Labor won a comfortable victory in yesterday’s election, losing only a handful of seats against an opposition that performed poorly.
By the latest count at the time of writing, Labor has won 49 seats and is ahead in another seven. The Coalition has won 24 seats and is ahead in three others (plus they will likely win the Narracan supplementary election). The Greens have won four seats.
Where are the seats still unclear?
Labor is leading in Albert Park, where the Greens would need to overtake the Liberals to win, which now seems unlikely, and in Northcote, where the Greens were in the lead until late in the night. Early in the night it looked like Footscray, Pascoe Vale and Preston could be in play but they have now faded. Labor’s lead in Preston is not yet locked in.
Labor is also narrowly ahead in Bass, Hastings and Pakenham. They are “likely” in Melton since there is no Labor-Liberal preference count (instead relying on an ABC projection).
The Liberal Party is leading narrowly in the seat of Croydon.
Independents have fallen behind in Hawthorn and Mornington. In both cases the independent is in the top two, but the preference count is very close.
It’s a bit hard to say how many seats have changed hands – many of those “changing hands” have been affected by redistribution and have negligible margins.
By my count there are nine seats where the leading candidate is not from the incumbent party. In at least three of these seats, the incumbent MP was re-elected after the seat was redrawn into a notional seat held by another party.
Labor has gained three seats from the Liberal Party, all in eastern Melbourne. These seats include Bass and Bayswater, where sitting Labor MPs are leading or have won despite a redistribution turning it into a notional Liberal seat. They’ve also won Glen Waverley.
Labor also gained Hastings, which was Liberal-held in 2018 but had been redrawn with a slim Labor margin, so technically doesn’t count as a gain.
The Coalition has regained Caulfield, which they won in 2018 but lost in the redistribution, as well as Nepean. The Nationals have gained Shepparton off an independent and gained Morwell, which was held by a retiring independent but was notionally Labor. The Nationals also regained Mildura, which had been redrawn from an independent seat into a Nationals seat, and thus doesn’t appear on the list of nine seat changes.
The Liberals are also leading against an independent in Hawthorn, which was won by Labor in 2018.
The Greens have gained Richmond.
Next up, this map shows three features of the results.
Firstly, the two-party-preferred swings. I have these figures for 75 out of 87 seats. Labor gained a swing in 16 and the Coalition did in 59. The average swing was 2.8% to the Coalition while the median was 2.6%.
While Labor only gained a swing in a handful of seats, this included numerous key marginals: Box Hill, Glen Waverley, Ringwood, Ashwood come to mind.
The Coalition’s biggest swings took place in the northern and western suburbs, and not one of these big swings produced a seat gain.
You can see these geographic trends on the map. Labor gained swings of 2% or more in the eastern suburbs corridor, and gained smaller swings in the outer south-east and outer east.
The Coalition gained small swings in most other areas but the biggest swings were in the outer north and west.
The grey also tells a story: there’s a bloc of ten contiguous seats in central Melbourne where the Greens or an independent made the top two, and this doesn’t include Albert Park, which has come close.
If you toggle the map, you can also see maps showing the seats won by each party by colour – the first map shows uncalled races in a lighter colour – the second one shows seats that changed hands emphasised.
These maps show clearly the scale of the Liberal defeat: how few seats they hold in Melbourne, and how Labor has been pushed out of the inner city.
Finally I want to touch briefly on the size of the minor party vote. Votes for minor parties and independents had peaked at 22% at the 2018 election. Right now it is just under 28%.
I will be travelling today but when I get home I will be posting another post looking at the upper house. In short, the vote for Labor fell further there, and they will probably require more crossbenchers to pass legislation. Legalise Cannabis in particular polled strongly, but the Greens also picked up votes and likely seats. The Druery alliance parties generally performed poorly, and are on track to win few seats even before below-the-line votes make life harder for them, and it looks like Labor will be able to stitch together a progressive upper house majority with the Greens, Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis.
The government threw a lot of money at the southern end of Bass – hospitals, health care. If Jordan Crugnale holds on, she might get a ministerial gig – especially as the ALP has no lower house MPs outside Melbourne and the BBG commuter belt.
In Albert Park District the 3 major parties have got about 90% of the primary vote so far as at 28 Nov 22 while the so called Freedom Party and Family “Farce” First have only got a tad over 1% which means that if this continues they wont get any taxpayer funds which I think is about $2.50 per vote but only if the candidate got 4% or more of the primary vote.
Something I think is missing from the analysis of this election is the strength of the Labor field program, and the weakness of the Liberal field campaign in non-moderate seats.
Most notably Hawthorn, but also a couple moderate leaning Liberal seats saw significant on the ground support (not surprising given the high Liberal local membership and large amount of resources put into the campaigns by the Libs).
That Northcote swing is a field swing, this Vic Labor campaign machine is brutal and self-renewing.
