Rockingham by-election, 2023

Will the Liberals contest? They obviously can’t win, but a double-digit swing wouldn’t be impossible and maybe worth the effort to start the long haul to being seen as a serious option statewide?

That 14.2% personal vote swing will likely be reversed but Rockingham is naturally a very safe Labor seat. The 2PP margin in normal competitive circumstances would be about 20-25%.

no liberal candidate for sure.

The only reason the Libs may run is the psychological boost of what would normally be a huge swing. If they could get 15% – a brush on the paintwork – they could crow about a big swing. A big swing could dent the new premier psychologically as well.

A 15% swing just takes the seat back to 2017 which is still a really strong performance for Labor. Even with a 30%, this would still be a safe Labor seat. The Libs could get a psychological morale boost by running and getting a big swing with barely any effort even though in reality the result would still be extremely strong for Labor.

Could Josh Wilson or Madeline King step aside and allow Mark McGowan to contest one of their seats in 2025 if he wanted it? Or maybe 2028.

I think McGowan is genuinely done with politics, I don’t even think we’ll see him campaign for the referendum later in the year, the most I can see him doing is writing a memoir and the odd campaigning in some metropolitan marginals, but that’s it really.

Re: Rockingham, I don’t think the Liberals will bother running a candidate, might only be a Green (when was the last time they didn’t nominate somebody for a by-election?) and a couple independents – final TPP will settle around 75-25, there won’t be much to read into for a statewide trend.

Agree Angus, McGowan has served in parliament since 1996 (over 25 years continuous service). This makes him one of the longest serving state or federal MPs in the whole country, on par with PM Albanese (who also served since 1996) and only beaten in service by fellow Labor MP and Speaker Michelle Roberts (who has served since 1994).

Yoh An – Kim Wells, the state member for Rowville in Victoria has been there since 1992.

I know Adam, I intended to say Michelle Roberts is the only member of the Wa parliament who has longer continuous service compared to McGowan.

Can’t imagine they won’t run a candidate. At least for the sake of respecting their voters in giving them a choice in who they vote for.

The Libs could field a candidate with the intention of giving voters a choice as well as to see how much their appeal has changed since March 2021 and see how much of the Labor vote really is McGowan’s personal vote. The last election, statewide people voted because of McGowan, rather than Labor. If the Libs knock off 15%, and go back to 2017 levels, they have reason to be happy. They’re not in it to win it.

As for McGowan, he may enter federal politics one day but I think 2025 is too soon. In the meantime, he may end up with a lucrative ‘jobs for the boys’ gig like many ex-politicians do.

A Labor Safe Seat means that Labor will do NOTHING for Seat. When will the sheep wake up. Vote Liberal and they will do stuff to win again. Too many dumb sheep in Rockingham who can’t realise this !

Highly doubt the Libs will run here.

Greens will probably run but I’d be surprised if it was anything other than a paper candidate. Still they should get their deposit back and probably make the runoff. From memory Senator Jordon Steele-John is based in this electorate – maybe they’ll be able to find a local candidate?

I’m expecting an extremely low turnout and a 2CP well over 75

Date is set for 29 July.

If the Liberals don’t run, I still expect a swing away from Labor. Logically Liberal voters would rather vote Labor than Green (based on past preferences). The Greens will still get an uptick as their vote more than halved in 2021 (very unusual for the Greens) and will be recalibrated in 2023.

The personal vote of Mark McGowan will splinter across a bunch of minor parties. Anti-vax and anti-lockdown parties aren’t as popular in WA as they are on the east coast. Ironically anti-vax/lockdown parties became more popular after the last lockdown and last hard border ended. On the flipside, people don’t want to be reminded of the pandemic forever.

@Votante, I do believe WA voters tend to take a more independent, pragmatic, and apolitical view of governments given there seems to be less extremism compared to the Eastern States probably explaining why anti-vax/lockdown parties arent as popular and why Mcgowan won 64% TPP%.

I think the Liberals would probably run. Normally it’s Labor that doesn’t run in by-elections in WA (in 2018, Mark McGowan decided not to run in the by-election for the Liberal seat of Cottesloe because it was hard for incumbent governments to win by-elections, hence the TPP was Liberal vs. Greens), but it’s a Labor seat so I’m sure as hell they’ll run here (especially because it’s their safest seat).

@Yoh An hasn’t Bob Katter been in Kennedy for longer? Or did he get elected in 1996? I know that when he was a National he was in Joe Bjelke-Petersen’s ministry in QLD, but that’s state politics.

