Southern Metropolitan – Victoria 2010

Incumbent MLCs

  • Andrea Coote (LIB), since 2006. Previously MLC for Monash 1999-2006.
  • David Davis (LIB), since 2006. Previously MLC for East Yarra 1996-2006.
  • Jennifer Huppert (ALP), since 2009*.
  • John Lenders (ALP), since 2006. Previously Member for Dandenong North 1999-2002, MLC for Waverley 2002-2006.
  • Sue Pennicuik (GRN), since 2006.

*Huppert was elected to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Evan Thornley.

Geography
Southern Metropolitan region covers the electoral districts of Albert Park, Bentleigh, Brighton, Burwood, Caulfield, Hawthorn, Kew, Malvern, Oakleigh, Prahran and Sandringham.

The Liberal Party holds six seats in Southern Metropolitan, while the ALP holds five seats. Out of the six Liberal seats, they are all held by margins between 7.6% and 12.3%. Malvern is the safest Liberal seat in Melbourne. The ALP seats’ margins range from 3.6% to 12.4%. In particular, the seats of Prahran and Burwood are held by margins of less than 4%.

2006 result

Group Votes % Quota
Liberal 167,202 46.22 2.7728
Labor 112,762 31.17 1.8700
The Greens 56,816 15.70 0.9422
Family First 7,894 2.18 0.1309
Democrats 6,219 1.72 0.1031
People Power 4,952 1.37 0.0821
Democratic Labor Party 4,206 1.16 0.0697
Independents 1,754 0.48 0.0291

Candidates
The Liberal Party is running David Davis, Andrea Coote and Adam Held. Sitting Greens MLC Sue Pennicuik is running for re-election.

Political situation
The Liberal Party is the strongest party in Southern Metropolitan. The Greens are reasonably close to a quota, such that there is little chance of the Greens gaining a seat. No other minor party comes close to winning a seat.

The main contest in Southern Metropolitan will be over the second Labor seat. The Liberal Party’s two seats are very safe, as is the first Labor seat.

In 2006, second Labor candidate Evan Thornley won the final seat by a 1532-vote margin over the third Liberal candidate. This translated to approximately 0.42% of the vote. Assuming similar preference flows, the Liberal Party requires only a very small increase in their vote before they would win a third seat off the ALP.

14 COMMENTS

  1. An interesting situation in 2006; in the corresponding lower house seats the Liberals got swings in their own safe seats but couldn’t make any inroads at all in the marginals. It’s really a poor effort from the Liberals to only get 2 seats in what is their strongest metro Province.

    You’d think with the predicted swing against Labor this time, the Liberals can get 3 seats here. Whether they can translate this improved vote into gains at lower house level is the more interesting question. Burwood, Bentleigh, and Prahran are essential for them to have a shot at winning government.

  2. You should do an analysis of the Region vote based on the 2010 Victorian Senate Vite. This will be the high and low tide values. If as expected the Greens will exceed the quota the surplus will decide who wins the fifth seat. There is an expectation that the Greens will try and offer the Liberal Party a trade off of upper-house seats in exchange for support in the lower house. The Greens can not direct preferences in the lower-house but thanks to the above-the-line group voting ticket unsuspecting Green voters could have their preferences directed to the Liberal Party. Come November 14 we will know the likely outcome of the upper-house election.

  4. The Greens will not be directing preferences to the Liberals. It would not sit well with the Greens and would cost them votes.

  5. The Greens are exopected to pick up 3-4% from 20065 at the expense of the ALP. If the Greens issue a split ticket or direct preferences to the LNP then the LNP will win the fith seat (LNP 3, Grn 1, ALP 1) The upperhouse is the only house here the Greens can direct prefernces. Don’t be fooled This will be part of the deal they cut with the Liberal Party head office.

