In yesterday’s blog post I analysed the statistics from my latest Victorian election candidate update, but I wanted to pull out one thing to focus on.
There are 32 independent candidates who have been announced so far. That’s not a particularly high number (102 ran in 2018), but there seem to be quite a few who are running serious competent campaigns. It’s not easy to quantify, but I’ve been visiting each candidate’s website, and a lot of them have a similar vibe to what we saw from the teal candidates in the federal election.
That isn’t to say that they will get a similar result, but it suggests that the groups who ran candidates in the federal election are regrouping – it seems likely many of these independents will be benefiting from knowledge and experience from the same networks.
It’s been pointed out that electoral finance laws are stricter in Victoria (and NSW too) which is true, and the political context is also very different. But it does appear that those independents have inspired like-minded candidates, who probably are running with the support of many of the same people as the federal independents.
So I made a map showing where these independents are.
There are a bunch in rural seats, including incumbents in Shepparton and Mildura, and an independent running in Benambra, in the heart of Helen Haines’ federal seat of Indi.
When you zoom into Melbourne, there are seats with independents all over the place, but there is most definitely a concentration in the inner south-east along the bayside from Albert Park to Mordialloc. There’s also candidates in Hawthorn, Kew and Bulleen, overlapping with Monique Ryan’s seat of Kooyong.
There are a higher proportion of Coalition seats with independent candidates than Labor seats, but it’s not that dramatic. 12 out of 26 Coalition seats have an independent (including independent MP Ali Cupper in Mildura, which I have classified as a notional Nationals seat) compared to 18 out of 58 Labor seats. That’s about half for the Coalition and about a third for Labor.
I doubt we will see the comprehensive defeat of Liberals in inner city electorates that we saw at the federal election, but there has definitely been a change in the type of person running as an independent, and seemingly these independents are running more serious and more competent campaigns.
The map’s not loading, Ben. And I’ve tried it on Firefox and Chrome. The little map at the top showing current party in each district is ok, but there’s just a gap in the text where the main one orta be.
Thanks John, should be fixed now. Map URL needed to be HTTPS but was only HTTP.
Hopefully the independent gets up in Mulgrave. Will be a tough task, but there is an anti-Dan attitude that’s not being captured by polling. Internal polling from Labor is showing roughly a 6% uniform swing against them.
Ashwood has a non-teal independent running, Michael Doyle.
I’d love to see Ian Cook beat the Crook in Mulgrave! Extremely unlucky though!
As for the Teal “independents”, Victoria’s strict donation laws will not help them like the federal donation laws did. I’d expect to see a very close Liberal v Labor in Hawthorn, Caulfield, Kew, Bulleen, etc…
Mark
Impossible task more like. The overlapping seats of Hotham and Chisholm recorded swings to Labor in May, while Bruce recorded a considerable primary loss, which was softened to a small swing in the 2pp count thanks to preferences flowing to Labor rather than the Liberals. The real “anti-dan” swings happened in inner-northern Melbourne and the outer suburbs.
>internal polling
Just because a party has done the polling doesn’t mean it is good polling. In fact, it is often worse as these are amateurs conducting the polling rather than pollsters who are motivated to produce accurate polling (profit) and also know what they are doing. Furthermore, this swing of 6%, real or imagined, is still short of the 12% margin which saw Andrews re-elected in 2018, and the 15% margin that Antony Green calculated after the redistribution last year.
There couldn’t possibly be a worse independent trying to unseat Dan than Ian Cook.
A disgruntled businessman bitter at the government that the health authorities closed his iFoods business due to food safety breaches, really?
Reminds me of the dodgy independent in Macnamara who ran on a platform of revenge against the health association over revoking his license for assaulting patients.
Ian Cook will barely make a dent. He would have a lot of support statewide from the anti-Dan mob but how many will actually be voting in Mulgrave?
He’ll get about 10% and most will come from Lib voters thinking he’s the best chance of beating Dan.
Also, a -6% swing in Mulgrave would still be around a 10% margin for Dan.
@douglas
If you look at the polling booths that are within Mulgrave district, you’ll see that the swings there were much less favourable to Labor than in Chisholm and Hotham overall.
Nevertheless, I agree with you that it is hard to imagine an independent defeating Andrews.
Can we just point out that Mark’s access to Labor’s internal polling is probably limited, and he’s just parroting second/third/fourth/imaginary hand rumours…
The Southern half of Mulgrave, which is in the City of Greater Dandenong, is the sort of lower income safe ALP territory that swung against the ALP in Victorian in May. The polling places that were in all of Mulgrave, Bruce and Greater Dandenong had double digit swings away from the ALP on the primary vote. May of the polling places that were in all of Mulgrave, Hotham and Greater Dandenong had double digit primary swings against the ALP, inluding Noble Park North that had a 22.73% swing. The Mulgrave (Chisholm polling place also had a double-digit swing against the ALP on primaries).
