Caulfield – Victoria 2022

Any information yet regarding the Labor candidate for Caulfield? I live in this electorate and can’t seem to find any details as of yet. Might not yet have been announced, but for the most marginal seat in the state, you would think a candidate would be announced by now!

Don’t know but ring alp ho Victoria and I am sure rhey can answer your question

I’m tipping this as the most likely Labor gain.

I know federal does not equal state, but the swings against the Liberals across the Caulfield area last month were enormous, some polling places up to about 11%. Labor not only comfortably won the 2PP in every polling place within these boundaries, but even won the primary vote in all but 1 or 2.

Considering this margin is only 0.1%, I can’t see any possible scenario in which the Liberals don’t get a swing of at least 0.2% against them here.

Labor should also ensure Josh Burns is seen to be prominently campaigning alongside whoever their candidate is, because he seems to be a very popular local member around Caulfield.

Liberals are in trouble here if the Federal swings are to mean anything. There were many double-digit swings against the Liberals in the booths in Caulfield some almost 15%. Greens even won a number of booths in Ripponlea, Caulfield and St Kilda East.
There’s a huge prepoll % in this electorate, so the results could be a bit distorted behind the booth numbers.
Any swing against the Liberals in this seat will mean a Labor gain.

This will be an interesting seat to watch. Obviously state and federal are different and the Caulfield area may have swung against the Liberals for reasons specific to the federal Liberal government but it doesn’t look good for the Libs. The Vic Libs would be nervous about the seats of Caulfield, Brighton, Sandringham, Croydon and Glen Waverley due to their very narrow margins. The expectation is that these seats would see a swing to Libs due to 2018 been their low point and struggling to see it get any worse but these areas don’t seem to have as big of an ant-Dan backlash and may be turned off by some of the Vic Libs antics. Also depends on the local member, Neil Angus has probably lost some personal support during COVID.

These seats also had swings against the Libs federally, be interesting to see if it’s just federal Libs they’re unhappy with or the current Liberal brand as a whole

It will be interesting to see if the anger from the federal Liberals will erode, however Mathew Guy is not very popular & the Liberal brand is on the nose in Victoria.

@North East and @Bob, I believe the Vic Libs has a worse reputation than even the federal Libs. Just based on their social media using right-wing rhetoric attacking not just Andrews but also the chief health officer and even the police. I have a theory that a number of Vic Libs MP’S attendance to the November ‘freedom’ rallies might have partly been a factor turning off many voters for the LNP in the Federal Election let alone the state election.
It seems Matthew Guy and Vic Libs have some similarities with Canada’s Conservatives for having their MP’s support the trucker convoy and would likely have Pierre Poilievre as their Opposition Leader. Poilievre seems quite similar to Guy in some respects as they both have hardline language against any covid mandates.

I don’t think there’s any way this seat won’t swing at least 0.2% to be a Labor gain.

I don’t think 2018 was the Liberals’ low point in the inner city areas.

They will probably get swings back to them in the outer and even middle suburbs now that Andrews is less popular than 2018 and anger at the federal Libs & Morrison will have eased off… But in St Kilda East, Balaclava and Elsternwick?

There’s just no way the leftward trend doesn’t continue in these progressive inner areas as the Liberal brand becomes increasingly conservative and they are openly abandoning the inner city as a target or heartland.

@Trent the question is whether it’s an actual trend or is just a protest vote against the current Libs. You could be right that 2018 might not be their low point, a lot of voters who held their nose and voted for the Libs in 2018 may not want to vote for a Guy led Lib party again.
As for getting a swing to them in middle suburbs is Caulfield not considered a middle suburb. As for St Kilda East, Balaclava and Elsternwick i don’t think the Libs are looking at these places to get votes in this seat, as these suburbs probably have probably never been good for the Libs in recent history. They’ll be looking to get more votes in the Caulfield area.
Also worth noting that there’s a uni campus in Caulfield so there’s likely a lot of students in surrounding suburbs, some in this seat and others in the Oakleigh seat.

