10:36 – I’m going to leave the live blog here.
This result tonight was truly remarkable. We all now know the history – governments simply do not win by-elections from oppositions, and it hasn’t happened in over 100 years. A commenter pointed out that similar by-elections with the retirement of former ministers have always taken place shortly after changes of government, yet we’ve never seen this sort of confirmation of a trend.
Alan Tudge went in to the 2022 election with a 10.1% margin. His successor Mary Doyle is projected to win with a 4.0% margin – that’s a cumulative swing of 14% over two elections.
I’ll be recording a podcast on Monday covering the by-election, and I’ll be back next week with further analysis of the NSW state election.
10:30 – The swings are fairly consistent across the seat but a bit stronger in the north-west. As is typical, my pre-election guide split the electorate’s booths into four parts. Here I have broken the 2023 results into the four same areas to calculate the swing by area.
| Voter group | ALP 2PP % 2022 | ALP 2PP % 2023 | Swing |
| Central | 50.0 | 56.1 | 6.1 |
| North-East | 55.6 | 62.0 | 6.4 |
| North-West | 49.7 | 57.4 | 7.7 |
| South | 44.0 | 50.4 | 6.4 |
| Pre-poll | 45.3 | 51.4 | 6.1 |
The swing was slightly larger in the north-west, but not dramatically so.
10:16 – Here is my map of the 2PP swings and the 2PP percentage vote by booth.
10:05 – We now have the two-party-preferred figures from the three pre-poll booths. Labor’s 2PP is still over 54% (54.27% to be precise), which is a swing of 6.8%. The race is well and truly over. The swing was highest in Rowville, and smallest in Boronia, but it only ranged from 5.4% to 7.2%.
9:05 – The primary votes have reported for the pre-poll booths and there is no particular bucking of the trend. Swings of 7-8% to Labor in the three booths on primary votes.
8:43 – There doesn’t seem to be much more to say now. I’m going to take a pause while we wait to see some pre-poll votes, might return with a map too.
I’ll be recording a podcast on Monday morning with Peter Brent to discuss the results of this by-election, so keep an eye out for that.
8:29 – Labor has won the Aston by-election. Basically there is not enough votes left in the postal and pre-poll votes for the Liberal Party to turn around if there was no swing (which is a very generous position).
At the moment my reporting has all ordinary booths reporting but no postal or pre-poll votes. On a raw basis Labor has 56.05% of the 2PP vote, which is 26,092 votes to 20,456. That’s a gap of 5636 votes.
There are just over 30,000 pre-poll votes left to count, and I expect 16,000 postal votes (about 18,000 postal vote applications were submitted, but not all are returned). About 2-3% are informal, which leaves about 44,700 votes.
The Liberal Party won the pre-poll vote 54.7-45.3, and won the postal vote 55.3%-44.7%. Meanwhile they won the ordinary election day vote with just 50.2% for an overall result of 52.8%.
If you assume absolutely no swing on the day, the Liberal Party would win those vote categories by about 4400 votes. Not enough to close the current gap.
If you assume a 3% swing to Labor, the Liberals would only gain 1700 votes. The Liberals would need a swing of about 1.3% towards them to draw even. It’s just not going to happen.
8:18 – The AEC website refers to 36 polling places, but that includes three standard pre-poll booths and the EAV booth (electronically assisted voting). It doesn’t appear to include the two special hospital booths. This leaves just 32 ordinary election day booths, and only one of those is yet to report: Rowville South.
On the other 31, Labor has gained a 6.2% swing, and is currently sitting on 56.3%.
8:04 – Of course it’s possible we could see a “red mirage” where the swing to Labor is weaker on the pre-poll and postal votes, which now make up a large share of the vote, as we did in the state election, but at the moment Labor isn’t projected to win by a tiny margin – a 5.7% swing would translate to a 2.9% margin.
8:01 – I’ve slowed down my updates because they were frankly getting a bit repetitive. We now have 2PP figures from 21/36 booths, and the swing to Labor is stuck on 5.7%. The booths are still Labor-leaning, but the swing so far is fairly consistent.
