Northcote – Victoria 2022

With the now official decision for the Liberals to preference the Greens above Labor, I struggle to see this seat as anything but a Greens gain.

Hi “Northcote Watcher” – what is it exactly that you think I am “having a sook” about?

Which of these events (all from the last 18 months) are you pretending didn’t happen-

1. Campbell Gome deceitfully using a long term Greens member and former candidate as part of his advertising/testimonial.

2. Darebin Greens Councillor Susanne Newton bullying and harassing a sexual assault survivor on social media, making false claims about the woman including accusing her of being a man.

I’m just trying to work out which Greens train wreck you are talking about.

I always wonder how many people commenting here actually live in the electorate because some of you seem a little behind on what actually goes on here. Gome wasn’t well received at the community forum…

Mathew community meetings are partisan affairs and bad candidates win all the time. I live in British Columbia, Canada, but have nearly 60 years experience in electoral politics and note that the candidate can shift the vote 2% to 3% either way. Many, many people vote for a party based on policy or because they like the Leader.

In Brighton & Hove in the UK in 2015 the Greens took a real drubbing at the city council level, but still re-elected their lone MP for Brighton-Pavillion. So the voters are quite sophisticated at differentiating between various levels of government and personalities.

The Liberal preferencing decision may not make as much difference here as people think because there won’t be that many Liberal preferences to distribute; they got 10.7% here in 2018 and it would be no great surprise if they do even worse this time. If the federal election is anything to go by they’ll also struggle to staff booths in Northcote to get their HTV cards in front of people. Historically Liberal HTV cards in Labor-Green contests shift Liberal preferences by about 30% depending on which way they go, which in a seat with such a small Liberal primary equates to a 2CP swing around 3% – helpful for the Greens but definitely not enough to make it a certainty.

That’s a fair point, @BT. If the impact is three percentage points, then Labor needs what would otherwise be a one percent swing versus the Greens to hold.

The Liberals didn’t even staff my booth in Macnamara this year, a seat where just 6 years ago they came within something like 1.5% of winning.

I can’t see them bothering to staff many booths in Richmond, Northcote, Prahran or Albert Park this time considering how they struggle for volunteers.

That’s a very true point, Greenman – my feeling was that people walked in to these community events with a candidate or party in mind to vote for, and all walked out with the same one in mind.

I guess all I’d say about it is that there were less in support of Gome, and also that Gome seemed to have nothing to say when people asked him how he proposed he would actually DO anything that he was promising.

Making promises that cannot be delivered is a death knoll for any other side of politics.

What Labor faces here in Victoria though is a “Dictator Dan” campaign that the Greens have the luxury of never facing themselves because they never have the responsibility of doing anything.

Genuine question to Matthew, or anyone else who lives in the electorate, how is Kat Theophanous as a local member, and how much do you think her personal vote will factor into the results?

I hear quite often that she’s a fantastic local member, but obviously not living in the seat, I can’t really get an accurate reading on that.

Small sample, but I’ve come across enough people during the campaign who are very positive about her but less so about the government as a whole to think she’s built a significant following.

I do not live in this seat or Australia for that matter, but the polls appear to be indicating that, so far, the Labour and Liberal primary vote is down, with the Green primary up. Then there is the question of where the majority of AJP and Reason preferences will go. Was it not the Sex Party preferences (now Reason) that originally flipped Greens from third to second in Prahan. Theophanus may hang on to this seat with a 2% to 3% edge.

I remember the Kootenay West-Revelstoke contest in 1993 between Reform (social conservative) and Liberal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kootenay_West%E2%80%94Revelstoke#Election_results

Reform won the contest by 2.01%, but to do it in every all candidates meeting they provoked the Liberal candidate, a doctor, into losing his temper in public. So it may come down to whether Gome and the Green party’s proclivities are well known outside the immediate community.

I know of an MP, who even though they had signed out of court settlements with a number of women, pre-Me Too, they still got elected as a result of votes in an area of the seat where they were not well known personally, whereas in their home community they could barely obtain one in four votes.