I know nether portal, I was referring to wa MPs when I made that comment.

@Votante: “Logically Liberal voters would rather vote Labor than Green (based on past preferences).” I think the reality is likely the opposite. In the 2021 WA state election in Fremantle, where the Greens finished second behind Labor, 65.2% of Liberal preferences flew to the Greens at the exclusion of the Liberal candidate. As for whether the Liberals would run in the by-election, note that the Liberals didn’t run in the 2009 Fremantle by-election, which delivered a historic victory for the Greens. Fremantle has been a safe/fairly safe Labor seat with only a few exceptions since the 1930s.

@Joseph no, Liberals/Nationals generally preference Labor over the Greens. Fremantle is one seat and 2021 is one year (and it just so happens to be the one year that the Liberals got nearly wiped-out in WA and especially in Perth). Federally I would say ~75% of Coalition voters preference Labor before the Greens.

@Joseph, @Nether Portal
Based on federal elections and even state elections, most Liberal preferences flow to the Greens. There are some exceptions in some seats. In 2021, WA Liberals feared Labor getting ‘too much control’ and a destruction of democracy and they hoped to get sympathy votes. This might’ve led Liberal voters to preference the Greens. I think if the results are likely: 1. Labor 2. Greens, there are Liberals who will vote tactically.

There’s the case of the Liberals preferencing the Greens ahead of Labor in some seats or even statewide. For example, Adam Bandt won the federal seat of Melbourne in 2010 off the back of Liberal preferences. Funnily enough, most Family First preferences went to Bandt, over Labor.

This is a bizarre conversation. The evidence is pretty clear – if the party tells them to preference Labor, they preference Labor, if they are told to preference the Greens, they preference the Greens. Neither tells you anything about an underlying preference from voters.

Agree ben, many liberal voters are apathetic and prefer neither party, as evidenced in nsw where they simply vote 1.

This indicates they are ‘forced’ to give preferences unlike Labor and the greens who freely give preferences even under opv.

@Votante by looking at the 2022 federal results (according to the AEC), for the seats that were Labor vs Greens (formatted as ALP-GRN):

Canberra, ACT: 58.65-41.65
Cooper, VIC: 68.29-31.71
Grayndler, NSW: 59.88-40.12
Melbourne, VIC: 70.25-29.75
Sydney, NSW: 68.83-31.17
Wills, VIC: 73.33-26.67

So in all of those seats Labor received most Liberal preferences, whereas the Greens did not.

@Nether Portal – of those all of them had HTVs preferencing Labor except Canberra (open ticket). I remember Canberra in particular as a theory about ACT Liberal voters being non ideological anti-ALP voters was debunked.

All the way back to 2010 Liberals heavily preferenced Greens over Labor when instructed to by HTVs, and this is how Bandt first got elected. But this hasn’t been repeated at a federal level. There’d be data available from the most recent QLD, WA and VIC state elections for some seats (Just Fremantle in the case of WA 2021).

Still I’ll maintain to this day that Perth was a winnable by-election in 2018 (similar to Cunningham 2004) and the Greens screwed up royally by running dead.

@John true but keep in mind the Greens of ten years ago are not the same as the Greens of 2023.

@BenRaue: What we have been discussing is whether more Liberal voters would switch to Labor than to the Greens in the absence of a Liberal candidate. The Liberal Party probably won’t contest the Rockingham by-election. If the Liberal Party doesn’t run, no one will tell its supporters who to vote for, so this is where “underlying preference” from Liberal voters come into play. 
@Votante @Nether Portal It’s true that the Liberal party generally ranks Labor ahead of the Greens on HTVs and Liberal preferences generally favour Labor in Labor vs Greens contests. However, in cases where Labor has an overwhelming majority, such as in WA both before and after the 2021 state election and VIC both before and after the 2022 state election, Liberal voters, especially in seats where the Liberals are generally excluded, will have a much greater desire to preference the Greens than when the Liberals are in government, in an attempt to reduce Labor’s dominance and get more non-Labor voices into Parliament to hold the Labor government to account. This was probably the mindset behind the Victorian Liberal Party’s decision to preference the Greens ahead of Labor in all seats in the 2022 VIC state election.
In VIC and federally, due to Liberal Party’s dysfunction, disunity and lack of policies, the Greens have become the de facto Opposition and have dialled up its criticism of Labor as the Coalition slips further into irrelevance. I’m sure the Liberals are watching the fight between Labor and the Greens with amusement. Therefore, VIC and federal Liberals may as well direct preferences to the Greens in Greens’ target seats to help get more Greens MPs into Parliament to hold Labor to account and to help deepen disharmony between the two parties. For this reason, considering how poor the electoral performance of the VIC Liberals are in both state and federal elections, I predict the VIC Liberals will preference the Greens over Labor at the next federal election just like what they did at the 2022 state election. For the same reason the WA Liberals are likely to recommend preferences to the Greens in Fremantle and Perth at the 2025 state election, just like what they did at the 2021 state election for these seats and a couple of other seats.
Going back to the Rockingham by-election, assuming the Liberal Party doesn’t contest, the fact that the WA Labor Government desperately needs more alternative voices due to its overwhelming majority will be on the minds of Liberal-leaning voters, and they know that the Liberal Party doesn’t run in the by-election in order to let a non-major party candidate such as the Greens get close to Labor and greatly reduce Labor’s margin in the seat. This is why, in my opinion, Liberal-leaning voters in Rockingham are more likely to switch to the Greens than Labor.

