Politics in Victoria has been gradually becoming more multipolar over time, with a dropping vote for the major parties and an increasing presence for a variety of minor parties. Despite this trend, the vast majority of single-member electorates for parliamentary chambers like the Victorian Legislative Assembly are still contests between Labor and the Coalition. But there is an increasing number of seats where that is not true.
The AEC refers to these contests as “non-classic”. They used to be quite rare, but have become more common over the last two decades.
There was a surge in races involving independents in 1999. That wave receded in 2002, but that election saw the Greens make the top two in four inner north Melbourne seats.
Traditionally some non-classic races were contests between the Liberal and Nationals parties but that hasn't taken place in Victorian state politics since 2006.
When you look at the list of non-classic contests, the same seats do keep coming up.
Mildura has been non-classic at every election since 1996, as well as the 1988 election, which is the longest non-classic streak in the state. Two different independent MPs have held the seat, separated by three terms held by the Nationals. In that time, three independent candidates have successively made the two-candidate-preferred count.
Shepparton has been non-classic since 1999, even though it was Nationals-held until independent Susanna Sheed won in 2014. The Nationals saw off an independent in 1999, the Liberal Party in 2002 and 2006, and the Country Alliance in 2010.
And then the next four seats on the list are Melbourne, Richmond, Northcote and Brunswick.
After five elections with 6-8 non-classic contests from 1999 until 2014, the big step change came in 2018. The Greens made the top two in a fifth inner north seat of Preston in addition to Prahran in the inner south that they had won in 2014.
In addition to Mildura and Shepparton, independents came in the top two in Benambra, Geelong, Morwell, Pascoe Vale and Werribee.
As a proportion of the total seat count, thirteen seats is actually not far off the number of non-classic seats at the recent federal election. 14.8% of seats in 2018 were non-classic, and 18% of seats at the 2022 federal election were non-classic.
You also see an accelerating trend if you look at the number of crossbenchers elected.
A single independent held a seat in the Assembly from 1967 until 1979. There was then a small number of independents who held seats in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
But in 2010, not a single crossbencher won a seat. This was quite unusual for a lower house in Australia at the time (although Western Australia last elected crossbenchers in the lower house in 2008). The Greens had won their first House of Representatives seat at a general election a few months earlier, but a change in Liberal preferencing policy blocked the Greens from achieving the same at the state election.
But there has been another uptick at the last two elections. The Greens won two seats in 2014, along with Sheed in Shepparton. And in 2018, the Greens won a third seat along with independents in Mildura and Morwell.
With a new wave of independents, it's possible we could see records broken with more non-classic races and more crossbenchers, although none of it is for sure. But some of these races will end up being the most interesting contests at the upcoming election. I'm going to return on Monday to look at one particularly interesting contest.
I think the Greens will make the final 2PP in at least Footscray and Pascoe Vale and maybe Albert Park if the liberal vote completely tanks (further)
It looks like Caulfield, Footscray, Hawthorn, Kew, Melton … and maybe even Brighton & Polwarth … might be moving into non-classic territory.
Footscray, Kew and Melton definitely I think. Hawthorn possibly. Caulfield I don’t think so, see my last comment on the Caulfield post.
The Redbridge poll had Labor at 31% and Independent on 8%, the entire western quarter of the seat is ALP/Greens heartland that isn’t really teal territory and will make it harder for the independent to pass Labor, and apparently recent internal polling shows the independent in “distant third”.
@Trent
The “recent internal polling” doesn’t exist. It was an assumption made by Ham.
Secondly, RedBridge isn’t really credible, as discussed many times on here. I believe it will be a Lib vs ALP contest but the numbers RedBridge shows are completely out of whack due to heavily skewed/leading questioning.
I don’t understand what you’re disagreeing with then.
I say it will be a LIB v ALP contest, because the Redbridge polling which has leading questions supporting independents didn’t show the independent in a winning position.
Then you disagree with me, because you think the Redbridge polling has leading questions supporting the independent so it will be an LIB v ALP contest.
Did you not read what I actually wrote?
I’ll just add that I wasn’t even commenting on who would win an ALP v LIB count.
My entire point was that there is no sign that the independent would beat Labor into a 2CP count. Which you seem to be agreeing with, but presented in a way as if you’re disagreeing with me?
One difference between Victoria and other jurisdictions is that the VEC conducts a full preference distribution only when it is needed to get a result. Once a candidate has over 50 per cent of the vote, the VEC stops distributing preferences – I guess, to save money – and just updates the count for the 2PP.
This means we don’t in fact know which seats ended up as non-classic contests. 2018 saw three examples of uncertain results, two of them in the adjoining seats of Footscray and Williamstown.
