Pittwater – NSW 2023

LIB 20.8% vs GRN

Incumbent MP
Rob Stokes, since 2007.

Geography
Northern beaches of Sydney. The seat covers the former Pittwater council area and northern parts of the former Warringah council area. The seat covers Narrabeen, Warriewood, Elanora Heights, Mona Vale, Newport, Avalon and Scotland Island.

Redistribution
No change.

History
The seat of Pittwater has existed since the 1973 election. It has been dominated by the Liberal Party throughout that period. The Liberal Party has won the seat at every general election, although it was won by an independent at the 2005 by-election, and he held the seat until 2007.

The seat was first won in 1973 by Liberal Premier Robert Askin. He had first been elected to Parliament in 1950 as the member for the new seat of Collaroy. He became Leader of the Opposition in 1959, and ended 24 years of Labor rule in NSW when he became Premier at the 1965 election.

Collaroy was abolished in 1973, and Askin moved to the new seat of Pittwater, covering much of the same territory as his former seat. Askin retired as Premier and from Parliament in 1975.

The 1975 Pittwater by-election was won by Liberal candidate Bruce Webster. He held the seat until 1978.

Pittwater was won in 1978 by Liberal candidate Max Smith. He won re-election in 1981 and 1984, but after winning a third term in 1984 he resigned from the Liberal Party to sit as an independent. He resigned from Parliament in 1986.

The 1986 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Jim Longley. He served as a minister from 1992 to 1995, and retired in 1996.

Another by-election was held in 1996, and was won by John Brogden. He was promoted to the Coalition frontbench after the 1999 election. In March 2002, he challenged Opposition Leader Kerry Chikarovski and won a narrow party room vote. He led the Liberal Party to a landslide defeat in 2003, but later in the term appeared on track to win the next election.

Following the retirement of Premier Bob Carr in 2005, Brogden was exposed for offensive comments he made about the retiring Premier’s wife, and he was forced to resign as Liberal leader. Shortly after, he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt, and resigned as Member for Pittwater.

At the following by-election, the Liberals were hit hard by accusations that Brogden’s opponents in the party had pursued him and brought about the end of his political career. The seat was won by independent candidate Alex McTaggart, the Mayor of Pittwater.

At the 2007 election, McTaggart lost to Liberal candidate Rob Stokes, a former advisor to John Brogden. Stokes has been re-elected three times.

Stokes served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the O’Farrell government, and has served as a minister since 2014.

Candidates
Sitting Liberal MP Rob Stokes is not running for re-election.

Assessment
Pittwater is a safe Liberal seat, barring a strong local independent.

2019 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Robert Stokes Liberal 28,170 57.4 -10.4
Miranda Korzy Greens 7,518 15.3 -0.8
Jared Turkington Labor 6,168 12.6 -0.2
Suzanne Daly Sustainable Australia 1,832 3.7 +3.7
Michael Newman Keep Sydney Open 1,644 3.3 +3.4
Natalie Matkovic Animal Justice 1,417 2.9 +2.9
Stacey Mitchell Conservatives 1,283 2.6 +2.6
Stewart Matthews Independent 1,087 2.2 +2.2
Informal 1,346 2.7

2019 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Robert Stokes Liberal 29,696 70.8 -4.8
Miranda Korzy Greens 12,225 29.2 +4.8

2019 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Robert Stokes Liberal 30,070 72.4 -5.5
Jared Turkington Labor 11,486 27.6 +5.5

Booth breakdown

Booths in Pittwater have been split into four areas based around key suburbs. From north to south these are: Avalon, Newport, Mona Vale, Narrabeen.

The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote (against the Greens) in all four areas, ranging from 60.9% in Avalon to 75.8% in Narrabeen.

Labor came third, with a primary vote ranging from 11.6% in Avalon and Newport to 13.3% in Narrabeen.

Voter group ALP prim % LIB 2CP % Total votes % of votes
Narrabeen 13.3 75.8 12,215 24.9
Mona Vale 11.8 72.4 6,645 13.5
Avalon 11.6 60.9 5,533 11.3
Newport 11.6 67.8 5,214 10.6
Pre-poll 12.6 72.3 11,734 23.9
Other votes 13.2 68.8 7,778 15.8

Election results in Pittwater at the 2019 NSW state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Liberal vs Greens), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, the Greens and Labor.

