Page – Australia 2022

Labor and the Greens seriously dropped the ball here. Janelle Saffin holding the state seat might help a little bit. But both Labor and the Greens need to bring their a-game to get the Nats out here. I don’t see that happening with that margin.

I don’t see the local Greens getting very excited about campaigning to elect Shoebridge to the Senate, so unless they get a strong candidate (e.g. Sue Higginson, who campaigned alongside Shoebridge in 2019) expect a swing against Greens.

interesting why the swing……. no one can believe the rubbish about Hogan half leaving the national party surely…… maybe it was because Janelle was not the candidate for Labor…… 2% is very marginal 9% isn’t maybe a personal vote for who ever is sitting mp

Regional seat with a visible MP – Labor have no chance here, particularly with their star performer (Saffin) now the State MP.

Mick
Look at the booth results massive swings in all the country towns . All non green areas particularly. Nat booths didn’t move much. Labor booths often double digits Says a lot.

Wreathy of Sydney
Yes. Do you agree with me that Page ought go west to tenterfield, or maybe even Glen Innes.?

wd Page probably should move west because the Greens only do really well (no middle ground either) in the random hippie booths which should be in Richmond character-wise*. Labor don’t do well in regional towns anymore (federal only for the sake of the argument) and they’re better off doing what they did last election; pitching to the small-l-liberals in wealthy inner-city marginals (Higgins, Goldstein, Curtin, Boothby, North Sydney) and also trying to not get even more sucked up by the Greens in the process of moving rightwards ever so slightly.
*I’m thinking Cawongla, Clunes, Dunoon, Jiggi, absolutely Nimbin, Rosebank and The Channon, which are probably less than 5000 voters in total

Ryan Spencer
“”Page probably should move west because the Greens only do really well (no middle ground either) in the random hippie booths which should be in Richmond character-wise*. “” Somehow i doubt the AEC will agree that these are arguments are compelling !!
Have you got a theory why Labor did well in most LIB eats, nearly all safe, NOT necessarily “wealthy inner-city marginals”” !? .> Hint>>> “small-l-liberals”” IS a really stupid typification of the left. i Most on the left expect the right to mirror the left (without varience !!) . This presumption is blind & ignorant. Please don’t make me remind you again. (I might get impatient, & cantankerous !)
Are The areas in Page you name north of the Richmond river, & part of Lismore LGA ?. Weren’t they part of Richmond previously? Regardless Richmond is at quota so needs no influx. on the other hand Page will need to shed its part of Coffs LGA to Cowper. & will presumably need voters. This is very problematic.
cheers WD

Labor’s policies clearly seemed to be oriented towards those sorts of people, to the detriment of losing working-class voters. For example, Swan, which contains very wealthy areas and very working-class areas saw swings of 4+% to Labor in the wealthier areas in the west and vice versa to the Liberals in the eastern booths. The fairly small booths that I named are actually east of the Richmond River, all of them in the areas surrounding the Nightcap National Park, and just by looking at the primaries from 2019, looks like a Greens vote overall of about 40%. It seems the boundary is Coopers Creek, which separates a booth like Rockbank from booths like Eureka and Federal, again very left-wing in nature. Heck, in Nimbin, the Animal Justice Party outpolled the Nats comfortably.

Ryan Spencer
Really interesting about Swan. Re Richmond my north seems to be your east. No matter. Until Ballina was taken from Page . Richmond was historically under quota & the Richmond river is a long & strong boundary so unlikely to change.
“Labor’s policies clearly seemed to be oriented towards those sorts of people, to the detriment of losing working-class voters. ” i agree with you’re observation. However thats not an opinion about what motivates the voting. That’s what i found/ find more intriguing

Swan was the most bizarre things to happen at the last Commonwealth election. Interesting that the area that went up, state Labor now holds by a 10% margin, nearly winning on primary votes alone (49%). Before that they had never won the seat in 70 years. Maybe that tells us something.

James

I assume you mean South Perth.

Ryan – you are correct the State seat is South Perth which is the richer area of the Commonwealth Seat of Swan. For Labor to hold South Perth is not right and yet to hold it by 10% something has changed? Is Labor now the party of the rich?