Well, it looks like the Liberals WILL contest.

https://thewest.com.au/politics/state-politics/liberals-preselect-peter-hudson-setting-up-youth-battle-to-replace-mark-mcgowan-in-rockingham-by-election–c-11017122

Judging by the article that Nether Portal posted, Peter Hudson seems to be a suitable candidate. Let’s see if he can claw that margin back to 2013 levels.

Ian, if the Liberals do manage to get the 2PP margin back under 20% (a swing of at least 10% in their favour) then it would be a fairly good result for them and a sign that they are well positioned to claw back their 2021 safe seat losses.

Agreed Yoh An.

Rockingham deputy mayor Hayley Edwards nominates as independent candidate to replace Mark McGowan
https://thewest.com.au/politics/state-politics/rockingham-deputy-mayor-hayley-edwards-nominates-as-independent-candidate-to-replace-mark-mcgowan-c-11033151

I’m not sure how strong or serious the Liberal and independent (deputy mayor) candidates are. I wouldn’t be surprised if Labor’s PV drops to the 50s as the Liberals and Greens aim to recoup and the deputy mayor is also running. WA has never been a Greens-friendly state but interestingly, the Greens scored 13% in Rockingham in 2008.

Votante, WA is one of the few states where the Greens have genuinely stagnated and made practically no progress in growing their primary vote in the past decade. Rockingham, being a classic working class electorate is one where the Greens have always done poorly compared to the rest of the state. With the independent running I don’t see how the Green candidate would get more than 7%. As a general commentary, I could see Hayley Edwards making the 2CP and squeezing out the Liberal party, simply because the liberal party would have very little luck in making headway in the primary vote, especially with a candidate as young as Peter Hudson

WA is the Greens’s worst state. Sure, WA is more loyal to the two major parties but the electoral system is another factor. The Legislative Council is divided into 6 regions and it makes the quota much higher and it’s much harder for the Greens to get in. Creating a single statewide electorate with one-vote, one-value, like in SA/NSW, would incentivise the Greens to field resources for both houses.

@StH. You have a good point about Hayley Edwards. She’ll probably the most well-known name on the ballot paper. Both the Labor and Liberal candidates are aged under 30. She could get into the 2CP if she’s a more ‘neutral’ candidate who can pick up preferences from all sides.

Votante

Not sure if I’m missing something, but I’ve got good news for you. WA’s Legislative Council was reformed by McGowan in 2021, and it not only becomes a single electorate at the next election, but it also abolished the group voting ticket.

The Greens have stagnated in WA and failed to consolidate their gains in 2017. Same with the 5 Victorians from 2014-2018.

Greens that get elected into multi member seats don’t seem to see it as an opportunity to become the “go to” local member, especially compared to MPs that win lower house seats. It’s not the MPs fault it’s just a different game when you’re trying to hold 10% rather than a majority after preferences, and it’s a damn shame that the likes of Tim Clifford couldn’t hang in there.

Seeing some change e.g. in the ACT some of the MPs are really building a local profile despite getting up on votes just over 10%.

WA will reliably elect a few Greens to the upper house but it will be even harder for them to consolidate those gains now

WA Greens have lost momentum but they still seem quite strong in the central Perth area and might be able to threaten Labor in that seat (both state and federal).

There’s also a pocket of strength in the Southwest that they may be able to consolidate in the right election, but Labor winning Warren Blackwood may have shut out Greens as the progressive force there. Same with once safe Liberal Nedlands (UWA) which could have been the WA version of Maiwar (UQ), but now Labor are in.

