Cranbourne – Victoria 2022

The federal election results do not bode well for Labor here. Big swings across the Cranbourne area.

Labor would have won this seat comfortably on federal figures. The small swing in Holt can be put down to retirement of the sitting member after more than two decades service.

In the federal seat of Holt, there were big swings away from both the ALP and LIB. In the Cranbourne area, PHON and UAP got swings to them. A lot of the votes went back to Labor via preferences. I’m guessing that pandemic politics weighed a lot. Most of the largest swings away from Labor were in safe Labor seats in outer Melbourne.

I don’t expect either PHON nor UAP to be as influential at the state election. Neither of them ran in 2018 and they usually don’t do well at state elections except in QLD.

This electorate will be interesting to watch as Daniel Andrews is not popular throughout here. It worth noting that the margin here is inflated with this seat being historically very close, it would be interesting to see if the LNP would have held this seat on these boundaries in 2010 or even 2014.

Agree Bob, this margin is inflated and during close state elections this area is very close. Compared to 2010 it is a bit better for Liberals as it does not include any Labor leaning Carrum Downs and especially Frankston North. However, this effect is somewhat softened by the loss of a part of Langwarrin (more established middle class area and not ethnically diverse). The Liberals have chosen a Sikh Candidate in a seat where there is a large South Asian community. Agree Daniel Andrews will not be popular in an area with young family managing home schooling etc. I am hoping both parties commit to Clyde rail extension (with a station at Casey Fields). Labor would hope the completed Cranbourne rail duplication and level crossing will soften the backlash and narrowly retain the seat.

The Liberals have committed to Clyde extension which is much needed. It remains to be seen if Labor would match it. During the last time the existing Cranbourne line was duplicated.

A station at Clyde would also be attractive to voters in Bass and Berwick.

I believe Mathew Guy visited here the other day so the LNP clearly think there is a chance here.

The Clyde extension is like the south-eastern equivalent of the Melton electrification: the local transport project that governments have promised for about 20 years but it never happens.

This electorate is very much in play, wouldn’t be surprised if the Libs managed to pick this seat up but lose other metropolitan seats, such as Caulfield or Glen Waverley.

There was talk that this seat would be in play, it didn’t even get close might be a suggestion that this seat is no longer competitive.

Think this was notionally liberal going into 2014 election
But this seems to be out of their
Reach now.. demographics?

This seat shows the failure of the strategy of the Liberal party. In fact it was the Liberal Primary vote here that crashed not Labor. Labor primary vote here dropped by 2.5% but AJP ran for the first time and got 2.5% when we take into the account that the Greens increased their vote by 1.6%, Cranbourne despite being an outer suburb actually voted more progressively than they did in 2018 although not all of the AJP/Green vote returned in preferences to Labor which explains a 0.3% swing to to Libs on TPP. Tim Smith said the party should forget about the woke concerns of Kew, Malvern etc and Cranbourne was a seat he used that could become a new stronghold and he said the seat was full of forgotten and quiet Australians yet this election proved it is not as simple. Cranbourne unlike St Albans etc is actually winnable for the Libs and they almost won in 2010 despite more pro-Labor boundaries at that time.

Interestingly, at the state election (and federal election), there were double-digit swings in the northern and western suburbs but minimal swings in the outer south-eastern Labor seats, except in Mulgrave.

@Nimalan. I agree that the Liberals messed up in Cranbourne. FF, Labour DLP and Freedom Parties gained at the expense of the Liberals it seems and not all their votes preferenced the Liberals. Labor managed to successfully defend almost all its seats with margins of under 10%.

The outer south-east “red wall” seats have much lower margins and are within reach if there’s a wipeout like in NSW in 2011 or in QLD in 2012.

Mulgrave’s swing is almost entirely because the Libs and the antivax and freedom party mob actually put a lot of effort there plus there was a lot of media overhype. Dan Andrews still got more than 50% of the first preference vote though. If Dan Andrews was contesting somewhere else, Mulgrave would likely have barely swung as well.

The Libs should have at least gotten a big swing in Cranbourne since it is supposedly one of the seats they think can replace their affluent heartland and eastern suburb base. Instead, it was basically a status quo result. Same with the Narre Warrens and Pakenham.

TBF, no one’s entirely sure how big the 2pp/2cp swing in Mulgrave was, as with Andrews winning on first prefs, there was no full preference throw.

It seems like an actual campaign from Labor is enough to mitigate “red wall” swings. Andrews didn’t campaign much in his own seat, and evidently he didn’t need to.

