Perth – Australia 2022

I’d be keen to see how this contest plays out.

Patrick should retain but victory ABOUSTELY not guaranteed.

Redistribution makes this a more marginal seat than usual (always has been), Patrick Gorman’s main challenger probably will come from The Greens rather than the Liberals unless a strong swing occurs towards the Libs. Greens won Northbridge TAFE booth in 2019, and won 20% of the vote more in more than 20 booths.

Liberals haven’t endorsed/announced a candidate yet – Caroline Perks is running for the seat again quite popular candidate within the party & in the electorate.

A future three-way seat like Macnamara, Griffith or Brisbane.

Labor will win but the primary gap between Labor and Greens will probably narrow. Even though the redistribution doesn’t seem to have increased the Green primary however Joondana, Turat Hill and Yokine has a much better potential for growth for Greens Noranda and Morely did.

I think Perth will be a wildcard seat in WA. A possible three-way split. The Liberal candidate who ever they preselect it likely lead on first preferences but a Green win from 3PP is an outside chance.

Especially considering suburbs like Maylands, Northbridge, Bayswater, North Perth and Highgate are comparable to suburbs in Macnamara, Griffith and parts of central Melbourne.

What’s the combined notional primary vote with the new boundaries?

According to Ben’s own analysis in the redistribution thread, the new Perth is 39/33.5/18.5 (Lib/Lab/Grn)

CG – for a 3 party contest the Greens will have to grow significantly with Labor falling. I cannot see that in this next election. Labor’s vote will grow, Liberals will decrease and who knows what happens with the Greens – remain the same. Having lived in Perth I don’t know how this is similar to Macnamara.

The Greens a long way to go before they can consider this seat an option to pick up.

Labor will hold here & most likely have a swing in their favour.

Perth is a clear Labor retain, in future could be a three-way contest but it would need to be reduce in size and be centred on the inner suburbs.

Labor retain, but Greens will increase their vote share.

The major party vote is too evenly matched for Greens to be a threat. Maybe in a low tide ALP election they could leapfrog a win on preferences. But that won’t be 2022. In fact I think ALP will win the primary vote.

Greens won’t be able to overtake Liberals but will have a good showing (low 20s?). The Greens senate strategy revolves around running their vote up here.

Liberals have announced their candidate for Perth rather late in game. David Dwyer, a former candidate for them in Roe.

Why did they choose someone who doesn’t even live in the seat and was parachuted from southern WA? Do they not care about community’s anymore? How can Scotty from marketing say his government works for all Australians when they just parachute candidates from other parts of the country?

Maybe they are conceding this seat but nobody wants to vote for a party who is giving up and conceding. Sound like Zak Kirkup saying there’s no chance of winning. You can’t just take peoples support for granted by assuming how they will vote.

The liberals would have been better served with a local who could run and lose this time and then run again in 3 years time but they have decided against this.

Labor should get a 10% margin post-election here. Won’t even be close but expect it to become marginal again in 2025 or 2028.

I’m also fully aware Labor does the same thing by parachuting candidates (the UK parties also do the same they have them run in a no-chance seat then move them somewhere else in the country at the next election) this is not good enough because you are elected to serve your constituency not to serve your party and their interests.

The Liberal Party probably has written off most of the marginals and is focusing on the safer seats: Curtin, Tangney, Pearce, Forrest, Durack, O’Connor, Canning, and Forrest.

Despite the Liberals regularly leading on the primary like in Macnamara, Cowan, Griffith, and Moreton, etc, Green preferences elects the ALP at final distribution. Patrick Gorman may lead on first preferences for the first time since the federal election.

Candidates for Perth:

Patrick Gorman (ALP)
David Dwyer (LIB)
Caroline Perks (GRN)

The only seat in WA that would be a realistic Greens target in the near future would be Fremantle, in the scenario of a collapsing ALP government. And even then, while the area in the state seat of Freo is very fertile Greens territory, the outer parts of the federal Freo electorate are not so much.

