There will be a by-election for the Victorian state seat of Prahran coming up soon, likely at the start of 2025.
Sam Hibbins won the seat for the Greens in 2014, and again in 2018 and 2022. He quit the party earlier this month after revelations of an affair with a staff member.
The seat is an unusual one – when Hibbins first won in 2014, the race between Greens and Labor for second place was extremely close, and it was also very close between the Greens and Liberals for the two-candidate-preferred count. Indeed it was so close that the Liberal Party would have won a race against Labor if they had made it to the final count.
The Greens-Labor race remained very close in 2018, but the Liberal Party fell behind. Hibbins won comfortably on both axes in 2022. But in his absence, this race could be interesting on either measure.
Prior to 2023, there had never been a sitting Greens MP elected to a single-member seat at a state or federal election (not counting by-elections) who had retired or been defeated. Jamie Parker retired in 2023, and the Greens retained his seat of Balmain despite a large swing. And then Amy MacMahon lost her seat of South Brisbane. But this is the first time a Greens MP has resigned mid-term to create a by-election.
Read my guide to Prahran here.
Greens have preselected Angelica Di camillo who was the candidate for Higgins before it was abolished
She was also the candidate at the Aston By-Election.
And before that the Greens candidate for Rowville at the 2022 state election.
She will be the new member for the seat.
Sounds like she has experience in campaigns then, albeit in low priority unwinnable seats. But she’s not new to the game.
I wonder why, before Higgins was abolished, they had moved Sonya Semmens from Higgins to Macnamara. Obviously Macnamara is the more winnable seat and the priority, so it could be about putting the stronger candidate there, but if Angelica lives in St Kilda East that’s actually Macnamara, not Higgins.
Running in Prahran should almost be a slam dunk for any Greens candidate, it would take something pretty significant to blow a 12% margin in a seat that basically contains all the Greens’ best area south of the Yarra.
@Nimalan. I agree with all of that. I believe one of the candidates that VS ran in Hume speaks Turkish.
Libs cannot win
Alp not standing
Green retain
Long ago this was a traditional marginal seat
@Mick Quinlivan the boundaries were once more favourable for the Liberals, now this is solidly Greens territory.
I don’t think boundary changes explains the change. If you look at the chart in my 2022 guide, there was only slight changes to the margin in the redistributions prior to the 2002 and 2014 elections. The most recent redistribution cut the Liberal 2PP by 2%. But that’s about it. This is mostly about the same areas shifting to the left, not about the seat moving areas.
Yep dating back to the 1970s even on quite different boundaries through the years, it had never had a margin above 8% until the current Greens margin so it’s literally the safest right now for any party than it has been since 1964 (when the LIB 2PP was 64%).
2CP Margins:
1979 – 0.9% ALP
1982 – 3.7% ALP
1985 – 6.8% LIB
1988 – 7.4% LIB
1992 – 7.8% LIB
1996 – 4.6% LIB
1999 – 4.0% LIB
2002 – 4.4% ALP
2006 – 3.6% ALP
2010 – 4.8% LIB
2014 – 0.4% GRN
2018 – 7.5% GRN
2022 – 12.0% GRN
Only from 1985-1992 did anyone have a margin above 5% until the Greens in 2014, and the 1985 & 1988 boundaries were the most Liberal-friendly ever as they included most of Toorak & Armadale with Kooyong Road being the eastern boundary; nothing west of Punt Road, and none of St Kilda.
The 1992 boundaries were much friendlier for Labor with a chunk of the old seat of St Kilda added, and the eastern boundary moved in from Kooyong Rd to Orrong Rd, removing all of its share of Armadale and about half of Toorak.
While it doesn’t look like it made much difference to the result, it actually made a huge difference when you compare the Prahran result’s deviation from the statewide result.
Liberal 2PP:
1985 – Prahran 56.8 / Victoria 49.3 = 7.5% higher than state result
1988 – Prahran 57.4 / Victoria 50.5 = 6.9% higher than state result
1992 – Prahran 57.8 / Victoria 56.3 = 1.5% higher than state result
1996 – Prahran 54.6 / Victoria 53.5 = 1.1% higher than state result
So that redistribution actually would have notionally wiped a good 5-6% off the Liberal margin, but the Liberals just had a 6% swing overall that year to cancel it out.