7:48 – The swing has fallen back slightly to 5.7% off 12 booths, but it’s also becoming more representative of the seat. The raw 2PP is down to 57%, with a projected 2PP of just under 53% for Labor.
7:37 – Results are coming in so fast that I’m not really watching the individual booths anymore. With eight 2PP booths in, the swing to Labor is on 6.6%. With nineteen booths reporting primary votes, Labor’s primary vote swing is 8.1%, with the Liberal vote down 3.7%. Also worth noting that a number of right-wing minor parties have departed the field – the UAP, One Nation and the Liberal Democrats polled over 10% between them in 2022 and aren’t running tonight.
7:32 – We now have five 2PP booths reporting, and two of those booths have a swing of over 10% to Labor. The most recent is Bayswater South, where the swing is 10.1%.
At the moment Labor’s 2PP is over 60%, but it’s projected to fall back as the early booths are more Labor-friendly.
7:27 – And we have a 10% 2PP swing to Labor in Ferntree Gully South West. Overall that produces a 5% swing across three booths.
7:26 – Labor has gained a 1.7% 2PP swing in Upper Ferntree Gully, the second booth to report 2PP votes. For reasons I don’t understand, a swing of 0.8% and 1.7% are translating into a general 2.9% swing. Both the AEC computer and my code is coming up with the same result, which would produce the slimmest of Labor victories if replicated.
7:22 – Overall the primary vote swing after ten booths is 7.7% to Labor, and 3.6% against the Liberal Party.
7:21 – We now have nine primary vote booths reporting, and six of them are showing primary vote swings against the Liberals. Rowville East is by far the best Liberal booth so far. It suggests the 0.8% swing to Labor on 2PP is likely to be a minimum.
7:19 – We now have four primary vote booths reporting. Rowville East showed small swings to both major parties, but the other three all show bigger swings to Labor of 9-12%, and swings of 5-9% against the Liberals. Encouraging early signs for Labor.
7:17 – Two-party-preferred count is in from Rowville East, and it’s showing a 0.8% swing to Labor.
7:07 – Second booth is stronger for Labor. Wantirna South has Labor’s primary vote up by 11.9% and the Liberal primary down 9.3%. Overall that’s now translating as a 9.8% swing to Labor and a -3.3% swing against the Libs after two booths.
6:58 – The first booth reporting is Rowville East. On the primary votes there is a swing of 4.9% to the Liberal candidate but also a swing of 5.4% to Labor. Can’t say much from that.
6:23 – If you want an insight into my work, I’ve been busy behind the scenes building my own tool that will pull out the booth-level results from the media feed and calculate swings by booth as well as match booths to give a seat-level swing. The sort of thing that Antony Green and William Bowe do at a bigger scale.
The AEC doesn’t publish booth level results on the website on election nights, you can only get it through the media feed. For the last federal election I developed code to download media feed data using R, so I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the last few days writing code that will pull out the booth-level results for each candidate and match it to the 2022 results to produce a swing. I used the 2020 Eden-Monaro by-election to test the code. And then this afternoon I decided to go a step further and write code that would compare the total vote at the last election just in the booths reported so far, which allows you to produce a matched swing. I won’t be publishing any of this directly but hopefully it will be useful for the analysis. I finished that code right on 6pm, and now I’m off cooking dinner waiting for the first booths to report.
6:00pm – Polls have just closed in the Aston by-election. I’ll be following the results tonight. So come along for the ride!
What is your prediction Ben and why?
I would like to REMIND people. That a popular Labor government of similar age faced a by-election that even the coalition leader famously predicted Labor would win as Labor was very popular and riding high in the polls.
Nope, there was like a 6-8% against Labor at that by-election. Almost double the average by-election swing against the government. Of course the demographics are way different in Gippsland are different to Aston, but it’s still a point to note, popular governments still face by-election swings, and they can still be significant.
Not looking good for Liberals. That’s a decent margin opening up on election day booths.
Looking like Labor will win on-the-day votes from results so far. But I guess the question now is how many early and postal votes are out there and what their composition is. Just like NSW really.
ABC pretty close to calling it for Labor already
I’m a bit surprised at the Labor swing being as high as it is. Even the leaked ALP polling wasn’t this high at more than 6%. Prepolls/postals really need to really favour the Liberals hard if they’re losing by this much on the day, otherwise this is an ALP victory already.