Fun fact: At the Nimbin polling place, the Animal Justice Party outperformed the Nationals (on first preferences).

winediamond the Richmond River isn’t the boundary. Cooper’s Creek is the boundary between Page and Richmond, and at state level, Wilson’s River is the boundary between Ballina and Lismore

I wonder if this seat is now in play with the Government’s poor response to the floods. I know I should not think like this but.

I doubt Page will flip, but Richmond probably firmed up a lot for Justine Elliot.

If Kevin Hogan is seen to be doing his stuff on the ground, he should be fine – even with the stuff ups at the national level. He also had a very big swing toward him last time so that gives him a buffer.

9% is a big margin.. but who knows swung 7% last election

Interestingly, Sportsbet has an Independent pickup here as being plausible. Current odds have Coalition on 1.35, Independent on 4.00, and Labor on 6.50. Not sure who the “independent” would be that would get it, but note that New Libs and Indigenous-Aboriginal Party don’t have entries, so it could refer to one of them, or to the actual declared independent.

Glen
Hanabeth Luke.

Ben, the incumbent MP is Kevin Hogan

James Stevens is a disgrace but he is right. He is not the member for Page nor is he a member of the Nationals.

Its really really hard to read these bellwether seats. Are their current margins a new normal or long term trend? Or is it just a fluke and the margins are inflated? We will find out soon enough. But don’t be surprised if Hogan does hold on that is is under 2% due to the flooding. Thats my take.

Lismore (where the majority of the flooding was concetrated) is already the weakest area for the Nats. Hard to imagine a uniform result across the entire seat and even harder to imagine a defeat here. Margin is just too large but I suppose anything is possible.

What is Labor polled 60% in Lismore..

@MQ I should have been clearer – I was referring to the entire Lismore area including Goonellabah (as defined by Ben), not only Lismore proper.

I believe Casino was also hit with floods, and that’s got quite a strong Nats base. I also think the floods are going to force many who are rusted on and normally disengaged to consider their vote more this election, especially with Morrison’s failure to make a presence in the electorate. Does anyone know how active the incumbent MP is in flood recovery?

If Labor can flip Grafton (I believe Janelle won it twice when she was MP) and if they can increase their margins in Lismore then they have a shot at this.

Running the same lacklustre candidate as last time shows Labor has written this seat off. I think it will be interesting to see how much traction Hanabeth Luke gets.

Anecdata from the ground at Lismore: the locals are still rightly livid and upset over the flood response. A lot of frustrations towards Morrison in particular. Hogan is fighting harder than he has ever had before to hold this seat. My assessment is an ALP pick up here but it will be close.

Lismore is a bit Labor leaning already although could swing more, although this electorate is much more than that. A 9.5% margin is hard to overturn.

@Ben – a margin of 9.5% is not that large.

1) 2007 election at least 6 seats had swings of 9% or more and changed hands
2) 2013 election at least 3 seats had swings of 9% or more and changed hands
3) 2016 election at least 3 seats had swings of 9% or more and changed hands
4) 2010 and 2019 no elections.

Then look at the last 2 Western Australian elections.

@Ben understand that this electorate is much more than just Lismore but the floods adversely affected a lot of the electorate outside of Lismore: Woodburn, Coraki, Maclean. Lismore is also a community of interest to Casino and Kyogle which might not have been as affected by the floods as Lismore, but would still have tremendous sympathies for Lismore and frustrations towards Morrison on Lismore’s behalf. I have anecdotally also heard this anger from Kyogle residents for example, for what its worth. Only places I expect to retain their strong LNP 2PP margin is Grafton and Woolgoolga on the Coffs Coast.

James referred to a couple of other previous elections and another thing I would point out would be that Page was won by Labor in 2007 and 2010, still relatively recent history. You might be able to dismiss 2007 being an outlier landslide Labor victory. But 2010 wasn’t a remarkably strong Labor win and included Page.

At this stage, I expect very similar seats nationally, especially the number of the seats to play out much like 2010 and result in a hung parliament.

Harry Woods also held page for a couple of terms for labor

Large swing to Labor in The Australian’s MRP analysis. Labor down only 48-52. Suspect correction from the large 2019 swing and recent floods a factor.