    Senior Liberal members who met yesterday are so concerned about the possibility of a 1999 hung parliament with the Greens holding the balance of power that they are considering handing out their own how to vote card in defiance with their party’s direction. They are backed by a number of other groups who are opposed to the Greens policies such as legalised drug taking and gay marriage.

  6. Antony Greens methodology,.

    Maybe Anthony Green failed to proportion out the Absentee, Postal votes, pre poll and section votes.

    SOUTHERN METRO

    We have the ALP on 27% not 29%, The Greens at 19% not 21% as he has indicated. Maybe he has added in booths that are not within Southern Metro. If the Greens, as expected, preference the Liberal party or even issue a split ticket the LNP will elect 3 and ALP 1 Gr 1.

    The ALP and Green data has been inflated and the LNP under valued. If you run a simulation count based on the 2010 preference distribution, including the below the line vote , for Southern Metro and then add in a split ticket or have the Greens Preference the Liberal Party in their above-the-line group voting ticket then the results most certainly do change.
    The Greens can not direct preferences for the lower house BUT they can direct preferences for the upper-house, Most above the line voters will not know where the preferences are allocated and how they will play out in the count. Only 3% of all vpters vote below-the-line. Add to that the distortion on the proportionality of the count arising from the flawed non weighted calculation of the Surplus Transfer value and the method and order of distributing preference data from excluded candidates and the election results are very much on a knifes edge.

    WESTERN METRO

    The Greens won Western Metro after a recount. 500 votes went missing and unaccounted for between Count A and Count B. Either the VEC double counted in count A or votes were removed. the total number of votes between count A and count B should never change. The Greens won on the second recount by less than 150 votes.

    When the Parliament requested copies of the Count A preference data files for comparison the VEC claimed that the data had been deleted and overwritten. No backup copies made. This is hard to believe for a professional organisation were this information costs millions of dollars to collate. No audit trail of count A in comparison to count B exists.

    The AEC maintain copies of both count A and count B data comparisons. what benefit was there in the VEC duplicating the development of software to count the vote when the AEC already had a better version which could have been used free of cost? Millions of dollars wasted in duplicated software resources.

    NORTHERN METRO

    The VEC due to a lack of due diligence resulted in doggy data being feed into their computerised count. There was no check or verification to ensure that the number of votes recorded reconciled with the number of ballot papers issued prior to the solution of the election results. we are told that the VEC will produce a reconciliation report prior to the count but has yet to provide a sample copy of what this report will look like and what information it will contain. In 2006 the VEC failed to provided copies of the preference data files to scrutineers., This information was only made available following an FOI application and even then they only provided information related to the final count not the preliminary counts. Data files had been overwritten without backup copies being made. Even though copies of the information had been requested prior to the commencement of the count

    The elections costs Victoria over 50 million dollars and hopefully we will not see a repeat of the mistakes that were made in 2006.

  7. ABC Electoral Analyst, Antony Green, has been exposed publishing false and misleading information, In doing a comparison analysis between the 2010 Senate and the Victorian upper-house statistics Antony green excluded from his calculation pre-polling and postal votes. This omission has the effect of inflating the ALP and the Green preferences and underestimating the true value of the Liberal Party vote.

    In responding to our question Antony Green stated:

    GREEN COMMENT: I stand by figures. I have allocated all polling places by which region they lie in, including splitting electorates that lie in more than one region. I didn’t include the pre-poll and postal votes because it rarely makes a massive difference.

    Well it does make a difference and the margin between the ALP winning a second seat and the Liberal party winning three seats is much closer as a result.  If the Greens, as has been suggested her and on numerous other web sites, issue a split ticket they will be giving the Liberal party a heads up  The analysis provided by Anthony Green of ALP 2, LNO 2. Gen 1) is wrong.

    GREEN COMMENT: Why should I allocate a split Green preference ticket? You assert the Greens will do this. If the Greens do issue a split ticket, we will know on Sunday and it will be the biggest story of the election campaign. I see no reason to start off analysis by assuming a flow of preferences that has never happened.