Pollbludger’s booth by booth breakdown already has Rowville East nearly equal 2PP, while Wantirna South is ALP favoured.
I’m feeling pretty happy with my prediction of “tossup, but favoured to Labor by a hair” regardless of whether pre-polls and postals can swing this back for the Liberals. Especially glad to go against the pseph groupthink that the “history of by-elections” meant the Liberals were favoured, as if there was any predictive value to be gleaned from it. I expect that was so commonly held purely because there was no public polling. Hope that will mean a nice payout by having Labor keep the lead.
Both in 1973 (soon after the election of Gough Whitlam) and in 1983 (soon after the election of Bob Hawke), there were by-elections in seats with similar histories, former Liberal Ministers retiring soon after the defeat of the Liberal Government. A swing of this kind to a government is completely without precedence in a Federal election.
Liberal loss?
The majority of Boronia and Ferntree Gully are in; which are 2 of the 3 strong Lab areas. Still little in from Bayswater which is the other.
Most of Wantirna (a Lib leaning area) is in and looking at primaries, Lab should carry all that have reported so far.
Rowville is probably Lib’s strongest area and currently around half of the booths are reporting primaries. I suspect we will see split results from booth to booth but Lib 2PP margins in those they do carry may be narrow.
The only big win for Libs that I can see looks likely to be the Lysterfield booth.
i too was a very smart boy and predicted labor to win. didn’t bet anything on it though. what were the odds?
ABC now says “ALP likely” to win Aston with 39.7% of votes counted and ALP ahead 53.2 – 46.8. The primary vote and 2PP swings against the Liberals are much larger than I could ever imagine.
Odds shot up to 3-4 for Labor on Betfair yesterday and earlier today after being ~2.3 after the NSW election. I think that’s a sign of the groupthink lining up too much behind the “reasonable” outcome of a Liberal win, without much real reason for such confidence.
This is really bad for the LNP, if this continues this will send shock waves.
I knew this would be the case! I was so right in the other thread.
This why we need a law where candidates can’t run in seats they live too far from, I’m sorry but they have no right to vote in parliament on issues they know nothing about in the community. liberals don’t care about local representation anymore, they are just autocrats.
History should never have been made if the opposition was normal. Dutton is unelectable, and he is no Abbott, he should resign if he had any decency left. I refuse to vote for the coalition under his leadership despite not being impressed with this Labor government.
Agree on groupthink Adda – betting markets are quite influenced by punditry So if a narrative builds without clear evidence to back it, you can get some good odds. The main issue being you still have to win.
Dutton coming to town and booking Insiders doesn’t seem like the diary of someone who thinks they’ll lose. Even Labor sounded like they didn’t prepare the speeches for this result.
@Daniel T
Yep, choosing a cross-city carpetbagger gifted the seat to Labor. It was the main reason why the Libs lost Aston today and to a lesser extent, Dudton. The Labor attack ads nailed it on that front. Why did the Libs choose Roshena Campbell instead of a local? Oh right, because fuck who the rank-and-file members want as their candidate.
On the other hand, Maya Tesa and Owen Miller had an interesting night.
I was surprised. I predicted a line ball or tossup following a swing TO Labor with Labor leading on election day votes but Liberals tightening the 2PP with postals. Labor members went to their election party thinking it would be a wind-down and not a victory party.
The Liberal Party in Victoria is damaged goods. They lost the eastern suburbs at the state election. On the ABC, they said that Melbourne’s population is 5 million but the Libs hold 3 seats now (all with margins <1.5%). If they could lose Aston, they could also lose the remaining 3.
Mary Doyle has made history. No way the AEC will come out and say "Happy April Fools Day Mr Dutton"!
Per usual, people like Nicolle Flint and Peda Credlin attacking people on twitter including a former Labor strategist who was on the panel tonight saying the Liberal party needs to move further to the right.
Labor could win a 1975 reversed election in future if the coalition keep moving to the right. Are they this stupid? Do they really think my generation and millennials are going to vote for an increasingly conservative party and folks on sky news calling for the party to embrace Trumpism?