Hey Hugo, good question.
Kat is a fantastic local MP. She has engaged with local schools, health centres, and community organisations supporting women’s health, multicultural groups and migrant support agencies, student groups – there was outstanding pandemic support from her office during the pandemic.

For all of this, the Greens candidate, Mr Gome, came up with the infantile idea of getting a member of his campaign team (and former Greens candidate, Mark Tregonning) to lose as just your regular “Mark from Thornbury” to provide a flattering testimonial for the Greens candidate, followed by criticism of Kat, but with no actual basis. No reason why. Just some proper sledging by these two men of a woman doing her job.

If you think I am just saying this because I’m a Labor supporter – let me tell you this for balance, that I think the ALP candidate in neighbouring Preston is an odd choice at best and I genuinely believe the most deserving candidate in the Preston electorate is the independent Gaetano Greco. Like Kat, he has put in the hard word of engaging with the community.

If Gome somehow captures enough of the small minded protest and Liberal vote to wheeze in here, it will be the biggest Bradbury that Victorian politics has ever seen.

Read the comments up above and see that I am talking about substantive issues that Greens have here in Darebin – each of them have been witnessed by many in the community and go onto the Darebin Residents Group Facebook page if you want to see what the community talks about. For all of that, a few Greens on this Tallyroom thread, many of them interstate or not anywhere near Northcote – can only try waving it all away as “smear”.

And the spurious claim that “Labor does it too”… does WHAT too? Not a single story, issue or tidbit about Kat. There’s nothing negative they can throw at Kat because Kat has been nothing but an outstanding and caring MP. Angry white men of the Greens trying to bullsh*t their way into a community that they have zero care for.

As a 15 year resident starting a young family here – I am so glad that our community is represented by two genuinely caring and progressive women in Kat Theophanous and Ged Kearney.

I imagine Lidia Thorpe last time would have appealed to some Labor-Green swing voters so having a generic white guy is probably disadvantage for Greens but doubt Kat T has appeal of Kearney to lefty voters.

‘If you think I am just saying this because I’m a Labor supporter’

Seems pretty damn obvious. Your criticism of the Preston candidate is tepid ‘at best’, you’re raving about Greens ethics issues with tenuous connection to the actual candidate, your criticism of the candidate himself is very petty, and you’re acting as if butter wouldn’t melt in the ALP’s mouth. You’re doing all this to the exclusion of any discussion whatsoever about actual policy issues or even just addressing the basic reality that even in an extremely bad year for the Greens, the 2PP margin in the seat you’re discussing was unbelievably close. Did you know that the 2018 ALP Northcote campaign tried to smear a Lida Thorpe staffer as a pedophile by using out of context social media posts? That they shopped their hack job story to multiple news outlets to do their dirty work for them, most of whom turned it down because of the mendacious nature of the allegations? The man almost committed suicide because of what the ALP did to him.

Of course the Greens are in for a chance in Northcote. The generic statewide polling indicates a significant swing towards the party besides anything else, and the local ground campaign is larger, more united and more motivated than they were before, as are the Victorian Socialists, who will be directing preferences to the Greens candidate. And as I said, the actual 2pp margin in Northcote is very slim to start with.

@Furtive

This site is crawling with Dan Stans and Labor voters. Don’t let it get to you.

I wish this site had a different dynamic to water drop twitter, but as it get closer to the election, the two seem to be converging.

Just yesterday, a bloke genuinely predicted that Labor would win 70-75 seats. It’s laughable.

You should probably ignore Matthew. I think he might be that particular Matthew who is known for being a Labor hack in Darebin and inner North and has been trolling Greens Councillors and MPs for years.

According to the latest Roy Morgan poll Labour’s primary vote is down 2.9% and the Greens are up .8%, but Labour’s TPP is 57%, which means that even if every Green vote went to labour another 5.5% is going to have to come from other parties and Independents. A lot of that vote is going to come from Victorian Socialists, Animal Justice and Reason, much of which will travel through the Greens first. That alone makes Northcote an interesting race.

