North Sydney – Australia 2022

@Pollster, I don’t know enough about the Sydney seats, or even Flinders for that matter, but the inner Melbourne seats I think are under serious threat from the Liberals:

– Frydenburg is on the nose across all of Melbourne, including in Kooyong. There apparently seems to be a groundswell of support for the independent.

– Tim Smith isn’t a particularly popular member in Goldstein, and that seat possibly has the highest profile independent running too. The Bayside is also quite different culturally to the leafy east. The eastern suburbs have a lot more generational Liberal loyalty running through well connected families and institutions, the Bayside not so much. They swung wildly in the 2018 state election – to Labor – so there’s no reason they wouldn’t swing hard to a high profile independent given how hated the Morrison government is.

– Katie Allen is a genuinely likeable moderate in Higgins, but her biggest issues are that she’s pretty new and doesn’t have a big profile yet, and her margin is very small. She has the benefit of not having an independent running against her, but Higgins has more Greens & Labor areas in it than all those other seats do so it doesn’t necessarily need one.

I think all 3 of those seats are at risk for the Liberals. The dislike of Morrison is more important than the merits of the local candidates who most voters don’t know or care about, except maybe in Kooyong due to Frydenburg being treasurer, but he’s deeply unpopular and close to Morrison.

In North Sydney I think Zimmerman is safe. The margin is bigger than all 3 of those seats, along with Katie Allen he is the most moderate MP out of them all, but he has a much higher profile and is more established than her, and North Sydney doesn’t have the solid Greens / Labor pockets that Higgins has.

I tend to agree with Pollster. In nearly every formerly safe ‘inner city’ seat people are saying the Libs are toast. I don’t doubt that they’re under pressure in these places, but I am very skeptical independents/will win more than one or maybe two. Wentworth is the most likely imo and maybe Curtin at a stretch. I also think we need to distinguish between the aforementioned seats and seats like Higgins and Kooyong which, despite their history, are actually marginal already.

We also need to keep a bit of perspective. With some of the comments here, you’d think that Morrison is down 20 points. Yes, he’s definitely behind and significantly so – but as Dr Bonham says, polls usually tighten before election day and when they do, it is usually the Coalition that benefits. All in all, I still think the Coalition will lose, but predictions of a landslide defeat are premature.

@Trent – thanks for the insights on suburban Melbourne. In Goldstein I thought Wilson would have hung on based on the 2018 Vic State Election and he survived in 2019. And given how bad it was in 2018 I would have thought that if he survived 2019 he would make it going forward. But we will see on election day – whenever that may be…

Best

Pollster

We’ll see Wreathy. I really don’t think the political atmosphere could possibly be worse right now. Polling is in the dirt and has been for months, and the progressive seat polls are where it’s worst. His own party seems to hate Morrison nearly as much as the most rusted-on ALP cheerleaders. Sure things will tighten by election day and certainly not all or even most of the seats that are mentioned as ‘in trouble’ will be lost. But it’s gonna be a lot worse than just one or two inner city seats. I agree that that won’t translate into a landslide Labor majority, but high 70s-low 80s isn’t unreasonable, and neither is a much expanded crossbench.

Then again, 2019 happened.

I think Zoe Daniel is what I see as the main difference between 2018/19 and 2022 in Goldstein. I don’t think it’s a seat Labor or the Greens would have any real shot at, but this is the first time a serious independent has challenged and there seems to be momentum, so I think it’s pretty 50/50 and could go either way.

Interestingly too, the two main overlapping state seats are only held by under 1% (and the remainder is in a Labor state seat), and that is against Labor rather than a teal independent too, so while I wouldn’t outright predict an independent win in either Kooyong or Goldstein, I think they’re legitimately under threat and will be seats to watch on the night!

Whereas North Sydney I expect to remain safely in Zimmerman’s hands.

As I’m mentioned before, there is certainly no Abbott factor in any of these Voices seats – Goldstein comes the closest with Tim Wilson – he’s hard to like. So I think we will definitely look upon Warringah 2019 as an outlier.