Governments don’t win, Oppositions lose when they are bad and don’t offer a credible alternative, this by-election was a loss for the opposition much more than it was a win for the government.
These far-right conservatives are out of touch with reality, having a more right-wing vision will just make it more clear to voters how bad the party has become. I thought we have gone past the days of far-right authoritarian leaders but it seems now, they are indirectly embracing them and some of their policies.
The only way they will ever be in power is if Labor messes up so bad and becomes a far-left woke mess, or if there was a coup in this country.
Not trying to sound extreme, I’m just responding to the ridiculous claims of former Liberal mp’s and sky news commentators.
Interestingly Peta Credlin after the 2019 election when Kooyong went to preferences to the first time and Aston became the safest seat in Metro Melbourne predicted that the future leaders of the party will represent seats like Aston. Many said the Teal seats had gone woke and Aston was idolized as an area full of Quiet Australians, Aspirational and its new heartland. How did it go from that to making history for all the wrong reason for the Liberal party? It turned from a heartland to a killing field in 4 years. Last time Labor held Aston, there was apartheid in South Africa, the Soviet Union existed, the world wide web was not open to the public, Bob Hawke was PM and this seat was a mortgage belt full of young families. Fast Forward, the millenial children who grew up hear are now Adults. After this result you can now drive from the Mouth of the Yarra River near Port Melbourne along the beach, pass through the stately homes of Malvern and Glen Iris and now to the gateway of the Dandenong Ranges National Park in Upper Ferntree Gully and only stay in Labor seats (not even Teal).
The Libs really screwed this. The double digit swings in many booths are crazy. I don’t see how Dutton can survive this except for the fact that there is basically no alternative left in the party. A factor that may be have been prevalent is Roshena Campbell being parachuted in from Brunswick, pretty similar to KK being parachuted into Fowler from Scotland Island with some vague promise of moving in after being elected. Voters simply do not like that. There were also above average swings in Wantirna South which is where the large Chinese community is mainly located, suggesting the Libs still have not managed to make inroads into this community.
I view this result as being in a similar vein to the double-digit swings across many Liberal heartland suburban seats in the last NSW election. Seats like Camden, Terrigal, Kellyville, Castle Hill, Miranda and basically the whole north shore have had huge and consistent swings against the Liberals. There’s a variety of likely reasons for it (probably the most compelling and consistent factor to me is continued education polarisation) but the Liberal brand has been tanking badly across all these typically Liberal suburban seats. And the signs are that this has only been growing stronger in the last year, particularly with the Albanese government running high and generally receiving approval among this cohort.
Dutton is most likely a dead man walking who will be replaced before the next election but even then, I doubt the Liberals will be able to truly resolve the crisis that’s growing before their eyes. Australia is far too urbanised of a country to surrender the suburbs of each capital city.
Another interesting factor – voter turnout was widely reported to be low in pre-poll. We’ll see what the final figures are like but if there’s a substantial expected turnout drop I wonder if that benefitted Labor.
The commentary generally seemed to assume that the Liberals would automatically benefit from a turnout drop but I’m reminded of the 2022 US midterms. It was widely expected that Republicans would be the beneficiary of a turnout drop then compared to the presidential election but it turned out that higher propensity voters, who are generally more educated, swung hard to the left and hence there was neutral or even a net benefit effect for Dems with lower turnout. Something similar may have played out here, albeit obviously on a smaller scale.
I just find Labor winning here extraordinary. This is a seat that had been strengthening for the Liberal party over decades. Before 2022, it hadn’t swung towards Labor in 12 years. Antony Green’s by-election guide had a graph comparing the Aston Liberal 2PP with the Victorian Liberal 2PP and the gap had been widening over time. Aston swung to the Liberal party against the state trend towards Labor in both 2016 and 2019, so it seemed to be getting stronger for the Liberal party. Neighbouring seats like Chisholm and Deakin also seemed to get more conservative (stronger for the Liberals) between 2013-2019 with a widening gap between the Victorian state Liberal 2PP and those seats’ Liberal 2PP. The fact that so much of that seems to have been reversed in such a short space of time is quite amazing.