Perth is a long way off – if the ALP were to lose it, it would most likely be to the Libs who have held this seat before. I’d say it’s more like Brisbane than Melbourne in that respect, just a bit more ALP friendly. It may change over time, but I don’t see it as a realistic Greens target

Patrick Gorman has been campaigning hard in Perth dropping off leaflets across the electorate. Particularly in Mount Lawley, Maylands and North Perth.

When The Greens announced their candidate, A large ALP-Gorman poster was posted near North Metropolitan TAFE in Northbridge – the only booth that recorded a Green plurality win in Perth.

Gorman likely sees the Greens as the long term threat.

Strong possibility the Greens will start winning more primary vote at inner-city booths in Perth (Highgate, Highgate North, West Perth, Perth) etc.

As in topping the vote in individual booths.

^^I think the Labor vote in WA is at a high point atm so that might suppress the Greens vote in Perth a bit. Generally expect the Greens vote to be down across the country in the lower house at least as they will lose some votes to teal independents, Bandt also doesn’t seem really cutting through as leader and where there is a sense of change in Government some Green voters seem to move to Labor.

We’ve all discussed this to death, but most can probably agree the likely scenario is that they’re definitely in for ups and downs on a seat-by-seat basis, potentially very wild swings in some seats, but it’s not going to work out to be a dramatic change overall.

As for Bandt – the party room is his main threat, and almost all the prospective class of 2022 would at least be ideological allies for him, with the exception of Peter Whish-Wilson (and maybe Elizabeth Watson-Brown, but I suspect she’s on the left too). The membership’s broadly behind Bandt’s strategy and won’t let it go back to the centrists without a fight, even if they’re not necessarily keen on Bandt personally as leader. I think he’ll stick around, and the Greens will control the balance of power, in the Senate if not the House. If Labor does manage to pass bills without Greens consent it’ll have to be with a frankenstein coalition passing centre-right nonsense, incensing the voters who were hoping for actual change rather than continuity Liberal government. More than likely Albo’s going to have to play ball, at least to some extent.

with the acquisition of liberal voters from stirling and the loss of labor voters to cowan seat definately in play

Only if polls suggesting about 10% swing to Labor in WA are miles off.

It’s hard to see the Libs claiming any new seats in WA, they’ll be working hard to try and hold the ones they’ve got.

Expat, are those state based polls for WA recent? I haven’t seen state based polls and the ones that I have seen show a narrowing of the Labor swing (These are mostly nationwide however, and they indicate that Pearce and Swan are no longer considered easy pickups, thus suggesting a swing to Labor of only a few percent.

I do agree with the second part of your post that the Liberals will struggle to pick up Perth. With a narrowing of polls they do have a shot at winning Cowan (no longer considered a guaranteed Labor hold)

Hard to imagine the Libs picking up anything, even with the swing narrowing. And of course, Perth is an inner city seat – not exactly the place I’d imagine Morrison to poll well. Still think Labor would be shooting for around 5% statewide swing so that puts them in a good position in Swan and Pearce. Hasluck is tougher.

Patrick Gorman is probably the least liked WA Labor MP even among Labor voters, this should still be a fairly comfortable win for him though.

In a normal Elections he would have had a tough time due to the redistribution & and the slow decline in Labor’s primary vote. This isn’t a normal election though, at least not in WA.

The Libs have put forward a much better candidate than they did in previous elections, specially in 2019, still have absolutely no chance this time.

I think Libs will probably end up on a primary of around 34% Labor around 35-37% and Greens will do well to maintain their vote around 20% and Gorman to win with a TTP of around 58%

@Ben

I haven’t read anywhere where the Liberals think Perth is in play. The only WA Labor held seat I have read where the Liberals have had a mumble about taking off Labor is Cowan. Liberals will be looking for a more defensive strategy in WA in retaining Swan, Pearce, and Hasluck.

Barrie Cassidy also seems think Labor holding their launch in Perth will have a bigger impact then the eastern states. Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne has been done before. But holding it in WA for the first time will likely have more traction with Western Australians.

