Today’s blog post brings together three unusual non-classic races in different areas: the Greens seat of Balmain, ex-Liberal Gareth Ward’s seat of Kiama, and the newly independent seat of Wollondilly.
Swing data thanks to William Bowe’s estimates of 2019 results by 2023 polling place.
The seat of Balmain was a fascinating context. It was the first ever case of a Greens member in a single-member electorate retiring. Labor put up a fierce challenge in the seat, but fell just short.
Labor gained swings in every booth, but there are some trends. The swings were largest in Annandale and Leichhardt, and smallest in Balmain. This lines up with the council wards represented by the two candidates. The new Greens MP Kobi Shetty represents Balmain, while Labor candidate Philippa Scott represents Leichhardt.
When you toggle to show the actual result, the Greens still won most of the booths on election day. They also won two of the three main pre-poll booths, losing on Scott’s home turf of Leichhardt.
Moving south, Kiama was a fascinating contest, with the sitting independent (and former Liberal minister) Gareth Ward barely scraping by.
This map doesn’t have a swing map, but the geographic trend is worth noting. Ward’s support has always come from the more southern parts of the seat, which also happen to be the more conservative areas.
Ward won most of the booths around Nowra (Nowra proper is not in the seat, but Bomaderry – which is basically Nowra’s northern suburbs – is), while Labor won most of those in the Kiama council area and all of those in the Shellharbour area.
Finally heading to the south-western outskirts of Sydney, we do have swings for the race between defeated Liberal MP Nathaniel Smith and new independent MP Judy Hannan, because both contested the seat in 2019, when Smith won with a 6% margin.
Hannan gained swings in almost every booth in 2023. The swings close to Camden were quite small, with bigger swings around Picton and Bowral.
Smith managed to win a majority of the vote in four booths near Camden and three booths near Bowral, but Hannan won most.
