Willoughby – NSW 2023

Willoughby also gained that part of Artarmon that sat very oddly in the Lane Cove electorate. This basically offset the addition of Castle Cove.

The parts of St Leonards and Gore Hill that were added are effectively the Artarmon Industrial Estate and have very few voters – unless you count the Bunnings traffic….

Think this could be teal territory. How many will they win?

Possibly. I don’t expect a repeat of a teal wave at the NSW election (nor the Vic election). In metro Sydney, they may just win one or two.

A teal independent may run here against Tim James, motivated by the huge by-election swing, teal victories at the federal election and just the fact that he is not Gladys Berejiklian. I feel that Berejiklian appealed to upper-class professionals and social progressives, whilst Mr James is right-wing.

Larissa Penn is already staking out her ground for another run, so it might be counter productive for an Independent with a “Teal” badge to bother here.

This will be a seat worth watching. I just did a quick calculation using North Sydney’s federal election results.

Willoughby (mainly south of Victoria Ave and Fullers Road, Chatswood) is almost entirely within the federal seat of North Sydney. Kylea Tink scored close to the mid-50s in 2PP terms based on Willoughby’s boundaries. She won every booth on 2PP terms except one where she marginally lost by 0.5%.

Following the four byelections in Feb 2022, I saw a piece by a Liberal insider who was more shocked by the result in Willoughby than in Bega and saw it as a sign of an upcoming federal “teal slide”. He definitely saw the writing on the wall.

Votante, you also need to look at the Primary votes. Many of those booths where Tink won the 2CP vs LIB, she was a distant 3rd on primary votes – the results were very varied across the federal electorate. Even though the 2CP results were pretty consistent, this was mainly because in the areaz where Tink was high, the ALP and Greens were low, but also vice versa. Some of Tink’s strongest booths vs Labor on primary fall outside the Willoughby electorate.

Also, a state Teal candidate will not have $1.3M to drop in the seat…..

Would you say Penn was effectively a teal?; Labor did not contest the by-elections… from what I can see the votes of teals Greens and Labor are interchangeable with the more conservative candidate doing about 2 to 3% better then the reverse flow. Another way of looking at things is the position of the coalition govt has worsened since the by-election. To win by 3% is close so not much leeway. Here I would pic the least likely result as being alp win
If they contest the seat. Mr Janes may survive but he needs lots of luck. Assuming the libs poll the highest primary vote he is advantaged by opv
But if people decide to extend their preferences. .. then.

I’d assume both Labor and the Greens would not contest here in order to let Penn do the maximum damage and not risk exhausting their preferences. The NSW OPV system will advantage the Libs since the Teal victories came from strong preferences from Labor and the Greens. Most of the Teals were second on the primary vote so if the federal election had OPV, the Libs would have probably been able to retain all the seats they lost to the Teals except for Warringah. Labor and the Greens would have to be strategic in what seats they contest in Northern Sydney.

Dan this assumes the liberals come first
Which is a fair assumption.here and in say Davidson. If the swing is.less than.double figures this holds. I haven’t.seen.opinion.polls.But.I suspect the.general swing is 6% and building.. if parties can agree to not stand in.a 60% other 40% liberal seat this will do the job

Insider. I agree that Kylea Tink’s primary vote in North Sydney was really low. I wrote somewhere in a federal election thread that her lowest primary vote (25%) is perhaps the lowest out of all HoR seat winners and I was really surprised that she even won.

There was speculation that Labor had a fighting chance and even Kevin Rudd came to North Sydney to campaign. Believe it or not, in one part of Chatswood, Labor came first on first preferences. Labor got 21% seatwide. In most other teal seats, Labor got single digits or low teens. Labor preferences, and to an extent, Greens preferences, helped Tink get across the line. Given OPV at the state election, Labor and the Greens voters, along with independent voters could split the anti-Liberal vote, ensuring Mr James gets elected.

I still think that North Shore and Manly are easier targets for the teal/community voices/independent movement, given their demographics, electoral history and recent federal election results.

I’d tend to agree Votante, about North Shore and Manly. I remember someone making the comment about Tink’s low primary vote but didn’t twig it was you. It is a very accurate insight and one that gets overlooked by the media in their assessment of Teal seats. That part of Chatswood you refer to, which was a joint booth with Bradfield (and the first preference results were basically a tie there) is in this state electorate.

Dan M – how would you expect Labor and Greens to keep their LC vote up in they are not contesting Assembly seats? And get their public funding? There is 0% chance of them not standing a candidate. As to Labor, if they put out a HTV that recommends preferences, there will be a very low exhaustion rate on those votes.

