Hawthorn – Victoria 2022

ALP 0.6%

Incumbent MP
John Kennedy, since 2018.

Geography
Eastern Melbourne. Hawthorn covers central parts of the Boroondara local government area, and specifically the suburbs of Hartwell and Hawthorn and parts of the suburbs of Burwood, Camberwell, Canterbury and Surrey Hills.

Redistribution
Hawthorn shifted to the east, taking in part of Surrey Hills from Burwood and Box Hill, and losing the remainder of Glen Iris to Ashwood. These changes slightly increased the Labor margin from 0.4% to 0.6%.

History
Hawthorn has existed as an electoral district continuously since 1889. In that time, it has been dominated by conservative MPs, and had only been won by the ALP at one election prior to the Labor win in 2018.

The seat was won in 1902 by George Swinburne. He ended up serving as a member of the Commonwealth Liberal Party before his retirement in 1913.

He was succeeded by William Murray McPherson. McPherson served as Treasurer in the Nationalist state government from 1917 to 1923, and as Premier from 1928 to 1929. McPherson resigned from Parliament in 1930.

He was succeeded by Nationalist candidate John Gray at the 1930 by-election. Gray served as Member for Hawthorn until his death in 1939.

His seat was won at the 1939 by-election by the United Australia Party’s Leslie Tyack. He lost the seat at the 1940 state election to independent candidate Leslie Hollins, who had links to the Social Credit movement.

Hollins held Hawthorn for two terms, losing in 1945 to the Liberal Party’s Frederick Edmunds. He also held the seat for two terms, until in 1950 the Liberal Party replaced him with his predecessor Leslie Tyack.

Tyack was defeated in 1952 by the ALP’s Charles Murphy, the only ALP member to ever win Hawthorn. He left the ALP in the split of 1955, and lost his seat at that year’s election to the Liberal Party’s James Manson.

After one term, Manson moved to the new seat of Ringwood in 1958, and was replaced in Hawthorn by Peter Garrisson. He was re-elected in 1961, but in 1963 he resigned from the Liberal Party, and lost his seat as an independent in 1964.

Walter Jona was elected as Liberal Member for Hawthorn in 1964. He served as a minister in the Liberal government from 1976 to 1982, and retired in 1985.

Hawthorn was won in 1985 by the Liberal Party’s Phillip Gude, who had previously held the seat of Geelong East for one term from 1976 to his defeat in 1979. He served as a minister in the Kennett government from 1992 until his retirement in 1999.

Since 1999, Hawthorn has been held by Ted Baillieu. Baillieu won re-election in 2002, 2006 and 2010.

Ted Baillieu was elected Liberal leader shortly before the 2006 election, and led the Coalition to defeat in 2006 and victory in 2010.

Baillieu served as Premier from 2010 until March 2013, when he resigned as Premier and Liberal leader under pressure from his party’s MPs. He retired at the 2014 election, and was succeeded by Liberal candidate John Pesutto.

Pesutto held Hawthorn for one term, losing the seat to Labor’s John Kennedy with a big swing in 2018.

Candidates

Assessment
Hawthorn has traditionally been considered a safe Liberal seat, but a cumulative swing of 17.1% to Labor since Ted Baillieu’s retirement in 2014 saw them grab the seat. It wouldn’t take much of that vote swinging back to restore the Liberal hold here, but if the Liberal Party doesn’t receive much of a bounce back Labor could hold the seat.

2018 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
John Pesutto Liberal 17,231 43.9 -10.6 43.9
John Kennedy Labor 12,646 32.2 +8.0 32.9
Nicholas Bieber Greens 7,167 18.3 -3.1 17.7
Sophie Paterson Sustainable Australia 960 2.4 +2.5 2.4
Catherine Wright Animal Justice 885 2.3 +2.3 2.2
Richard Grummet Independent 367 0.9 +0.9 0.8
Informal 1,462 3.6 -0.2

2018 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
John Kennedy Labor 19,793 50.4 +9.0 50.6
John Pesutto Liberal 19,463 49.6 -9.0 49.4

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into three areas: central, east and west.