Labor retain.

@Ben, I actually expect a swing to Labor in the areas that were transferred from Stirling. Labor has not really campaigned in the those suburbs since 2004 and The Libs are likely to focus on holding there own in WA rather than pick anything off Labor. Look at Burt in 2016, covered a lot of areas where Labor did not bother campaigning for two elections and suddenly there was a swing. I expect the same in suburbs such as Yokine.

Agree Nimalan, the suburbs transferred from Stirling (Yokine and Mount Lawley) fall into state seats that are naturally Labor leaning and are only won by Liberals when they are on the ascendancy (2008 and 2013).

Just because an area was supportive of one party at a particular election does not mean it will continue at future elections, especially if there is a redistribution that transfers a community into a different district. Yass is one example where it becomes competitive when placed into a swing district (Eden Monaro) but reverts to its natural conservative lean when placed into a safe Coalition seat (Hume).

Patrick Gorman seems like he has little public profile tbh, but Perth should be easily retained by Labor. Would expect both the Labor and Green primary vote to increase.

Tbh I think people are backing Labor too heavily in the west. While a populist protectionist Labor govt got them in to state parliament federal Labor are another story in the west. Marginal swings maybe on the McGowan vote but won’t be the same bloodbath we saw in the state election. F Labor can’t win a seat here in WA they won’t be in the lodge.

@ Yoh An, good point about Yass. Another good example was when the state seat of Goulburn was redrawn before the 2015 election and Labor campaigned strongly in 2015 also the seat of Macarthur when it was redrawn to be more competitive for Labor in 2016 followed by a huge swing once Labor actually campaigned in the area.

Yoh An, that’s an interesting point you make about Yass. I don’t live far from there, but I am curious – why do you think that Yass votes in such a way? Is it to do with communities of interest, or because people have a sense of how the rest of the seat they are in plan to vote at any given time?

Strong swing to The Greens in booths within borders of the state seat of Perth.

11% swing in Highgate North
7% swing in West Perth and North Perth
Topped the poll in Mount Lawley East, Northbridge and Highgate North.

This may be a Wills type seat where Labor will win but will face Greens in TPP but win on Liberal preferences.

I have already run the numbers on the state seat of Perth (results in 2022) ALP 37.72% GRN 28.35% LIB24.58%, if Liberals prefrerence the Greens (like they did last election) then the it would come to something like ALP 46.3% vs GRN 44.3% before minor party preferences. Would easily be the best seat for Greens to target at the next state election.

The seat finally joined the 20% club for Greens. They aren’t far off the range where they could make the runoff in a low tide election. A fully resourced “winnable seat” campaign may have seen them beat the Libs this time, though Labor would retain easily on Liberal preferences.

I think this will be a Green target in 2025, though it will still be hard to overtake either major.

Although the raw numbers make it look impossible for the Greens, I’d say the their chances here actually aren’t too bad.

Let’s say there is a 5% 2PP swing in WA back to the Liberals at the next election – a modest correction after the 10% swing to Labor in 2022. Therefore assume a direct 5% primary vote shift from Labor to Liberal, so on primaries Labor falls to 34%, Liberal on 32%. On those numbers it’s safe to assume the Libs will make the 2PP count so won’t come third, making the Greens chances easier. Once you factor that in, the primary vote gap between Labor and the Greens is only 12 percentage points. A similar swing to what Greens got in Griffith in 2016 and they likely overtake Labor and win. This is all quite far-fetched but not as far-fetched as the raw numbers suggest.

I’m also unsure how popular Patrick Gorman is as local member and what effect the redistribution will have.

I would also suggest that the Green vote here is suppressed, as their Senate vote is often higher than their House vote – HOR 22.2%; SEN 23.5%. Presumably these Senate-only voters shouldn’t be too hard to win over with a more active/visible Perth campaign, so taking 23.5% as the starting point narrows the Labor Green primary gap to only around 10 points in this scenario.

100% agree. This seat has on a normal election very similar voting behaviour to Griffith and Macnamara.