Insider. The problem is getting people to to extend their preferences when the instructions on the Ballot paper. Say something like pls vote for the candidate of your choice.it is only necessary to number one square but you can fill in other squares in accordance with your choice

Agree – OPV is difficult when candidates and parties are trying to maximise the rate of preferencing.
The larger parties are in a better position as they will have >1 person at each polling booth, someone present all day at each pre poll booth, and where they issue a HTV that recommends a preference that their voters do not find objectionable, there are almost always low rates of exhaustion.

If the sitting member has a “just vote 1” message yet everyone other candidate, of which there could be many, is saying “fully preference to make your vote count as much as possible”, will be interesting to see what wins out. I think most people in Willoughby will realise what’s really behind a “just vote 1” message.

So, someone thinks Willoughby is interesting enough to do some polling, as I was just live called polled by a well known firm. Asked about Climate 200 under a Favourable/Unfavourable question……..
Very interesting for an Insider to be polled.

Is potentially in play

Tim James is out and about every weekend and has been door knocking since July. He certainly knows he’s in some danger – whether that is based on gut instinct or internal polling, hard to tell as yet.

Can confirm that Tim James has been basically campaigning since election. I have also heard that he has resonated well with the voters so far.

As stated above, I think the idea of Teals running in NSW would be a massive stretch of the resources of Simon Holmes a Court et al. Given they just ran a Federal Campaign, followed by their move in Victoria, a 3rd campaign would put their resources on the edge.

They would need to be very selective about where they run

Hawkeye_as – The funding caps per candidate per seat would probably max out before the resources did. Only something like $130K per seat is allowed, and as they are not a registered party (despite what might be said about them being a “party”) they don’t have an overall party limit to spend.

There was a precinct meeting in Cammeray this week – not sure he resonated well there from what I heard from one who attended

Seems prudent that James is campaigning early; I’ve heard he’s popular enough. However, he might become rusty come election day, similar to Reid in 2019. Incumbency will definitely help though.

He might be popular with most of the 40% of voters in this area who still vote Liberal (43.5% at a low turn out by-election and 38.5% in corresponding areas of North Sydney). It’s the other 60% he needs to worry about.

Where is Kellie Sloane based?

I understand she’s currently nominated for Vaucluse but if she’s actually based north of the bridge wouldn’t that be more logical? Plenty of openings.

She lost to Tim James in the Willoughby by election pre-selection, didn’t she? So presumably her horse has bolted in Willoughby

Tim James has his first declared competition and its not a Teal. On the back of a breakout campaign in the overlapping federal electorate, Labor have got out early for one of the safest seats in the State.
https://twitter.com/sarah_will2023

I’m putting this here as though Willoughby is NOT mentioned – it’s the odd one out. Comment relates to a range of seats though.

The Australian has a report of Redbridge polling for Climate200 that showed 6 seats (5 across northern Sydney + Oxley) where the Liberal vote is below 40% and in Manly, below 35%. “”Yet to be declared ‘Teal’ Independent’s were in the 30’s in all seats, except for Lane Cove.

Whilst the Redbridge polling certainly looked like strategic leaks during the federal campaign, they were pretty accurate, helped no doubt by a self -reinforcing effect of strategic voting by Greens and Labor voters.

Apart from the fact that in not one seat is there yet an obvious Teal Independent that has announced they will stand, the other interesting takeaway is that Willoughby wasn’t mentioned and therefore likely wasn’t polled.

Poor choice Mr Jane’s from
The liberal party right. His victory in the preselection was
Based on branch stacking by the lib left gone wrong. His victory at the by-election was sheer luck

The Redbridge polling for the Victorian election was pretty awful, but I modelled the polling for the NSW seats under OPV. Not a single one of them had an independent outpolling Labor, so on a 2PP basis my model had the Liberals winning all 5 polled seats on a 2PP Basis. On a 2CP vs Independent basis I had the Liberals winning Wakehurst, Pittwater and Lane Cove while the Independent won Manly and North Shore on a 1.5% margin – highlights the difficulty for them under OPV. I also thought it’d be interesting to model the Liberal 2CP’s under OPV with traditional preference flows and I got:
North Sydney: LIB 1.6% vs IND, LIB 9.1% vs ALP
Warringah: IND 10.1% vs LIB, LIB 17.5% vs ALP
Mackellar: IND 1.4% vs LIB, LIB 22.3% vs ALP
Wentworth: IND 1.4% vs LIB, LIB 17.0% vs ALP
Bradfield: LIB 8.8% vs IND, LIB 19.0% vs ALP
This just shows that in situations where the teal vote is within 5% of the Liberal vote, they can still win under OPV, however if the non-Liberal vote is heavily split like in North Sydney then the teals would lose.

I wonder if there will be more voters numbering all boxes since the voting rules of the federal election are (relatively) fresh in their minds. There have been two federal elections since the last state election.