The Labor Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, with just over 52% in the centre and east and 57% in the west. The Liberal Party narrowly won the pre-poll vote and won the remaining vote more convincingly.

The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 12.3% in the east to 21.5% in the west.

Voter group GRN prim % ALP 2PP % Total votes % of votes
Central 17.0 52.1 9,807 22.7
East 12.3 52.2 6,135 14.2
West 21.5 56.9 5,796 13.4
Pre-poll 18.1 46.5 13,503 31.2
Other votes 19.3 49.6 8,018 18.5

Election results in Hawthorn at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor and the Greens.

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397 COMMENTS

  1. @Yoh An

    Dan M is correct. Whitehorse was developed first followed by Manningham and more recently Knox. However, i still feel Whitehorse is not as Inner city except maybe the western fringe around Mont Albert/Surrey Hills which is elite. I always feel that Glen Eira is similar to Strathfield although the ethnoreligious demographic is quite different. I feel Whitehorse is very much like Bennelong (Ryde/northern fringe of Parramatta council) has excellent PT while Manningham is more like a mix of Hornsby and Hills Shire (Beecroft, Cheltenham, West Pennant Hills, Castle Hill, Dural etc.) Knox is a mix of the Western Part of Hills Shire and parts of Blacktown LGA (Seven Hills, Kings Langley, Glenwood, Kellyville, Rouse Hill, Bella Vista etc/.

  2. Nimalan that makes sense as the SRL full route will be like the Northwest rail/metro line linking Epping to Rouse Hill through Cherrybrook and Castle Hill.

  3. What a great result for the Libs winning back Hawthorn. This, along with the result in Kew, will be good news for NSW.

  4. If Pesutto is serious about becoming leader and leading the party into the next election he’d need to find a safer seat to parachute into at the next election – this isn’t really a friendly seat for the Liberals

  5. Ben, Look how low the Labor PV is (with a sitting member) and what the Labor/Lib TPP is once the results are finalised. That would give a clue about how safe or marginal the seat is.

  6. Libs haven’t won this back yet.

    Pesutto is only leading by around 300 votes, but the remaining votes left to count will mostly be absents which heavily favour ALP & Greens (whose preferences are flowing 80% to IND).

    In 2018 there were around 3800 postals and 3000 absents here (and absents broke about 58-42 to Labor, it was the Liberals worst vote type). So far over 3000 postals have already been counted so it will mostly be absents left…

    Given the higher earlier voting, I’d predict maybe 1200 postals and 2500 absents left. This will go right down to the wire, maybe an 0.3% margin either way

  7. @Trent There are still up to 5k pre-polls (Source from Antony Green’s blog on early voting) and up to 4k more postals (not all of this will arrive). At most there would be around 3000 absents so there just aren’t the numbers for the teal to win. (Source from Kevin Bonham). Independents may generally do worse on absents because of the lack of how to vote cards so voters may not know the independent and just put the major parties they’ve heard of first and then donkey vote.

  8. Agree Nimalan, with Pesutto as an incumbent, the ‘teals’ are probably less likely/keen on running a candidate to challenge him at the next election.

  9. Methinks that if John Pesutto had hung on in 2018 and then become the opposition leader, he would not be the Premier-elect right now.

    The factional wars and branch stacking within the Liberal Party would’ve toppled him, like how Malcolm Turnbull was toppled by the likes of Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott. The pandemic probably would’ve accelerated this.

    If Pesutto made it to the election, I reckon he would’ve lost too. There are many common themes between the federal election and VIC state election – crash in vote amongst ethnic Chinese voters, teal threats (diverting resources to those seats to defend them), loud anti-vaxxers etc.

    If he wins Hawthorn and then becomes the opposition leader, I doubt he’d do worse than Matt Guy. By the end of Dan Andrews’s third term, there might be fatigue and the it’s time factor will kick in.