In Footscray, the primaries were:
AJ 7.60
Greens 16.74
ALP 57.12
Liberal 18.55
The VEC had chosen to count the preferences as a classic contest, so the Animal Justice votes were simply distributed between ALP and Liberal. But given that roughly half the AJ preferences in other seats went to the Greens, and that in this seat there was also an element of donkey vote, I suspect that had it distributed preferences, the Greens would have in fact come second.
Williamstown was similar, except that there, one popular local councillor running as an independent won 10 per cent of the vote – and again, they were distributed only between Liberals and Labor, whereas he appeared to be close to the Greens.
Preston was a reverse case, where the Greens finished second because that was where the VEC assumed they would be. They were probably right, but when you looked at the numbers, it would have been in a photo finish with the Liberal. But no final count was undertaken in any of these three seats.
@Tim Colebatch
Regarding Preston, I don’t think it really would’ve been a photo finish last time. The Greens were 1.2% behind the Liberals on primary, but there was 16.65% of the vote left after taking out Labor, the Liberals and the Greens. This 16.65% was split between a leftish Independent, the Victorian Socialists, Reason, and Animal Justice. I can’t see the Liberals taking much of those votes by a 3CP count at all, and that’s a decent chunk that the Greens could overtake them on even keeping in mind that a lot of it would have gone to Labor still.
But on a similar point to your overarching post. The VEC did eventually show off a 2014 3CP for Preston (a couple years after the 2014 election iirc) which indicated that the Greens were actually in the top 2 that year in the seat. It was defaulted to a Labor vs Liberal because by the 3CP count Labor already had over half the vote. Here were the 3CP numbers:
Greens: 23.98% (Primary: 16.14%)
Labor: 52.68% (Primary: 48.42%)
Liberals: 23.35% (Primary: 21.16%)
@ Tim Colebatch
It’s very close and definitely within my model’s margin of error, but based on preference flows between the same parties in other electorates, my model agrees with you that the Green would have made the final two in Footscray:
Predicted 3cp:
Labor 59.1%
Green 20.7%
Liberal 20.1%
On the other hand, in Williamstown the preference distribution model thinks the Liberal would have come second, though again it’s a close thing:
Predicted 3cp:
Labor 56%
Liberal 23%
Green 21%
In Preston my model actually agrees with the VEC’s decision to count the vote between Labor and the Green:
Predicted 3cp:
Labor 57%
Green 23%
Liberal 20%
FWIW, when I put the model through cross-validation (i.e. hide an electorate for which I have 3cp from the model, and get it to “predict” that electorate’s 3cp), the average error on 3cp is +/- 0.9% and the “margin of error” is +/- 3%. It also gets the top three wrong about once every 15 electorates (e.g. maybe it predicts a top 3 of ALP/LIB/IND instead of ALP/LIB/GRN) though it didn’t get the final two wrong in any of the 45 electorates I tested it in. Hence all of these electorates are within the model’s “margin of error” even if barely.
I built a tool to explore the 3cp here, if anyone’s interested: https://armariuminterreta.com/projects/3cp-explorer-vic-2018/. There’s some interesting geographical dimensions to the 2018 result across the state.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/50299/comment-page-1#comment-777881
Given the unusual size of the Animal Justice Party vote, the Green`s candidate issues and the Animal Justice Party being the sort of party that unhappy Greens voters could protest vote without significant ideological divergence, I suspect a lower proportion of Animal Justice Party 3CP preferences when to the Liberal Party compared with the Greens in Footscray in 2018, particularly in the part of the seat not moved to Laverton in the redistribution.
@Tom the first and best
Possible – my model is blind to that kind of thing. I do wonder how many voters actually pay attention to that level of policy detail though.
In any case, when the predicted 3cp is GRN 20.7 and LIB 20.1, it’s fair to say it was a tossup as to which of the GRN/LIB would make it into the final two to lose to the Labor candidate. The one I found most interesting (and didn’t know about till I ran the model) was that the AJP actually ended up in 3rd place in Mill Park over the GRN (AJP 6.7 vs GRN 5.3). There was also a Socialist candidate in Mill Park with 3.9% of the vote, but given that there were four other candidates in the count (including a Labor candidate), it’s unlikely the GRN could have pulled out a 36% margin over the AJP on SOC preferences.
The Greens came second in the 3CP in Preston in 2014:
https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/results/state-election-results/2014-state-election
but the VEC didn’t go to a full 2CP because the Labor candidate got over 50% at the 3CP count.
But it makes sense they did the 2CP between the ALP and Greens in 2018 based on the 2014 result.
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