I don’t think that’ll be a major factor regardless given there’ll be advertisements saying you can Just Vote 1 like there were at the Willoughby by election. It is interesting to note that the informal vote in NSW was 0.5% higher than average and the highest out of any state in the 2019 the federal election, with suggestions this was because of the state election, so a reverse effect of around 1% is plausible. With OPV it’s plausible for the Liberals to win from a 35% primary vote if the non-Liberal vote is not concentrated.

The lack of fundraising due to caps is really the main issue, OPV is the secondary issue. If you look at Victoria Labor essentially ran dead in Kew and Mornington, yet they are still polling around 20% of the vote. My estimate of the margin with OPV with all Teal seats is as follows:
Mornington: LIB 6.8% vs IND, LIB 12.3% vs ALP
Hawthorn: LIB 7.4% vs IND, LIB 11.5% vs ALP
Kew: LIB 8.3% vs IND, LIB 12.9% vs ALP
Caulfield: LIB 16.6% vs IND, LIB 7.2% vs ALP
And some bonuses (Regional seats have National and Liberal vote combined because the Nationals and Liberals do not run against each other in NSW):
Benambra: LIB 3.2% vs IND, LIB 19.9% vs ALP
Mildura: LIB 4.3% vs IND, LIB 27.2% vs ALP
Shepparton: LIB 5.8% vs IND, LIB 26.1% vs ALP
The teals get nowhere close under OPV in metropolitan seats and only get close in regional seats where the Labor vote is practically nonexistent.

Hi Ben, do you have an article on how lower house OPV works? How does it work when no candidate gets 50% of the primary vote; in that case, is it like FPTP?

Ian, for OPV preferences will still flow but at a reduced rate. I read from analysts including Anthony Green that the preference flow from a significant minor party like Greens will be something like 50% to Labor, 20% to Liberal and 30% exhausted.

This is compared to a flow rate of 80% to Labor and 20% to Liberal, with no votes exhausted under full preferential voting.

A rough idea of how opv impacts look a 2pp which only counts those votes where voters
Extended preferences say this
Was 55/44 lib Labor
Then look a the primary votes divide into left. Say green ajp
Alp.. same for right lib uap phon
Christian democrats
Add the totals assume no leakage this gives a rough
2pp vote with full preference
Say Labor 30 gr 6 ajp 4 socialist 8 total left 48
Actual left stated 2pp 44 %
So the difference is the opv
Bonus in my example 4% in the
Favour of the libs
This method is rough but gives an idea.

Opv benefits the party with the highest primary vote.. rarely can a party win from behind. Eg
East Hills 2019
Alp 40 libs 42
Greens and left parties roughly 12 %
The primary vote gap Waa +2%
Liberal
Final result was 2pp plus 0.5 % liberal
Thus gave the libs a massive boost roughly 10%

Ian hope my posts help
Run East Hills now and assume
Alp and liberal primary votes even
So 40 /40
12 elsewhere same composition as 2019
Gap zero
Now Alp gains .1.5% in preferences so all things being equal Labor gets 51.5% and wins

@Yoh An and Mick Quinlivan, thanks for your explanations.

@Mick, to be honest, Tim James’ pre-selection ‘luck’ is warranted, given that he lost to Felicity Wilson for Preselection for North Shore by less than a handful twice, especially after Felicity Wilson was brought into question for lying on a Stat Dec around her place of residency (apparently claimed to live in Kirribilli, despite living for over 15 years in Epping). Let’s just say she had to pull some major strings from her spiritual leader Michael Photios to get over the line.

In reality, Tim James should be the member for North Shore. One could make an argument that this is justice for that.

I’ve just been able to get further details about this and, for the benefit of Mick Q, here is what happened.

It wasn’t a branch stack, per say. it was a semi-legitimate shift of branches that caused tipping points to change in some of the seats. Felicity Wilson was in legitimate trouble against Tim James for Pre-selection for North Shore, so they engineered the shift of the Artarmon Branch from Willoughby to North Shore. It did the trick as Felicity won pre-selection by 1 vote.

However, what they didn’t anticipate was that, along with losing Artarmon, Willoughby then gained Roseville (a conservative branch). This then tipped Willoughby in favour of Tim James.

Either way, Tim James was going to win pre-selection for one of the seats. It just so happened that the shit-housery being pulled by Photios et al to preselect Felicity Wilson ended up backfiring and Tim James still managed to get into parliament.

@Hawkeye_au I’m surprised they didn’t decide to move the Artarmon Branch back into Willoughby when Berejiklian admitted about her relationship with Maguire to ICAC 2 years after the preselection challenge in North Shore. They should have been able to anticipate it might lead to her resigning and it would be good to have a just in case plan.

