna Bauer. A fourth candidate is rumoured to be Sharn-Adelle Coombes, who was a participant in Survivor, but locals don’t think she can pull back a 3% margin as an outsider. Coombes may well be positioning to ultimately replace Greg Hunt in the Mornington Peninsula seat of Flinders, where she lives. The Liberals were reportedly trying to find a star candidate for Dunkley if they got a favourable redistribution, but this failed to eventuate.
It won’t matter anyway because Crewther isn’t winning the seat back. Labor will hold it because this is Victoria which will likely will see the coalition lose another 1-2 seats at the next election even if they retain power.
Final WA boundaries are up. Seems like only very minor changes from the original proposed boundaries
https://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/Redistributions/2021/wa/announce-names-boundaries.htm
The Age reports today the field of Liberal candidates looking to knock off popular local MP Peta Murphy in the seat of Dunkley. As suggested, Donna Bauer (now Hope) and Sharn Coombs are among those lining up. The nomination of Deputy Mayor Nathan Conroy is less clear. People are suggesting that past member Chris Crewther is no longer likely to get up – having lost over 8% to Labor in just two elections. The Age reports that Coombs would relocate to move into the seat of Dunkley if she is pre-selected. Conroy and Hope both have some local profile, though all candidates would be starting well behind the incumbent Labor MP. The decision is expected to be announced in July, at which time you can expect to see Morrison come to town too (he visited a church on the very edge of the electorate about a month ago, but has otherwise stayed well away).
Am I correct to assume that they have not actually released maps showing these changes?
Seems like it Ben. Note the box near the top of the “Step 6” page
Overview maps will be available on the website on Monday 2 August 2021. Detailed maps and a report outlining the augmented Electoral Commission’s reasons for the formal determination will be tabled in the Federal Parliament and subsequently made publicly available.
You can work out some of the maps from the verbal descriptions but it’s a bit teejus. So teejus that it’s going to take themn 2 months do do it. (??)
The main interest in WA will be to see if the population has had enough Liberal bashing after the state eleciton, or if there’s still an appetite for more.
Normally, I’d completely divorce Federal and State voting intention here in the wild west, but at the state election, the Federal Liberals seemed to play a big part in how much the party got beaten up at the election, so I wouldn’t assume that the Federal election wouldn’t bash the same group.
Plus, the election would have seen a lot of people vote Labor for the first time ever – that might be the gateway to doing it *again*.
Still nothing in this redistribution has changed, other than the Libs losing a seat. There’s nothing realistic they can pick up in the current WA climate, and the seats they can lose are all the same ones they could before: Swan, Hasluck, Pearce. Oh, and the WA Nats really should have a red hot go at O’Connor again now.
It’s interesting though: the ALP hold close to every state seat covering Hasluck, Cowan, Moore, Tangney, Canning, Pearce and Swan (and a majority in Curtin, Forrest and Durack)
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