Higgins – Australia 2019

The loss of Windsor does hurt the Greens here, it’s their strongest area where they polled nearly half the primary vote. The Hughesdale/Oakleigh area in the south-east is more 50-50 territory where the Greens don’t do anywhere near as well.

There may be room for the growth in Green support, but the demographic in the east is also becoming more affluent as people are priced out of the exclusive suburbs closer in, which might help the Liberal vote hold up. The 2016 results show that most of the “Green growth” was just cannibalism of the Labor vote, while some of the Murrumbeena and Oakleigh booths actually saw the Liberals improve their vote.

Personally, I find it hard to see the Greens causing serious trouble here, when they can’t knock over lower hanging fruit like Batman/Cooper and Wills.

Mark Mulcair
i think you are completely right. The winning Green vote in the West is surprising. However unless the Greens change direction this will be there peak in such areas.
I wonder how much O Dwyer is a drag on the Lib vote. She is such a moron, & over reactive fool. She gets my nomination for worst current assistant minister. Perhaps for all time.

Either this or Brisbane is most likely to be the first federal seat that the Greens will win from the Liberals. The Greens received a large swing last time and O’Dwyer has been a very poor performer. If it doesn’t go Green at the next election then there’s a good chance it will at the one after.

Firefox
Your prediction seems to be based on the rising, & continuing popularity of the Greens. What is the basis of your assumptions ?
BTW i disagree strongly as Batman/ Cooper, or Mc Namara are far more fertile ground for the watermelons

Loss of Windsor hurts the Greens primary vote but the redistribution on the whole helped their 2PP vs Liberal, and I don’t see Labor relegating the Greens to 3rd place in this seat.

If they do stay in 2nd place it will be interesting to see how the overall 2PP Coalition vs ALP swing compares to the local Coalition vs Green swing.

Knowing how Coalition vs Green swing relates to Coalition vs ALP swings would be important to predict future races in Higgins, Macnamara, Brisbane, Ryan, Warringah, Kooyong, Wentworth, North Sydney, and Richmond (federal) campaigns that could soon be routine Coalition versus Greens runoffs if the Green “primary vote intensification” trend continues (and to predict a fair few state races like Prahran in VIC, Ballina in NSW, and Maiwar in QLD).

I went looking for some historical datapoints and I couldn’t find any federally. I found 6 cases at state elections (frustratingly all under optional preferential, I’d bet that is frustrating for the Greens as well given they were trying to win these seats from 2nd place!):

NSW state electorates of Vaucluse and North Shore in 2011, +10 and +7.4 (Liberal vs Green) while statewide was +16.48 (Coalition vs ALP).

NSW state electorates of Vaucluse, North Shore, and Ballina in 2015, -3.2, −2.1 (Liberal vs Green), and -20.1(!) (National vs Green) while statewide was -9.9 (Coalition vs ALP).

QLD state electorate of Noosa in 2015, -16.84 (LNP vs Green) while statewide was -14 (LNP vs ALP).

Can anyone else think of seats where the runoff was Coalition vs Greens 2 elections in a row?

Other than Higgins only Warringah (if the Greens stay in 2nd) and Melbourne (if the Liberals stay in 2nd) are potential datapoints in the coming federal election but those seem less likely to occur than the O’Dwyer vs Ball rematch.

He said from the Liberals, both Cooper and McNamara are Labor held.

Morgieb Firefox
Yep i missed that. Sorry

Greens could pick up a few of the Turnbull liberals who hadn’t realised in 2016 that he was going to basically be Abbott on policy, but as far as awareness raising, I think the Greens are “tapped out”. There was a poll that had the Greens winning Higgins and they threw nearly everything at it afterwards.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a swing TOWARDS liberals in the strong Green booths. Now that marriage equality has happened, a lot of the single issue affluent LGBT voters will “come home”.

John
Single issue LGBT voters would not have occurred to me. I’d have thought the Andrews state govt would be far more influential, as a vote changer.

Something I find interesting in this map is what it says about how the state seat of Prahran might go in the November election. I know Prahran will have its own state election guide coming soon, but it’s worth mentioning here too because comparing the Greens vote in the 2014 Prahran map with the ‘west’ section of this 2016 Higgins map could be very telling.