However if Zimmerman gets 48% PV I be shocked and 50% I will give up elections forecasting. I think there’s a 4- 5% swing just to ALP and then the IND effect, even though I think Tink will be a bit of a bust. I’ll tip PV of
– LIB: 40%
– ALP: 23%
– TINK: 22%
– Green and leftist IND – 8%
– assorted Other: 7%

At the last exclusion it will be LIB 43 / ALP 29 / TINK 28 and about 54/46 TPP

I must admit that when I was door knocked by the some Labor party representatives last weekend they did ask if I had any questions for them and I might have asked why they were running a strong candidate when the best chance of the liberals losing the seat is for the 2PP to be against Tink. They certainly convinced me that they believed they had a real shot at winning the seat, I’m less convinced. As a many have mentioned without an ‘Abbott factor’ and the fact that the federal north Sydney electorate has large areas which aren’t susceptible to a Greens, Labor or Voices campaign I’m struggling to see it changing hands. I certainly see Zimmermans primary vote dropping as he will bleed towards Tink but so will Labor and the Greens so I’m struggling to see him losing.

For Frydenburg campaigning in North Sydney I wouldn’t be reading that much into it. Scomo is certainly not popular in the electorate and Frydenburg is a senior Loberal who is, I don’t think it’s much beyond that. Well, that and he’s probably more popular in NSW than Vic these days so maybe he wanted to spend a day in a friendlier climate.

Oh, and for those outside the electorate, in terms of campaign visibility it’s Tink, daylight, daylight, daylight, Labor, Kline, Zimmerman

How many percent do you think Kline will get?

@ GregC – at the last election I told the Labor candidate who was canvassing at the bus stop – Mr Harris – in Warringah that the best thing he could do was to run dead to defeat Abbott. The advice was not appreciated! Given Mr Harris still managed 6.8% of the vote (down 8%) one would have to conclude his campaign efforts were not fruitful. Similarly, Labor have no hope in North Sydney so I am surprised they are making any effort. Strategically it would be better for labor to leave the field open for a candidate that can win.

@Marko – I think Kilne will get between 1 and 2%. No science to this number but haven’t seen anything on the ground other than the occasional poster.

Trent
Your analysis of Goldstein fails to account for fully one sixth of the electors, who live in neither, ‘the two main overlapping state seats’, nor in ‘a Labour-held State seat.’ I refer to residents of Caulfield South (nine thousand), Ormond North, & Glen Huntly (three & a half thousand), & Elsternwick (four thousand).
This population supported Bill Shorten last time, but will find less common cause with Anthony Albanese, Zoe Daniel, or her campaign manager, Sue Barrett.
This population have tended not to migrate to their ‘weekenders,’ and have remained in the electorate, & correspondingly increased their influence in Goldstein, – to a record proportion.

‘This population supported Bill Shorten last time, but will find less common cause with Anthony Albanese, Zoe Daniel, or her campaign manager, Sue Barrett.’

Why?

What we have here in forecasting North Sydney is 2 data points from actual elections (Warringah 2019 and Wentworth 2018 by election) where the ALP/GRN vote was decimated by an IND, vs 4 seat recent poll data points (North Sydney, Wentworth, Curtin and Mackellar) where the ALP vote has held up, even though there is an IND in the mix (in Wentworth where the comparison is against an election result with an IND, the ALP vote in the poll is up).
So we will see what remaining seat polls say in these types of seats, and what turns out being more predictive of the final result.

Poll released yesterday for North Sydney. Another one commissioned by Climate200 (second one in as many weeks, with the first one commissioned for Mackellar). 1114 People polled
Zimmerman – 37.1%
Tink – 19.4%
Renshaw (Labor) – 17.3%
Saville (Greens) – 8.7%
Nalbandian (UAP) – 5.6%
Others/Undecided – 12.9%

If you split the Undecided according to the same splits:

Zimmerman – 41.9%
Tink – 21.9%
Renshaw – 19.5%
Saville – 9.8%
Nalbandian – 6.3%

This indicates a 10% drop in the Primary Vote for Zimmerman, a 5.6% drop in Primary Vote for Labor, and a 4.9% drop in Primary Vote to the Greens, with that drop mainly breaking for Tink and some of the vote to UAP.

The Race for 2nd place becomes critical
If Labor ends up in 2nd place, Zimmerman wins and wins fairly comfortably as that Teal Vote will break back to him enough. Probably ends up 55:45.
If Tink gets 2nd place (likely off the back of Greens Preferences), then, on these numbers, it will go down to the wire. Going off last year, you would say the LDP and UAP votes will break for Zimmerman. That would put Zimmerman on 48.2%, before we get to the Greens and Labor. From there, I think Zimmerman scrapes home but no more than 52:48.

