A state by-election will need to be held in early 2025 for the western Melbourne seat of Werribee. This by-election was triggered by the retirement yesterday of Tim Pallas, a long-serving Labor minister who has served as Treasurer since 2014.
Werribee lies on the western fringe of Melbourne and has always been a Labor seat. But this is the kind of seat that could flip at a by-election. We’ll have to see how the campaign plays out.
I’ve published my Werribee by-election guide here.
The inner eastern seat of Prahran is due to hold its by-election on February 8, and it’s possible Werribee could be held on the same day.
@Maxim, never said it had to be uniform, in fact I said it never is. But they would need swings close to the 8% range in very different types of seats.
They’d need to win at least Bentleigh (8%) or Mordialloc (8.2%) in the sandbelt; at the same time they’d need to win eastern suburbs seats on margins over 7% like Box Hill (7.2%) & Ringwood (7.5%); seats like Monbulk (7.6%) up around the Dandenong Ranges area which has its own set of characteristics; seats like Niddrie (6.7%) and Greenvale (7.1%) in the north-west; regional seats like Eureka that are also on more than 7%.
So that’s a wide range of seats. A party might have a strategy that targets one or two specific types or profiles of seats at the expense of others, but the Liberals don’t have that luxury. Yes they try to focus their swings to the target seats, but 17 very diverse seats across different regions doesn’t make that easy.
For every seat up to Bentleigh (8%) that they don’t win, that’s another seat further up the pendulum that they do need to win.
I’m not saying it’s impossible. I simply said it’s not likely. If you think it’s “likely” that a party who have historically had terrible campaign resources in Victoria can effectively target their swings to win no less than 17 very demographically & geographically diverse seats on margins up to 8% (more than half of them on 6% or more), I’d just have to say I disagree that Albo simply being PM makes that the “likely” outcome, which is the only point I was disputing.
@Trent: I don’t think it’s likely either but let’s look at it this way, most recent polling (pre Battin leadership) has the Liberals achieving a 6-7% swing (51/52-49/48 2PP), that swing I suspect will be a slight bump in the inner city seats they already hold, making up some ground and flipping a few middle ring eastern suburb seats (Glen Waverley, Ringwood, Bayswater come to mind) but the bulk of the swing comes from the outer suburbs and peri-urban seats where they need to make up close to double digit margins.
Your example of Bentleigh and similar sandbelt seats I don’t think represents their best path to government. They are probably a better chance of winning Werribee on about a 10% margin or Sydenham for example if they pursue Battin’s strategy and are frank with themselves about the lack of broad appeal the party has in seats they won in 2010
Regardless of who is in government federally that’s the strategy I think they need to pursue – amplify swings on the fringes in seats they’ve pretty much never won in order to outflank Labor who have more or less locked them out of a 2010 style map
You are right about the problems they will face trying to mobilise campaigns in such a diversity of seats I agree on that point too
They are all good points, and I do think if the Liberals are able to maintain their strong position (that’s a big if) and if Labor are still in government federally (especially if it’s a minority that is seen as dysfunctional), they can certainly get pretty close.
17 seats is just a huge ask when there are only 8 seats on less than 6.2%. So assuming they pick all of them up, they still need to snatch 9 seats on margins above that. They could very well get strong double-digit swings in some areas, but there are going to be must-win seats that Labor are simply able to sandbag, pushing that 17th seat higher and higher up the pendulum.
Another factor is that as the major party vote continues to decline in general, people have other avenues to place a protest vote and there is always going to preference leakage which somewhat dulls the potential 2PP swing.
We saw a lot of that in 2022, where 18% primary vote swings from Labor turned into 9% 2PP swings against them. In a previous era probably as recently as 2010, an 18% primary vote swing would probably have been at least a 14-15% 2PP swing.
And the current polling appears to reflect this same dynamic too, because while Labor’s primary vote has tumbled by 10-11% since the 2022 election, the Coalition primary vote has only increased by 3-4%. That leaves a lot of room for preference leakage back to Labor.
