Mayo – Australia 2016

LIB 12.5%

Incumbent MP
Jamie Briggs, since 2008.

Geography
Parts of South Australia to the south and east of Adelaide. Mayo covers the Adelaide Hills and the coast of South Australia from Lake Alexandrina to the southern edge of Adelaide, as well as Kangaroo Island.

History
Mayo was first created in 1984 as part of the expansion of the House of Representatives. The seat has always been held by the Liberal Party, although it has always been a high-profile target for minor parties.

The seat was won in 1984 by Alexander Downer, son of former cabinet minister Alec Downer and grandson of former premier Sir John Downer. He retained the seat safely in 1987 but was challenged by the Democrats in 1990, with the minor party polling over 20%. Downer retained the seat with a 6% margin.

A redistribution and a fall in the Democrats vote saw him retain the seat easily in 1993 and 1996. In 1998, the Democrats ran John Schumann, best known as lead singer of the band Redgum. Schumann achieved over 22% of the primary vote and reduced Downer’s two-party margin to 1.7%, the closest the Democrats ever came to winning a House of Representatives seat.

Another favourable redistribution in 2001 helped Downer win re-election, and he was untroubled at the 2004 and 2007 elections. Downer had served a disastrous year as Leader of the Opposition from 1994 to 1995 and served as Foreign Minister for the entirety of the Howard government from 1996 until 2007. After the defeat of the Howard government in 2007, Downer moved to the backbench and retired in 2008 to serve as United Nations envoy to Cyprus.

The ensuing by-election was contested between Liberal candidate Jamie Briggs and Greens candidate Lynton Vonow, as the ALP did not stand a candidate. The Greens polled 21%, and the Liberal vote dropped to 40%. After preferences, Briggs won 53% of the vote, and retained the seat by a slim margin.

Jamie Briggs was re-elected in 2010, with a slight 0.3% swing compared to the 2007 election.

Candidates

Assessment
On paper Mayo is a safe Liberal seat, but it is a key target for the Nick Xenophon Team, who polled over 28% in the Senate in Mayo in 2013.

It remains to be seen how well NXT can do in a lower house seat, but if they can overtake Labor they could benefit from Labor and Greens preferences and possibly threaten Briggs.

Polls

  • 39.6% to Liberal, 23.5% NXT, 18.3% Labor, 10.7% Greens, 4.4% undecided – Reachtel commissioned by GetUp, 16 May 2016
  • 42% to Liberal, 38% NXT, 9% Labor, 7% Greens – Newspoll, 13-15 June 2016

2013 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Jamie Briggs Liberal 49,195 53.8 +6.9
Norah Fahy Labor 19,325 21.1 -4.1
Ian Grosser Greens 12,931 14.2 -2.9
Bruce Hicks Family First 6,525 7.1 +1.4
Bikkar Singh Brar Palmer United Party 3,434 3.8 +3.8
Informal 3,684 4.0

2013 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Jamie Briggs Liberal 57,141 62.5 +5.2
Norah Fahy Labor 34,269 37.5 -5.2

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into six areas, based on local government boundaries. Five groups cover all of the polling booths in a single council area: Adelaide Hills, Barossa, Kangaroo Island, Mount Barker and Onkaparinga.

Those in Alexandrina, Victor Harbour and Yankalilla council areas have been grouped together as ‘South’.

Over one-third of ordinary votes were cast in the Adelaide Hills, with just under a third cast in the south of the seat.

The Liberal two-party-preferred vote ranged from 60% in Mount Barker and Onkaparinga up to 67.6% on Kangaroo Island.

Nick Xenophon’s Senate vote ranged from 21% on Kangaroo Island to 34.4% in the Barossa.

The Greens vote ranged from 11% in the south and the Barossa to 17.8% in the Adelaide Hills.

Voter group XEN % GRN % LIB 2PP % Total votes % of votes
Adelaide Hills 29.6 17.8 61.4 22,647 24.8
South 30.4 11.0 63.2 18,479 20.2
Mount Barker 28.2 15.1 59.9 12,734 13.9
Onkaparinga 31.0 13.3 60.0 8,582 9.4
Kangaroo Island 21.0 12.2 67.6 2,216 2.4
Barossa 34.4 10.9 61.7 856 0.9
Other votes 25.2 13.3 64.8 25,896 28.3

Election results in Mayo at the 2013 federal election
Click on the ‘visible layers’ box to toggle between two-party-preferred votes, Greens primary votes and Senate votes for the Nick Xenophon group.

69 COMMENTS

  1. The SA seat I’ll be watching the most on election night – considering the Democrats almost toppled Alexander Downer in 1998, could the NXT topple Briggs in 2016?