Hawkeye_au
Thanks for bringing this poll to everyone’s attention.
1. I haven’t seen any information what that missing 12.9% is – some of it will be Others, but some may be undecided. There could be a big an important difference though to how to interpret this poll.
2. The effective MoE I believe is 3.5% so there is very little between Tink and ALP on these numbers.
3. Still not sure why you think the Greens preferences will get Tink over the line, but the proof will be in the data on election day I suppose.
4. If UAP get 5.6%, I will eat my hat – they got 1.9% last time and I can’t see any real difference. I’m not feeling that North Sydney is swarming with anti vaxxers.
5. If Zimmerman keeps his head above 40% then I do think he will get home, regardless of Tink being 2nd or not. It not clear from this poll if he is or not – but its probably close.

If Tink gets into 2nd on PV, he very likely wins. Zimmerman’s pretty worried.

Time for the ALP to encourage their voters to vote tactically here…

Good one Expat – I am 100% sure they will do just that…….
(and people complain that Political parties are too short term focused but then suggest they tell their own voters not to vote for them – geez!)

Had to go through Chatswood for work today and to catch up with a Co-Worker.
Fun Fact – Victoria Road is the boundary break between Bradfield and North Sydney. Trent Zimmerman was handing out at Chatswood Station outside the Orchard Hotel, along with staff members from Paul Fletcher.

Robert Nalbandian (UAP) was handing out as well (Clearly no relation to the Tennis player :P). Agreed that the UAP vote is very high but, then again, given the political climate atm, it is a very good time to be a minor party/independent.

Expat – I think it is very likely that Labor will encourage very tactical voting, to drive their voters into 3rd place. As High Street point out, that MoE covers the Ind/ALP Gap so it is very close there.

It’s very close in the poll because it is indeed very close on the ground. Why a political party would encourage people not to vote for them is beyond me. Head office boffins may prefer this to be the case, but when head office isn’t either running the local campaign nor contributing any funds to it, it’s what the local members do that counts and I don’t think local members are going to volunteer to walk to the guillotine.

Has anyone confirmed that that’s actually happening? Labor have been hyping the chances of their own candidate in NS so I can’t imagine them doing that at all.

From what I can gather, Catherine Renshaw is not the type of candidate who would take kindly to be being made ‘tactical’ and hence expendable. It is the Greens who are in the box seat as it is likely that their preferences will determine who is second or third.

Methinks that a Climate 200 poll is to be taken with a grain of salt. There is a fine line between actual polling and some degree of push polling. From having been polled many times, it becomes very obvious that there is an agenda just in the way the questions are asked.

Would agree with the others, kind of what I expect except for the UAP vote, I would have expected that any anti vaxer vote in north Sydney would head more in the direction of LDP as a libertarian thing rather than UAP as a populist thing.

Personally I think Labor should have run a good young union oriented candidate. A candidate that needed some experience in an election before going off to a seat they could win but would rub the north Sydney voters the wrong way enough to ensure Tink came second without looking like they were playing dead. Renshaw is an excellant Labor candidate for North Sydney, but she’s not really any show at winning.

And as a campaign report Liberals stepping up a lot more visibly now, helps to have a candidate I guess. Almost seems like Tink is slowing down with a lot less pink shirts on display but that may just be because she isn’t the only one campaigning any more it’s not so obvious.

Id still be surprised if Zimmerman loses

Greg c.
The problem Australian Labor Party face now is that they are selecting candidates on the basis of gender and race rather than working class experience. The Australian Labor Party has ceased to be a Labor Party is no
Longer the party of working class.

@Andrew Jackson.

Not sure how you know how the ALP candidate for North Sydney was selected.

Any perhaps you should go a read about Labor PM, Andrew Fisher. He knew the ALP wasn’t just about representing the working class, and that was 110 years ago.

High Street
I am not sure how Renshaw was selected but look at her website and count how many of her supporters look working class. They look like precisely the middle class described by Kym Beazley.
As for Andrew Fisher as a member of the Democratic Labour Party I regard Fisher as part of my party’s history but I can think of only one member of ALP Federal Caucus who has anything like the history of Fisher. Impoverished working class background, dragging himself up by self education, remaining working class but advocating co-operation. The Australian Labor Party is frequently accused of being trade union dominated but its candidates are now selected more on the basis of their sex and photo geneticist than working class background.
Please do tell us about Renshaw’s working class impoverished upbringing and self education and even more tell us about her efforts to improve the lot of the working class.

Andrew Jackson – of the 10 candidates that will on the ballot I think you will find she has by far the greatest focus on improving the lot of the working class, and underpaid.
If you have to have had an impoverished upbringing and be self educated to be a Labor candidate nowadays it would be a very small selection pool. Or otherwise it would means Labor’s times in office would have been for nothing, there being a very large pool to select from.

Perhaps she was simply a local member that put her hand up?