You missed mentioning Ripon
What Tim Smith said about being another eight years in opposition to 2030 was an understatement, the Vic Libs are far more likely to dissolve than ever win an election again. The only way they might win is that they become Labor Lite led by Pesutto, but people would vote Labor anyway, even without the aura of Andrews. I wonder who’s in a worse situation, the Vic or WA branches; they probably should both dissolve and spare themselves of further humiliation. However, the Nats will probably survive and continue as the rural party.
I don’t think Victoria Libs will end up like it will in WA. WA tends to be more politically independent, less politically polarised and happens to be less diverse economically and socially unlike Victoria and other East coast states which tends to have more life-long party supporters. Another factor is the lack of representation of WA in federally
There are many states in the US that are “1.5-party systems” – one party dominates, winning big in most elections and losing only in extraordinary circumstances. Is this what Victoria is turning into?
As long as the Liberals are a viable party of government nationally they will remain that way in Victoria. Victoria is over a quarter of Australia’s total population, not some small state with widely differing demographics from the rest of the country.
I would say the US and even Canada have more regionalised politics. Australia has fewer states than the US so there is greater demographic diversity within states in Australia. I dont agree with the notion of Victoria being the “Massachusetts of Australia. That state is very small geographically does not have a lot of very rural areas far from the state capital. All 9 of that states congressional delegation is Democrat while 3 of the most conservative seats in the Country (Gippsland, Mallee and Nicholls) are Victoria. I feel Victoria maybe the “California of Australia” it has a similar history starting with the Gold Rush has large metros, build on immigration regional cities, Agricultural areas and a varied climate and natural geography. California was once strongly Republican now strongly Democratic but has pockets of conservative strength. Also even when Victoria was the jewel in Liberal Crown. It still had a Red Wall in NW Melbourne (except for the area around Essendon) and had some of the strongest Labor seats in the country.
The VIC Libs can make a comeback at the next election if their stars are aligned. I remember in 2012 when QLD Labor was wiped out and Campbell Newman’s LNP won in a landslide, there was talk that Labor was finished for a generation. On paper, LNP had unbelievely high seat margins. Labor won government after one term.
I heard from Tim Smith and Peta Credlin on Sky News that they were too focused on retaining and winning seats in the inner east and bayside (e.g. Kew, Hawthorn, Malvern, Brighton, Sandringham) that they overlooked middle-ring and outer-ring suburbs. They did have a good point. The Libs didn’t really have a good marginal seat strategy except for in Nepean which had a small margin to begin with.
Danielle
Ripon is 63.1% counted, with reports of one of the three pre-poll boooths outstanding. Poll bludger rates it a 97% chance of labour win. Latest update 30/11/22 14.18 hrs.
I wonder if the Vic LNP not introducing lower house OPV after the 2010 election was their biggest tactical error in the years since then. 2014 and maybe even 2018 would’ve played out differently; Dan might have been just another opposition leader to come and go.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/50485/comment-page-2#comment-779920
The Nats don`t want OPV, because of reduced 3-corner contest abilities, and the Nats would have been needed to pass the Legislation.
Tom, the NSW Coalition has performed relatively well under OPV, and the two parties haven’t contested against each other since 1995.
The NSW Liberals in teal target seats should be very happy with these results – only one teal managed to make it into 2nd place and none of them won. While Green preferences may get the teals into the final count in Hawthorn and Kew, this is with Full Preferential Voting – with OPV in NSW it will be extremely difficult for any teal to win from third or even with a vote just above Labor’s due to OPV. Given NSW has tight spending and donation caps – I suspect it’s very possible the teals could do even worse.
@Yoh An The Nationals and Liberals may run against each other in Port Macquarie (NAT 20.1%) in 2023 due to unusual circumstances – it gives Labor a much better chance to win the seat compared with the past although I suspect Labor probably won’t win. The 2CP for the teal seats under a OPV estimate using current results:
Caulfield: LIB 17.9% vs IND
Kew: LIB 9.0% vs IND
Hawthorn: LIB 8.1% vs IND
Mornington: LIB 7.3% vs IND
None of them even close to marginal.
I personally feel in NSW state level the Teals will not do that well. The NSW Liberals are not climate-action and have not moved to the Far Right so Teal voters maybe happy to vote for the state Liberals.
The federal teals, Vic teals and NSW teals all have different circumstances.
The federal teals could’ve turned their contests into a referendum on Scott Morrison and climate policies and scapegoated their incumbent Liberal opponents. They had something to campaign on. In teal seats, a vote for the teal candidate was a step closer to removing Scott Morrison. At the NSW election, in small l-liberal seats, a teal candidate can turn it into a referendum on the incumbent Liberal premier and 12 years of LNP.