Commenting on the results in the MRP analysis, the expected OTH is expected to be 15%. It seems that the MRP has fairly evenly distributed this to Coalition and Labor for the TCP count. However, if Hanabeth Luke (Climate 200 backed independent) is the predominant candidate amongst this 15%, you could potentially expect a higher distribution of preferences against the Coalition in this match up. This could potentially be closer on TCP and potentially favour ALP than the MRP analysis suggests.

Luke is not directing preferences, but you would think they would break at least 60-40 to Labor. Page is one to watch.

@Ben Raue Margin is 9.4% as the Nations received 59.449% of the vote, same with Hughes which should be 9.8% instead of 9.9%

Thanks, fixing now. Hughes has already been fixed.

Based on VoteCompass results, Page has been ranked as the most left-wing Coalition-held electorate in the country. Would not have guessed that.

It is very much an outlier. Interesting to see Warringah, Goldstein and Wentworth a long way to the conservative side of the ledger. Vote Compass is self selecting so has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Page is certainly no longer a bellwether. Unless of course this inflated margin is largely because of Hogan’s personal support (Personal vote tends to be more important and significant in regional seats)

The Nationals also still kept Hunter marginal so Joyce’s leadership is under no threat unless he chooses to opt out. However in the seat of Richmond they feel to 3rd place which could largely be due to the controversial candidate they ran.

Despite this result in Page do not underestimate Saffin’s chance to hold onto Lismore at the next state election. The floods largely affected Lismore.

I think this is the most surprising result of 2022. Biblical floods only weeks ago. Slow and limited government response….and swings TOWARD the government?! What the?
I had this one as a possible move to ALP or IND. Clearly I should keep my predictions to metro seats.

I’m also suprised by the swing to the nats here, I thought there would be a strong swing to the left here due to the floods but it didn’t happen

If I were living in this electorate I would be embarrassed honestly. The National party literally goes out of their way to destroy the environment and to make potential natural disasters worse through one means or another. I’m being very unprofessional and rude but was the Labor candidate here completely incompetent and invisible or does this place just have Stockholm syndrome?

Before any potential lecture I want to be clear that I’m not some ignorant inner city coffee barista who doesn’t understand the regions – I’ve lived in rural QLD & NT my whole life. It baffles me all the same.

It appears unfortunately people are too. Loyal to.the nats.

This was probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, swing to the LNP. It’s surprising that there was a swing away from the Greens and Labor. One Nation and LDP got swings towards them.

I don’t live here but I suppose that the Nationals are far more liked than the Liberals amongst their constituents.

Looking at the swings, two Lismore booths swung to Labor and two Lismore booths went the other way. However Lismore pre-poll swung big to the Nationals.

The results here surprised me. The Nats had swings towards them in Lismore. Maybe the people in this seat like Hogan and are happy with his response to the floods. I’m not from the area so maybe someone with more knowledge can give insight. Another possibility which I’ll throw out there but is unlikely is that the locals thought the Greens and Labor were using their misfortune as a political football and trying to get their vote that way, also could’ve had the ‘that’s why you should vote for us idiot’ feeling in their messaging (i don’t know the campaigning in the area so this is completely hypothetical). If this is the case it would be similar to how WA and Victoria swung away from the Libs as hey used the whole time in lockdown to say ‘why can’t you be more like NSW’ which wasn’t very helpful and made them feel isolated.

The most angry with the Coalition are likely to be those displaced by the flooding, who would have a higher rate of postal and absent voting due to many having to temporarily relocate out of Page. Also, 2 polling places used last time were not used this time making swing comparisons difficult.

@Tom the first and the best The electorate still swung to the Nats though when a swing against was expected.

A lot of split ticket voting in this region of NSW. Seems like a lot of people vote Labor at a state level and National at a federal level – Janelle Saffin has a massive margin in Lismore and as does Kevin Hogan here. Would be curious to know if this area is generally becoming more conservative (similar to the state seat of Clarence) or whether it’s more to do with Kevin Hogan having a large personal vote. This area appeared to start trending towards Labor, or at least becoming reachable for them in the 90s and 2000s like Richmond, but since 2019 it’s gone strongly the other way.