If the liberals need to win Weribee to achieve govt.. they are stuffed
I tend to think that what the Libs are looking at is not just the next State election, important though it is, but a 20-30 year project. If you look at the last 20 years at least (and probably a lot longer) the ALP has started with a block of seats in the West/north of Melbourne, then planned what they can win elsewhere. The Libs had that too in the East/inner South East. But as those areas are trending away from the Libs then they are now essentially fighting for every seat. I think the Libs are looking at consolidating all the seats in an arc from Cranbourne to Werribee as their new ‘base’ and working out what more they can win from there. This makes sense if you believe, as I do, that the realignment (uni educated voters going let/non uni voters going right) is underway and this is where we will get to anyway. But that is going to take 2-3 electoral cycles and they have already wasted 2 cycles with Guy/O’Brien/Guy/Pesutto trying to appeal to the same electorates that are trending Labor (noting that I have no idea who Matt Guy was supposed to represent).
I think you’re right MLV.
Party strategists would surely know that actually winning government in 2026 is a real long shot, even if Labor are “on the nose” and their vote tanks, the scale of the swings needed across not only such a large number of seats but such a diversity of seats would just be almost unprecedented. Especially in a state that generally leans progressive by default.
So I think a 2026 result where perhaps Labor are reduced to a minority with maybe 42-43 seats, while the Coalition manage to rebound to around 38-40 seats and reduce the margins in some of the outer suburban seats that are still too much to overcome in 2026, sets them up well to have a realistic path in 2030 and beyond.
And if Labor are in minority they could very well win in 2030, but it’s the “and beyond” that will be difficult as I truly think the Liberals would struggle to hold government for more than a single term in Victoria. I think the Liberals winning in Victoria will mostly be a case of the electorate just thinking Labor needed a term “on the bench” to regroup and reset, as was the case in 2010, moreso than the majority actually wanting a long term Coalition government.
I don’t necessarily agree with you there Trent. The reason VIC seems so progressive is the block of seats to the west and north of Melbourne that essentially only vote Labor. This has allowed Labor to target the more socially progressive seats in the inner east/along the bay. The Libs have never really targetted those seat as the Lib leadership, at least since I have been in VIC, has tended towards those old money inner city seats who have no real appeal to the West. Brad Battin might, and I only say might, change that. Basically as much because Labor is also now trending to be a party of the affluent inner East, meaning they themselves are losing touch with their base. If he does, there is a very strong likelihood of 25 or so ‘safe’ Labor seats suddenly being in play, and if that is the case, which I think it probably will be, then Labor also has the same problem of trying to appeal to both its ‘old western heartland’ and its new eastern heartland.
So I think your analysis of the Libs struggling to win in VIC is based around Labor having a block of immovable seats they can work from as a base, and I personally think that is on its way out.
The safe Labor seats are safe for a reason that is their voters don’t trust the liberals to look after their interests. The liberals will normally win seats like Brighton and Sandringham and seats that tend to make up the federal seat of Kooyong the fact that teals can win there suggests their voters don’t trust the liberals either
The seats Labor won to form government in 2014 now sit on a margin of about 10%.The changes in.Bendigo and Ballarat and Geelong also don’t help as post 2014 the liberals have not been able to win Amy seats in those areas. As Labor won back to back landslides it will take unity and at least 2 terms for the liberals to.regain government
@Mark Quinlivan. Liberals aren’t even guarding Hawthorn anymore. Pesutto only just won it back from Labor (at the slimmest of slim margins). Even Pesutto said that Hawthorn is “one apartment block away from never being Liberal again”. Malvern, and Kew (the other Kooyong seats) will remain Liberal.
Victorian Socialists are running in Werribee. I think they will do quite well, and will help ensure that Werribee doesn’t fall to the Liberals.
Whilst there will be a swing away from the ALP, I can’t see the Liberal Party winning this seat.
Hence why Labor want social/affordable housing towers in the middle suburbs and Liberals want more greenfields in growth corridors.
No doubt there is a realignment of the working class going on, Labor and other centre left parties around the anglosphere and in Europe are the parties of the professional class. No different here.
@Maxim. The ALP is a capitalist party, so it governs in the interests of big business. The ALP has always been a capitalist party despite being formed out of the 1891 Barcaldine shearer’s strike. The aim of a social democratic party is to tie the interests of the working class to the capitalist state. There has always been segments of the middle class that has been attracted to Labor.
These days the media claim that workers are moving to the Liberal Party (sic). This is not true. Class is based upon one’s relationship to the means of production. Statistics show that people who do not own or control the means of production do not vote for conservative parties en masse. The confusion comes about because more small business people are moving into certain areas that are deemed working class.