At the Vic election, it wasn’t really a referendum on Dan Andrews, and so there was one less reason to vote for a teal. In Hawthorn, it was near-certain it would be a LIB vs IND race. There was also a statewide 2PP uptick to the LNP which might’ve boosted the Liberal brand and minimised the swing to the teal. It was the opposite at the federal election where there was growing national disdain of the Liberal party and Scott Morrison. This meant that momentum worked in the teals’ favour.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/50485#comment-780041
Ben, what formula did you use for OPV 2CP?
@Ian
I used similar preference flows taken from several seats from the 2019 NSW election (Generally 34% from Greens and Labor to Independents, 6% to Liberals and 40% exhausting) and then tested it against real 2019 NSW election results, the margin of error was generally around 1-2% either way for the 10 seats I tested (I tested Barwon, Coffs Harbour, North Shore, Willoughby (2021 by election), Wagga Wagga, Upper Hunter (2021 by election), Dubbo, Murray, Wollondilly and Sydney)
Adding to the above, I generalised flows from minor parties to Independents with 20% flowing to the Liberals and 30% flowing to Independents – of course the minor parties could be from either side of the spectrum so it is a generalisation, but the formula compared to the real result was almost always within 1-2% of the real result.
*It should be 60% exhausting for my first comment, not 40
Some more info on the Greens’ campaign: the party only recorded 50 000 doorknocks throughout the entire state. For comparison, the Victorian Socialists did double that number (although they don’t keep as rigorous data about meaningful conversations) and the 2020 federal Griffith campaign did roughly 30 000 doorknocks in an electorate of about 110 thousand voters. It’s very obvious that the Victorian Greens just have not built anywhere near the kind of campaign operation that the Queensland Greens have.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/50485/comment-page-2#comment-780053
Thanks, Ben.
The Libs really underperformed in this election and it shows you how incompetent the Vic Libs are and how unpopular Matthew Guy is, i can’t believe there were peple inside the Vic Libs that actually rated him as a leader and thought he was an election winner. I’m also confused as to how people genuinely thought the Vic Libs could actually win, this election for the Libs should’ve been one where they reduce some of the inflated margins on traditionally marginal seats or seats that were more marginal after the 2014 election. The Vic Libs even failed to do this, Carrum, Cranbourne, the Narre Warrens and Albert Park sit at around 10%, Mordialloc and Bentleigh both sit around 7-8% and seats such as Ashwood and Ringwood which they held 2 elections ago by 3-4% after an election loss now sit on Labor margins of 6-8%.
I can’t remember if it was this thread or another one but there was talk about why the massive swings in the North and North-West of Melbourne but not South-East, candidate quality was one reason and think that’s true but also i thinkseats like St Albans has a populations that’s a bit more settled and an area already with services and not a lot of focus whereas seats like Cranbourne and Pakenham have a newer population likely been living there less than 5 years and in need of new services, which Labor have promised and delivered.
Also does anyone know why places like Ararat and Maryborough voted around 55-60% for the LNP at the federal election but 55-60% for Labor at the state level.
@North East agreed that this election was basically the worst case scenario for the Libs; going backwards in the seats they could have won while wasting their swing on seats that they have zero chances on winning. In regards to why the north and west swung, I believe the swing can be mainly attributed to the anti lockdown agenda that the state Libs have been preaching about. The seats that swung the most are mainly the most economically deprived seats in the north and west where the population would be the most negatively affected by the lockdowns. In the 2nd lockdown, a bunch of postcodes in the north and the west were locked down before the entire city was so that may also have been a factor while in the south east there wasn’t really a swing despite parts being pretty demographically similar to the north and west. That does mean that those seats are likely going to swing back to Labor in 2026 or at the very least not swing any further away from Labor so the Libs would be better off not doubling down and instead focus on the seats that they should have won this time.
North East/Dan M, Totally agreed with your analysis. If we look at the Pakenham/Cranbourne rail corridor beyond Warrigal Road it is similar demographically to North and West Melbourne a mixture of settled and deprived working class areas along with Growth areas. The electorate of Dandenong is actually the poorest seat in Melbourne and only had a small swing to the Libs. This in my view debunks the realignment theory that that the far right have been vocal about. In Matthew Guy’s final statement he lauded the swings in NW Melbourne and said this was a future electoral opportunity for the Libs. This view was echoed by the John Roskam from IPA in a interview on Sky News with Rita Panahi when he talked about the North/West as where the Libs should focus on but both of them did not mention the South East as it was an inconvenient truth. Springvale/Noble Park is very similar to St Albans/Deer Park not just socio-economically but also ethnically with large Vietnamese/Bosnian communities etc but the former did not see an Anti-Labor backlash even though Andrews was directly on the ballot there. I would actually say this election was better for Labor than 2018 as they won support in middle class areas where they can entrench themselves in as opposed to protest votes in seats like Nepean/Hawthorn. Swapping Nepean for Hastings is a good example as there is more genuine Labor voters there. In the Hastings thread i talked about the suburb of Langwarrin as the suburb which exemplified the failed strategy of the Libs and how they underestimated the support of Andrews in Middle Australia.
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