Deakin – Australia 2016

I don’t think the Liberals will lose here. Melbourne’s eastern suburbs is flat out Liberal territory, In fact I’m surprised Labor keeps this competitive and winnable. Out of the Liberals marginals in Vic, this is the least of their worries.

It is because the Liberals are having a hard time in Victoria as the state moves and trends away from the right. Conversely however, I would say that NSW is now far more favorable to the Liberal Party than it used to be.

The reason the seat has been so marginal and stable is because it is basically a snapshot of “Middle Australia”. You can see clearly from the booth map that the seat is very homogenous; it’s middle class suburbia with no strong base for either party. It’s exactly the kind of seat that changes with government.

The area is becoming more affluent as people are priced out of the richer suburbs closer in, but also becoming more ethnically diverse. So the seat remains marginal, because the two demographic trends are pulling in opposite directions.

This seat will stay with the Liberal Party fairly comfortably I’d imagine. The East-West link debate is rife in this Electorate and they are still furious with Labor for not building it. Look at the results in Ringwood and Box Hill if you need any further proof. I’d imagine a swing of only 1% to Labor if that.

@PRP if that is true, then it would be an extremely good result for the Libs in their weakest state. My feeling is similar – likely a Liberal retain so long as they retain government.

This seat will continually move towards the Libs, If you look at state results the adjoining seats are safe Lib or that lean towards them.

PRP
I hope you are right about the influence of the E-W link debacle.
I’m incandescent with rage at Andrews & his stupid govt over this, & i don’t even live in the city, let alone the state !!!. The bigger the coalition vote here the better, to send as clear a message as possible to those dunderheads.
You would think that the state ALP MIGHT have had some judiciousness over the waste of public money, after the appalling Desalination plant debacle of the previous LABOR state govt.
BUT NO, NO WAY. !!!.
Even more so, is to consider the reality that no less than 3 yes , THREE OTHER state govts had made the SAME massive,incompetent mindless stuff up. SO now we have another huge UN-USED de-sal plant that we are all paying for, & will continue to pay for. For evermore.
I really dream of charging & executing POLLIES for this kind , & level of mis-management,that verges on national treason.

Overreaction much?

@winediamond

The Coalition tried to make the whole state election about the EW link and the Victorian electorate for the most part had no appetite for it. After all Abbott infamously said that the election was a referendum on the issue. So by their own logic it’s completely its hypocritical to force Labor to rescind on a promise, of which they would have lampooned them. I may also need to remind you that its business case was critically flawed, only returning 45 cents in every dollar invested, finally the obscene amount of money that is now owed to investors is only due to an unnecessary side letter which the coalition signed. In the end the Libs pushed Victorians into a corner, after which they didn’t sell the project particularly well, and after Labor won the election they didn’t explain their reasoning for not going ahead with the policy or in fact ever supporting it.
It was just messy politics and if I had my way I would have gone ahead with the project, obviously revised, as well as going ahead with the metro rail project.

GG
No . Not at all.

L96
Everything you have said may be be true. However the promise aspect/ thing is totally irrelevant. A govt will never be lampooned for putting the best public interest first. Andrews was a complete lunatic, & fool ,with his ridiculous statements about “not being worth the paper they are printed on”. YEAH right on Dan !!!!
Has he taken responsibility, for his grievous errors.???.
HE OUGHT TO RESIGN.
Has he even apologised
The business case is irrelevant for Victoria, as half the money was federal money.
Blind Freddy could see The road is needed. It will be need to be built in the future. What modern city does not have a ring road network ??? Or an effective CBD by-pass ???. There ought to have been NO sales job needed. The project ought to have sold itself.
You are probably too young to know,or remember other public works debacles in NSW, such as the Harbour Tunnel, & the M5 East tunnels.
ATEOTD no one can predict how much utility will be gained from a lot of projects, or the flow on benefits, particularly over time. Generally the punters would rather have, & use the utilities than not. It really comes back to a bit of a ‘Gucci” factor, if not equation.
I won’t even go near thinking about defend the Libs creating an unnecessary public liability. They were not a good govt, so anything is, & was possible, & no amount of ineptitude (from them) would surprise me !!!.

L96,

East West link as originally proposed would have addressed a number of traffic issues, but the Liberals marketed it terribly, and it ended up being seen as nothing more than a cross-city commuter tunnel.

The issue now is that Andrews is proposing a sort of half-arsed version of EWL, building only a part of the original “West” end. But this is not really one thing or the other…..either build EWL properly, or don’t build it at all and use the billions for other projects.

MM
Yes. Precisely.
i wonder whether ( as you so delightfully put it) the half-arsed EWL ends up costing (Victoria) nearly as much as the real thing.??
It could be a close run thing.
I am reminded of the M5 East tunnels here in Sydney. Carr , & Egan were offered an extra lane each way for $150 million in 1995. ” NAH” they said. The fools !!!.
As part of Westconnex we are about to pay $5.5 BILLION to duplicate the bloody things.

Do people think the whole CFA issue will have a large impact on surburban seats like this one or will it be restricted to country based electorates?

There are no CFA places in Deakin so it is doubtful, that being said the Liberals are handing out material on it.

My prediction: Likely Liberal hold, Deakin is prone to small swings, and now contains the Ringwood area, making it better for the Liberals.

Tony Abbott is visiting this seat today, and he brought up the East West Link and the CFA on the Alan Jones’ show.

Seems a bit… tone deaf. A seat to watch.

Deakin is shaping up as a Lib hold.

The Libs will have no trouble here. For one, the statewide swing is not large enough for Labor to come close here. Even if it was, incumbency will brunt any swing.

IMHO Labor are very unlikely to make many gains in Victoria – their target is undoubtedly going to be QLD and NSW.

Beat me to it Sandbelter!

Hmmm, I think it actually WA that will decide the final outcome.

@Sandbelter, it is true that the ALP have much better chances in a lot more Lib-held seats in WA than in NSW and QLD. Theoretically, Hasluck, Cowan, Swan, Stirling, Pearce, Canning and Burt are all in play.

In practice however, I think that local factors, incumbency and the diminution of the statewide swing will mean that Labor will struggle to gain more than 2, if that – when the statewide swing was 8% Labor were only just breaking even in Cowan were well behind in Hasluck and only just ahead in Burt.

Prediction: Liberal retain

Great result for the Liberals here. Probably a combination of Turnbull’s appeal in broader Victoria and the work of the local MP.

I’d be very interested to see if the Libs can crack 50% of the PV. ATM they’re on 49.6%.