Daniel T April 1, 2023 at 10:22 pm
I thought the Labor Strategist (Con) got it absolutely right in his analysis of where it went wrong for the Liberals. It was all about the demography and the Liberal Party (not just Dutton as the political commentators were trying to sheet it home to) have not woken up to the changing demographic make up and demands of these different cohorts.
If old ideological warriors such as Credlin and Sky After Dark Talking Heads all want to continue the ideological wars – all power to them, because they will just push them further into extinction. I was down in Sydney last weekend staying with my sister and her husband who happens to be strongly right wing and he was shaking his head at the NSW Election results and he was saying – The Liberal Party is no longer the same. What he was really saying was the Conservative Faction no longer held sway. He will be bitterly disappointed because the Liberals will need to become more liberal (in its truest sense) if they are to meet the needs of the younger voting cohort who will only grow bigger in time.
@Neil
I think you’re talking about Kos (Samaras).
He’s right. The Liberal Party sit around looking for reasons why they lose, parachuted candidates etc… but the reason is that they’ve now lurched so far to the right that their remaining voters are now majority old and/or ultra-conservatives, and the electorate is neither. Millennials now outnumber Boomers in the electorate, and not only do they not vote for the Libs, they aren’t getting more conservative as they age like their parents did.
The “anonymous Liberal MP” telling the newspaper this morning that it’s Pesutto’s fault for making the party look “anti-Christian” is symbolic of how deluded they are.
@Expat
This is why, despite being one of those conservatives and in my early 30s, I wanted Frydenberg as leader (obviously a no go as he lost Kooyong) and Pesutto as leader in VIC.
In the old Aston federal 2022 thread, somebody mentioned that on state voting numbers, Aston would be a marginal ALP seat so the result isn’t *that* surprising. The sudden swing in the last two elections here is, but I think that’s electoral trends catching up with demographic and political trends. The swing may be inflated by things like the Liberals parachuting candidates into the seat, but Aston really is a marginal seat now.
I agree with the points about the Liberals moving too far to the right (socially *and* economically) for the electorate and younger people being less inclined to vote for them. It’s a structural problem for them because their membership mainly consists of older people and younger ideological warriors who aren’t remotely representative of voting people their age. The lobby groups that have influence over the party promote policy and ideological positions that the electorate don’t find appealing or relevant. A lot of people will still vote for them out of habit and if the ALP screw things up, they will still be the main beneficiaries electorally, but they will find themselves spending more time away from power if something significant doesn’t change within the party.
There’s a mix of short-term and long-term (demographic, internal party and structual) issues affecting the Liberals.
The most obvious was that Roshena Campbell was a parachuted candidate who seemed quite out of touch with Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs, like Kristina Keneally was parachuted into Fowler. The Liberal MP from Menzies alluded to this on the ABC panel.
Redbridge (Kos, Tony) on ABC said that the combined PV of ONP, UAP, LDP was 12% in 2022 but their voters didn’t turn out at by-election. Pauline Hanson said she tactically didn’t field a candidate so not to take votes from the Liberals. That backfired!
@Expat. “The “anonymous Liberal MP” telling the newspaper this morning that it’s Pesutto’s fault for making the party look “anti-Christian” is symbolic of how deluded they are.”
John Pesutto is to blame for an event that hasn’t happened in over 100 years? Does this make sense?
“It’s clear that parts of the Liberal Party are convinced that mirroring the hard Right conservative approach of the U.S Republicans is the solution to their problems.” – Kos Samaras.
The US Republicans can play small-town politics and consolidate their base in small, largely white and rural states in the South and the Midwest and in smaller towns in Texas and Florida. The electoral college means that small states have more electors per capita. Most Australians live in large cities where there’s more diversity. We also have a multi-party sytem and this means the teals/Greens can compete and have out-competed against the Liberals. Because of these differences, it’s important that the Liberals account for changing demographics and aim to appeal to a largely urban electorate.
‘The “anonymous Liberal MP” telling the newspaper this morning that it’s Pesutto’s fault for making the party look “anti-Christian” is symbolic of how deluded they are.’
Who’s voting for the ALP because the Liberals are viewed as anti-Christian? I don’t think there is a single voter in existence who thinks like this lol. It’s just as funny as Nicolle Flint claiming on Twitter that she’s centre right.