    Also, under the Assessment section, you’ve got the information for Adelaide.

  2. @AK, that was my assessment as well. I feel that if the Democrats came so close with a sitting, high-profile minister at the helm, then Xenophon should at the very least have a good shot.

    Also, nice fancy map Ben!

  3. The text says “Nick Xenophon’s Senate vote ranged from 20.4% on Kangaroo Island to 33.5% in the Barossa.” but the graphic shows some 35% booths in the Barossa?

    Definitely one to watch. In 2013 the Liberals polled over 54% on primary votes in the House here, but only 31% in the Senate.

  4. Agree this is what you would assume is the most likely seat for Mr X’s Team if they are to win any in the House.

  5. Just saw the NXT candidate’s bio. She used to work for Briggs and the SA Liberals apparently.

  6. Thanks kme, fixed. Nick first alerted me to this problem. I fixed half of it. It turns out I screwed up twice – I calculate the Xen vote for the booth numbers by dividing over the House formal, not the Senate formal (Senate formal is larger so this exaggerates his vote), and then for the regional totals I did it over the total vote, not the formal vote, so that underestimated. Both problems now fixed. Using a new method for the interactive maps, there will be some kinks.

  7. I’d chalk this up as an almost certain NXT gain – probably their only one. Even 20% of the vote could conceivably win them this, based on the split of the non-Liberal vote and I’d expect them to do a fair bit better than that. Throw in Briggs fairly off-putting persona and his recent resignation from the ministry and the Liberal primary vote should take a fair whack, probably falling to around the 40% mark.

  8. if nxt gain……. then that is denying the libs a seat, throw in Windsor in New England and it is looking most likely the best the libs can hope for is a hung parliament,

  9. @MQ Neither are certain gains. While I personally think that the scandal surrounding Briggs may affect him, there is by no means a consensus of opinion on this view. Some believe that the scandal will do nothing at all. Time will tell ofc.

    As for New England, it is early days there and frankly I am not convinced that Windsor will be winning this time around.

    Then there is the issue w/Fairfax and Indi…

  10. There’s another factor to consider here. What will Labor and the Greens do with their preferences? Will they preference each other ahead of the X-Team? If they do that could keep or push one of them into 2nd place and knock out the X-Team, presumably producing a comfortable Liberal retain. We know some in the Greens really don’t like Xenophon, even though in a seat like this presumably many Greens voters prefer the anti-politician Xenophon to either major party.

  11. Greens voters are notoriously hard to direct preference-wise so it probably doesn’t matter a great deal anyway. The ALP preference recommendation probably does matter though, and the strategically sound option seems like preferencing NXT since it’s not like the Greens or ALP can hope to be competitive in this seat in the medium term.

  12. Putting NXT at #2 is a no-brainer for both Labor and the Greens.

    Personally, I’m sceptical of NXT’s chances of picking up any House seats, but Mayo is their best shot.

  13. Of course they ‘should’, and of course many of their voters, particularly the Greens, will preference the NXT anyway, but there’s no guarantee they will, and the benefit of the HTV recommendations could be critical.

  14. There are a number of assumptions here, but assuming
    1) The Greens, Labor and FF vote is roughly the same as in 2013 and
    2) NXT’s Rebekha Sharkie can muster a little over 20% of the primary vote and
    3) the flow of preferences from Labor, Greens and FF is a little over 70% (not unreasonable)
    then Jamie ” you have such piercing eyes” Briggs should be a very worried boy indeed.

    Most of my local Liberal Party member friends in Mayo, while sadly resigned to the possibility of losing their “jewel in the crown”, will be glad to see the back of him.

    I have it on good authority that rank and file members have been warning the SA Liberal brains trust, AKA the state executive, of this possibility/probability for some time.

  15. Our assumption are based on 2013,an election that showed a strong movement to the right..The 2010 results are much higher for the greens !

  16. Glen Dallimore an Australian Submarine Corporation employee and union delegate will likely be the ALP candidate
    .Mayo was flooded with ‘robo-calls’ from Malcolm telling us how Jamie worked hard to bring the sub contract to SA..not to forget that Jamies ‘broken table ‘partner Abbott broke his election promise that the subs were to be built in Adelaide.
    Fun time in Mayo !

  17. You can see the potential for the NXT candidate winning off a low primary here. If NXT can get a little over 20% of the primary vote and at the same time see the Lib primary vote drop by 10% then they should be close to winning it off what you’d expect to be an overwhelming preference flow from the ALP, Greens and other voters (from which they’ll probably receive 75%+ of prefs). That’s if you also assume that Greens/other voters preference NXT over the ALP which is a likely outcome imo, though there isn’t really any precedent I know of to say this for sure.