I live in an area, that despite some hipsterization (in certain pockets of the locality) is still primarily working class. It’s very different to the lawyer belt (Greens) suburbs of Fitzroy, East Melbourne, Fitzroy North, Clifton Hill, and Carlton North, or the marketing manager belt suburbs of Collingwood (Greens), Richmond (Greens), Prahran (Greens), St Kilda West, South Melbourne, and Port Melbourne. The number one occupation in my suburb (according to the Census) is retail worker. My area is still seen as undesirable by many of the types who would happily purchase a worker’s cottage in Collingwood, an apartment in Port Melbourne, or a terrace house in Fitzroy. The Liberal Party is far less popular in my area than it is in East Melbourne, Port Melbourne, or South Melbourne. The Victorian Socialists out perform the Liberal Party (sic) at my polling station, which is in an area that may not be that far from the CBD, but is far from gentrified. Many of the residents are gig workers, dishies, and laborers.
I live in both an ALP state district and Federal electorate. Both seats are unlikely to be won by the Greens. The Liberal Party (sic) would never win in my area. They are despised. The Victorian Socialists poll well in my area because they actually offer something that residents in my area want: higher wages, public housing, government ownership of utilities, diversity and inclusion, better and accessible public transport, and anti militarism etc. No one I know is under the illusion that VS could win the seat, nor do they necessarily like SAlt, however they want to make a statement to both parties that they want a progressive society that looks after all people, not one of hatred and division.
If you offer workers progressive working class policies they will vote for them (of course lots of door knocking and leafleting is required). It’s not just in my area, as Fawkner is the same. Fawkner is a solidly working class and immigrant area that returned a Socialist Alliance candidate to Merri Bek council. People in such suburbs know that the Liberal Party (sic) has nothing to offer them.
Stopping refugee boats, jailing Indigenous youth, supplying arms to enable a genocide, anti Chinese saber rattling, knocking down public housing towers, or transphobia won’t put food on my neighbors’ tables, nor will it pay their rents, or mortgages. It won’t lift them out of financial distress.
The “tradie class” is very strongly Liberal these days but that’s different to the working class. I agree.
@Trent tradies may be culturally working-class but many actually earn a lot of money.
@Trent and Nether Portal. You’re both correct.
Many tradies run their own business and are therefore middle class. I am not talking about sub contractors who turn out to be working class when the “master servant act” is applied.
Some people misunderstand what class actually means. This doesn’t help because the media are happy to blur the lines. The media peddles the lie that working class means people who have not been to university, people who wear hi vis gear, and people who talk a particular way. They even go to the lengths of saying they follow a particular football team.
These stereotypes have lead to people drawing all sorts of wrong conclusions. I have met someone who sat in a Footscray pub and overheard two people in hi vis talking about their investment properties. Given their attire, and the fact that they were in a Footscray pub, this person assumed that they were working class and they said RIP to traditional class analysis. They went on to formulate a 21st century class analysis. All of sudden they claimed that there was the 1% (ruling class), the 9% (investment class consisting of anyone who owns more than 1 property), the majority (small business and workers who only own one property or rent), and the 30% (welfare recipients).
This so-called 21st Century class analysis is flawed, because workers and small business owners have competing interests. It’s also flawed because apart from politicians, CEO’s, and heads of companies, here are the people who own multiple properties (based on figures from the Bureau of Statistics). 42% of Surgeons own investment properties. Surgeons top the list of people who own such properties. 40% of medical specialists and anesthetists invest in real estate, while 35% of dentists, and 33% of school principals invest. 29% of mining engineers are investing in real estate. Compare these figures to the fewer than 1% of fast food cooks who have an investment property.
In short, those people who are benefiting from the investor friendly policies are from the ruling class, upper middle class, and middle class, as opposed to the working class.
One cannot judge someone’s class based on appearance. Someone in corporate attire could be a white collar worker, while someone in high vis could run a lucrative building company. Someone in dirty overalls could run their own motor mechanics business, while someone in a dress suit could be a hospitality worker in a high class hotel.
Class is fluid as well. A person could have been born into a middle class family but due to certain circumstances not ended up middle class.
Well, new polling by Resolve has Labor on 22% primary vote (yep, that’s correct) and 44.5% 2PP.
Horrible news for the government going into the by-elections. Brad Battin is 10pts ahead as preferred premier.
Before I would’ve put this as Labor retain but I’m not sure anymore, that’s dire