North East, I agree with all that. I don’t consider Caulfield a middle suburb either, but it just has a different dynamic to the suburbs in the west of this seat.

My exclusion of Caulfield when talking about how the Libs won’t gain votes in St Kilda East, Balaclava & Elsternwick was for the same reason you say, because I also think that’s where they’ll be looking to gain votes.

However, when I look at 2018 the Liberal vote actually held up pretty well in Caulfield. The seat was already marginal and they retained it with only a -4.6% swing compared to double digits in neighbouring Malvern, Albert Park, Brighton & Bentleigh; and if I recall the suburbs where it held up the best were around Caulfield itself. So their vote didn’t actually really collapse here in 2018 at all.

Fast forward to 4 years later, and the Liberal vote completely collapsed around Caulfield by between 10-15% in a lot of booths in the federal election.

Now there are a lot of factors here not relevant to the state election:
– Unpopular federal Liberal government (protest vote as you say)
– Popular incumbent MP in Josh Burns (Southwick will have this advantage in November)
– Absolute disaster of a Liberal candidate in Colleen Harkin

All that said though, there’s no indication whatsoever though that the mood in this area has shifted towards the Liberals since 2018, all evidence points to the opposite.

Now those big swings in May clearly won’t happen in November due to the factors outlined above that won’t be applicable, I’m not suggesting anything like that. But if the mood has swung against them by double digits in 4 years (albeit with different federal factors at play), the idea of at least 0.2% out of that double digit federal shift not holding up for the state election seems unrealistic to me.

The other thing too is that while it is exceptionally important for the Jewish community here to have a Jewish MP; there is even more value to having a Jewish MP who is part of the government, not the opposition.

If Labor bungle this and choose the wrong candidate, that will be the Liberals’ only chance to retain. If they choose a solid Jewish candidate who has Josh Burns out campaigning with him/her, it should be Labor’s to lose.

The redistributed margins that the VEC released yesterday notionally flip this seat to Labor now on a 0.2% margin.

It also has Sandringham’s redistributed margin reduced to 0.4% and Glen Waverley to 0.9%.

With the recent Liberal Party scandals pretty much blunting any momentum they may have had on integrity and the IBAC findings, I’d say all 4 of Caulfield, Brighton, Sandringham and Glen Waverley could very well be Labor gains in November, which would certainly cushion their majority against any big swings to the Liberals on the outer fringes or to the Greens in Northcote & Richmond.

Interesting that the VEC has classified this as a notional Labor seat now, Trent.

The Labor candidate is also Lior Harel according to The Age, “an active member of the local Jewish community who has worked at Arnold Bloch Leibler and as chief counsel at SEEK.com.au.” I haven’t seen anything about him anywhere asides from this article.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/women-to-the-fore-as-labor-picks-new-faces-to-replace-ex-ministers-20220704-p5ayws.html

That’s the first I’ve heard of the pre-selection too but he seems like a good choice.

– Prominent member of the Jewish community will help compete with Southwick’s personal vote with the Jewish community

– Lawyer, should also appeal to teal-leaning professional types outside the Jewish community in the eastern half of the seat, moreso than Southwick (small businessman with marketing background)

– The west of the seat (St Kilda East / Balaclava) isn’t going to vote Liberal anyway and at the same time the Greens have no chance in Caulfield, so they don’t really need to think about targeting their candidate to compete with the Greens or appeal to the younger demographic in St Kilda East

So I think a prominent professional from the Jewish community is a great choice.

Given that Josh Burns seems to be pretty popular in the area, he should make sure the two of them are out campaigning together as much as possible.

I am unsure if the Teal would be as successful as the polls claim. How would they campaign against a Labor state government in the same way as they did in the federal election against the federal LNP government?

@Marh, I agree.

That Redbridge poll that supposedly showed a hypothetical teal candidate winning the 2PP in Caulfield was a bizarre conclusion considering the hypothetical independent wouldn’t have even made it into the 2PP count.