Become a Patron!

120 COMMENTS

  1. Those Branches, who were originally in favour of Jason Falinski, are smarting after his loss at the Federal Election. So their confidence will be well down. If it was someone from outside the area, they would 100% rally around Rory and I only need to mention the name Paul Nicolau and the Pittwater Liberal Party Members arch up.
    But Natasha? It’s a bit tighter.

  2. The Sydney Morning Herald reporting that Rob Stokes and Dominic Perrottet where trying to get Rory Amon not endorsed for Pittwater amid concerns he won’t perform well against independent candidate Jacqui Scruby

  3. Can confirm that the Pittwater SEC have ignored Head Office and have voted to endorse Rory Amon as the Liberal Candidate for Pittwater.

    Effectively, this will make Pittwater Rory Amon vs Jacqui Scruby

  5. @Mick – Rory is the Liberal Candidate. All other candidates have pulled out and he was formally endorsed.
    That process is over. It’s now down to the election.

  6. Hawkeye, in other words Rory won the nomination unopposed. This is fairly common for US primary elections where other challengers will pull out/withdraw leaving one candidate to be elected/endorsed unopposed.

  8. Well now that the preselection is over, do we think the teal has a decent chance of picking this one off? Would be interested to hear the thoughts of those more knowledgeable.

  9. I think this seat would have been uncertain. Now with Rory as the candidate the chances of a liberal loss have increased.

  10. I think it will be a bit more uncertain but, given the situation with NSW vs Australia, the lack of resources available and the relative lack of name recognition with Jacqui Scruby, I’d still say Rory Amon would go in as favourite for the seat.

    Currently, my prediction would be the margin coming in around 5-10%

  11. I think the difficulty of a teal winning is shown by the 2019 election results in NSW. In Wollondilly in 2019, the Liberal primary vote was at 38.0% with the Independent vote at 20.1%. Every other candidate including One Nation directed preferences to the Independent, yet the Liberals still won by a 5.5% 2CP margin. In Dubbo, the National primary vote was at just 37.4% with the Independent vote at 28.4%. Despite this, the Nationals still won by a 2.0% 2CP margin. In every seat an Independent or minor party won in 2019, they topped the primary vote. Thus, for a Teal to win in Pittwater they’d either need a very high primary vote, the Liberal vote completely collapse below 40% or for an extremely good preference flow.

    A similar comparison could probably be made to the Willoughby by-election where a popular incumbent retired and was replaced by a bit of a controversial candidate. In that race, the Liberal vote dropped to 43.5%, yet the Liberals still won by 3.3% in the end with no Labor candidate. If there was a Labor candidate, I’d anticipate the margin to be even higher as Labor preferences may exhaust. In the Manly and North Shore by-elections, the Liberal primary vote was 43.8% and 42.8% respectively, which wasn’t enough to lose the seat. I’d note that the 2019 redistributed primary vote of 57.4% in Pittwater is actually higher than the primary vote in Willoughby, so a bigger primary vote swing than the Willoughby by-election would be needed. As long as the Liberal vote is above 41%, I’d say they’re likely to win.

  12. I also don’t really buy that Rory Amon is unpopular. He had one of the highest BTL votes of any candidate at the Northern Beaches Council election and the highest out of all the Liberal candidates. With Amon leading the ticket in Pittwater Ward, there was a 12.1% increase in the total Liberal vote. The 42.1% total Liberal vote with Amon leading the ticket was the highest out of any ward.

  13. Left vote 42 right 58 opv bonus
    10% the libs are of course in the box seat. But federal election shows a teal win is possible and Rory to be charitable makes the liberal win more difficult. Remember too there will be an anti liberal swing this election. Think Labor almost won this seat in 1978 or 1981

  15. The further north you go, the older the population is and the Greener the vote is.

    Avalon Beach is a magnet for sea-changers and tree-changers. The suburbs from Newport to Palm Beach low-density and bushy. I think of Home and Away when I think of this area. Culturally, they’re a bit hippy but still economically conservative. It’s not surprising that it voted teal federally. It’s also a hangout for celebrities and Instagram influencers. It’s a bit like Orange County in California.