    The latest Morgan poll has NXT polling at 19.5% statewide in SA, but it’s hard to believe that this level of support will translate to actual votes in the House when Xenophon himself is not on the ballot. If NXT only poll say 10-13% statewide at the election, previous voting patterns would suggest Mayo will poll well above the state average for NXT.

    It’s going to be one of the most interesting contests at the next election at this stage I think Mayo is just too unpredictable to call. It’s hard to know to what extent a strong Senate vote will translate to a vote for the local candidate.

  18. NXT candidate Sharkie is a former Liberal staffer for Isobel Redmond , Rachel Sanderson (State liberal M P s) and Jamie Briggs .It would seem highly unlikely that many Green voters would preference the NXT candidate.However,it would be more likely that Labor voter would preference Green over NXT.
    The 2013 result moved strongly to the ‘right’ with Briggs gaining 53.8% of the primary vote with Labor 19.3% and Greens 14.1%.
    In the 2010 election Briggs 42.9 ,Labor 25 % and Greens 17.9 An .NXT gain would likely be at the expense of predominately Liberal and some Labor voters and not the Green Vote,
    A 20 plus Green vote could be possible ?
    The Green candidate has been running a strong grass root campaign (,doorknocking and hall meetings) in strong Green areas of the Central Hills.-Mylor, Bridgewater, Stirling Crafers -all with 25% + green vote. The green candidate is also an Adelaide Hills Councillor representing this area and a former Greens State Secretary..
    With this scenario a Green win could be possible

  21. The Greens vote dropped from 14% to 10% in 2013 from House to Senate. There is also no evidence in the polls of a surge in Greens support.

  22. The ‘X’ factor. has not been tested in the Lower House.
    In 2013 despite a 26% Senate vote Nick was not able to get his running mate Stirling Griff a Senate seat . However, Sarah Hanson-Young picked up the 4th spot on 4.9 of a quota. O P V may make a difference.
    .Nicks ‘poor choice of running mates as a State MLC is shouted loudly by Liberal and Labor.
    Fun time in Mayo !

  23. The Green vote is largely concentrated in the Hills with it tailing off markedly in the rest of the electorate. The booth spread on the Fleurieu Peninsula seems indicative with 3-4 booths showing a ‘left’ leaning but not enough to translate into a Green wave. I’m a Mayoite and I’ve not picked up on any Green sentiment that would translate into giving the seat a shake.

    I’ll echo Red Ron’s shout that there’s a lot of folk right royally peed off with the over-entitled Master Briggs and his neglect of the electorate that in my more fanciful moments I’d like to think could translate into an Indi-style knife-edge result. Green voters are practical and if they can see a way of making Mayo marginal by voting for NXT many might even though it’ll be the closest they ever get to voting for a Tory. They key is to lower the LNP vote of course but if a LNP voter preferences NXT first they’re going to back up with LNP/FF as second.

    I would think the preference share for NXT with a primary vote of around 20% would have to be closer to 80%+ to get them over. A tall order but not undoable. Once the primary heads towards 25% then ‘Mister Marble Table-Dancer’ can start clearing his underused desk.

  25. I expect the Green vote in the House of Reps in South Australia will decrease with many votes going to the Nick Xenophon team. Many voters would love to see Mayo, Boothby and Sturt be removed from the Liberals who have done zilch in those seats for decades. Our personal Green Senate votes will also preference the Xenophon team in case the 2nd Green doesn’t get up. Any party that has either Cory Bernardi or Don Farrell will never be preferenced in any way!

  26. I’m not sold on NXT as a threat to lower house seats, but as others have noted, this is probably their best shot and 5/1 is quite generous odds. I’d be interested if anyone has word about the local campaign here.

    I expect the Green vote here to be behind NXT, Lib, ALP and possibly even FFP, which probably doesn’t lose votes to NXT the way the Greens will.

  27. Xenophon is a ‘centre right’ politician,His Mayo candidate is a former Liberal staffer(2 state M P and worked with Briggs) A Liberal,but a lighter shade of blue
    . Jamies antics and his aggressive nature have upset many traditional Mayo liberal voter.The local press reported a major liberal supporter “throwing his hat” into the NXT campaign. Talk of disendorsement of Briggs and replacement with Georgina Downer.(Before her failed Goldstein nomination )
    Sharkies’ gain will be at Jamies expense

    .Green voters are to the “left ‘ of the political pendulum and would be unlikely to move to the “conservative ” NXT lower house candidate with their first preference but could be motivated to give Sharkie a number 2 in the hope of making Mayo marginal or better still – “Bye bye Jamie – goodbye”
    Fun time in Mayo

  28. Where is everyone getting the idea that Xenophon is right-wing???? From everything I have seen he is at the very most a centrist with Third Way tendencies. Now, whether he attracts more Liberal than Labor voters is an entirely separate question.