This will be a Labor v Liberal contest and Labor will win with a small swing to them. If a “teal” independent runs, they’ll finish a distant third (maybe 4th because the Greens are strong in the west of the seat) and Greens preferences will overwhelmingly flow to Labor over the independent anyway.

It’s highly likely a teal independent would win against the Liberals on the 2CP here. The question is whether the independent would make it into the top two, and that’s much more doubtful.

A lot of this seat is more socially mixed with a high percentage of renters/units in some parts. It is really only Caulfield North which is Quite affluent and has some stately homes that is very affluent and to a lesser extent Cualfield South. I am trying to think of a Sydney comparison for Glen Eira LGA. Does anyone have any thoughts.

Greens seem to think they have an outside chance here, with the absence of a strong local independent I would say Labor would have a chance to win here. Labor will need to win here to offset potential losses in outer metro Melbourne in the Northern & Western suburbs.

@Bob: Greens are very much an outside chance I agree, but the federal results in this part of Macnamara had big swings to the Greens. The Ripponlea booth – I think this is the biggest in the entire part of the state seat of Caulfield? – had a 13% increase in Greens primary. Greens also won booths in Caulfield North and St Kilda East. While I don’t think the Greens are in with a serious shot, the next few elections will be interesting to see if their vote rises.

The Greens aren’t likely to do well in area around Caulfield proper and Caulfield South since a lot of the Jewish Labor preferences would flow the Libs before the Greens due to the Greens’ stance on Israel and Palestine. They can however do very well in the west of the seat around Elsternwick, Ripponlea and St Kilda East.

Following on from my post on the Prahran page, I thought I would try to overlay May’s federal results with Caulfield as well.

This was a little more difficult for two reasons:
– Ordinary vote differs far more from the total around Caulfield (variation was only about 1% in Higgins)
– Booths overlapping with Goldstein were more difficult because of Zoe Daniel skewing the results

So, just using all the booths across the suburbs of Caulfield, Caulfield South, Caulfield North, Glen Huntly, Elsternwick (Macnamara booth only) and only 1 booth from St Kilda East (‘Ripponlea’), I get the following primary votes:
ALP – 32%
LIB – 31%
GRN – 29% (surprised it’s so high, especially since there was only 1 St Kilda East booth counted)

The biggest booth I had to exclude, due to it being in Goldstein, was Ormond. But that’s not exactly Liberal territory and they only got 28% there, so I don’t think it would change much.

Now, the non-ordinary votes there are almost certain to add at least 3-4% to the Liberals, mostly at the expense of the Greens. So I’d probably estimate that if non-ordinary votes were included, it would be something more like:
LIB – 35%
ALP – 31%
GRN – 25%

In any case, the Liberals couldn’t come close to winning on those numbers. So the bottom line is that if they want to ‘retain’ (sort of) Caulfield in November then they need to poll about 10% higher than they did at the federal election in May.

@ Dan M, Agree that Greens are unlikely to do well due to position on Middle Eastern issues in the Jewish community. Just one point of clarification the Western parts of this seat also have a Jewish community in Balaclava etc maybe less affluent though for example Ripponlea has the largest concentration of Ultra Orthodox Jews in Australia (many dont vote on Saturdays which is why booth results maybe skewed). One of the reasons i feel Labor won Higgins instead of the Greens is that in the absence of a teal many Jews who may have been moderate Liberals preferred to vote Labor instead of Greens for their foreign policy stances. Ananda-Rajah did reach out to the Jewish community in Higgins and was supported strongly by Josh Burns.

I realised that because Caulfield isn’t a three-way race I could have just used the 2PP results which would have been easier and more useful. Although it was interesting still to see how high the Greens vote was.

Anyway, the 2PP for all the federal booths overlapping the state seat of Caulfield* is 62-38.

Adjusting that for what I expect the difference between ‘ordinary’ and ‘total’ would have been for only the Caulfield part of Macnamara (it was 2.5% across the seat but I expect higher in Caulfield and less elsewhere), I think the result would have been closer to 58-42.

So the Liberals probably need to do 8-9% better here than they did in May.

* Excludes “Elsternwick (Goldstein)” and “Ormond West” polling places because both were an IND v LIB contest.