  16. Votante is 100% correct. The further up the peninsula you go, the more you hit what should be bread and butter for genuine small-l liberals: Conscious about the environment but very much economic conservatives. The last two genuine Capital-C Conservatives within this area were Bronwyn Bishop (Federal) and Patricia Giles (Council). That ended half a generation ago.

    What the teals need to be very careful with is how they straddle the line that they are pushing. Their base is clearly centre-left, given how many people were willing to vote strategically from both Labor and the Greens, which stripped their respective Primary Votes in these seats. However, what got them over the line was that they won enough disaffected Liberal Votes to win seats. Those votes can easily swing right back.

  17. @Hawkeye – Since all the Teal IND pretty much won with a 2CP margin of 2.5% to 4%, they should be equally at risk of disaffected Liberals moving from their pile (back) to the LIB pile. However, for reasons explained on the North Sydney thread by Leon, Kylea Tink in North Sydney is the Teal IND most at risk of the scenario you mention. All the other Teal IND have a much bigger margin at the 3CP than they do at the 2CP, whereas Tink only has 2% or so difference.

    I estimate 10% of her 25.2% PV was disaffected Liberals, a much high percentage than other Teals. Just a couple of % of Liberals returning will make her not far above the Labor PV, and if the benefits for Labor and Green to strategically vote disappears or greatly reduces, she’s on very thin ice. The combined ALP/GRN PV available is around 44%, only 30% of which landed there in 2022. So it doesn’t need much % drop in strategic voting (like only 1 in 10) and Tink will be excluded. Also, preferences from the remaining GRN primary are crucial. Whilst the Greens Head Office may like to see lots of IND to keep an ALP Federal Government close to hung Parliament territory, that doesn’t mean Green voters necessarily will come 2025.

    The great unknown here is whether the urban Teal IND’s can follow the regional IND model of increasing their PV at their second election. The overt nature of the straddling you mention will likely play a part here. I sense that commentators will assume this will happen but that all that strategic voting that normally happens to KEEP an IND as the MP, has already happened just to GET them to be the MP at the first election. It will be very interesting to see what the pre 2025 election opinion polling in the Teal seats indicates and what narratives build around it. Across so many seats, the polling should be quite accurate and reliable.

  18. The dynamics of a teal win are their primary votes go up due to
    Labor and greens tactically voting as they want the candidate who is best placed to defeat the libs to win. The second part is they take close to 10% of votes from the liberals this allows the win. In all the teal held seats the 2pp shows Labor polling less than the libs on the 2pp. How this fans out under opv will be interesting.

  19. rory gets a negative article on him today in the SMH
    He says he supports gambling reform but did vote against it as a councillor in 2018

  20. There are 93 state seats and I think 50 federal seats in nsw..almost 2 to 1 ratio. But this allows different concentration of support in individual areas

  21. 47 Federal seats (at the moment), so it’s basically 2 to 1.

    But of course many state seats are half in one federal electorate and half the neighbour – North Shore and Lane Cove are good examples near me. This can add to different dynamics driven on what is happening at the federal level in a given area.

    For instance – Lane Cove state electorate is stated as a Safe Liberal seat, and may well be – but half of it is represented by a Federal Labor MP and much of the other half has a Labor Mayor!