In 2022, the Liberal 2CP in Prahran was 7% lower than their state result so the seat has certainly changed, not only in terms of boundaries but also demographic and cultural shifts. Most notably, South Yarra was considered a “Liberal heartland” even as recently as the 2000s but now the Greens even top their primary vote there.
I agree Ben, I think the boundary change that probably had the biggest impact throughout the seat’s recent history was 1992 as that seemed to significantly slash the deviation between the Liberal margin in Prahran and their state result. But it is a bit disguised due to 1992 being a Liberal landslide.
What we’ve essentially had from around 1992 until the 2010s was Prahran being pretty close to bellwether (1999 was an exception) with mostly only a slight Liberal lean compared to the state result – turning more left in the 2010s.
I honestly think the biggest difference is the demographic change in South Yarra, the seat’s most populous suburb which actually accounts for close to half the electors. It has shifted from once being a “Liberal heartland” to the South Yarra booths being roughly 50-50 on 2CP by 2014, the Greens winning the South Yarra 2CP by 2018 and then even winning the primary vote across every South Yarra booth by 2022.
None of that is explained by boundary changes as South Yarra has always been in the seat, but South Yarra has dramatically changed particularly over the last decade, as it not only lost its prestige with the decline of the high end retail core, but rapid high rise development has just brought in a very different demographic of predominantly young, educated, progressive renters who are high income but not asset-wealthy.
@Trent that’s what I’m trying to say, Prahran once included Toorak which is a blue-ribbon suburb but now it’s based around St Kilda and Windsor which are about as Liberal-friendly as rural towns are for Labor (aka not at all, their vote is below 15% in some parts).
I think from 1992 to present the boundary changes have really been incremental and only chipped away at the Liberals’ strength, but prior to 1992 it was VERY Liberal-friendly.
The 1985-1992 boundaries (which is actually the last time the seat was somewhat ‘safe’ for the Liberal Party) compared to the current 2021-Present boundaries are chalk & cheese and would have a huge variance.
1985-1992 the seat was basically South Yarra, Toorak, Prahran & Armadale, and more of Toorak than was even in the seat post-1992 as well.
Currently like you say it’s basically South Yarra, Prahran, Windsor, Melbourne (St Kilda Road) and parts of Southbank, St Kilda & St Kilda East.
So it’s a very different seat to what it was when it was considered a “Liberal heartland” seat and I think the boundaries changes over time – which have been incremental but certainly added up – are a big part of that.
But more recently, there’s also been a big shift since 2010 from the seat being slightly Liberal-leaning (compared to the state result) to being significantly left-leaning (+7%) compared to the state result which I think is even more explained by the demographic change in the suburb, plus the broader trend of inner city professionals moving left while working class suburban voters move right.
Former member Tony Lupton is running as an independent.
Tony Lupton appears to be a similar figure to Michael Danby these days. Socially conservative old school Labor guy, he has written articles for The Australian criticising Labor, and views the Greens as more of an enemy than the Liberal Party.
Prahran being a mostly young, transient seat means any personal vote he may have had from 2002-10 would almost be entirely gone by now.
His views & values are not really aligned with a seat like Prahran, which is more left socially than economically. While it’s definitely more left-wing than “teal” seats, it’s also a lot more “teal” than it is DLP and Lupton (like Danby) seems to be of the Labor ilk that would resonate more with DLP voters than teal/Greens voters.
So my prediction is that he’ll probably get a primary vote in the mid-to-high single digits, and probably more at the expense of the Liberals than Greens, but it will mostly flow back to the Libs via preferences so probably not make too much difference to the result.
I think the cohort he’ll do best with would be people who would have voted Labor if they ran, but would have voted Liberal over Greens in their absence, and would now vote Lupton>Liberal>Greens, effectively not changing much.