Once in my previous comment, I had mentioned areas similar to Caufield in Canadian Cities (outside the prairies) vote for the centre-left Liberal (although their economics are more a mix of Labor and Liberal making closer to Teals), I wonder if that can happen in Australia. One factor may be due to Canadian Conservatives pushing hard-right (even more than Australian LNP) for example by supporting the trucker convoy. Canada Conservatives will soon mostly likely have their own equivalent to Matthew Guy as their leader (Pierre Poilievre). A parallel is happening in Vic Libs by supporting the ‘freedom’ rallied.

Marh, an excellent contribution as usual. You are connect the Canadian Liberals are more centrist closer to the teals. This is primarily due to Canada having three party system with the NDP being a social democratic party with links to organised Labor. The NDP has even won government at a provincial government for example in British Columbia. Canada and Australia have many similarities being new world countiries that were built by subsequent waves of immigration. One notable difference between Canada and Australia is importance of regionalism and social class. In terms of regionalism, we can see in Canada it may be more important than social class in terms of voting patterns for example the Conservatives win with “Saddam Hussain margins” in Alberta while the Liberal party is very strong in Atlantic Canada. Also Canada is the only place in the New World with an strong separatist movement. By contrast, Australia is known for being homogenous geographically only exceptions maybe Cocos Island, Christmas Island, Torres Strait Islands, Norfolk island and the Tiwi Islands. The reason that we in our discussions often compare parts of Melbourne to parts of Sydney is for this very reason. It is not possible to compare a suburb in Toronto with a suburb in Montreal. Also one other difference i personally feel is that class plays a bigger role in Australia has a larger % of the population attend non-government schools (one of the largest in the world), this is often an indicator of class status and privilege in Australia second only to postcode more than occupation. The Cauflield electorate has a large number of Private schools including Caulfield Grammar, Wesley, Shelford Girls, the primary campus of Melbourne Grammar and Kilvington. This maybe a reason that many would rather vote Teal than Labor.

You are correct that Canada seem similar to the US by voting on more social issues rather then economic issues. The reason why Australia has a high percentage of private schools may be due to past government policy for education in addition Australia has many government selective school. This actually has consequences in making Australia amongst the most unequal academically in the OECD. This not that once a public school has high average score, their would be an influx of students enrolling which low average score schools would lose students. This is explains that different public schools may have completely different demographics and their is a lack of education diversity in most public schools.
Unlike Canada which focus on equity for the education so their public school system in emphasized and even many Catholic schools are publicly funded

@ Marh, correct in Australia, education is more unequal and especially in Melbourne asking one where someone went to school or where someone children go to school is a way of finding out someone’s SES more so than asking what someone does for a living. In the US, there is also a larger % of people who go to Public Schools although which university someone went goes to depends on wealth for an example the Ivy League universities is filled with students from the elite and one’s network is often dependent on this rather than which school someone went to it.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/teal-candidate-poised-to-take-on-liberals-in-state-seat-of-caulfield-20220816-p5babr.html

Breaking news, a “teal” is running in Caulfield.

First thing I’ll say, is I think that’s a bad idea unless the objective is to help re-elect Southwick, for the same reasons I outlined in my recent Malvern post.

I don’t think she will finish in the 2CP count because even though I agree with the above comments that some of the *Liberal voting* demographic in Caulfield is ripe for a teal, a lot of the Labor vote in this seat is rock solid and won’t swing right for an independent (why would a left-wing voter strategically move right when it’s already notionally Labor?), and without climate targets being an issue, Greens preferences are almost certain to overwhelmingly go to Labor over an IND too, so Labor should easily finish ahead of her.

That means the result of her presence will likely be that some disillusioned Liberal voters who would have considered swinging to Labor (as they did in May) might now vote teal and then preference the LIB over ALP, hurting Labor in the 2PP count.

She’s not an independent. She was a working member of the ALP until she was “approached” by the head of the supposed independent movement.

Funny how the same people don’t target marginal Labor seats of a government that’s 8 years old.