Ballot for North Sydney Confirmed:
1. William John Bourke (???)
2. Robert Nalbandian (UAP)
3. Heather Lynne Armstrong (???)
4. Victor Alan Kline (TNL)
5. Lesley Kinney (???)
6. Dajen Todd Tinkler (???)
7. Trent Zimmerman (Liberal)
8. Kylea Jane Tink (IND)
9. Michael Adam Walls (???)
10. Catherine Michelle Renshaw (Labor)

@Hawkeye_au

William Bourke is the leader of the SAP (Sustainable Australia Party). Current Deputy Mayor of North Sydney Council (and has run in various other elections).

Armstrong is the Green candidate

Kinney is Informed Medical Opinions (from Katoomba I think) and Tinkler is LDP. Walls is PHON (from Victoria I think)

Andrew
Aren’t you being remarkably old fashioned and out of date? Who exactly are the working class in Australia these days. Essentially while there are lots of entry level contract jobs most of these are taken by new immigrants who often are not citizens, nor involved in politics. Others are taken by the very young, often students ready to climb the ladder to middle class jobs. Long gone are the days of unionized labourers and semiskilled tradesmen- the working class of your dreams and your DLP history.. Tradies once the backbone of the labor movement are now mostly contractors and roaring around in their utes are generally actively hostile to the ALP. In case you hadn’t noticed we actually no longer have a manufacturing industry, so that whole segment of the “working class”you seek to find, just is not there anymore (except in retirement homes or towns.

The working class these days is almost exclusively the lower paid middle class professions- teachers, nurses plus some remnants of the old types in the public sector- bus drivers etc. Naturally they look and feel middle class to you because they are educated etc. But they are not socially at the top of the tree at all, at least not financially.

@Politics Obsessed, @Ryan Spencer and @High Street, cheers for that. I got emailed the announcement but didn’t have all of the parties linked at work.

Can’t believe there are 10 candidates going here…

North Sydney’s leading three candidates (in polls) having a debate on Sky News tomorrow – out of North Sydney Oval it seems – hope they take an umbrella

Tink has secured Greens preferences over Labor and (unsurprisingly) number 4 to Liberal’s 6 on Labor how-to-vote cards. The Greens preference flow to Tink will benefit her chances of making it to the 2PP as Labor’s 2019 primary of 25% can be expected to be eroded. Interestingly, One Nation (not expected to pick up a big primary…) will be preferencing Labor over moderate Liberal in North Sydney. Not sure what this means for Tink but a difference of 1 or 2% may be impactful.

Once Tink is at the 2PP, a resulting flow of Labor preferences to Tink will make it very close. It will be interesting to see the extent to which Zimmerman’s primary has been eroded by Tink as this will be a determining factor when it comes to preferences which will favour Tink. A primary in the high 30’s is certainly lower than what many expected as a figure in the low 40’s was considered to be the level at which Tink’s chances become feasible.

If it comes to it, it will be interesting to see what the Labor and Green preference flow is to Tink over Zimmerman. Zimmerman is at the opposite end of the spectrum to say, Tony Abbot, and as much as Tink tries to attach herself to her pal “Zali”, she no where near as popular.

“Interestingly, One Nation (not expected to pick up a big primary…) will be preferencing Labor over moderate Liberal in North Sydney. Not sure what this means for Tink but a difference of 1 or 2% may be impactful.”

How to Vote cards are only as good as having people to hand them out. Highly unlikely that the there will be many ON booth workers in North Sydney so it is more likely that the small number of ON preferences will fly everywhere despite what Pauline may say.

HS, I’d expect preference flows from Labor and Greens to Tink to be comparable to the usual flows they get from each other, if not better.

I think in North Sydney and Kooyong, the independent will win, but there’s also a decent chance that Liberals will lose the 2PP vs Labor.

Open question as to whether backing teal independents who will align and vote with Liberals on several issues will be worth it if Labor/Greens could have won. Teals will likely have more staying power than Labor, but not Greens (who seem to be able to seriously change voting patterns of areas like Indooroopilly and South Yarra)

John
The Teals will disrupt both Labor and the Greens. There are a lot people who vote Green as a least worst option – they don’t want to vote for the Libs – and won’t vote for the UAP and ON. Look at Warringah and Wentworth last time – base Green vote only and well down from 2016. It is odd that there is not a Teal in either Higgins or Ryan. The Green vote is probably softer than they like to think.

It is odd that there is no Teal in either Ryan or Higgins or Richmond – coincidentally where the Greens have lower house state seats. Was there an ‘arrangement’ between the Greens and Climate 200?

