Ben is joined by Stewart Jackson and Andre Brett to discuss which seats might fall when the Labor vote in the WA state election recedes from the high levels reached in 2021, and how the minor parties might perform under the new Legislative Council electoral system.
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My take
The wealthy seats like Nedlands Carine
Church lands Riverton will be lost to
Labor.
Seats such as South Perth Scarborough will be close.
Any seats with a alp margin greater than
20% will be retained for the most part.
Unclear Darling Range Kalamunda
Now We come to the regional seats
Unexpectedly most will be retained as people want a voice in government.
Warren- Blackwood likely to be won by the nats
I wouldn’t be so quick to write off some of the under 10% seats to Labor. There was a massive 10% swing back to Labor in 2015 in NSW and they still didn’t pick up East Hills (.2%), Monaro (2%) and Oatley (3.8%). There will likely be a few seats under 10% Labor hold onto and than maybe even some seats on margins over 20% that Labor lose.
I think Labor will get smaller swings against them in their inner city seats and much bigger swings in the outer suburbs and outside Perth.
Can I respectfully suggest that the lack of local knowledge is really telling here? Some of the macro comments are good, but it’s problematic when it comes to some of the issues that are driving bigger swings against the government among certain types of voters. Take live export for example. It is a uniquely WA issue. Without wanting to get too much into the detail, it’s a big deal precisely because it puts a lot of country people out of business and jobs – not just farmers. Local abattoirs in WA are closing down as we speak. The price per head has collapsed since the ban was announced and other factors have also contributed to a mass destocking across the Wheatbelt and Great Southern in the past year or so. That’s why so many regional people are angry with Labor and yes, it has spilt over into different tiers of government in this case. Remember, a lot of these people voted Labor in 2021 which helped them to win a lot of regional Upper House seats.
As for some of the seat by seat commentary, Mandurah will be a very comfortable Labor hold. The Labor candidate is the outgoing Mayor of Mandurah who is very well known and very good. Bunbury is similarly not on the radar in anyone’s mind. Kingsley is definitely a seat worth watching and Forrestfield could throw up a surprise too. Riverton will come down to whether the Liberals have had enough momentum over prepoll to overcome their starting position, which was behind due to a highly visible and active incumbent. Final margins in seats like Nedlands, South Perth and Mt Lawley will be very interesting.
Maybe the Gaza war is shifting Muslim Votes to the Greens. I have been having a look at Suburbs within Electorates with relatively high Muslim population to see if the swing is more. In most cases they swing is twice as much compared to the swing to Greens across the electorate as a whole.
For example, the swing in Suburb of Thornlie was 9% compared to the swing of 5.3% across the rest of the electorate.
The swing to Greens in the Suburb of Nollamara was 8.6% compared to the swing of just 4.4% across the electorate of Morely. The swings in the Suburbs of Balga and Mirrabooka with relatively high Muslim population were also considerably higher than the swing to the Greens in the rest of the electorate of Girrawheen.
In the seat of Bassandean where the Independent basically got all the votes that would otherwise gone to the Greens, the swing to Greens was just 2%. However in the Suburb of Beechboro that a much higher Muslim population than the rest of the Electorate the swing to Greens were 7.8% and 6.4% in the two booths within the Suburb.
A similar thing can be seen in the Electorate of Belmont. The Suburb of Kewdale has a high Muslim population due the big Islamic School being there. The swing to Greens in Kewdale was 12.3% compared to the swing of 7.6% across the Electorate.
A similar pattern can be seen in the Electorates of Cannington, Forrestfield, Southern River and West Swan. In all of these the Greens pretty much run a cardboard candidate, there were little to no campaigning whatsoever.