  10. Thanks Ben, I didn’t know there were that many prepolls and postals left.

    Would those prepolls potentially be out of district ones, and if so do they sometimes break a bit differently to the others?

  12. If John Pesutto was leader since 2018, the Libs would still lose but not to the extent as now. The swing to Labor among ethnic Chinese voters and the anti-vax factors would likely still be there. Not to mention the Libs have essentially been in civil war since 2014 between the factions with the religious and far right seeming to come out on top, who would want to undermine him like how Dutton and Abbott undermined Turnbull. Despite all the warnings and exposes of Marcus Bastiaan, candidates like Moira Deeming and Renee Heath still end up getting preselected in guaranteed elections, indicating that the party membership is still very much to the right.

  13. I don’t agree that absents will favour the Liberals.

    I believe absents don’t generally favour independents in primary vote terms, but they heavily favour Greens and Labor, and are by far the Liberals’ worst vote type, so preferences should favour the IND in 2CP terms.

    Pre-polls will be harder to predict. I don’t think the VEC differentiates declaration pre-polls from those within district like the AEC does, but dec pre-polls like absents usually heavily favour Greens and Labor too, so if remaining early votes aren’t from the prepoll centres within the seat, they could break more left than other early votes.

    Pesutto being in front with still a number of postals to come definitely puts him in the best position but I definitely think the remaining prepolls and absents could go either way.

  14. Just to clarify, I’m not saying I think Lowe will win, I agree Pesutto is in the best position.

    Just saying I wouldn’t write it off yet because how the remaining prepolls and absents break, and how many postals come back, is still a question mark without much precedent to go by.

    I believe the commentary around absent prepolls is more that independents don’t do well in them, than it is that the Liberals do (because I don’t think they do either). If Labor and Greens do well in the remaining votes it could still be competitive.

  15. Votante I actually really doubt this. John Pesutto would be in the same situation as Guy. John Pesutto would have had exactly the same problem. Most middle class people in Melbourne were comfortable with the Government’s pandemic response and vaccination policy. Pesutto would’ve had to deal with the same anti-lockdown sentiment on the right and there’s no evidence he’d have struck a better balance between appealing to hard-line anti-Dan sentiment whilst also making the mainstream community fell comfortable that the Coalition was a safe set of hands.

  16. At present the ALP is slightly ahead of Melissa Lowe on the primaries. There would seem a possibility that he would pull ahead on absents and Green absent prefs favour the ALP. It may turn back into a traditional Lib vs ALP contest.

  18. On federal election results in Kooyong, the Independent did 4% better on 2CP with absents and 1% worse with absent pre-polls compared to the final result. Assuming the Independent here does 4% better on absents and there are 2000 absents, that would only net the Independent 160 votes, not even close to what’s needed, with postals and pre-polls favouring the Liberals.

  19. More accurate figures:
    Independent did 3.41% better with absents, 1.10% worse with absent pre-polls, 4.45% better with provisional votes and 6.71% worse with postals. It’s worth noting here the Liberals are doing almost 15% better with postals. This will likely narrow quite a lot, with them breaking to the Liberals maybe closer to 55-45. I expect a Liberal margin of around 1.1%.

  20. New batch of votes for Hawthorn, probably rechecking or small batches of prepolls or absents:
    2PP:
    LIB 10 47.62%
    IND 11 52.38%

    AJP 2 9.52%
    ALP 7 33.33%
    FFP 0 0%
    LDP 0 0%
    IND 2 9.52%
    GRN 2 9.52%
    LIB 8 38.1%
    DLP 0 0%
    This nets the Independent 1 vote, she’d need around 52.4% of the 2CP vote for all the remaining votes to win.

  21. New batch of votes, probably out of division prepolls:
    LIB 2378 55.98%
    IND 1870 44.02%

    AJP 99 2.33%
    ALP 988 23.27%
    FFP 50 1.18%
    LDP 70 1.65%
    IND 652 15.36%
    GRN 538 12.67%
    LIB 1803 42.46%
    DLP 46 1.08%
    This has netted the Liberals 508 votes on 2CP, interesting to note the Liberal primary vote in this batch is actually down compared to the overall vote, while both the Labor and Green primary votes are up and the Independent well down. Yet this still breaks in favour of the Liberals nearly 56-44.