Trent Zimmerman is much more popular than Tony Abbott so to suggest Labor can win the 2PP is quite crazy. I’d say he’s got an edge over Tinker Bell although it’ll be close.

There was an ‘arrangement’ between Elizabeth Watson Brown in Ryan and the local Voices Of group. I’m not sure what the circumstances are there but I suspect it’s more just the general reality that the Queensland Greens were already campaigning and had a formidable local machine for a while by the time the Voices group got set up.

Generally in rhetoric the Greens and the Climate 200 people are more cordial between each other than Labor and the Greens. We’ll see if that continues. I can see the inner city electorates going the way of the United States where the Liberals are not competitive, and it becomes a contest between centrist social liberals (Voices of Candidates and, maybe you can argue, Labor) and socialist minded Greens.

I wonder if the chances of NS going IND are bettered by residents with fond memories of Ted Mack. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

FL,
I’d expect them not to be – but I’m not stating I am definitely going to be correct. Lets check back in to see who’s expectation was closer to the money.

There’s a lot of people in North Sydney who think Trent is a good bloke – if polls show a likely ALP win nation wide, many may prefer Trent to remain than see Tink get in.

PS everyone – Tink’s not a “Teal””, she’s a “Pink”.

And the difference is ….?

colour

While do not believe that this would be a Labor gain there have been previous instances of North Sydney being in marginal territory between the two parties.

It therefore seems probable that North Sydney would be brought into marginal territory this time around if there is an heavy anti-government swing across the board.

I’m not sure that this could become marginal, keep in mind there was a decent size swing against liberal here in 2019 and that swing was made up of the voters that Tink is going after so whatever votes she gets are likely to come as much from Labor as they will from liberal. The electorate has three sort of areas, the deeply conservative who are squarely liberal voters and not swayed by labor or teal (or pink) candidates – hunters hill, Riverview, Northwood, northbridge, castlecrag, kirribilli, parts of lane cove (the parts that have lived there for 50 years). It has the small l liberal areas who are moderates who are susceptible to a teal (pink) campaign where things like climate change are an issue – Willoughby, naremburn, cammeray, and then there’s some younger areas which tend to be young professionals who could go any way really so could vote liberal, Labor or Teal – st Leonard’s, crows nest, neutral bay, north Sydney.

The deeply conservative areas will always give Liberal a big lead out of the gate, always. A really good independent/teal/pink can win enough in the southern young areas to offset this so that the fight is in the middle moderate areas to decide who wins. Labor can win some booths in those younger areas, but not enough to offset how much they bleed in the conservative areas, and the moderate areas will fall liberals way in a Labor/Liberal 2PP.

Until the demographics of the seat change radically (or someone like Dutton ends up leading the liberals) this will always be Liberal vs Independant and from what I’ve seen Tink doesn’t have the profile or momentum required, not helped by the fact that the voters that swung Labor way last election may just stay with Renshaw because she’s almost the spitting image of the independent they would vote for. I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2PP ends up being not that much different to 2019

Good analysis GregC, although the Kirribilli booth in 2019 was only 55.9% to 44.1% to LIB. So its not quite the “deeply conservative” area you place it as. Would be funny if the PM’s place of residence voted ALP

Northbridge will be interesting, as both the IND and ALP candidate live there and it had the biggest anti Lib swing at the state by election.

The dynamics of a teal win are ..they take 10 to 12% off the liberal outpoll Labor then collect 40% odd of Labor greens etc to win…… quite possible

From The Saturday Paper – the usually reliable Karen Middleton, referring to undisclosed internal polling (presumably Liberal):
“North Sydney has turned into a three-way contest, with Tink’s emergence potentially splitting the conservative vote and giving Labor candidate Catherine Renshaw a surprise chance of seizing the seat. Having secured almost 52 per cent of the first-preference vote at the 2019 election, Zimmerman now finds his fate potentially resting on whether Renshaw or Tink runs second on primary votes.”

“If it’s the latter, preferences from Labor’s Renshaw are likely to elect Tink over Zimmerman. If Renshaw is second and Tink is eliminated first, it’s unclear just how the preferences of her independent voters will flow. In this scenario, that unknown, along with how much of Zimmerman’s primary vote is reduced by the two main challengers between them, will determine whether Tink’s preferences deliver the seat to Labor or back to the Liberal incumbent.”

I’m hearing chatter that Tink’s team thinks whoever comes 2nd will win. They are getting increasing desperate to push Labor out of the race.

We will see the Angel of Death back this week??