The Green 2PP votes in the west of the electorate were considerably higher in this map than they were in the 2014 state election. The most obvious example is the suburb of South Yarra which was a Liberal stronghold in 2014, but in the above map the Liberals’ best booth in South Yarra was 50-50 with the Greens winning the rest.

Now obviously I know there are different issues at state & federal level (including the SSM debate raging in 2016) and different candidates. However, if anywhere close to that increase in Greens support in South Yarra from 2014 to 2016 is sustained into the November election, it looks like that knife-edge margin the Greens currently hold will only be increased given the suburbs of Prahran, Windsor & St Kilda are already Greens strongholds (with particularly low Liberal votes in Windsor & St Kilda). If South Yarra remains around 50/50, Toorak alone wouldn’t be enough to carry a Liberal victory.

On the topic of Higgins though, I don’t think it’s winnable for the Greens for a while with their strongest suburb Windsor leaving the electorate. But you never know, further swings to the Greens in South Yarra & Prahran coupled with a solid swing to the ALP in marginal suburbs like Carnegie, Murrumbeena & Hughesdale could make it pretty close..

In my opinion Macnamara is the next Greens gain.

Prahran guide is due to go up in mid-late September but could be pushed up if someone who is a patreon donor requests it.

Getting a good swing to the ALP in the suburbs south of the Princes Highway would require an active ALP campaign in a seat that is completely unwinnable for them.

I don’t see the ALP spending resources on helping the Greens pick up a seat, especially in Victoria.

Things like Melbourne Metro and level crossing removals will boost Labor’s vote, but they will have no ground game in Higgins.

Not sure that the level crossing removals will be a winner for Labor.

‘Skyrail’ was not exactly super-popular through there.

I agree I think it will hurt them rather than help them around Murrumbeena, but by next year it might not make too much difference. I just meant more along the lines of if a uniform swing towards Labor away from the Coalition of 2-3% is replicated in those areas, then that combined with further movement towards the Greens around Prahran & South Yarra could definitely eat into that 7% margin a bit.

This thing watching Higgins is the sheer stability of the Liberal vote, the margin may not be great but the volatility is low..except as you get closer to Oakleigh. Can’t see the libs losing this.

And no the skytrain is not popular….replacing boom gates with pedestrian lights is not progress.

The fact that the Greens couldn’t even gain batman makes me think Kelly will hold this seat by a larger margin, There is even a chance if Labour wins the next federal election which is increasingly likely, Labour could become 2nd on the primary vote and this Reverts back to a safe seat prob 58-42 TPP (Lib vs Lab). Even though the batman greens candidate was slightly scandalised, and even though labour was leading in the polls unlike election day 2016, The greens should have at least not done nearly as bad as they did

Daniel I think you are forgetting the massive resources the Labor party concentrated into Batman to hold it. Major parties trying to win 76 seats can’t do that to hold off a more focused minor or independent campaign in a general election. Despite losing it was not a total rout for the Greens, they gained primary votes they have never had before in booths north of Bell Street.

Will the Liberals dump a million dollars to save O’Dwyer if the Greens come-a-doorknocking? Hell no. Batman by-election is a bad test case for greens lower house chances in the coming general election imo.

@Benee, as a (thankfully) FORMER (and I do emphasise former) Liberal, I can say with confidence that O’Dwyer is going to be well-protected. The moderates in the party are not going to throw her to the wolves contrary to your prediction IMO. That’s just a guess from my experience.

I severely doubt the Greens will get anywhere near in Higgins.

@Bennee I also agree that Batman was bad test case, it was almost the opposite of the previous election as Bhatal had the majority of pressure on her instead of Feeney.
As for Higgins, I doubt the Greens will win but another 2-3% swing isn’t necessarily the worst outcome, as for the threat of falling back to third, well I doubt that too. The simple fact is that Labor will run dead again as they have other seats to worry about.
My current prediction 55-45 Lib over Green.

L96 I agree, I’m predicting the combination of a national swing against the Coalition (albeit not so much in blue ribbon suburbs like Toorak, Malvern & Armadale) combined with an increasing Green vote around South Yarra & Prahran, the Liberals will still win relatively comfortably but with a decreased 2PP result of around 54-55%.