In an extremely bad election for the Libs in WA they got 31.43% on the 3CP. You’d have to think even the tiniest reset to normal would mean the Libs would get >33.33% and always make the 2CP.

Considering that, the Greens than only need to poll at the maximum, >33.33% on the 3CP to win the seat. They got 25.9% in 2022. The greater the ALP->LIB reset is, the lower primary vote the greens need to win.

If the Lib 3CP goes back to >40% 3CP, like it was for 2010-2019, than the Greens would only need a >30% 3CP to win the seat (only about a 4% swing).

If the redistribution in WA does what most people think it will and removes Bassendean shire, this would increase the Lib vote and decrease the Labor vote. Making the seat easier for the Greens to win.

So the scenario for the Greens winning this seat would be running a very strong local campaign here + having the Lib vote return to normal around here, where their vote is high but not high enough to win the seat.

I actually think for the reasons above this is the 4th most winnable seat for the Greens after Richmond, Macnamara and Higgins. The WA senate seat for the Greens is pretty much a lock, so they might as well throw all of their resources here.

I agree Perth is a possible Greens victory.

While no two elections are in exactly the same environment, 2010 might be the best guide to what the next election holds, for it also featured a first term Labor government seeking re-election, with 2PP polling being close to even.

In that election, Labor fell 5.4% in HoR primary vote, with about 4% of that going to the Greens. But that was across the whole country. When localised to an urban seat, the swings can be much higher. For example, Adam Bandt won the seat of Melbourne in 2010 with a swing of 13%, with Labor falling 11%. The Greens wouldn’t even need a swing that large to win this one, although they may not have the same campaigning ability in Perth as they did in Melbourne.

the is likely with many inner city seats like sydney and grayndler which will probably fall once albo and pllibersek retire

Agree with others here that Perth is a seat the Greens ought to target and could possibly win if Labor were in a position where they were excluded before the final 2PP. Possibly a bridge too far in 2025 for the Greens however think the demographic trends in this seat will likely see it becoming increasingly competitive between Labor and the Greens. The current MP strikes me as a rather low profile careerist so wouldn’t think he has a strong personal vote. Think it’s going to eventually become one of those awkward seats like Brisbane where the 3 largest parties finish fairly close together and it becomes a question of margins as to who makes the final 2PP and ends up winning. It’s they type of seat where a teal independent could potentially do well if they can expand beyond Liberal held seats.

The Greens have selected City of Vincent councillor Sophie Greer to be their candidate for Perth at the next election.

I don’t really think this is much of a Greens target, nor is the state seat of Perth.

While I think Perth will be retained by Labor at the next federal and state elections, I think the Liberals will still finish second. Traditionally both seats have been marginal and the state seat was actually a marginal Liberal seat from 2013 (a Coalition landslide) until 2017 (a Labor landslide). Same goes for the federal and state seats of Adelaide. The state seat of Adelaide was actually a marginal Liberal seat from 2010 until 2022, while the Liberals lost Adelaide to Labor in 2004 (to balance it out, Labor lost Kingston to the Liberals), and ever since then it’s been a Labor seat.

I agree with @Malcolm that if the Greens were to win it, the result would need to be similar to the 2022 result in Brisbane or Ryan as opposed to the 2022 result in Griffith or Melbourne. I think a way the Greens could win is by beating Labor on TCP; the primary votes would be like 38% Liberal, 27% Greens and 25% Labor. The Greens only get second preferences from other left-wing or far-left parties (i.e socialists, namely the Socialist Alliance and the Victorian Socialists), so if Labor finishes first or even if they come close in second, Labor would win on Coalition preferences. But if the Coalition finishes second, the Greens will benefit from both socialist preferences and from Labor preferences which could potentially get them over the line.