    Well Sunday is a bit late the public need to be properly informed.  Antony Green in not publishing in more detail the margin for a change in outcome has mislead the public.  On comparing the Southern Metro to Senate vote the margin is within 1-2% and a split Green ticket would favour the Liberal Party. Anthony Green should know this to be true but he ommitted to mention this fact. Why?  He makes all kinds of predictions after all is not the swing chart a prediction based on statistical data? To publish an incomplete data set is another issue that only compounds the omission.

  8. I’m sure Antony is doing this purely to upset you, DaW. Just like Steve Tulley and the VEC were slow on the recounts in 2006…..I’m sure they all spend every waking second wondering how to stir you up.

    Honestly, your stuff is getting into tinfoil hat territory……

  9. @DemocracyAtWork,

    You’re making serious accusations against Antony Green based on absolutely zero evidence and regarding a pretty meaningless statistic. Your obsession with the Greens supposedly issuing a split ticket in Southern Metropolitan (despite absolutely zero evidence of this) and then using this to impugn Antony Green makes you sound like a crank. You’re very close to being banned.

  10. Just squash him, Ben. He’s already been banned from Poll Bludger for the same kind of paranoiac posts (and has since been sock-puppeting there), hence him stinking up this blog instead.

    I tend to think South Metro will go 3-1-1 to the Libs, for the old-fashioned reason… actually getting the vote themselves. The Liberal vote from 2006 only needs to go up a couple of points for then to make up a third quota from minor right-wing parties like Family First and the DLP, and a couple more to give them 50% and three quotas straight off the bat. Bearing in mind they’re still correcting from the 2002 landslide defeat and the Labor govt is now getting old and on the way downhill, I think they’ll get there. 3-2 to the right is perfectly understandable for a region that contains Toorak and Hawthorn.

  11. I would just like to thank Ben for having the most informative site on elections around Australia.
    Over the past couple of years Ben has taken this site from scratch to the premier site in this country for elections.

    Although we dont always see eye to eye on issues Ben has continued to gain inside information and many media leaks have come through this site.

    As nominations close (in what was to be an uneventfull election) I think we can look forward to a very close contest indeed. The Greens are” the Elephant in the room” and how the two majors handle them is what will really drive this result.

    If the Coalition do preference deals with the greens then the minor parties from the centre/centre right will gain votes and certainly weaken the Liberals base vote.
    If they dont do deals with the greens then their hope of taking government is limited and so will be the greens chances in the lower house seats.

    So we now situation that two parties from the opposite sprectrum will determine each others final result in this election.

    Alternatively if the ALP do the deal with the greens they too will reduce their base vote and its where these votes go that will hold the most interest.

    In our situation where we have placed our canidates and the final number will not be known until today. My last conversations with the Victorians indicated that over 60 and possibly (over 70) candidates have sought nomination for the DLP in Victoria. The large influx of younger members have come from with the ALP ranks and most are very anti the greens.
    I think we are about to see the beginning of some very hard fought battles between these two minors in the coming years.
    One of the highest rated radio programmes during the last election was the debates between these two parties and the media will wake up to this.
    (Even if Antony is a bit slow)
    Thanks again Ben.

  12. Despite Antony Green’d doubts the impossible has happened.
    The DLP today nominated 31 Upper Candidates and 36 Lower house candidates ( a total of 67) candidates which has been confirmed as the largest every comeback of a political party in our nations history.

    Well done to the team in Victoria which has gained support accross the board with other minors and will go head to head with the Greens.

    Yes Ben …. as they say…. you heard it here first.

  13. Tony,

    Can you supply a quote from Anthony Green? It seems to be common practice for people with “strong and unconventional beliefs” to trash Antony Green opinions, which is a shame considering he is genuinely objective commentator.

    Is there a reference to back up “Largest ever comeback of a political party in our nations history”?

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