This would certainly move it out of the “very safe” range moving forward, especially as the rapid development of high rises is moving more and more young, progressive professionals into South Yarra, Carnegie is becoming increasingly multicultural and student oriented, and the booming popularity of Windsor is starting to push more hipster credibility into Prahran.

I recently moved into Higgins from Melbourne Ports/Macnamara and regardless of your political preference, I think it’s only ever a good thing to be in a marginal seat. So I was disappointed the redistribution didn’t move the boundary far enough north to move Prahran and keep me in Macnarama (which I think is far & away the front runner to become the Greens second federal seat, ahead of Batman & Wills), but to see any kind of swing shift Higgins from a perennial “blue ribbon” seat towards sniffing distance of becoming a legitimate contest would certainly be welcome.

Labor won’t be coming 2nd here because they aren’t going to be doorknocking, putting up lots of corflutes, etc. Around here they will focus much more on Macnamara and Chisholm.

Batman, while a bad result for the Greens, does show the potential for the Greens to pick up swings in “middle ring” areas with a ground campaign.

@Wreathy

I don’t mean that they would intentionally throw O’Dwyer to the wolves, I mean that everyone in the Coalition has their own bacon to save. There are 33 Coalition seats more marginal than this one, 8 of them are in Victoria. If the Greens continue to increase their campaigning ability and make a serious go at Higgins the Coalition may not have the dollars and volunteers spare to defend it (unlike Labor did in Batman, because Batman’s 100,000 voters were the only ones the Vic Labor party had to focus on that month).

The Greens (CA, PHON, and KAP as well) have an asymmetric/”guerrilla warfare” advantage in federal elections where they are trying to pick off a few lower house seats while both major parties are going for 77+, as long as they can organise to follow through on the narrow seat targeting.

too much liberal territory here for alp or greens to win

ReachTEL VIC statewide federal poll is bad news for O’Dwyer (and great for Greens in Higgins, Macnamara, Wills, and Cooper)

LIB 31.3 (-5.7 since election) NAT 4.3 (-0.5) ALP 34.8 (-0.8) GRN 18.0 (+4.9) ON 5.0 (+5.0) Other 6.4 (-3.1)

If it’s not a rogue poll it’s remarkable gains the Greens haven’t seen since 2010.

The reachTEL poll was commissioned by the Greens, it is as dodgy as the poll that was done for the Greens in Higgins prior to the last federal election!

This is a rogue poll commisioned by the Greens…

The Greens will struggle to gain this seat in the short, and even long, term in my opinion. They barely moved the two party preferred vote in this seat in 2016 despite throwing the kitchen sink ($1.5+ million) at it. In fact, it is arguable that if they didn’t plow as much resources into this seat as they did, and instead directed those resources into Batman and Wills, they would have gained those seats instead losing them narrowly.

Higgins is probably just too Liberal and blue-ribbon to ever go to the Greens.

Agree with Matt – They also seemed to campaign underwhelmingly in Melbourne Ports and didn’t identify Brisbane as having Green potential despite being severely short on Liberal held seats to campaign in. I don’t think their data people are particularly good at identifying opportunities.

I don’t think the Greens were aware of things like vote parking, or the poor quality of individual seat polls. There was one poll showing the Greens winning the seat – I think that caused them to switch to a sincere attempt at winning. The Greens had various other reasons to run here – shoring up Prahran, building the senate vote in a seat with weak ALP campaigning, and visibly running hard in a seat not held by Labor.

However in the seats that look like Higgins, there was usually a swing towards the Liberals – a small “honeymoon” effect for Turnbull. As the clearest example, Frydenberg picked up 2.3% in Kooyong. This makes me think the Greens campaign did work to some extent.

The 2019 campaign will basically be a freebie as they’re running the same candidate and will have built up local volunteering capacity. The seat being formally Liberal vs Green would convert a few more senate votes, and the idea that they’re also running to take seats from Liberals will be even more important in the 2019 election. I don’t expect them to spend anywhere near as much money this time around but I expect a swing to Greens, and a big one if the PM isn’t Turnbull.

Agreed, Higgins is a low Beta, is it safe because of the liberal votes stability ‘not the margin. .