Thanks Hawke eye
I understand more. I don’t agree with it but then I am not in the liberal party. Ordinary voters do not understand faction dynamics. And to large extent it does not matter to them unless the process selects a dud or someone out of tune with the electorate eg Ms Deeves. If the actual prosecution is perceived as rorted by a would be liberal this could effect their vote.

Preselection

It’s a bit of a shooting oneself in the foot exercise as I really do think Tim is a better match for North Shore and the pre selection shenanigans does give him a harder job in Willoughby.

I’d also say that the night works that have just been announced couldn’t have come at a worse time for the LNP. 6 weeks of all night jack hammering and concrete cutting which will end only 6 weeks before the election, it will affect North Shore a bit but most of the pain will be felt in Willoughby. Will be interesting to see the impact this might have in those booths near the freeway because from the sounds of things it’s going to be very unpleasant.

Is there really room for the Liberal first preference vote to drop further in the booths near the freeway from the by-election though? The booths are:
Anzac Park Public: LIB PV 36.9%, LIB 2CP 44.6%
Cammeray Public: LIB PV 35.4%, LIB 2CP 40.0%
Naremburn Anglican: LIB PV 36.7%, LIB 2CP 43.6%
Naremburn Community Centre: LIB PV 29.5%, LIB 2CP 31.5%
At the federal election the Liberal primary vote compared to the by-election was lower at Anzac Park Public, higher at Cammeray Public and around the same in Naremburn. At the by-election the Liberals won every Chatswood booth, but at the federal election the Liberal primary vote around Chatswood was absolutely smashed with massive primary vote swings. North Shore has a very Liberal voting area in Mosman to save the Liberals, but Willoughby doesn’t really. On the other hand, Tim James has seemed to be quite active in the community and Labor is contesting the general election, thus with the anti-Liberal vote will be more divided and with OPV, I think the by-election may have been Penn’s best chance.

@Ben The results in the Chatswood booths reminds me of the ones the Strathfield electorate for both the byelection and the federal election. The Lib vote held up pretty well in the state by election but crashed in the federal election. In fact, Labor had the highest first preference vote in the Chatswood booth in the federal election despite there being a teal while the Libs still led massively on the state by election results for the same booth. For Strathfield, the by election result was basically status quo with only a tiny swing to Labor but federally the swings were double digit to Labor. What Chatswood and much of the Strathfield electorate have in common demographically is the large Chinese community. The NSW state Libs seem to be able to do much better among Chinese Australian voters than the federal Libs which is something Perrotet can bank on in seats like Ryde and his own seat of Epping.

This seat is uncertain
I would guess the chances of liberal loss are 50 /50.so it comes down t9 the candidates
Thet

There will be an anti liberal swing everywhere. So is Mr James able to campaign well enough to.limit the swing if so. Can he limit it enough?

@Ben – I think it will come down to how many votes ‘ high noise demolition work from 10pm to 7am’ for 6 weeks will affect people. I’d be pretty annoyed if I was Tim James because he has campaigned heavily in this space so to have the decision to do this night work just before the election with Penn as his main opposition is pretty much a worst case scenario. Up until this was announced I would have agreed that Penn’s best chance but this decision will cost them votes.

Regarding Chatswood there’s the Chinese vote that it so important but the key here is the thing I think many forget, Penn isn’t a Teal. Penn doesn’t really have any pro business cred, she’s basically an anti development/nimby candidate and Chinese are pro hard work, anti regulation pro small business so once you take out the anti Chinese rhetoric of the federal that demographic goes fairly hard liberal. Probably hard enough that Chatswood is to Willoughby as Mosman is to North shore.

Tim James has been campaigning very heavily lately, especially with a lot of Bus Stop Stalls through Northbridge, Crows Nest, Cammaray and Artarmon. He has also managed to garner support from the North Sydney Bears in both Rugby League and Cricket. He is very well known as a Bears Tragic.

He is definitely pushing his profile up

I have this wild theory that Tim James and the Liberals underestimated Larissa Penn and thought that winning the by-election would be a walk in the park, even with the absence of Labor, because Willoughby was Liberal-held forever.

Ms Penn had it easier at the by-election as she was the natural choice for Labor voters. With Labor running again in 2023, most Labor voters who voted for her at the by-election will go back to Labor. Her fate depends on how many of Tim James’s voters will switch to her and whether Labor voters will preference her given OPV.

@GregC, I agree that Larissa Penn is running on a NIMBY or community advocacy platform. She is mistaken for a teal because she nearly caused a huge anti-Lib swing at the by-election and is running again for a state seat that is mostly in federal teal territory. I don’t think she’s backed by any group, unless I’m mistaken. She looks like a stronger competitior than the teals in neighbouring seats who are running on quite a generic, teal platform.

*Melissa Penn DID cause a huge anti-Lib swing.

*Larissa Penn DID cause a huge anti-Lib swing.

Sorry. Too many mistakes. My mind must be on holidays.