  23. Well, I called this one correctly at least lol

    Hopefully Pesutto can become leader and rebuild the party back to what it was during the 90s/early 2010s.

  24. Ben – where are you getting your votes from. I have checked the VEC and it seems stuck but the ABC much more up to date.

  26. I don’t get it, Liberals got a swing against them in the primary very slightly. And the independent is 2nd place. Are Labor and Green preferences flowing less strongly than preferences to Labor in this seat at the last election? What percentage are Labor preferences breaking for Lowe?

  27. I think what’s happened Daniel is that the IND has obviously taken votes from Labor, Liberal and Greens – Liberal by far the least of the 3 – and some of those votes she got from Labor & Greens have flowed back to Pesutto.

    Not many, or the 2CP swing would be much higher, but most likely former Liberal voters who reluctantly swung to Labor in 2018 in the absence of a more ‘centrist’ option; now they had the option to vote IND but preference LIB over ALP which they have done.

    What’s really interesting though is that in Brighton, where the VEC originally conducted a LIB v IND count then corrected it to a LIB v ALP count, preferences actually flowed stronger from IND to ALP than they did from ALP to IND, which is the complete opposite of what I would have expected.

  28. The problem with the LNP is the infiltration of the Christian Right which could undermine John’s chance as leader of the opposition.

  30. Trent yes that is right in nine
    Out of ten occasion
    .I think.the flow of prefer occurred like that in all teal
    Won seats

  31. Seeing as the party room wants Heath as a sitting Liberal and the conservatives have lined up behind Battin, I’d say the chances of dealing with the Christian Right are next to nil even should Pesutto win (which is not looking too likely).

  32. The fact that all leadership candidates want to bring Heath back to the party room including Pesutto himself should suggest the hard Christian Right aren’t going anywhere any time too. The Libs may never recover from the near decade of branch stacking by Marcus Bastiaan.

  33. Pesutto has been touted as a future leader for a long time. It’s more to do with his persona than his political stance.

    If he’s the leader at the next election, he will have some challenges:
    – Defending his own marginal seat against Labor, Greens or potential teals.
    – Attracting voters from middle-ring and outer suburban seats as well as the outskirts of regional centres (e.g. South Barwon, Ripon) whose interests and socio-economics are very different.
    – Defending affluent, small-l liberal heartland seats (e.g. Caulfield, Kew, Brighton).

    I won’t say that they are mutually exclusive. It’s possible to achieve all especially if the Liberals cleanup their internal culture and if the Labor government stumbles.

  34. A bit surprised at the fact John Pesutto (LIB) will win this, currently with 51.5% vs IND. Currently he has an almost identical primary vote to what Josh Frydenberg got at the overlapping federal seat of Kooyong (Pesutto 42.6%; Frydenberg 42.7%), yet Josh Frydenberg ended up losing with 47.1% 2CP to Independent Monique Ryan. This would imply that Pesutto is getting better preference flows than Frydenberg got, but I am struggling to see where Pesutto might get better flows other than higher rates of Labor/Greens leakage, since there doesn’t appear to be a higher vote for conservative minor parties in Hawthorn than Kooyong. The conservative minor party vote in Hawthorn (am defining as DLP, Lib Dems, Family First) is currently roughly 2.9% cumulatively. For Kooyong, the figure was roughly 2.7% (made up of UAP, One Nation, Lib Dems).

    Another factor I think is interesting is that the combined IND/ALP/GRN vote in Hawthorn is currently 53.1%, yet Independent Lowe will not win, roughly similar to Kooyong (53.51%), Goldstein (53.31%) and Mackellar (52.45%) yet these federal Independents managed to win.