The recent publicity in the Herald Sun about the potential for Andrews to be unseated may cause significantly more donations to head his way from anti-Andrews donors.
Wary of independent polling. I as a rank and file member don’t get access to that….normally accurate internal polling is not provided
Yes most internal polling by parties is not released to the rank and file and is only for the senior party holders, MPs and campaign directors so unless someone leaked it to the media or the one talking about internal polling is a high ranking party official, it’s likely just rumours and gossip. Dan Andrews should be pretty safe in his seat even if there’s a large swing against him since he still has a 16% buffer and the independents contesting are very poor quality and more or less duds. The only way Dan Andrews would lose is if there’s a Melbourne version of Dai Le who lives locally and can appeal to the large Vietnamese community in Springvale and Noble Park.
Another point is a Melbourne version of Dai Le may not appeal in areas such as Wheelers Hill and Mulgrave (suburb) where the demographics are quite different. There is a major social divide in Mulgrave so not a clear community of interest.
Thanks for the list, however some seats with notable independent candidates are missing. Gaetano Greco is running as an independent candidate for Preston. Dr Ian Birchall is running as an independent candidate for Melton. Also note that the independent candidate for Lowan, Amanda Mead, was a Liberal Democrat candidate for Wannon in the May federal election.
Ian Birchall appears to be running again in Melton:
https://allevents.in/melton/dr-ian-birchall-campaign-launch/200023395507355
I don’t live in Victoria, so I have no on the ground feeling about what is or isn’t happening here. But my sense from far distant Queensland is a few things:
1. I don’t think Dan is in any real danger this election. The Liberal opposition appear weak and defeated, so I am interested in what, if any, influence the anti-vax groups have as either a party or independents. From afar, they seem to have, or had, a bit head of steam in Victoria and this may have an influence on this election, or not.
2. I don’t think Dan will be too worried about the rise of Teal independent candidates. They will be mainly snipping at traditional Liberal seats, so his thinking would be more power to them.
3. I find it interesting the on-flow implications from the Teal uprising in the last Federal election. I would be pretty certain that the Teal Federal Members will be providing whatever support they can lawfuly do to likeminded teals candidates within their electoral boundaries. One of the things from the last WA electoral rout was the Liberals had no on the ground campaign support from Liberal / National State Members and this affected their Federal campaign. This may get very ugly for the Victorian Liberal Party.
4. As for other independence, they are always a dime a dozen in any election. Again, as demonstrated in the last Federal Election, what counts is getting name / brand recognition out there, which in turns generates its own head of steam. Without this head of steam, then independents tend to get lost and forgotten.
5. Finally, I think the real danger for Dan will come from the Greens. I wonder if the ALP will start to use Senator Lidia Thorpe rantings and ravings as part of their election campaign – Can you trust this mob?
A 6% uniform swim would still leave Dandrews with a very comfortable margin.
@Matt The polling is going to be presented to the Labor campaign committee next week and signals 14 seats which are at risk of falling.
Time to take off the rose tinted glasses. Daniel Andrews has been a utterly terrible premier. None of you would like him if he was a liberal, that’s the hilarious part.
@Neil
Sorry but I laughed at your comment. It’s very easy to support a terrible premier when you don’t have to live under their rule. You cannot accurately proclaim to sense the mood within a community when you’re a resident in a completely different state. Secondly, the teals are not going to be anywhere near as influential at the state level. This has been established via multiple expert analyses now.
Thirdly, everyone should have a listen to the ABC vox pops by Raf Epstein. He has visited Point Cook, Collingwood, Hawthorn, Caufield and Glen Waverley. The purpose of his trips was to interview the public about the upcoming state election.
In all of them, everyone knew who Dan was. When asked later on in the conversation who they were going to vote for, most were Liberal or openly saying “not Dan”. Very few communicated their support for the premier/Victorian Labor. The rest said they’re still undecided.
The polls that have been publicly released showing 20% leads for Labor in the 2PP are obviously way off, going by the way the parties are campaigning and by what people are saying on the street.
I’ll be happy to concede if I’m incorrect on election night, but I’m quite certain that the election will be much closer than external polls are showing.
@zac A 2PP of 51.3 is not “very comfortable”
Mark
Re: your comment at 1:04 pm, where do you get a 2pp of 51.3 after taking 6%? That is, where do you get his 2pp being 57.3 at the moment? His 2pp at the last election was 62.7, rising to 65.8 after redistribution according to Antony Green, as I mentioned earlier.
@Mark – The discussion was around Dan’s seat of Mulgrave where he holds a margin of 15.8%. So a 6% swing against would leave him with close to a 10% margin still. That is what the comments were referring to.
Also, the supposed 6% swing against Labor is their primary vote I believe, not their 2PP. A primary vote swing is pretty much meaningless.
