ALP 21.3% vs GRN
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.
Redistribution
Preston expanded in its north-western corner, taking in the remainder of Reservoir from Thomastown.
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 has been re-elected three times.
- Gaetano Greco (Independent)
- Brian Sanaghan (Independent)
- Raouf Soliman (Family First)
- Patchouli Paterson (Greens)
- Carmen Lahiff-Jenkins (Reason)
- Rachel Unicomb (Animal Justice)
- Angelique Matias (Freedom Party)
- Amanda Paliouras (Liberal)
- Nathan Lambert (Labor)
- Steph Price (Victorian Socialists)
Assessment
Preston is a very safe Labor seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Robin Scott | Labor | 19,409 | 52.0 | +3.6 | 52.4 |
| Guido Lilio | Liberal | 6,083 | 16.3 | -4.9 | 16.6 |
| Susanne Newton | Greens | 5,636 | 15.1 | -1.1 | 14.6 |
| Gaetano Greco | Independent | 2,570 | 6.9 | +6.9 | 6.9 |
| Stephanie Price | Socialists | 1,453 | 3.9 | +3.9 | 3.8 |
| Nadine Richings | Animal Justice | 1,079 | 2.9 | +2.9 | 2.9 |
| Margee Glover | Reason | 1,116 | 3.0 | +3.0 | 2.9 |
| Others | 0.4 | ||||
| Informal | 2,687 | 6.7 | +1.4 |
2018 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Robin Scott | Labor | 26,372 | 70.7 | -4.0 | 71.3 |
| Susanne Newton | Greens | 10,928 | 29.3 | +4.0 | 28.7 |
2018 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Robin Scott | Labor | 29,318 | 78.5 | +3.9 | 78.3 |
| Guido Lilio | Liberal | 8,028 | 21.5 | -3.9 | 21.7 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: north, south-east and south-west.
Labor won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 67.4% in the south-west to 75.4% in the north.
The Liberal Party narrowly outpolled the Greens on primary votes. The Greens did better in the south-east and south-west. The Liberal Party did better in the north and on the special votes.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LIB prim | ALP 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| North | 10.3 | 16.1 | 75.4 | 9,389 | 23.7 |
| South-East | 15.1 | 14.8 | 71.8 | 5,715 | 14.4 |
| South-West | 18.9 | 13.9 | 67.4 | 5,135 | 12.9 |
| Pre-poll | 14.8 | 18.2 | 70.3 | 14,110 | 35.6 |
| Other votes | 17.1 | 17.4 | 67.2 | 5,324 | 13.4 |
Election results in Preston at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.
The Greens have announced Patchouli Paterson as their candidate. She ran in Scullin in the fed election just passed.
Independent and former Darebin Mayor is running, could make this interesting by running on a platform of trying to save the Preston market which is a big issue locally.
In saying that he only polled 6.9% in 2018 when he ran then too, but the market wasn’t on the radar then.
The market was definitely on the radar back then, even if it wasn’t as hot an issue. I can’t see him improving his vote enough to leapfrog the Greens, who are likely to do better than last time imo.
That being said, unless the Liberals decide to put Labor last this will almost definitely be a Labor retain. Even if the margin ends up being cut a bit.
I wonder if and how much will the Robin Scott Branch stacking and allegations of misuse of tax payers funded staffer will impact the results in Preston.
Greens are blowing their best opportunity ever to win this seat with an anaemic campaign.
They are benefiting from Liberal preferences and a Labor candidate that quit over scandal, and they’ve proven in the past they can win strong numbers in Preston at other tiers. But there’s no evidence of doorknocking or any serious grassroots campaign at all.
I have left a post on Pascoe Vale, which is getting more attention than this seat. However, i think Preston is ripe for an upset. Consider the following:
A retiring MP, which is one of the main reasons for losing a seat (and a lower vote);
To boot, the MP retired due to the Somyurek affair, which might linger in the minds of some left-leaning voters. (In fairness, Scott was tainted by that more than he deserved to be.);
A Labor candidate from central casting that is not terribly local and has been given the seat;
A local issue which the Labor Party is not on the ‘right’ side of, namely Preston Market redevelopment;
A general swing from the Government anyway after 2018;
Taken all of the above, it is easy to see Labor losing 10% primary vote here and getting into the low 40s danger zone.