    Does anyone have any ideas about why John Pesutto is getting a relative solid win here at 51.5% 2CP whereas comparable figures in federal seats weren’t enough to save Liberals from “teal” independent challenges?

  35. Greens Political Party Supporter, I think the difference between Ryan’s and Lowe’s vote probably influences it somewhat. Ryan got over 40% of the vote in Kooyong. Lowe’s was barely half that. Much harder to get the right kind of preference flow when you’re so far behind on the primary vote.

    Could also be that non-Liberal voters were far more motivated to kick the Liberals out at any cost federally in contrast to the state election.

  36. Good point @Chaisa, it looks like preference leakage is likelier to be higher when flowing to a candidate with a lower (say below 30%) primary vote than a candidate with a higher vote (say >30%). Looking at the federal electorate of North Sydney, the Independent candidate Kylea Tink got a comparatively low primary vote of 25.20% to other “teal” candidates, and the combined IND/ALP/GRN vote there was 55.2%, about 2 points higher than some of the other “teal” electorates I mentioned above, yet her 2CP vs LIB was 52.92, pretty much equal to Kooyong and Goldstein, which might point to slightly higher ALP/GRN leakage in North Sydney due to the lower independent primary vote.

    Another point that surprised me was that the 2PP here in Hawthorn between LIB vs ALP was 51.7% to LIB, only 0.2 points better for the Liberals than the 2CP margin vs IND. This implies the preference flow from IND to ALP must have been roughly equal to the flow from ALP to IND. This is contrary what we saw in all other “teal” seats federally (Kooyong, Goldstein) where the Independent’s preferences were much weaker to Labor than Labor/Green’s preferences to Independent.

    I am not certain Labor could have retained this even if no “teal” candidate had run as has been argued on twitter. Other neighboring, affluent seats like Malvern, Caulfield and Brighton all swung towards the Liberals too, so perhaps there was a general trend of affluent Liberal-leaning inner-city seats swinging back to the Liberals that would have led Labor to lose Hawthorn regardless.

  37. Based on combined results from here and Kew, the Libs would have won Kooyong narrowly around 2%. This should send a clear warning to Monique Ryan that she could very well lose her seat at the next election. It is a long way off yet, But if the Libs run a strong candidate and have a strong campaign, They can take off Goldstein and Kooyong from the crossbench at the next election.

    These independents in Melbourne in my view will be allot easier to unseat than ones such as Dai Le. And even fellow teals like Allegra Spender and Sophie Scamps which I would give them higher chances of retaining Wentworth and Mackellar respectively than Kooyong and Goldstein.

    Frydenburg will be smiling at these results. He has a path back to Canberra if the Libs can hold these voters they got back at this state election from the federal election, But it will be close.

  38. I think it would be silly to take anything much out of the Victorian teal results other than that they can’t just expect to rock up to a seat and win in a canter. Beating an incumbent first-term independent remains an incredibly difficult political feat and nor do I doubt that the voters of Kooyong will be happy to vote either Peter Dutton or Josh Frydenberg in 2025 when the memories of Morrison’s 2022 government will still remain strong.

  40. Comparing the federal and Victorian teals is like comparing apples with oranges.

    At the federal election, Scott Morrison was toxic and voting teal was a way of getting rid of him. In other words, Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel could’ve turned the election into a referendum on Morrison. They won off the back of resentment towards 9 years of LNP. Most teal voters were in fact, ex-Labor or ex-Greens voters who voted tactically. Obviously they preferred Albo over Scomo.

    This factor wasn’t present at the Victorian election. There was less motivation to vote teal and support what they stood for.

  41. I’m not sure why some people are confused with the idea of voters voting differently in state and federal elections when it happens a lot. Voters are more than capable of differentiating between state and federal issues.

  42. @GPPS, re: “Another point that surprised me was that the 2PP here in Hawthorn between LIB vs ALP was 51.7% to LIB, only 0.2 points better for the Liberals than the 2CP margin vs IND. This implies the preference flow from IND to ALP must have been roughly equal to the flow from ALP to IND. This is contrary what we saw in all other “teal” seats federally (Kooyong, Goldstein) where the Independent’s preferences were much weaker to Labor than Labor/Green’s preferences to Independent.”