The so called anonymous MP is probably Moira Deeming who’s still annoyed at Pesutto.
@ Votante/Expat
There is a lot of talk about how education, income etc is leading to a realignment in the Western World. However, something that may be missed is how race is impacted. For a US comparison to Aston, i am thinking of the 6th Congressional District special election in 2017 (When Jon Ossoff ran). That showed a big swing to the Democrats but they narrowly missed out fast forward 3 years the Democrats won both senate seat and won Georgia’s electoral college votes for the Presidency. It could also be compared to suburbs of Texas such as Tarrant County. Aston was increasingly seen as bible belt, conservative suburbia. aspirational, home owning and should be a new stronghold for the Libs. However, was another demographic trend of increasing ethnic diversity missed. Texas and the suburbs of Atlanta have becoming much more ethnically diverse in recent years despite being socially conservative. Did Peter Dutton comments about white farmers in South Africa, Sudanese gangs etc as well as Victorian Liberals perception on being soft on neo nazis hurt them here with people of colour?
Turnout was down to 82% down from 96 odd so 16000 voters who didn’t vote this time who did last.time. on those numbers a 60-40 split would get the coalition over the line not unplausable expect coalition to try and retake this in 2025 especially if there is a swing on against the govt. In the meantime another union hack on parliament.
why is lysterfield such an outlier in this map?
Would be very interesting to the swing map with the combined swing over the last 2 elections.
As a local, it is quite telling that one of the smallest swings to Labor was at Ferntree Gully (St John The Baptist school). This is the closest booth to the Glenfern Rd part of Ferntree Gully, which is the area most affected by the Dorset Rd extension and Napoleon Rd duplication projects. Clearly this campaign had some effect in moderating the swing here. It was clearly the wrong strategy for the Liberal party though, as this was on a micro level, probably only affecting this one booth. The people of Wantirna, Bayswater, Scoresby etc would very rarely use Dorset Rd.
I suppose they didn’t have much else to campaign on.
@ Louis, Lysterfield is very wealthy as it has large houses on big blocks and part of it is Green Wedge. It is a bit like Templestowe, Warrandyte and Narre Warren North etc, also a less ethnically diverse than Rowville, Wantirna South etc
It Tudge was really a “popular MP” then why did he get a massive swing in 2022, and why did he resign, he may have been popular early on in his career.
2010: Labor came close because of Gillard and no sitting Member
2013: Dumping of Gillard and the national landslide for the coalition helped the coalition hold on.
2016: Turnbull was more popular in suburban seats in Victoria and there wasn’t much of a swing. Take neighbouring Deakin that year for example.
2019: Labor didn’t try and Shorten cost Labor so many seats and negative gearing would have hit hard in seats like this.
2022: an MP facing corruption, unpopular MP, unpopular PM, however not a very strong/serious/visible Labor campaign still put this under 3%
Does this seat lean Liberal? Definitely, but I wouldn’t call it “Very Safe” like Mitchell, Curtin, Cook, Rural seats etc.
Historically Menzies is safer than this.
Labor will hold in 2025 if they don’t screw up. And that is because of Peter Dutton.
If you don’t change, you can’t expect the electorate to vote for you.
@Daniel T Early on I think Tudge was popular but since his shenanigans have been exposed, he’s gone downhill. This seat does lean Lib in normal circumstances. This seat has changed over the decade like much of Eastern Melbourne with many free standing homes being rebuilt into townhouses and increasing populations of Chinese-Australians. The voters, both new and existing, are still very much aspirational and economically conservative, favouring things like lower taxes etc. What the Libs have done instead of focusing on those issues is doubling down on culture war issues and adopt Trump-style populism (including hawkish rhetoric towards China) which alienates voters that would have otherwise voted Lib both in the teal seats and seats like Aston/Menzies/Chisholm/Deakin.
Dutton and LNP’s dilemma is in QLD where they have almost nothing to gain and everything to lose. Not to mention, most preferences from PHON and UAP flow to LNP and not Labor/Greens. PHON and UAP are hardly a threat, except for taking one senate seat away at most or one HoR seat (via an election loss or defection) if they’re unlucky. Dutton is quite popular in QLD, outside of inner-city and middle-ring Brisbane. I still see him staying on as it’s an unpopular job and a posioned chalice and hard-right conservatives want him there just like they wanted him to win the 2018 leadership spill.