“Same with the 5 Victorians from 2014-2018.”

That is harsh. The Vic Greens were seriously dudded by Group Voting in 2018 – they probably would have had 4 seats instead of one.

Agree redistributed, group voting tickets add a ‘random’ element to who gets elected if a party fails to reach a full quota. Unlike non gvt systems where a party polling at least 0.5 of a quota is likely to get elected.

The Vic and WA Greens were dudded by GVTs but it’s notable they didn’t really pick up that much primary vote swing after 4 years in office.

Sadly history is repeating – compare Katherine Copsey, Aiv Puglielli and Sarah Mansfield to any QLD Green. I like them but they just seem like they’re making up the numbers and haven’t really seized the moment. Amy McMahon and MCM are household names in comparison. It’s a bit tougher for the Vic’s as their regions cover am area equivalent to a bit under 5 federal seats, but you’d expect Copsey to be highly active in Albert Park, Caulfield and Malvern to foreshadow Greens offensives on Macnamara and Higgins, or Puglielli making the warrandyte by-election count, or Mansfield probing a potential Polwarth campaign. It’s frustrating as hell seeing them be bit players.

WA Greens have scored double-digit primary votes in inner Perth. The problem is that unlike in NSW, QLD and Vic, there are no seats that have consolidated ‘Green’ areas. Electorally speaking, there’s no equivalent of Newtown, South Brisbane or Brunswick that’s large enough and contained in the one seat.

@douglas. I know that the new system will be official in 2025, so there’s one single upper house electorate, with no GVTs. Good for the Greens and both and older and upstart minor parties but sucks for the Nationals who have benefitted from malapportionment and regional electorates. Conservative regional voters no longer have to tactically vote for the Nats.

There’s an incentive for the WA Greens in the upper house now given the absence of strong, homegrown minor parties that their interstate counterparts have historically faced (e.g. SA Best/NXT in SA, JLN in Tas, SFF in NSW). However, the new upper house electoral system may encourage competition from the birth of similar parties as well as older interstate minor parties.

StH & Votante – I disagree. Deputy Mayor is extremely disliked in Rockingham. Strong purple circle in the City spearheaded by her. Sends legal threats to FB admin if you say anything bad about her, sent a colleague to standards panel, wants to use public funds to sue the publoc for defamation, always wanting to increase rates. Won’t get up, won’t beat Libs, her reputation is terrible in Rocky.
Keen to see who Greens put up.

@Votante the SFF Party is active nationwide. They hold seats in the NSW and Victorian Upper Houses and formerly in the WA Upper House. At the last federal election however they only contested a few rural NSW seats and Maranoa in Queensland.

Agreed John; since 2002, the Vic Greens have failed to grow their primary vote at state elections. Although, they do a little better at federal elections. GVTs don’t seem to influence their primary vote.

Greens Vic LA primary vote:
2002 – 9.73%
2006 – 10.04%
2010 – 11.21%
2014 – 11.48%
2018 – 10.71%
2022 – 11.50%

Greens Vic LC primary vote:
2002 – 10.87%
2006 – 10.58%
2010 – 12.01%
2014 – 10.75%
2018 – 9.25%
2022 – 10.32%

The Greens’ drug policies don’t help them. Their vote was down at the 2017 election because they emphasised that. Their vote is up at the moment because they’re de-emphasising that and focusing on issues that help them more like housing.

@Ian most notably for me is after picking up incumbent legislative councillors in 5 regions (up from 2), their primary vote went backwards. 2018 wasn’t a great election for the Victorian Greens but it’s also clear incumbency didn’t count for much. Despite being Legislative Councillors covering wider areas I hope other Greens that get an office allowance learn from the QLDers.

@Votante – the WA Greens had that area: Fremantle (state electorate) and they blew it. Maybe they’ll be able to come 2nd in federal Fremantle and Perth if they can position themselves as the main anti-ALP force and prevent WA Liberals from making a recovery. Otherwise they’ll have a bad case of not being anywhere near being able to overtake either major (which is where they were before 2022).

*Apologies, up from 3 (increase of 2)

Going back to the by-election result, I’m honestly less convinced that Hayley Edwards will make the 2CP now: on further inspection her council ward is Baldivis (outside of the electorate) so doubt many people within Rockingham have actually heard of her – I don’t think many people actually know who their deputy mayor is, especially one who’s only been there for two years (since 2021).

Classic Lab-Lib contest, ~70-30 is my prediction