  22. Eg Pittwater I think is wholly in McKellen but the teal vote is much stronger there. Same applies with Davidson..
    In Wentworth the reverse applies.. Vaucluse is a liberal strong hold within Wentworth as it covers Double Bay Rose Bay and similar suburbs. So we cannot argue the pattern is similar to the federal result. PITTWATER has a much higher base of teal support so opv will
    mean that the liberal candidate needs either an absolute majority or close. Any inadequacy of the liberal candidate magnifies this.
    I would say the chances of a ind/teal win here are better than Wakehurst

  23. Insider my point exactly. This is why I would like to have stat’s of
    Votes from state to federal and
    Visa versa. Also when you have half the number of voters for a state seat as opposed to a federal seat it is easier for a state mp to entrench them selves especially in a country area

  24. Early activity has been Scrubie following the Scamps strategy – Lots of Middle-age people banner-waving around the Mona Vale Road Intersection. However, Amon appears to be a lot more visible in campaigning than Falinski was, especially with the recent announcements around PEP-11 and the Wakehurst Parkway. With PEP-11 looking committed to not occur, one of the next major issues will be Transport and Infrastructure, with Sydney Buses and the upgrading of both Mona Vale Road and the Wakehurst Parkway.

  26. Pittwater Pill:
    Primaries:
    LIB: 41%
    IND: 30%
    ALP: 16%
    GRN: 4%

    2CP:
    LIB: 52%
    IND: 48%

    Personally, I get a 53.8% 2CP off these primaries, the Greens vote seems absurdly low considering Falinski got 6% in Mackellar, although the Labor vote seems like it has the potential to drop. 41-45% is probably about where I’d expect the Liberal vote to be though.

  27. I’m tipping Jacqui Scruby to be the best performing teal in the state and likely the only one to make the 2PP count, though I won’t say she’ll win. The Greens and Labor would run dead here. I wouldn’t be surprised if the combined Greens PV and Labor PV ended up under 20%.

    Jacqui Scruby has a more visible campaign than the other teals, and is actually running on local Nimby issues, and has experience working on a federal teal campaign. Also, the seat is vacant.

  28. The trend toward the end of the campaign as seen in the federal election is that the Teal vote increases at the expense of Labor and the Greens while the Liberal vote increases too, generally due to undecided voters (see Mackellar polls for proof). If the Liberal vote is already at 41% 1 month out, then I’d say the Liberals will hold this.

  29. 41% liberal in this poll if correct and electorate level polls are unreliable. If these figures are right then that means 59% opposed. 30 ind and 20% alp/green.. some more may shift to the ind so this will raise their vote.. assume 5% shifts then almost 16% alp/ green.. these preferences can be directed alp 1 2 and greens the same. 2 is teal. Result is uncertain obviously Ben has assumed a high exhaust rate of alp/ green preferences what if it is very low.

  30. Climate 200 backed poll of ~700 reported in the Daily Telegraph with a 2PP to Scruby 50.7 – 49.3 over Amon

    Primary
    Lib – 34.3
    Ind – 28.5
    Lab – 11.2
    Grns – 6.4

    Top voter issue climate closely followed by the economy.

  31. The poll seems very out of touch. Wouldn’t be shocked if Climate200 favoured their candidate and the prominence of climate as an issue in this poll. Cost of living is consistently the single largest issue this election… unless you’re the son of Australia’s first billionaire.

  32. A Liberal primary vote pf 34.3% is just not believable and there is 20% of the electorate either voting for someone else or undecided. The swing against the Liberals on primary’s will not be 23%, it’ll likely be 15% at max which is generous because that’s higher than at the federal election. I’d be more willing to trust the non-partisan poll taken at the same time with a 52-48 2CP, which seems more reasonable. I still expect it to be about 54-46.

  33. I’ll just point out that the poll commissioned by Climate 200 for Mackellar had a Liberal primary vote of 32% and a 2CP of 40%. Seat polling is notoriously unreliable in the end

  34. Wow, just blown away that a Climate 200 poll has found a big swing to the Climate 200 candidate, and the main issue is climate!!!

    Almost as good as the study that ran in the Tele the other day that told us ‘Renters will decide the election’, with the study funded by… the Tenants Council of NSW!!

    Neither are worth the paper they are printed on. Which is not to say Pittwater won’t be a tight race.