Nothing upsets Greens voters than their team copping the slightest bit of criticism. Yes they’ll win here and also have a divine right to all inner city seats.

@Greenback

Roy Morgan isn’t credible though

Also the 2PP is old data from November 9, as per Kevin Bonham

As usual, Roy Morgan should be taken with a grain of salt.

I don’t see Labor holding here, especially with the low margin that the have. It is worth noting that I don’t feel the Greens have tried as hard here & the Labor incumbent hasn’t done anything bad.

Although for some strange reason Kat Theophanous is from the right faction which you would imagine that one of the most progressive areas in the country that they would have someone more left wing.

@Bob for some reason state and federal candidates in the Northcote area have always been part of the Right faction. Feeney and Martin Ferguson are the most notable, but also Fiona Richardson (RIP) and Clare Burns who Lidia Thorpe defeated in the 2017 byelection. They made an exception for Ged Kearney so Labor could win the 2018 federal byelection against the Greens – she was very briefly the preselected state candidate for Brunswick where she lives.

Probably some factional deal that dates back to when these were extremely safe Labor seats.

@Bob sounds similar to Josh Burns being a member of the right faction, despite being progressive on social issues and in a socially progressive electorate

John,
That would make sense as it’s only been in the last 10 years that the seat has become quite progressive. The seat used to be like the rest of the northern suburbs.

Hi “ patreon_57”

As others here have said – it is just laughable how fragile Greens are to the slightest criticism.

Yeah, I’ve lived in the electorate for 15 years. I truly did campaign and vote for Greens when I first came here.

I saw the people who make up Darebin Greens and I detest having had anything to do with them.

I have since investigated, called out and noted the behaviour of many of them falls short of community expectations. You mention that I “troll Greens Councillors”. What does that even mean? Does this include calling out Councillor Susanne Newton for her vacuous bullying of my friend on social media? You have some sort of problem with calling out shit behaviour?

That’s called a cult.

I have a lot more evidence and pieces around that incident. Maybe we should publicise it a little more, just for you..

And I notice that Tony Canning is a great photographer… know what I mean?
Ask your buddies. Over to you 🎤

I wouldn’t take too much stock in what faction a Labor MP is from when evaluating their suitability for progressive seats such as this. The ALP factions are merely vehicles to organise numbers rather than people on an ideological basis – there’s a lot of people in both factions who in theory belong in the other, but aren’t because they choose to be where the numbers are, which one has to do if climbing the ladder of the ALP is their goal. And ultimately, in any public facing capacity, individuals are beholden to the party line no matter what arguments they may put forward behind closed doors.

What does matter though in seats like this is if the incumbent Labor MP is community oriented. That seems to be the common denominator, from my observations, that keeps seats like this in ALP hands – because community oriented MPs hoover up votes that may otherwise go to the Greens in their absence for as long as they stand for re-election. I’m not sure if Kat Theophanous (who hails from political protege) fits the community oriented archetype as effectively as say Ged Kearney.

The latest Resolve Strategic poll gives Labour and Green only 46.3% of the primary vote, but Labour 52.7% of the TPP. I am assuming that 4% of that, around two thirds, will come from Animal Justice, Victorian Socialist and Reason, the bulk of which will flow through the Greens first. If you add to this the potential flow through of Liberal votes then Northcote, Richmond and Pasco Vale should become very interesting races for the Greens.

That of course all depends on whether you believe Resolve Strategic, who are reporting the same trend as Roy Morgan, noting that 538 in the US over predicted the swing to the Republicans and the extreme right wing candidates. The Democrats, in the House picked up 6 seats and the Republicans only gained 18, with races still undecided.

A great result – good to see that the ALP skullduggery fell flat.

Labor ahead after pre-polls and postals. Ouch.

Looking like Labor might just pull this one out of the hat with pre-polls and postals.

It’ll be a Herculean hold by Kat if it does eventuate, against the expected “Greenslide 2.0” from demographic changes in their favour. I’m glad for my part that I accidentally made a bet on 4 seats for the Greens at odds of 7.33. Turns out that ended up as a great hedge.