Higgins could be interesting with Dutton as Liberal leader because even with a better aligned leader in Turnbull, Kelly O`Dwyer went on to record the lowest Liberal primary vote in the seat’s history, so adding Dutton to the leadership and the banking RC could see this seat go to preferences for the first time in its history, although I would expect the Liberals to hold it.

The Liberals are protected by their stable vote in Malvern, Glen Iris, and Toorak.

John

“Frydenberg picked up 2.3% in Kooyong”

Josh Frydenberg achieved a swing to him partly because he is an active local MP, so it is possible he will maintain that vote although I am not sure how Kooyong types will react to being told they are no longer the Liberal base.

I tend to agree, most of the Liberal votes here are pretty solid. Even if the Libs fell below 50% on primaries i’d imagine that the lowest it could get to would be around 48%.
That being said if Dutton was leader it wouldn’t be particularly helpful for the Libs.
My guess would be 55-45 Lib over Greens.

In light of the leadership change and drama that went with it, I’m predicting a Liberal win with a much reduced margin of around 53-47.

As others have mentioned the Liberal vote is way too stable in the middle of the electorate (Malvern, Toorak, Armadale, Glen Iris) for the Libs to be beaten, but the Carnegie-Hughesdale area has potential for big swings to Labor from pro-Turnbull swing voters, while South Yarra & Prahran should swing further to the Greens which could easily knock a good 4-5% off the margin.

I was out in Carnegie & Murrumbeena on the weekend and overhearing discussions, the mood was very much that they’ll be punished at the election for ditching Turnbull.

Trent
The whole situation is now so fluid that we’ll need a couple of months before things congeal. Interestingly Higgins is 1 seat that won’t be affected much either way.

O’Dwyer is such a moron i think she has a negative personal vote. She has my vote as runner up for the worst minister in the govt (Birmingham is the “winner” !). Therefore if she went the lib vote would increase at least 3 points, maybe double that !

Here is what i posted in 2016, from the archive Posted April 19, 2016 at 5:48 PM

W of S
Whilst O’ Dwyer is from your team, she really is a pain in the butt. Another lawyer, turned political staffer, turned MP. I have yet to hear an original thought idea, or concept. Stopped listening a long time ago.
What i find most remarkable about her is the ease with which she can be distracted, & provoked. As i used to say to my son (WD junior !) sans teenage years. “Rohan your’e like an expletive girl. You can’t have an expletive thought without expletive sharing it ”
Sexist i know. However when dealing with male adolescents challenge is often the most effective communication, & tactic.

Kelly clearly grew up without any brothers to teach her how not to react , & take herself so seriously !!!.

How you enjoy that vignette !
cheers WD

In light of the massive swings in Wentworth – a seat with a quite similar profile – I wonder how safe that 7.6% margin is in Higgins now. That 3-4% swing away that I was expecting previously, due to the stable vote in the central part of this electorate, now looks way understated.

If even the traditional blue-ribbon booths in Wentworth around Vaucluse, Rose Bay & Double Bay copped a -20% swing against the Liberals, it means a 5% swing against them in this electorate’s equivalent seemingly stable “heartland” (Toorak, Malvern, Armadale) doesn’t look out of the question.

Obviously the Turnbull knifing had a bigger impact in Wentworth being his own seat, but 18% is massive and makes an 8-10% swing across the rest of a similarly diverse, socially progressive but affluent electorate like this one very achievable. If the Greens can achieve a swing in the 10% range around the Chapel St area and the Labor can pull off similar in the east from Ashburton down to Carnegie-Hughesdale, a 5% shakeup in the “heartland” is probably all that’s needed for the Libs to lose this…

Higgins will now be a seat to watch, I don’t see it going to either the ALP or Greens but it is home to number of well known people that could run as independents, they will have to play it like Phelps did by being Liberal lite on economic issues but if they can get the message right on climate change and other issues the Liberals have fluffed then it could be close

I think the Greens have the best shot, if there’s a big enough swing to Labor in the more middle class areas but the Greens stay in second place, ALP preferences will overwhelmingly flow to them giving them a good chance of getting over the line.