Add to this-
A still growing Green vote (apartments etc), though i am not sure their position on Preston Market;
Perennial candidate and ex mayor Gaetano Greco is running on the Save Preston Market Platform. Who knows, maybe he picks up the Labor vote and gets to second place? I don’t know, however, how he is doing from preferences. It will be interesting to see whether he preferences the Greens above Labor.
Throw into this mix the Liberals preferencing Labor last…
I think this will be a more interesting seat on the night than Pascoe Vale.
Greco is preferencing GRN ahead of LAB.
How’s Mr Greco’s on-the-ground campaign going?
If he ends up third on primary votes then he’ll be in the 2CP for sure. It’s because the Greens would preference him ahead of the Liberals and vice versa.
It’s visible, but he’d probably need to double his 2018 vote to have a realistic shot of getting into the 3CP at either Green or Liberal expense.
Interesting to note that Greco is getting lots of preference flows including the Socialists and Reason. Also interesting that Reason are preferencing (after Greco) the ALP before the Greens. Very hard to see the ALP being in any sort of trouble unless they are sitting in the low 40s.
For a bunch of reasons I reckon the swing to the Greens here will be surprisingly high. Not enough to win though.
Well, looks like Gaetano very well could end up in the final 2 after all. There’s a clustering of his, the Greens, and the Lib vote around 15%. Seems like Labor are likely to hold on regardless of who comes 2nd though.
It looks like it @Matthew. Greens and Vic Socialists will preference him ahead of Liberals.
The Greens flopped in the northern suburbs. In Preston, they came fourth on primaries, though on the ABC at the moment, the 2PP count is ALP vs GRN.
Who would’ve thought this seat would be the closest an independent would get to defeating Labor in their northern and western suburb heartland. Gaetano has almost zero coverage compared to Joe Garra, Ian Birchall or Ian Cook.
Well I did Dan…
Greens are currently ahead of Gaetano on primary again according to the abc, but it’s still very tight. Who ends up in the final 2 is definitely going to be decided by preference flows from the VS and other minors. Regardless of what happens, Labor’s drop in primary here is quite massive. And it’s quite amusing that somebody could get so close to winning the seat with a primary of less than 15%.
With 81.07% of the preferences counted the Green candidate is now 536 preferences ahead of Gaetano. So the question becomes whether the flow of preferences will continue to favour Patterson over Gaetano, and then given that the Liberal is currently only 661 preferences ahead of Green, with Victorian Socialists on 2,331, Reason on 862 and Animal Justice on 767 versus 1,083 for the Freedom Party, 806 Family First and 247 other Independent it seems that Green not Gaetano is going to get to number 2. Unless of course Vic Socialists or Reason or Animal Justice preferenced Gaetano ahead of Patterson.
Ended up as ALP vs Greens after all, and like Pascoe Vale and (to a lesser extent) Footscray, it’s now a marginal seat.
As far as I could tell, the Greens campaign was actually very small target (retain incumbents and pick up Richmond and South Metro). They were definitely not expecting Liberal preferences and were caught flat footed in the other seats (including Northcote). Something like the QLD Greens federal campaign and they would have taken home 8 seats.
Most interestingly, the seat is only 2% stronger for Labor than Northcote is. The old Bell St divide has given way to something much more gradual.
Something like the QLD Greens federal campaign and they would have taken home 8 seats.
@John
Greens really benefited from no Teals running in those Queensland seats in the last federal election. The other thing the Greens and the Teals in the Victoria state election had to run against a Labor government. Look for the Greens and Teals have the same difficulty getting traction at the next federal election. This has also been concluded in the Labor review. I’m not saying they will lose any seats but gaining further seats will be harder running against a Labor government especially if it remains popular in the polls by the next federal election.
Just suggesting the Greens ran a bigger target campaign federally in Queensland. And if the replicated the same in Victoria they would have won 8 seats is a little simplistic and not taking into account other factors.
