ALP 24.7%
Incumbent MP
Robin Scott, since 2006.
Geography
Northern Melbourne. Preston covers northern parts of Darebin council, covering most of the suburbs of Preston and Reservoir. The electorate has very clear boundaries being bound on the south by Bell Street, on the north by Mahoney’s Road, on the east by Darebin Creek, and on the west by Merri Creek.
History
Preston was created for the 1945 election, and has always been held by the ALP.
It was first won in 1945 by William Ruthven, Mayor of Collingwood, and a recipient of the Victoria Cross in the First World War. He held the seat for the ALP until 1955, when he moved to the new seat of Reservoir, which he held until his retirement in 1961.
Charlie Ring held the seat for the ALP from 1955 to 1970, followed by former Mayor of Preston, Carl Kirkwood, who held the seat from 1970 to 1988.
In 1988, the ALP’s Michael Leighton won the seat, holding it right through to 2006. He served as a shadow minister when Labor was out of government in the 1990s, but never reached the frontbench after Steve Bracks became Premier.
In 2006, Leighton retired and was succeeded by Robin Scott. Scott was re-elected in 2010 and 2014.
Candidates
- Guido Lilio (Liberal)
- Gaetano Greco (Independent)
- Robin Scott (Labor)
- Stephanie Price (Socialists)
- Susanne Newton (Greens)
- Nadine Richings (Animal Justice)
- Margee Glover (Reason)
Assessment
Preston is a very safe Labor seat.
2014 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Robin Scott | Labor | 17,607 | 48.4 | -5.5 |
| John Forster | Liberal | 7,694 | 21.2 | -5.1 |
| Rose Ljubicic | Greens | 5,869 | 16.1 | -3.0 |
| Gaetano Greco | Independent | 4,103 | 11.3 | +11.3 |
| Rachel Ward | Family First | 1,091 | 3.0 | +2.7 |
| Informal | 2,043 | 5.3 |
2014 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Robin Scott | Labor | 27,199 | 74.7 | +4.5 |
| John Forster | Liberal | 9,235 | 25.3 | -4.5 |
Booth breakdown
Booths in Preston have been divided into four parts: central, north, south-east and south-west.
Labor won a large majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 75.2% in the south-west to 76.9% in the south-east.
The Greens primary vote ranged from 11.1% in the north to 21% in the south-west. Independent candidate Gaetano Greco’s primary vote ranged from 8.5% in the south-east to 15.6% in the north.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | IND prim % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| North | 11.1 | 15.6 | 75.8 | 10,456 | 28.8 |
| South-East | 17.5 | 8.5 | 76.9 | 6,585 | 18.1 |
| South-West | 21.0 | 10.2 | 75.2 | 5,904 | 16.2 |
| Other votes | 16.9 | 8.0 | 73.0 | 5,066 | 13.9 |
| Pre-poll | 17.4 | 10.8 | 72.1 | 8,353 | 23.0 |
Election results in Preston at the 2014 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes, Greens primary votes and primary votes for independent candidate Gaetano Greco.
The 2PP result isn’t that great of an indicator in this seat imo. Robin Scott got past 50% before the final preference flow so it wasn’t counted, but it had the Greens very slightly ahead of the Liberals. It ended up being: Robin Scott (52.68%), Rose Ljubicic (23.98%), John Forster (23.35%).
Considering the results at the 2016 Federal election and the 2018 by-election, I’d expect the Greens would improve their results, but I don’t know how well federal and state results usually line up. And the existence of a popular independent candidate as last time could throw a spanner there.
I don’t see any way Robin Scott could lose this. My ‘long term’ prediction for this seat however is a marginal ALP/Greens seat.
This tpp result is false. The liberal party were trailing the greens on distributions. The profile should be redone.
IT does say “two party preferred” (it’s often useful to see ALP v Lib even in seats where one of those two doesn’t come first), not “two candidate preferred” so it’s not wrong.
There was no Labor vs Greens 2CP count. If there was, I would’ve included it in the results.
This isn’t in Batman?
I think Liberal preferences usually go 70% to Labor over the Greens when it says so on the HTV card, which would put the 2PP ALP vs Greens at something like 70-30.
Eyeballing the like booths in the Batman by-election it looks a fair chunk better for the Greens, maybe 60-40.
I dunno if we should expect the Green to improve here this election, the lower house seat is decidedly out of range and it’s in the only “safe” upper house region that they might pull resources out of. It’s not impossible they are playing towards Cooper in 2019 and are therefore carpetbombing this electorate, but I’d doubt that.
I’m not convinced seats like this are the ones the Greens should focus on long term, surely it’s a lower bar for victory in seats where they can exclude Labor in 3rd place (ie- seats where the Liberals poll 34+%). The party started chipping away at Labor’s lead in the better Melbourne/Richmond type seats way back when the Liberals preferenced Greens just to try to stuff up Labor, if they’d known that was going to changed once they snagged a win (federal Melbourne 2010) maybe they would have started somewhere else?
Daniel
Preston is mostly the northern half of the seat currently known as Batman, soon to be known as Cooper.
If Greco`s preferences flow Green-ward again and Animal Justice and Socialist preferences arn`t directed to Greco, it is likely the seat could well end up with an ALP versus Green 2 candidate preferred count this time.
Despite the primary swing to Labor causing a full distribution to not be required, the VEC decided to conduct the count as a Greens/Labor contest. Glad they did so, considering the Liberals would have seen a dearth of preference flows that would very easily put them 3rd.
And while we don’t have 2CP data from 2014, through fiddling with numbers the 2018 results are probably about the same as last time.