  35. Pittwater has become Corflute City, with Amon and Scruby Corflutes everywhere along Pittwater Road from Mona Vale to Narrabeen.
    AEForecasts currently has Amon in front 54.4 to 45.6 over Scruby and that hasn’t moved.
    Scruby’s advertising seems to have dried up now, with Climate 200 now pushing their own advertising through (attempting to circumvent the fundraising rules). But I have noticed that the pitch of their campaigning has been unfocused, trying to cover Wakehurst Parkway Flooding, Lizard Rock, PEP-11, Integrity in parliament and restoring Mona Vale Hospital to full capacity.
    Scruby has also been targetted as a bit of a blow-in (not sure how accurate this is). If there is one thing I know about Pittwater, they look very negatively on a parachute candidate (Paul Nicolau anyone?)

  36. Hawkeye-au – having spent some time in Pittwater over the weekend I think your observation is accurate. There were street stalls at a number of shopping centres, but the enthusiasm levels for Scruby were nothing like those for Scamps 12 months earlier. It will still be very tight though – Amon trying to be installed as a new MP in teal heartland was always going to be very challenging. It would’ve been interesting to see the margin if Stokes had stayed – My best guess is around 15%.

  38. Preferences on HTV cards.

    LIB – just put 1
    IND – IND and then number 2 to 5 yourself
    ALP – ALP then IND then GRN
    GRN – GRN then IND then ALP

    Labor and Greens tend to preference teals before preferencing each other. It’s a smart move on their part. They know their chances of winning are really slim and so they can only help the teal get into the 2PP through their preferences. If Labor/Greens preferenced each other first then Liberals will retain for sure because there’s no guarantee that teal voters will give Labor/Greens many preferences after getting knocked out in an earlier round.

  39. Alp and greens are trying to make voting simple 1 2 is relatively easy and encourage a better preference flow

  40. The borderline-slanderous advertising from Climate 200 just reached pittwater, where they have attempted to implicate Rory Amon with the death of a local from suicide following debts caused by their gambling addiction.

    Zali Steggall came out in the media and condemned these attacks and had claimed that Climate 200 is now losing what it stood for, in terms of positive politics.

    It is really getting nasty on the northern beaches.

  41. yea “someone” has tried to paint the holsworthy candidate as promoting inslamification by sending out flyers mimicking election material

  42. Even the Liberal Party is growing in confidence around Pittwater at this point:
    AE Forecasts – LIB 6.0%
    Sportsbet – $1.70 LIB
    TAB – $1.60 LIB

    The word from HQ is that they think they have done enough to stop Scruby and the recent negative campaigns from Climate 200 might be the clincher, similar to the feeling in North Shore.

  43. looks very close
    preferences seem to be either scrubby or exhaust

    Seems the northern end around Avalon was teal heartland, the libs won the retirement home belt and the rest being fairly even

  44. Latest update has Amon pulling away from Scruby.

    Not quite there yet but if the Pre-Poll and Absentees/Postals continue, I think Amon will have this

  46. Scruby may run again in 2027 given how close she was to winning. Many candidates who run and narrowly miss out, do choose to run again. 2027 is a lifetime away so things may change.

    Hannan (Wollondilly) and Penn (Willoughby) ran for the third time at this election. One won and the other one narrowly missed out.

  47. Thanks for stating that – I don’t know how many times I’ve read in recent days that Penn was having her second attempt – 2022 by election and now in 2023. She also ran in 2019, which is pretty easy to confirm.

  48. @Insider
    To be fair, Penn was up against Berejiklian in 2019, a sitting premier that is well liked in the area (even if not so in other parts of Sydney). Not many would seriously remember Penn’s 2019 attempt as she only got 9.9% that time (4th after Brejilklian, Labor, then Greens).

  49. Consider as well that the Coalition were on a downward trend in the political cycle. The question will be whether they have troughed out or if there is more to come. The next two years will decide whether the Coalition remains competitive or whether we get a repeat of 1999 and 2003. That depends on whether the Liberal can realign itself for a proper tilt in 2031 or whether they repeat their mistakes in the period previously mentioned.

    Based on the way the seats are trending, I don’t think it is the landslide that some media outlets are claiming. At this stage, it looks like a straight role reversal and the potential that the range that both parties are bouncing around as the expected norm.

  50. We might be in for a by-election soon, with Liberal MP for Pittwater charged today over child sex offences. I guess he doesn’t have to resign straight away.

« Older Comments Newer Comments »

Comments are closed.