Rockingham – WA 2021

ALP 23.6%

Incumbent MP
Mark McGowan, since 1996.

Geography
Southern coastal fringe of Perth. Rockingham covers the suburbs of Rockingham, Shoalwater, Safety Bay, Hillman and part of Cooloongup and Waikiki, in the north-western corner of the Rockingham council area.

Redistribution
Rockingham gained part of Waikiki from Baldivis. This increased the Labor margin from 23.4% to 23.6%.

History
The electorate of Rockingham has existed since 1974, and has always been a Labor seat.

Labor’s Mike Barnett won Rockingham in 1974. Barnett served as a shadow minister from 1977 until 1983, and as Speaker from 1986 until 1993. He retired in 1996.

Rockingham was won in 1996 by Labor’s Mark McGowan. McGowan has been re-elected in Rockingham five times. He joined the ministry after the 2005 election, and became Labor leader in 2012.

McGowan led Labor to the 2013 and 2017 elections, winning government in a landslide in 2017.

Candidates

Assessment
Rockingham is a safe Labor seat.

2017 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Mark McGowan Labor 13,576 61.6 +5.2 61.6
Wendy Baumann Liberal 3,965 18.0 -14.5 17.7
James Omalley One Nation 1,915 8.7 +8.7 8.6
James Mumme Greens 1,605 7.3 +1.2 7.2
Craig Buchanan Independent 433 2.0 +2.0 2.4
Sylvia Stonehouse Australian Christians 413 1.9 -0.2 1.9
Mark Charles Micro Business 147 0.7 +0.7 0.7
Informal 998 4.3

2017 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Mark McGowan Labor 16,174 73.4 +10.2 73.6
Wendy Baumann Liberal 5,869 26.6 -10.2 26.4

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into three parts: central, east and south.

Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 72.3% in the south to 78.7% in the east.

Voter group ALP 2PP % Total votes % of votes
South 72.3 5,793 25.5
Central 76.1 4,181 18.4
East 78.7 2,500 11.0
Pre-poll 71.9 6,051 26.6
Other votes 70.6 4,185 18.4

Two-party-preferred votes in Rockingham at the 2017 WA state election

14 COMMENTS

  1. Could it be possible that we see a booth here (namely the Bungaree booth) breach a TPP of >90%?

    If McGowan’s unprecedented popularity sticks anywhere surely it will be in his own seat.

  2. Third safest seat in the state after the 2017 election, and I think it will be the safest seat after this election.

    I think McGowan will get 70%+ of the first preference vote. It will probably be a race between one of the polling booths here or in Collie as to which one has the highest 2PP vote in this election.

  3. The margin here will be one for the record books. I wonder if McGowan can join the >80% 2PP club (a very rare result from my search).

  4. If the Libs dip that low then I could very well see a possibility of this being an ALP vs GRN contest but Mcgowan still easily wins possibly 80+ TPP

    You have to remember however uniform swings don’t tend to translate in safe seats because considering this is already a very safe seat a 10% swing statewide to the Libs is unlikely to translate to a 10% swing here.

    100% is the maximum possible percentage of votes and it’s like how Washington DC in the US doesn’t swing wildly. It is because it is solidly safe and a double digit swing towards the Democrats countrywide would mean getting over 100% of the vote which isn’t possible.

    So for that reason I believe the swings won’t be as big in the ALP safe seats than the marginal seats and the coalition held seats

  6. Daniel

    I recall at the Victorian State election in 2018 that the ABC momentarily projected Thomastown to have a 104% Labor margin when the best booth for the Liberals had a sizeable swing to Labor. The final result was 77% to Labor.

    Perhaps we’ll see something similar here.

  8. This will be an easy hold for Labor but getting rid of McGowan as leader is electoral suicide, they will still win the next state election but not by a landslide. Labor could drop about 20 seats so a smaller majority.

    If McGowan had stayed on, Labor would have had a shot of winning between 40-45 seats, and could hold some of the seats they won off the Libs in 2021 such as Hillarys, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Riverton, South Perth, Bateman, etc.

    They could still hold Hillarys considering it’s on almost a 20% margin and it’s safer than half a dozen seats that Labor won in 2017, but now that McGowan has quit it’s not so a sure thing anymore.

    It was always a certainty that Labor would lose Churchlands, Nedlands, Carine and Scarsbourugh regardless of what happens. Those 4 seats should be easy Liberal gains but the other seats I mentioned before could be tight races but the Libs will win some of them. But with McGowan resigning, Labor could lose more than that, and lose seats like Bicton, Kingsley, Joondalup, Albany, Kootamundra, etc, seats I think they could hold if Mark McGowan had stayed on.

    McGowan will regret this.

    Mettam must never be premier of the state, she would be dangerous.

  11. @Daniel T

    I’m guessing you meant Kalamunda when you said Kootamundra? If so, that’s definitely the sort of seat the Liberals will want to regain in 2025.

  12. Seems Rockingham is a Safe Labor seat as it is working class Anglo area with many British Immigrants similar to Noarlunga in Adelaide and Frankston in Melbourne

  13. Rockingham is a safe blue collar Labor seat but nowhere near as safe as a 88-12 margin at the last election would suggest. Historically Labor would be getting a vote of 65-35 here in an election where it won government by a small margin. Assuming the Libs bother to stand a candidate they’ll be doing well to keep it to 70-30 at the by-election. The National and Liberal parties are near invisible atm in WA the Liberals in particular look moribund.

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