Primary votes in the ballpark of 45 Lib, 28 Greens and 18-20 ALP seem pretty likely in the current climate and that’d make for a very close 2PP count.

The big difference between Higgins and Wentworth is that the starting point is already so much closer. A party like the Greens never had a chance in Wentworth with an 18% margin, because such a massive number of traditional Liberal voters was never going to jump ship to a left-wing party, only an independent centrist could manage such a swing there.

The target is so much smaller for the Greens here. The south-east of the electorate is the definition of swinging, marginal, middle-class suburbia that will likely swing hard with the political mood, while the Greens already hold the west of the electorate at state level, so both ALP & the Greens picking up just 4% each could unseat O’Dwyer.

The Greens will probably be wishing Windsor had stayed in Higgins, but as Wentworth showed, voters will only go to someone that isn’t against them economically, just as a anti-union candidate could never win in say Brunswick or Northcote.

Replacing Windsor with relatively strong Labor Hughesdale has improved their TCP, as the Labor will then flow to Greens. Oakleigh (Higgins), which covers that end, was actually a Greens booth by about 0.5% in 2016.

I agree, at first shifting Windsor would have been seen as a positive, concentrating their support in Macnamara to increase their chances of picking up 1 seat, rather than spreading it across both and more likely pick up none.

However, since Turnbull’s ousting and the Libs’ turmoil spiralling further out of control, Higgins is within reach now and I think the Greens should be in a position to pick up Macnamara with or without the addition of Windsor, so those Windsor votes would probably be more useful to help their chances in Higgins.

Your point about going to somebody who isn’t against them economically is valid, but I think it’s overstated in Higgins (and possibly Melbourne in general). The Greens tend to do much better in wealthy suburbs of Melbourne than Sydney, possibly because the VIC Greens are seen as more moderate than the NSW Greens.

Comparing the most traditional blue-ribbon sections of each electorate in 2016, the Greens only managed between 5-9% throughout most of Wentworth’s harbour suburbs. By contrast, multiple polling places throughout Toorak, Armadale, Glen Iris & Malvern had Greens PV’s of 27-30%, and they are about as ‘old money’ conservative as Melbourne suburbs get.

The Greens also have an affluent, high income voter base themselves so I don’t think wealthy voters see them as an economic adversary like they often do Labor.

Trent

Agree that Melbourne is different than Sydney, and I differently think Higgins could go, 8% seems to be in the sweet spot or potential ceiling for the coming landslide and I just can’t see how this government can turn it around. The Liberals scored 52% last time, if there was a further swing of 5% to 10% then it will either become marginal or fall.

Yep, two months ago I was predicting about a 53-47 Liberal win but with the scale of the Wentworth swing, the polls that we’ve been seeing and no sign that the Liberals can turn it around (more likely it will only get worse) I’m predicting primaries around the 45/28/20 range and a near 50-50 2CP result.

Also long term I think if the Greens don’t win it this time and the Liberals manage to hang on, that’s probably the end of the Greens’ chances because it will ‘normalise’ back to a reasonably safe Liberal seat the next time around when Labor are in government, which makes it all the more important for the Greens to try to snatch it this election because a Greens incumbency should at least keep it close.

Trent
A lot would depend on how that ALP government performed and how the Liberals responded to losing, when Kennett lost in 1999, I don’t think there were many people expecting the scale of the ALP win in 2002, also the Greens seem to perform better when the ALP is in government so it may be the case that the Greens chances might not recede and then there is the next redistribution which I believe will be held in the next term.

Trent, Pencil, I think you are both right on different points.

The Greens nationwide vote certainly seems like it would rise in 2022 if Labor is in government from 2019, the Greens then being the sole critic of the sitting government “from the left” (as opposed to now where they somewhat compete with the Labor party for similar angles of attack on the government).

But in the particular case of Liberal vs Green seats the Greens aren’t necessarily helped by increasing their higher primary vote when that gain is coming at the expense of Labor’s vote… I’d assert it’s clearer for the Greens to prosecute a campaign to shift crucial Liberal votes Green when the Liberals are in government.

Agree Bennee.