If the Greens win Northcote – they will do so on a swing of -10% and around about 30% of the vote. That will be an interesting result.

Labor is in front with at least 51% 2PP. It looks like Richmond will be the only Greens gain, which I’m sure most of us knew would happen.

I heard from the ABC (Antony Green, Redbridge) that younger voters tend to vote in person and prepolls and postals were very strong for Labor at the federal election. This might explain why Footscray, Pascoe Vale, Albert Park and Northcote looked good for the Greens on election night but have since swung back.

I note that the Greens won 8 of 15 polls on E-Day and that this seat has gone to a check or recount according to the VEC website. Further ABC is not now calling this seat to close to call because they noted that the Absent vote usually favours the Greens. This is what happened in the 2022 federal election during the count with the Brisbane seat. Initially ABC called it for Labour and then during the count had to re-calibrate it.

I can’t believe the Greens blew their opportunity here.

This seat had the lowest Labor vs Greens margin pre-election, though it’s a bit misleading as in 2018, Lidia Thorpe was the incumbent Greens MP. The Greens also had the benefit of Liberal preferencing.

The Greens primary vote fell 10% and the 2PP vote barely moved in Northcote, despite huge 2PP swings in all three Green-held seats and Richmond and a 20% 2PP swing in neighbouring Pascoe Vale.

@Votante Labor had a strong campaign here an a good local MP, incumbency seems to be a good advantage in Greens v ALP contests.

Just thought I’d pop back in to say that I was a scrutineer in the prepoll counting room and called this one for Kat/ALP at precisely 7:14pm on election night after seeing Kat’s primary vote piles nearly doubling those of Gome’s.

Oh – told you so. Greens will never win this off Kat, end of story.

Greens just don’t understand the electorate here and think it is just because people have progressive values that they must naturally vote Greens.

Haha, the other part is as I said last week – that the behaviour of Greens Councillors toward the community has been deplorable, especially that of Susanne Newton, who the Greens have promptly put up as Deputy Mayor this evening.

By god could you get anymore stupid than that?

Watching Gome bore his volunteers with a 21 minute acceptance speech was golden on election morning.

And for any Samantha Ratnam staffers here – yeah, that was me who called your office at 3am after Election Day, when I got home from a 20 hour day to impersonate our Premier, who Ellen Sandell had assured us all would be picking up the phone to listen to Ratnam’s demands on election night. Only Greens are scared of Samantha Ratnam. To everyone else she is regarded as that droll person you once got stuck with on a group assignment at university.

Lectures, lectures, lectures.

Next job – removing at least two Greens from Darebin Council in 2024.

Someone’s gotta do it!

Oh, and if any of you actually lived in this community, you’d know that the location of the prepoll booth being strangely located in Northcote Central Shopping Centre meant a VASTLY changed prepoll demographic, right?

And Kat was there every hour it was open, despite vitriolic abuse being hurled at her from opposition parties, not letting sexist Angry Greens Men get in the way of her community’s opportunity to chat with her.

Ohh, Gome jumped 20 votes closer today on absentee ballots, like a fish flapping on the floor of a boat.

What a boring man he was.

Who’s laughing now, Mark?

Daddy’s trust account?

So VEC has Gome within 270 preferences on the TCP count as of December 3rd, with approximately 5.29% of the preferences left to count – based on the 2018 count. Comparing results with 2018 Gome is up on Lidia Thorpe over Labour by a swing of 4.29% among Ordinary Votes; 4.13% of Absent; 1.01% Early; down -.59% Postal; with Provisional and Marked as Voted still to come. Currently the gap is down to .64% compared to 1.7% in 2018 and Gome at a 1.39% swing is running at double the statewide average of .6%.

So have ABC called this one and possibly Preston too early?

They’re running a recheck so the count is going slowly and appears as “72.5%” when it’s over 80% included in the 2CP. Which means no more than 4-5k votes to go. ABC put it back in doubt over caution with the margin but presumably the Greens have seen the scrutineering info with late postals and other votes and know they are not going to get the margins they need to make up the gap.