On a final note, I think it’s pretty clear that any swing won’t be unform because the tide is moving in different directions in different areas. I dare say the swing against Labor will be considerably more than 6% in a number of outer suburban seats (but a lot of them will be seats with 15-20% margins); whereas the inner south-eastern seats are likely to have far less of a swing, if not a small swing the other way against the Liberals.
So it’s a bit redundant to be talking about uniform swings in the current environment, when you could be easily see a +10% LIB swing in Pakenham resulting in a LIB gain, and -1% LIB swing in Brighton result in an ALP gain for example, and that would result in no net change to the seat count despite that averaging out to be roughly a -5% ALP swing across the two seats.
The electoral map and current dynamics are a lot more complex than just applying a uniform swing.
Agree Trent, I think federally Labor did see large primary vote losses in west Melbourne seats, but that only translated into 3-4% 2PP swings. Perhaps the same dynamic will also occur in the state election.
Also consider examples like SA 2010 and Brisbane Council 2016 where you can see double digit swings but still retain safe seats, whilst also having negligible swing in marginal seats. I believe the anti-Dan factor would be lower in affluent inner suburban districts whose residents were not as impacted with lockdowns compared to those in outer suburban areas.
@ Mark
Well I will have to file your comment away and see how well each of us are when it comes to the election result. But I never profess to know the ins and outs of Victoria politics, much like you will have little knowledge of the ins and outs of Queensland politics. It is only my observations from afar and I make no bold predictions to be right.
It is possible that in Wheelers Hill for example which is educated and affluent there maybe a swing to Labor which may offset an adverse swing in the lower income areas in the South of Mulgrave. More affluent areas such as Wheelers Hill were not affected by lockdowns as they tend to have an older population, more people work in jobs that can be done remotely and also have access to Green space like Jells Park while that is not really the case in Springvale or Pakenham where there is a younger population and home schooling was an issue.
With the anti-Dan vote, I do wonder how much more it would be state wise compared to federal? Because if the bulk of it extended to anti-Labor at the federal election then they’re already largely accounted for, as opposed to those who are both anti-Morrison (anti-Lib federal) and anti-Dan (anti-Labor state).
@Yoh An At the federal election, there were large primary vote and TPP swings against Labor in seats in Melbourne’s outer north, namely Scullin and Calwell. Scullin recorded a 14.17% primary vote swing and 6.08% TPP swing against Labor. Calwell recorded a 9.57% primary vote swing and 7.23% TPP swing against Labor. I believe Calwell’s TPP swing against Labor was the second largest in the country after Fowler. At the state election, I expect to see large TPP swings against Labor in seats like Broadmeadows (incumbent MP retiring), Greenvale (new seat), Kalkallo (new seat), Thomastown etc.
According to Sportsbet today, the shortest odds are for the independents to win five seats, and the next shortest are for four seats. I know that the odds are often funny and so I take them with a grain of salt.
Will there seriously be a number of independent gains?
Votentate
I guess second favourite precise result on betting market is for;- not a number of indie gains. ( but rather for a single gain – up from 3 to 4 ).
So answer to your question is no.
I mean there are 3 independents already in the lower house, so those odds imply 1-2 gains which doesn’t seem ridiculous.
Two indepedent MPs, Suzanna Sheed and Ali Cupper, are seeking reelection. Russell Northe is retiring.
2 or 3 new independent gains sounds like a lot. I don’t really foresee a federal-style teal wave at the VIC election. There may be an IND gain in Benambra.
Independents not on your list (most of which were found in the depths of Facebook):
Michael Doyle (Ashwood)
Matthew Bensemer (Bendigo West, contested federal as LDP)
Cameron Liston (Box Hill, his one policy is being anti-Dan)
Michael Ray (Eureka)
Ian Burchall (Melton, ran last time)
Larry Zhao (Point Cook)
Shwetali Sawant (Point Cook, was originally going to run for Victorians Party)
Gaetano Greco (Preston, ran last time)
Bernard Quince (Ripon)
Patrizia Barcatta (Werribee)
Sportsbet has recently opened electorate betting for the Victorian election.
Just scrolled through some of the Sportsbet electorate betting odds, and indeed, it shows there too that whoever is setting their odds is quite bullish on the prospects for both “Teal” and “anti-Dan” independents to win seats.
I’m standing as a community independent in the seat of Bass, others contesting are Greens, Liberals, Nationals and Animal Justice Party. I work with local groups in my community and have been advocating for the last decade on local issues such as Sustainability, Housing Crisis, Climate Change related transitions and the Arts.
We have some significant local issues such as the loss of remnant woodlands to sand mining, a housing crisis, road’s being impacted by 40T trucks approx 1200 per day now and forecast to reach 5000 per 24hr period, no rail service, Westernpot Bay mismanagement by Parks Vic and more.
google Jeni Jobe 4 Bass to check out my messaging, I am not funded by climate 200 and I supported the Voices for Monash campaign in the federal election. Happy to chat.
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