Wentworth by-election, 2018

Turnbull wanted to be pm.

Still believe IND Gain, Theres no way a Conservative wins in a socially progressive seat, Allot of voters are frustrated about whats going on at the moment in Canberra, But they also don’t think the Labor party is the solution, As long as Labor and the Greens Prefernce Phelps she could narrowly be pushed over the line,

If Phelps wins, will she support any no-confidence notion against the Morrison Government? Has she said anything on the subject (or who’d she back in a hung Parliament after the next election?)

Phelpd has said she’d guarantee supply.

It wouldn’t make sense for Phelps to sink the government before the May election, it would only hurt get chances of being re-elected into the 2019-2022 parliament where she might have time to get something done in.

This will be a squeaker, Phelps is a good candidate and has a lot going for her in the way of ALP/GRN preferences and the progressive nature of this seat, but i’m not convinced she will win it, although I wouldn’t be shocked.

I’ll slightly lower my prediction to LIB 51% IND 49%, give or take 2% each way, It’s probably also too far off to say how this seat will vote next election.

Not sure I agree with the Ractel poll having the Greens polling at 12.6%, I kind of feel the Liberals will poll somewhere in the 30%, I can see Kerryn Phelps reaching that poll’s 22.5%, and the ALP may well maintain their 17% as I suspect that is the core ALP vote just as the Liberal core vote is in the 30%-40% range, so while I am questing I can see the Greens coming in closer to 7% to 8% which in such a crowded field is actually a good result but I just feel they will be squeezed by the number of candidates particularly running on progressive platforms.

There has been suggestions in the guardian Phelps preferncing the Liberals may have backfired by alienating her support base. Phelps may not even overtake Labor in the primary vote it’s been reported. Polling has been done by political aligned independent canidate though.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/04/wentworth-byelection-liberal-vote-collapses-as-poll-shows-safe-seat-now-a-close-contest

As long as Labor gets at least 80% of preferences off all the other parties they could scrape this, But whoever wins is likely to be a 1 termer, especially if Labor wins, The Liberal Party will pick a very strong candidate and by elections tend to be wonky compared to federal margins, If Sharma wins he could get a very strong independant challenge, Next election. Plus there is no way Sharma would be ever on the ministry or ever be Prime minister, Hes just another Abbott/Dutton Puppet that embraces their policies

Approx 60/40 split lib vs. Non liberal…..this if accurate and it is a big if….as seat polls tend to have big margins of error. That should lead to a non liberal winner.. but who knows. This seat pre 1949 and post 1994? Has had similar boundaries but never alp won….although close on a couple of occasions…….Looking at the results in the turnpike era there is at least 12% which was added to the liberal 2pp which means the margin minus Turnbull is 5 to 7 %……..the libs should be favourites .but would be much closer than the 17% margin

The Libs are not favourites with Sharma as Nominee, He will turn off Moderates and Progressives in the electorate

Website J-Wire has advised that there will be a candidates forum in Wentworth however only 3 candidates have been invited they being the Lab, Lib and an Independent. The forum organisors have repeated dont this in Melbourne Ports as well. Weird stuff but the forum in Melbourne Ports was really only put on to promote outgoing MHR Michael Danby, I my opinion. I live in Melbourne Ports (soon to be renamed Macnamara for the next election).

Adrian
Candidate Forums have to some extent become less than non partisan. Most are organised with views more conservative or more extreme left than either of major parties and often more extreme than all of the parties standing. Green and Left wing ALP often refuse to attend ACL forums. Half of the candidates at the recent Longman by election were not represented at the Catholic Parents and Friends rForum a few even failed to give the organisers of them the courtesy of a reply.

The forums have become less lively with questions submitted in writing and only a few questions asked.
Organisers of forums need to remember that any good candidate will be buggered in the last few weeks of campaign.
May I suggest that forums should be before the issuing of the writs. This will seperate the prepared from the in prepared and that local newspapers should organise them. Candidates who do not turn up should be rejected by electorate.
There are far too many minor party candidates who are not real candidates but merely names on a bit of paper. ALP had a candidate a few years ago who had never visited electorate.
Some of questions need to be knowledge based rather than just opinion based. Eg What is the current revenue received from income tact. What is unemployment rate in xxxx? Gown much does a person on New Start receive.
The question put to the then .PM about GST on a cake have us a far
More informative answer than most of the inane questions posed by supposed journalists.

Also most candidate forums are usually attended mostly by supporters of the various candidates. The general public ignore them or do not know that they are on. With local newspaper now mostly junk mail there is little editorial reporting of forums unless it in a niche newspaper like the AJN or on a online websites like J-Wire were this forum was advertised this week.

50-50 Lib Vs Lab according to latest poll, But if Phelps comes 2nd, she will win, I believe she will win, there is no was Sharma wins this. Many voters are upset with the departure with turnbull as well as picking an out of touch candidate that has never lived in the electorate. If Phelps was the Liberal nominee she would have blown labor away here. it just shows that it all comes down to the candidate, Especially in By-Elections

Labor has been supplying Phelps’ campaign manager and the CFMEU is backing her with the money she needs with Tim giving her his preferences. Now Alex has shown what the Turnbulls are really like and Malcolm went against ScoMo to support a man when polling said they would win with a woman, it seems he wants this seat to be lost and the government to be brought down with an early election to bring in Bill (CFMEU) Shorten to punish those who would not hand over our sovereignty to the UN through the Paris agreement being made law through the NRG agenda.
It will be close, but Sharma is an even better candidate than Turnbull and the Greens preferences will favor Tim and put him ahead of Phelps. Then preferences from Phelps will put Sharma in and he will hold this seat for many years to come and one day he may be the next PM to represent this seat.