@ Mark, i am thinking Teals could do well in Eltham which is a marginal Labor seat or Hawthorn. The only other Labor seats Teals i think could Run are Ivanhoe/Albert Park but both those seats have rock solid left wing areas as well.

She was approached by the “Voices for Golstein” group last week, and was an ALP member up until the end of last week. She has worked for multiple VIC Labor MPs and her partner ran for Labor.

She was chosen by the leader of the Voices group over actual locals and genuine independents.

I can definitely see this backfiring for Labor. The ploy is obvious.

@Nimalan

Agreed. There are multiple Labor seats they could contest but they’re staying well clear of them. It’s obvious that the “teal” thing is just a left-wing anti-liberal thing, rather than genuine independents pushing for change etc etc.

If it was genuine, they’d be campaigning against VIC Labor, just like they did with the federal liberals.

Mark, your theory about Labor being behind this, and teals not targeting Labor seats, is flawed by the simple fact that Caulfield is a notional alsbor seat.

Why would Labor want a teal to run against them in a seat they already notionally hold, and most likely bleed preferences to the Liberals?

Labor have nothing to gain by having an “independent” run in a seat they notionally hold already, and were favourites to win anyway.

@Trent

I didn’t say it would help them. Victorian Labor aren’t known as the smartest bunch. I agree completely with your analysis, especially with the teal funnelling preferences to the Libs, thus increasing their 2PP margin.

I was just pointing out that said “independent” was an active member of the VIC ALP up until the end of last week. She’s basically a Labor MP.

The seat is notional on 2018 numbers, which was a high watermark for the Labor party. I really cannot see how Labor holds much of the eastern seats that they won in 2018. Many of them are very marginal and, with a slight shift towards even a 2014-like result, most of them would fall to the Libs.

I think the teal results in May will not be replicated at all, and with that, seats that Libs lost at the federal election will be retained or gained at the state level. State vs federal is a completely different game, just like what was demonstrated in Sept-Nov of 2010.

@Mark, I think 2018 was a high watermark in alot of areas including most of the eastern suburbs, but not the inner southeast including Caulfield.

For example in the May 2022 election, the result across the state electorate of Caulfield was approximately 58-42 to Labor, and that’s after adjusting back down for a high Liberal postal vote (it was 62-38 in ordinary votes).

So this area swung a further 8% to Labor between the 2018 state election and 2022 federal election.

State & federal issues are obviously different but there’s a clear trend away from the Liberals and the probability is that November’s result would most likely fall somewhere between 2018 and 2022, how much is unknown but either way Labor are the favourites, because the Liberals need to recover at least 8% of the vote across the seat to win.

Your theory about the teals only wanting to unseat Liberals was true at the federal election, and would also be true if they only targeted seats like Kew, Malvern and Bulleen – that Labor can’t win – in November.

But seats like Caulfield, Sandringham and Brighton are key Labor targets, and teals would be directly competing with Labor.

Even if the Liberals may very well win them all, or you may consider them the favourites, the fact is that they are still very *winnable* for Labor and a teal running has zero benefit for Labor in seats they can win.

Also, the teal running in Brighton is a Liberal member who lost preselection for the Libs. So they are a basically a second/alternate Liberal running.

Nomi Kaltmann has been nominated as the ‘Teal’ candidate for Caulfield

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/teal-candidate-poised-to-take-on-liberals-in-state-seat-of-caulfield-20220816-p5babr.html

The whole business here is really suss – ALP member until last week and a former ALP staffer. It doesn’t sound too ‘independent’. Possibly all will be revealed that the ALP have their fingers in this Teal pie.

@redistributed, as I mentioned above though I just don’t think that the ALP have anything to gain whatsoever from having a teal run against them in a seat they can win, let alone already notionally hold.

The reality is that ia teal is running just as much against Labor than they are against the Liberal – possibly even moreso because the teal has to eliminate Labor to even get into the 2CP count. And if they fail to do so which is most likely, all they do is reduce is reduce Labor’s 2PP by bleeding preferences to the Libs from LIB>IND voters who may have otherwise swung to Labor if there was no teal.