Greens preselected every seat other than Northcote and Preston very late and clearly didn’t try very hard. They had plenty of issues to campaign on, but it was obvious not much door knocking and movement building was happening outside Richmond (and maybe Northcote later on).
Despite this, Preston and Pascoe Vale are close marginals with Footscray not far behind. So a real missed opportunity. On the other hand the return of small l Liberals to the fold made Albert Park and Williamstown a bridge too far to get into 2nd.
I suspect Pesutto would happily preference Greens over Labor as teal virtue signalling, so it’s worth the Greens trying again here next time.
I actually think Preston will be out of reach for the Greens at the next election. Its not as Greens friendly in Preston as it is in Northcote. Greens and the independent also benefited from there being no incumbent. And probably also the previous member name being in the media headlines for the wrong reasons didn’t help either. If the Labor member works the seat hard there will a lot independent and minor party votes up for grabs that he can convert and build up his primary vote. This election probably was best chance if the Greens or the independent wanted to take Preston. The next election the sophomore surge will also be beneficial for the newly elected Labor member as well.
Agree PN, neighbouring Northcote which also features the same/similar type of demographics as Preston saw only negligible swing against Labor, as it was defended by a fairly popular and hard-working incumbent in Kat Theophanous.
Therefore, if Nathan Lambert as new member works this seat hard then he should be able to retain this seat (albeit narrowly) at the next election
I’m not sure Nathan will actually work this seat hard. He very much fits a mould, being a parachuted in rightwing Labor MP into a (now formerly) safe seat. His own branch didn’t seem to like him at all either.
On the other hand, he probably will be able to boost his primary vote due to incumbency. And Labor might put more resources into the seat now that it’s marginal.
The Greens campaigns in the state seat have never really been much more than visibility campaigns. Doorknocking has been super minimal, for example. If they actually targetted the seat (with time, money, and coverage of specific local issues), I think you’d probably see a pretty substantial swing (in primary, at least).
Gaetano will also certainly run again, barring unforeseen circumstances. His primary seems somewhat volatile though, going from 11.3% in 2014 to 6.9% in 2018, and now 13.7%.
Matthew is Gaetano considered a progressive similar to the Greens? If so, then maybe the Greens should run ‘dead’ or consider not running in this seat to minimize the extent of vote splitting. This is because even with preference recommendations, there will be some leakage (at least 20%, possibly up to 30-40%).
He’s sort of progressive. But he sides with the ALP councillors a lot, and used to be a member. He’s also got multiple investment properties in Northcote (where he lives), so he’s not like, ‘left’ left. But then neither are the Greens (especially not the Victorian Greens). He’s considered much more of a progressive than he actually is in my opinion.
I’m not sure he wouldn’t follow a similar track to what he does on Council if he was elected to State Parliament. He would definitely oppose the Labor government on Preston Market though, that’s abundantly clear.
I find it unlikely the Greens would just concede a potential seat that now appears somewhat atainable though. Though I could definitely see the situation where the party ignores it enough and Gaetano eventually wins it anyway.
Ok, thanks. It appears the preference flow from greens to gaetano is stronger than the reverse because the 2cp margin vs. gaetano was under 1% whilst the margin vs greens was at least 2%
Safe Labor win. Any lower house set win with a margin of 150 or more votes is unlikely to change unless they find a missing bundle or two or votes misallocated or, as has been the case in the past, a polling plachas e included and counted twice.
@Political Nightwatchman, I’m not sure that a Labor government is the barrier to Green or Teal success that you believe it is. One only has to look back at the last federal election where a Labor government went to the polls after one term – that is, in 2010, where the Greens got a massive increase in votes, including their highest Senate vote share to this day. Of course, Gillard was not particularly popular due to the circumstances of how she came to power (which wouldn’t be an issue now if Turnbull and Morrison were anything to go by) and you’d expect the current government to be more popular. I’m also not sure that the Greens and the Teals are fishing in the same waters in terms of target seats. I doubt the Greens would have ever actually knocked off Frydenberg, for example.
Relating this back to Victorian state politics, there will be a lot to play out between now and 2026. Any scandal could erupt and shake the perception of the Government or the Oppposition. It’s also possible that Andrews could retire at some point, which presents its own risk to Labor at the ballot box.