The results makes me wonder if Labor could have actually won Berwick if they campaigned harder. It was an early write off for Labor and it perhaps shouldn’t have been.

This is the 2nd election in a row where Cranbourne was expected to be interesting for Liberals and it wasn’t.

@ John
I actually made some comments in the Berwick thread regarding this if Labor campaigned there i think it will be a close result only thing is that Berwick has some of the strongest solid Liberal territory on its northern fringe something that Narre Warren South/Cranbourne dont have. The Growth areas in the Southern part of Berwick are still Red.

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/vic2022/berwick2022#comment-780471-My comments

I definitely agree that Labor simply campaigning seems to mitigate the swings.

Look at the northern and western suburbs. The 3 seats that were considered most likely to fall were Melton, Point Cook and Werribee.

Labor campaigned in all 3, and the swings were less than 1% in Melton, about 4% in Point Cook (Garra probably had something to do with that) and actually a swing TO Labor in Werribee.

Compare that to all the seats they didn’t campaign in – Greenvale, Sydenham, Mill Park, etc – and they swung hard. It tells me that all Labor need to do is show interest and campaign, which is enough to mitigate the “we’re forgotten in the west” sentiment.

Agree Trent, although with so many marginal seats Labor does face a dilemma – which seats should they prioritise for funding and campaigning?

With Pesutto as Liberal leader, maybe Labor will focus their efforts on defending all marginal northern and western seats for the upcoming election and let the traditional conservative seats in the eastern suburbs swing back to the Liberals (in this scenario I can see Liberals gaining Pakenham, Bass, Hastings, Glen Waverley and Bayswater, with others like Box Hill, Ashwood and Ringwood being potential gains).

@Yoh An the problem is even if the Libs manage to gain all those seats you mention and hold all the ones they currently have, it’s still not enough for them to win government. They still need to make gains in the sandbelt and the more affluent outer suburb growth areas like Point Cook.

As a local, I have no idea where this Labor campaign was (though nor did I see much evidence of a Lib campaign).

There is certainly potential for a swing here, but over the last 8 years there has been a lot (and I mean a lot) of road projects to significantly improve travel in this area, and a lot still ongoing. Despite the ‘sexiness’ of a lot of big rail (and road) projects, improving the local road network is I think a big winner here.

@ Trent, agree i think simply campaigning made these electorates feel valued and not taken for granted. The other point i am interested what others think is whether voters in the very safe Labor seats such as Thomastown, Broadmeadows, St Albans felt that they their seats were so strong that they can give smack to the Labor party with a wooden spoon and not affect their outcome a bit like swings in a by-election where voters can give a kick but not change the government and if there was talk that the seats were actually competitive and their votes could actually elect a Liberal government and Liberal MPs they would swing back to stop that. That may have in part motivated voters in the Liberal affluent heartland to swing back to the Libs after their was now a real potential of the seats falling to Labor and the Liberals abandoning that for new territory.

Dan, I was only highlighting a possible Labor defensive strategy where they try and minimise potential losses, not a roadmap for the Liberals to win power. Given that the Liberals actually went backwards in many key marginal seats, they probably need at least 2 if not 3 elections before they can win power again, barring an unexpected landslide like QLD 2015.

@Nimalan, that’s an interesting take. That would the average voter to be very politically engaged which I don’t think most voters are, especially in economically deprived safe Labor seats like Broadmeadows, Thomastown etc. But I will say in affluent seats, voters may be more politically engaged and aware so are more likely to be strategic with their votes just like in Kooyong in the federal election. JF got a larger primary vote compared to other teal seats which may be because such voters want him to be reelected to lead the party despite Morrison and the Lib brand being very much on the nose while Monique Ryan also got a huge primary vote of 41% indicating that lots of normally Green and Labor voters deliberately switched their vote to her because they knew that only she would stand a chance to defeat JF and were worried about preference leakage reelecting him. The state election results in Hawthorn and Kew back that up as well. The talk about the Libs abandoning them might have also spooked voters to vote for them.

I don’t think it’s right to characterise the eastern suburbs as traditionally conservative. The seat of Ringwood and its predecessor Mitcham is a seat that has long switched between both parties and is a traditional marginal. Can’t really understand the shock when Labor won it in 2018. The Federal seat of Chisholm is also a key marginal and has been with Labor more often than Liberal in recent years. Th eastern suburbs of Melbourne is certainly no heartland for the Liberals and never really has been. It is an area that the Liberals can’t win without though. Their real heartland is Booroondara, Stonnington and Bayside LGAs.