On the night of the 2022 federal election I remember Antony Green said early on in the count that Brisbane would not be won by the LNP, but he couldn’t call it, not only because the count wasn’t high enough, but because it was unclear who would finish first. At the time, the Greens were first and Labor was very close in second, and on those numbers Antony said that Labor would win on LNP preferences. The actual result ended up being a Greens gain; the LNP ended up finishing first, Labor finished second and the Greens finished very close in third. In Ryan, the LNP finished first, the Greens were second and Labor was third, yet despite Ryan being more marginal than Brisbane, it was called before Brisbane because it was clear that the Greens would beat Labor.

Worth mentioning that 2022 Federal Election in WA was still very heavily a Mark McGowan election. I would very surprised if Greens primary in Perth isn’t between 25-30% in 2025.

Greens would also prefer if the redistribution removed areas like Morley and Dianella rather than Bassendean. Bassendean’s demographic very is very similar to Maylands and Bayswater and favors the Greens specially those new voters moving to the Suburb.

Greens would benefit here from Libs recovering. It’s unlikely the Libs will ever win here, so every vote the Libs claw back from Labor just decreases the margin Greens need to overtake Labor and win the seat. I think the chance of the Libs missing the 2CP is very unlikely here with covid/McGowan issues gone. So all the Greens need to do is outpoll Labor on the 3CP

Agree the path to victory for Greens is pushing Labor into 3rd and in my view this makes it the Greens most winnable seat in WA – much more than Fremantle (where it’s really hard to see which major party gets overtaken).

I don’t see Liberals cracking 40 again – this is one of the seats where Turnbull outperformed Abbott. So Greens will need to be polling in the 30s to win I think

this si one seat the greens will take a while to unseat lbor. while they do well in capitals cbd wa is more conservative and therefore will favour labor over the greens for some time

What i would say and this the same with Adelaide. As both cities are smaller they cover areas that in other capital cities would be considered middle ring suburbs which is classic Labor/Lib battlegrounds.

That’s a good point Nimalan but Greens managed to overcome that issue in the 3 QLD seats which all go well into suburbia (parts of Ryan are even semi rural). They managed to take a strong base area and use it to win a bigger seat.

Perth seems promising. Greens do crack 30% in their better areas and can even win booths. It helps that their more winnable state seats overlap with Perth and the elections will be close together. If there is Green support hidden in the inflated Labor vote then maybe it’s winnable. Looking forward to the redistribution.

@ John
Fair point although i would say there is a few slight differences compared to the 3 QLD seats
1. Even in the 3 Brisbane seats the most average parts of the electorate such as Gordon Park, Carina, Ferny Grove Labor still out polled the Greens
2. The Labor primary vote in the semi-rural part of Ryan is very weak so it is easier for Greens to come second here.
3. The 3 Brisbane seats all contain the most expensive suburbs in Brisbane so the Greens were able to attract a small l liberal demographic in the absence of a Teal.
4. By contrast Perth does not really have any of the posh Perth suburbs within its boundaries so it is harder to get that Teal vote.

@John @Nimalan I agree, Perth and Darwin seem to have the most conservative CBDs out of the capital cities looking at historical trends (Darwin would be the most and Perth would be second).

@John if you look at the semi-rural suburbs of Ryan they still voted majority LNP. For example, the LNP won 60.92% of the TPP vote in the semi-rural suburb of Brookfield in 2022 (with 53.58% of the primary vote). The Greens had a primary vote of 25.89%, while Labor had just 14.03%. Looking at the swings, it appears that the Greens actually finished second in Brookfield in 2019 too. Brookfield also voted 52.25% No in the Voice referendum.

For a while, Perth was at risk of falling to the Liberals. The 2PP gap was narrowing until 2022. I agree with the general sentiment that the Greens are on their way to become a bigger threat to Labor. I see the Liberals running dead in 2025. There are lower-hanging fruit such as the seats they lost in 2022 plus they’ll have to defend Moore. It could become an ALP vs GRN contest.

At the last redistribution, Perth picked up Liberal-leaning Dianella and Yokine. Perth is over-quota and will have to shrink. If it loses the aforementioned suburbs, the Greens will love it. It might shift west to take up Subiaco and Wembley – both blue/green suburbs.