Di Natale seems to be unlucky again. His 2015/16 image of a pragmatic progressive would do the trick here, but since Corbyn and Sanders grew a lot in popularity and Labor ran an aggressive campaign about “Tree Tories”, he’s been gradually emphasising the more radical things about him. He went from wearing ties to Q&A to wearing Stop Adani tshirts. Now though it seems like the Greens are missing the boat on being able to get votes off disgruntled Liberals and being the party of Kerryn Phelps types (even though they have key policy differences like company tax cuts).

The Greens will have to face up to the fact that while they’re to the left of Labor and have been for quite some time, they are actually well positioned to pick up the old Democrats vote (between the two majors) and small-l Liberals. There’s a demographic of culturally Liberal progressives (eg educated young voters from wealthy families) that the Greens are more likely to pick up than Labor. People underestimate how popular many Green policies are among Liberal voters (eg renewable energy, legalising marijuana, and “war on waste” issues).

Meanwhile their efforts to position themselves as more pro-union than ALP aren’t going to switch ALP rusted ons without significant effort, and the maths of seats like Cooper/Wills are going to be tougher than sets where the Liberals win on primaries for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately even within the Greens, there’s a contingent that cry foul whenever the Greens make overtures to small-l Liberal voters, even though it has no impact on policy. There are Greens candidates that have the exact same problem as campus socialists (or were them quite recently) – thinking that because their causes are right, they don’t need to even attempt to be persuasive and would rather show how radical they are than build support. They significantly underestimate how likeable and overestimate how radical Sanders and Corbyn were, as well as the main difference between the leader of a major party and a minor party like the Greens.

Right now it seems like Jason Ball would easily win the seat as an independent, but the Greens brand may be doing more harm than good, and that’s a serious problem.

The order of the day; Greens will need to remind voters, at least in urban areas, that they can win seats off Liberals: Prahran, Ballina, Maiwar are the main examples. They need to emphasise a set of policies that, while progressive, are appealing to small-l Liberals. That doesn’t mean any policy change however; the aforementioned Maiwar was won off the most left wing Greens platform I’ve seen to date.

Pencil – I had completely forgotten about the redistribution! I think it’s more than likely that the next redistribution will probably make all our points about whether a Labor government would increase or decrease the Greens chances in Higgins null & void, because if it loses South Yarra & Prahran, the Greens will be as good as written off there anyway.

John – Good analysis. I agree also that they need to show they are targeting (and can win) Liberal seats. I don’t think in a seat like Higgins that the Greens brand will hurt Jason Ball, it’s very Green friendly territory, but it would definitely be the case in seats such as Wentworth, Warringah or possibly even Goldstein looking for a “small l” progressive alternative.

Trent, you are dreaming, Higgins will not fall or even be marginal for a long time!
It has far too many strong Liberal booths beyond Prahran and South Yarra.

Actually Stan it can, If the liberals do super bad at an election, Just as people said that the state electorate of Braitling and Katherine in the NT would never go Labor, They did, Although that was a state election it proves it can happen ANYWHERE in the right environment, It proves no seat should be taken for granted or locked in, So while it is ‘unlikely***’ that higgins will fall it is possible, At the current polling it would be a marginal liberal seat 54-46

Stan

On paper Kelly O’Dwyer should have no trouble holding Higgins but she currently holds an 8% margin, now we know that this government may be facing a severe defeat and what sometimes happens in such elections is we see seats fall that normally don’t, we also know from previous landslides that the usual high watermark is somewhere around 10%, by that the party on the losing end generally holds everything above that, take 1996, Lindsay was the safest seat to fall and its margin was somewhere around 11%.

At the last election the Liberals scored 52% on the primary in Higgins, this looks like a strong result, except I believe its the lowest primary vote recorded by the Liberal Party in the seat’s history.

When Costello held the seat, its margin was lower than it is today and while I think the redistribution helps the Liberals by removing their weakest booth (Windsor) from the seat, and I don’t see Higgins falling to the ALP, or the Greens but it could fall to a strong independent, although at this stage I don’t see any emerging to challenge Kelly O’Dwyer, so she will probably hold but I can see Higgins being at or near the high water mark if we do see a landslide in 2019.

I agree with Trent that the following election may see Higgins swing back towards the Liberals, but that will depend on how they perform in opposition and future redistribution.