Don’t get me wrong, it definitely sounds suss that this person was an ALP member until last week; however I think it’s more likely that the “Voices Of” group in this case actually see a Labor win written on the wall and are doing this to sabotage it.

It’s highly unlikely that Labor would be behind having an independent run against them in a seat they notionally hold and are favoured to win.

Labor candidate here is non-existent, asides from the few articles on it and one mention of an event with him in a Jewish newspaper there’s basically nothing. Southwick on the other hand is literally everywhere, with ads all over the place and party folk at every spot with heavy pedestrian traffic.

Nomi Kaltmann’s not really a teal then, more like a centre-left aligned person trying to take advantage of a trend. The whole point of a teal is that they’re like the Liberals economically but like the Greens on environment and social issues, simply they would say they’re socially progressive and fiscally conservative. Hard to claim you’re a socially progressive Liberal when you’ve been a member of the Labor party until it came time to run for election.

I think the teals will struggle in both Caulfield and Brighton for that reason. The federal success relied on about a 10% LIB to IND swing plus a majority of ALP and GRN voters strategically voting teal.

In Caulfield, Lib voters are less likely to swing to a very recent ex-Labor member.

In Brighton, ALP and Greens voters won’t swing to a Liberal member who lost preselection.

It was important in the federal seats that all the teals who won had the same profile: they all openly said they voted LIB under Turnbull but Labor against Morrison. That kind of pragmatic swinging centrist was what the voters were looking for.

These ultra marginal seats..are hard to pick..given 2018 was a Labor landslide you would expect a swing back to the liberals but who knows I would be unsure. Last election a liberal primary vote of just under 47% resulted in a line ball result. The map of polling booths looked 50/50 as well.. could be a better preference flow to.labor might lead to an alp win without a single primary vote changing

Trent, don’t know if you or anyone else Melbourne can shed light as to whether Nomi is more like a Labor defector in the mould of Steve Christou (Cumberland) or Angelo Tsirekas (Canada Bay), who were dissatisfied with the local party branch and ran as pseudo independents on a party like ticket (aka OLC).

She seems very different to those ones who were incumbent councillors who split from Labor.

This seat reminds me of Prahran, once a liberal stronghold but over the decades the demographics changed & benefited Labor/Greens.

The pre-1992 redistribution when the seat of St Kilda was abolished probably played a role in ending Prahran’s run as a Liberal stronghold, it became a bellwether after that in every election from 1992-2010 (except 1999 but was still marginal) until the Greens won it in 2014.

Whereas Caulfield remained relatively safe Liberal other than 2002, until the 2014 election. Moving forward though I can see it being more bellwether/marginal so maybe it’s a a but behind, but you’re right and is more like Prahran in the 90s and 2000s now.

Bob, Caulfield reminds me more of Malvern than Prahran. The change in Prahran is more to do with changing electoral boundaries than changing demographics with Prahran picking up parts of St Kilda while losing parts of Toorak.

This’ll likely stay as a Liberal v Labor contest I think, not sure the teal candidate will make the final 2 – but other seats such as Hawthorn and Kew will very much be a Liberal v IND contest.

Big swings to the Greens in this area in May, so I’d expect that to be replicated here as well but the teal vote may split it.

Zoe Daniel and Monique Ryan won in May because they outpolled the Labor candidates. This will not happen in Caulfield. The seat will be won on preferences with lots of postal votes.sleepless nights for Southwick and Harel for what has never been a state Labor seat

Completely agree John.

Teals got 2/3 of their votes from Labor & Greens to outpoll Labor in May, that happened because Labor & Greens voters very savvy enough to know the Teal v Lib contest was the best chance to unseat a Lib.

Why would they do that in a seat Labor now notionally hold, and swung even more than that in May?

Additionally, less Lib voters will probably swing to the teal due to her recent ALP background, so I just don’t see her passing Labor to make a 2CP count. She’ll probably get around 15% and her preferences will be decisive in what will likely be a very close result.