This seat is a lot more tight than election night with Labor only leading by 0.3 in the TPP as of when I wrote this. There is a very small chance the Greens go get over the line. Did this happen in Brunswick in 2018?

I wish the ABC gave probabilities. There’s been too much movement in and out of the “in doubt” column. What is the “in doubt” threshold? Below 95% confidence?

Agree Nicholas, for US election coverage many sites indicate probabilities as to the likelihood of either party (Democrat or Republican) winning a certain state or congressional district.

If the remaining preferences are around 4,000 to 5,000 Gome is going to need between 55.4% to 56.75% of the remaining preferences, when the largest swing to Green has been between 4.29% to 4.13%, so it will be a tall order…but this race is certainly tighter than it was on election night. I am assuming that among the remaining votes to count are “below-the-line” votes which are probably a real wild card and then postal and absent votes. So this race may finally come down to 100 preferences or less, at which point is a recount in order?

Greenman, below the line votes only apply for upper house/Legislative council elections. A lower house seat like Northcote only has a single ballot with no separation between candidates and parties.

It’s been “in doubt” for this long thanks to the slowness of the counting but I don’t think the fundamentals have changed much. The margin has tightened thanks to absents but there shouldn’t be too many of those remaining. (2.2k currently in 2PP while 2018 had 2.9k). That’s unlikely to be enough to close the remaining gap, and even if it does the other remaining votes should be favourable for Labor.

Despite a 9.55% decline in primary vote, and vitriolic campaign (likely on both sides) Gome has now come within 162 preferences of catching Theophanous. On TCP the only area where he has done worse than Thorpe is a .59% swing to Labour on Postal Votes. On Provisional, just counted, the swing was +4.88% and in “Marked as Voted” this time Gome obtained 66.6% compared to none last time.

At what point is there an automatic recount, as in Colorado it is when there is less than .5% and in Canada an automatic judicial recount occurs at .1% or less? Finally, the count so far is 1.36% less than 2018. Does that mean there are still “below-the-line” votes to count or is that it?

Will the count change when the distribution of preferences is undertaken or are all the preference flows now entered in the computer?

@ Mathew, beyond your obvious partisan cackling, I observe that Theopanous suffered a -1.1% swing against her candidacy compared to a +.7% swing to her in 2018. That said the swing against Labour statewide was -5.86%, so you could say that Theophanous’s personal appeal was 4.76%, but of course you would clearly have to know the average primary vote for that kind seat before definitively determining that.

Gome on the other hand suffered a 9.55% swing on his primary vote, of which 6.5% can be attributed to the fact that the Victorian Socialists did not run a candidate in 2018. Then there is the fact that the Liberals picked up a swing of 1.5% on their vote. So Gome’s personal negative factor could be between 1.55% and 3.05%.

Given his TCP improved by 1.49%, with Liberal preferences, it will not take much to knock off Theophanous if the swing against Labour statewide increases in the next Victorian election. In the meantime the recheck remains in progress, if the count is complete. 162 preferences is not a large margin to play with prior to distribution of preferences, after all votes are counted and checked. Stay tuned.

Greenman, there are no “below the line” votes for lower house seats. As Yoh An said, it’s a ballot with no separation between candidates and parties. You might be thinking of distribution of preferences instead, where often there are votes that are entered on primaries but not included in 2CP. They all get included in time, although this current rechecking process meant that there was probably a discrepancy (and still might be).

Lower house votes are also counted by hand using IRV and not using a computer. As far as I know only the upper house involves preference flows that enter into the computer (thanks to the voting system).

There should still be additional votes to come at this stage. They will include provisional and perhaps late postal or prepoll. It’s not clear if any of them will be absents.

To make it clear – the current 2CP that the VEC shows is only indicative. The full count in which the distribution of preferences happens has yet to be done and occurs after rechecking. More info here https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/results/2022-state-election-results/count-update/overall-lower-house-count-plan