  29. Since 2007 the Green vote in Mayo has been more than double the Family First Vote.
    “Bob the builder”Unsuccessful lower house bid in 2008 gave FF 11% to the Greens 21 % despite Bob spending bulk $$ on his Campaign.
    It is highly unlikely that the Greens would run behind FF in this election.

  30. Wreathy

    I agree if anyone has a look at the NXT policy platform it can hardly be termed right-wing. It seems like a centrist, social liberal movement.

  31. Senator Nick Xenophon may be a centrist.,However,what is his lower house candidates position ?
    Sharkie has spoken at a forum organised by FLAG australia and has strong strong public support from this group..FLAG has previously sponsored visits to the area by Pauline Hanson and Lord Christoper Monkton.
    For a fair proportion of her working life she has worked for the Liberal party.

  32. Xenophon is mostly Third-way although he does seem to gather the old Democrats supporters, so although he isn’t particularly conservative he does seem to unite people under a big tent ideology, Just look at Ann Bressington who was his elected on his ticket and then went on to join Katter.

  33. Yes, the perception as to how ideologically close those running under the NXT banner are to Xenophon himself will be a major factor as to whether they can elect any lower house reps.

  34. @Papa G, Xenophon is a personality movement like Palmer’s party was. The entire party is based around him, remember it *is* called NICK XENOPHON TEAM. I believe that most of their vote will come from a liking of Xenophon himself and I doubt very much that local candidates will have much of an impact on this. Maybe a little – enough to probably win this seat.

  36. @Richard they haven’t declared one as yet, still a couple of weeks until the close of nominations. Providing they don’t have two heads the individual won’t make too much difference.

  38. Oh right, you mentioned he was ‘likely’, I was going off the published declarations that don’t have him listed yet but fair enough.

    Don’t mean to right off the individual either. It’s just that from past experience when the ALP do run a candidate the electorate isn’t overly receptive.

  39. @ Hold the Mayo Dallimore is now listed on the ALP (SA) website – Must be recent because there is no photograph.,His previous problem was that his employer ( ASC) would not grant Dallimore unpaid leave .- to essentially contest a seat as a ‘paper candidate’.
    Having said that ,Labor has never polled less than the low twenties and as high as 28% in the “Kevin 07” election. ‘.Rusted on’ Labor voters !

  41. The Mount Barker area which includes Littlehampton and Nairne have had large housing estates built recently, would these mainly young families be Liberal voters. I am a 65 year old Vietnam veteran who has had a gut full of both major parties. I am a NXT volunteer and have helped put up posters for them in the Mayo electorate. I can’t wait for polling day, most of my mates who would normally be to the right of centre say they will be voting NXT because they can’t stand Briggs. I think it will be very close

  42. Where are the NXT votes going to come from?

    If its 7% from Greens, Libs and Lab then NXT will most likely lose to the Libs. Basically needs to pull something like a whopping 12% of LIb votes to stand a chance.

    I dont see this as a given

  43. Andrew

    If you use 2010 first preference votes :Briggs 43 %. drops to below 49% ,NXT manages to run second then Jamie is’ on the ropes’.Preference flows will play a vital role,
    The 2008 by election results (AEC website) and preference flows show how a very close contest can be possible
    Bye Bye Jamie Goodbye

  47. A “press 1 or 2…”poll was conducted in the electorate on Wed Evening..
    A Briggs – Nick X stoush on ABC radio over an Australian Newspaper headline related to Nicks’ undeclared business interests.
    Malcolm visit to Mt Barker to announce lots of $$ this afternoon.
    John Howard visit next week to support his ‘workchoices’ advisor.(Jamie)
    There has never been so much activity or money promised for a seat that has a 12% margin – and we still have 4 weeks to go !
    Fun times in Mayo

  48. Mayo is gone for all money. Said that weeks ago. The more attention it gets the bigger will be the groundswell towards NXT and will also increase the tactical voting from greens supporters, sealing the deal. As the possibility of an NXT boilover now gets more attention, this will spill over into other SA seats as well. Fun times ahead 🙂

  49. Morgan says Lib 36%, NXT 28.5%, Labor 21.5%, Greens 7.0%, Others 7.0%.

    This one shows NXT hoovering up the Greens and minor party vote, with Labor’s vote relatively unchanged. Although on these numbers it’s possible the Greens would put Labor into second place. NXT would probably want the Labor vote to fall.

  50. Greens are running open ticket. I don’t know what percentage would got to NXT, but I’d assume a lot will be either NXT then Lab or Lab then NXT.

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