@Nimalan, I do agree that an influx of migrants and ethnic diversity has changed Aston. I heard that many migrants and first home buyers have moved here and it is no longer semi-rural. The area is urbanising especially on the fringes and is becoming more integrated socially and politically with Melbourne and have felt the hipster and progressive ripples.
Some things that are worth mentioning about this electorate about demographics, while there has been a chance it hasn’t been huge I think the main problem here was Tudge as I spoke to a lot of locals who constantly voted Liberal but for the first time were voting Labor out of frustration with Tudge and there seemed at the same time to be a positive reception to Mary Doyle. Its also worth mentioning that the infighting with the Victoria Liberal branch really hurt them here and on top of that a liberal candidate that was parachuted from the other side of Yarra, I know some people will say Mary Doyle doesn’t live in the electorate but at least its Nunawading & not Brunswick.
change”
Can someone tell me exactly what the policies are that has the Liberals ‘moving right’?
Because all I can see are the Liberals moving ‘left’ (as completely irrelevant as Left and right are now) to shore up inner city seats at the expense of outer suburban seats.
What am I missing?
Right and left are relative.. Onp far right then nats right of libs not far behind…. Labor is centre left .greens are to the left of them probably not very far left.
The population seems sl8ghtly left of centre
Labor seems to have done even better at the Aston by-election than at the 2022 state election. Could Kim Wells’ seat of Rowville even be Labor on these results? I would suggest it would be very close.
Labor would have won Rowville on election day figures if you take out pre-polls. Pre-polls don’t count because the PPVC is for the whole electorate, not just the parts of the seat that contain Rowville.
John Pessuto is getting allot of unfair meria coverage at the moment. But it’s mainly from the conservative factions who are blaming him for something THEY CAUSED. If they remove him and install Battin, Labor will win 60+ seats at the next state election, because they will be back to Matthew Guy and the right-wing shit all over again.
Pessuto won’t find it easy to win 2026, But he will be competitive unlike Battin. I will be in Victoria in 2026, Not a fan of Dan Andrews as an outsider but I will vote Labor if the Liberals remove Pessuto.
Pessuto gives me Turnbull vibes and looking back, I would have supported Turnbull now.
@ Adam, interesting question. I am now thinking the results in November were actually a warning sign in hindsight. I posted on the Rowville thread that the Libs actually under performed in Knox which is contrast to the 2018 state election where the Liberal vote held up better in Knox than other parts of Melbourne. Based on the 2018 state results Aston would have had a Liberal TPP of 2.4% which would have made it the safest seat in Melbourne. However, in 2022 that was not the case and Aston turned into a Labor seat based on the results in contrast to the Goldstein, Kooyong etc where the Libs actually improved in 2022. How an area that was praised by the Libs as their new heartland replacing Kooyong and where a seat where future leaders would represent into an area that would deliver the Liberal party’s most humiliating night in just under 4 years still perplexes me. Back to Rowville, i think it is possible that it will be close if we look at the Jells Park booth in Wheelers Hill not that long ago it was sapphire blue now it is marginally Red, could it be that there will be a day when the only blue booth in Knox is Lysterfield? The Liberal vote held up better in Rowville than Wantirna South mainly because it is a bit less ethnically diverse even thought it is quite similar in virtually all other respects. Fun Fact, the TPP for Labor is now the same as it was at the 1987 election when Labor last won it and the Liberal primary vote is the lowest ever for this seat even lower than in the 1980s.
I calculated the Liberals would win the seat of Rowville with a margin of 0.3% based on these results. They won it with a 3.7% margin in November.
My calculation makes the assumption that all voters in the Rowville and Scoresby Pre-polls were Rowville voters (which I’m sure 90%+ were). It also assumes that the relative 45% of postal votes were from Rowville and that they have the same Liberal lean relative to the rest of the seat as ordinary and prepoll votes had.
Clearly a very bad result for the Liberals.
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