    I was thinking about this today, and I don’t think preferences necessarily had to flow stronger in one direction than another, it’s just the maths of having a bigger primary + smaller preference pool versus a smaller primary + larger preference poll.

    Hypothetically, say for example you had these primary votes:

    LIB – 43%
    IND – 35%
    ALP – 9%
    Others – 13%

    Now let’s assume all preferences in every direcrion break the same way, 75-25 against the LIB.

    A LIB vs IND 2CP means the starting points are 43% LIB vs 35% IND with only 22% to distribute: 75-25 wpuld be 16.5% to IND and 5.5% to LIB meaning the IND wins 51.5-48.5.

    The LIB vs ALP 2PP still has a starting point of 43% LIB but only 9% ALP, with a whopping 48% to distribute 75-25, which would be 36% to ALP and 12% to LIB, so ALP fall short and lose 45-55, despite preferences flowing the same.

    This I think explains why federally, where the IND primary votes were 3-4 times higher than Labor,’s the Liberals did much better in a 2PP contest vs Labor than against the IND; but in Brighton (counts vs IND and ALP were conducted at different times) where Labor’s primary vote was more than double the IND, the Liberal actually did better against the IND than Labor; and in Hawthorn where the primary votes were almost the same, so too were the 2CP and 2PP.

    I have a feeling IND to ALP and ALP to IND preference actually flow pretty similar across the board but having a bigger primary vote (and therefore smaller pool of preferences to leak to the LIB) is the defining factor.

  43. Trent, higher primary = better preference flow is a pretty common trend in general when comparing the same party, which “teal” probably counts closely enough for the purpose of examining this. It is true that it explains a lot when it comes to preference flows, though I still expect that in certain seats and with certain candidates there are Liberal voters who are willing to switch to a teal but not quite willing to put Labor over Liberal. Kylea Tink, for instance, had a 2CP about 3 points better than the Labor candidate while having a relatively similar primary vote.

    I expect many other teals who are able to get enough crossover appeal from Liberal voters along with a high primary vote would be similar in getting a better 2CP than Labor. But it is true that “teal” does not automatically mean getting that crossover appeal – that has to come from the independent’s personal campaign strength.

  44. Trent re preferences alp to teal
    And visa versa I would suggest
    That the more equal flow as opposed to the federal election
    Could explain teal success as opposed to failure. This may
    Be a reflection of Morrison ‘s hatred

  45. Hawthorn result is interesting and maybe contradictory. On one level the the ALP Primary is very low despite a sitting Labor member not that dissimilar to Kew. However, Labor managed to narrowly make the TPP something i would not have expected given a very low primary vote. In Hawthorn it seems the Teal pulled primary votes compared to 2018 from Labor, Greens and some AJP. While it may be seen as Pesutto losing some primary votes it needs to remember that right wing minor parties LDP, FFV did not contest last time and Pesutto may have lost some primary votes to them which would have come back in preferences to him. In Kew and Mornington the Libs lost primary votes to the Teal which does not seem to be the case in Hawthorn. The fact that the Teal did not make the 2PP despite AJP, Greens preferencing her second may mean that some of these voters defied the HTV card and preferenced Labor. I would like to know what the AJP and Green breakdown in preferences went.

  46. John Pesutto has been elected as opposition leader which means they have obviously learned something from the outcome, however I’m not sure how much the right the party will put up with him.

  48. It was a close result 17-16. Given some conservatives like Matthew Guy backed Pesutto, the party room is definitely dominated by conservatives.

  49. That would suggest to me Pesutto is going to face a lot of challenges from the religious and hard right factions of the party room.

  50. Probably agree Dan, Pesutto may be like Turnbull when he was federal Liberal leader – the conservatives could easily wear him down to the point he struggles to unite the competing factions.

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