What a big joke, He will never be the PM, Nor a Minister, Sharma is not a better candidate than Turnbull, he is more conservative than Turnbull. This is one of the most socially progressive areas in eastern Sydney. Its Highly unlikely even if he was to win that he will hold this until he retires, Demographic changes and the fact that this area is trending more Progressive will help Labor rather than hinder them, This might become a Battleground in a decade or 2, But i expect that Phelps will win this by less than a PP

Just saw on Sports bet that the odds are $1.88 for Sharma and $1.92 for Phelps. That is about as line ball as it gets…..

Libs must be feeling the pinch at this point.

The seat can be as progressive as it likes but I seriously doubt it will ever be an ALP seat expect at the odd election or more likely the AEC redistributes it into one, but seats like Wentworth have always been progressive liberal minded but that has never resulted it becoming an ALP seat. There is about as much chance of the ALP winning and holding Wentworth as the Liberals have in Batman.

Agreed, the profile of Wentworth is pretty much the same as the Melbourne seats of Kooyong and to a lesser extent Higgins (small pockets of Higgins are way more left-leaning than anywhere in Wentworth). Progressive and liberal minded but firmly rusted onto the Liberals.

If by some miracle the ALP won this byelection, it’s almost guaranteed they’d lose it in the general election.

Yes, agree with Trent. An ALP win here would be no more secure than, say, holding Ryan after the ALP won the 2001 by-election there. By the federal election at the end of 2001, the Liberals regained Ryan comfortably.

wow Peter most of what you have written is wrong…do you work at Sky news

Kooyong is more akin to North Sydney (established rich and suburban). I would think of Wentworth as more progressive than Higgins. Though Wentworth’s harbour suburbs are firm Liberal territory, and are more like Toorak and Malvern, inner-city Paddington is very similar to South Yarra/Prahran, whilst some of the demographics in the Waverly area would not be out of place in the Inner West (i.e. Balmain), or bayside Macnamara (though Bondi has gentrified substantially more than St Kilda).

Hence makes Wentworth quite an odd electorate quite distinct from the traditional North Shore Liberal heartland.

Phelps ahead on Sportsbet! 1.75 to Sharma’s 2.00, If the betting/polls turn out to be true this would be a disastrous result for the Liberals, Phelps will likely remain here until she retires or does something stupid, Or they Hypothetically bring back Malcolm

There are three factors that we need to remember –

1. How far will the liberal primary vote fall? If it hits below 40, they are certainly in trouble.
2. Can Phelps get into 2nd place and collect preferences from Labor? If she can, then if her Primary vote is within 5-10 of Sharma she will be a shoe-in.
3. Will people follow the how to vote cards? Wentworth voters are a pretty savvy lot and it will be interesting to see where a lot of minor party preferences go.

It’s possible that Dave Sharma could still win this seat on a very low primary vote, as long as he comes first and Greens preferences put Tim Murray(Labor) ahead of Phelps. Then Phelps preferences will go to the liberals… assuming people follow the how to vote cards. Which makes this a pretty interesting race.

Heath has also not issued a HTV card, so lord knows where her voters will end up.

On preferences, Turnbull only picked up about 4% off preferences at the last election so for mine Sharma has to break into the 40% to be a chance unless Phelps doesn’t make the final two but even there he will still want over 40% or this will be a bad result for the Liberals regardless of whether they hold it or not.

out of left field is it possible that Sharma’s preferences are distributed to chose between Murray and Phelps… how will the fake email about Phelps withdrawing and Pauline Hanson’s endorsement of Sharma effect the result?

Turnouts in by elections are usually much lower than general elections. The turnout is a potential wild card. It would seem that the Libs would gain from a lower turnout – a more ‘settled’ demographic. Can’t recall if it was discussed but something similar may have helped the ALP in Batman.

Peter, & Daniel
You are both getting way, way ahead of yourselves. ANY MP needs to first be a successful minister, before being considered for PM.

Irrespective of who win and looses on Saturday it will all have happen again in less than 6 months time in the general election.

Is Wentworth a case where strategic voting would work for the Liberals?

If a small amount of Lib voters vote Labor they potentially stop Phelps from getting into second place and harvesting Labor preferences?

A number of Independent women candidates, plus the Greens man, were on the ABC TV panel show “The Drum” on yeterday (Thursday afternoon) and they all spoke well and were more down to earth (to use that over uses phrase) and spoke of things they say voters are more interested in, like freeing the refugees and climate change. In affluent electorates the day to day cost of living and utility prices were not a real issue. We should not rule out some of these excellent women as the winner in addition to the more publicised Dr Phelps.

The PM’s Harbour Bridge climb with Prince Harry today (Friday) and the Kirribilly House visit could be his last official engagements before the likely hung parliament comes into force.

We know the ALP wont win but ALP voters are more likely to 2nd preference Dr Phelps or another strong independent who may win.

Andrew this has been discussed on pollbludger too…. the danger of doing this is that can backfire and cause Shamra to go into third place and his preferences are the one’s distributed…. also there are logistical problems doing that as I think all htv need to be registered with the aec

Andrew ‘s comment about strategic voting is interesting but this only works to stop either Phelps or ALP winning NOT both of them. Clearly Libs would refer Phelps to ALP but they want to win. HTV do not need to be registered federally. So there is nothing to stop HT V being reprinted at 1030 today to take account of voter behaviour or issuing different HTV for different booths.
I would like to see ALP, Phelps, Greens and Liberals all defeated. What a choice?

Mick Quinlivan and Andrew Jackson,

I want the Liberals to lose, so I’ll preface all my remarks with that.

If Phelps massively outpolls ALP it is irrelevant.
If ALP massively outpolls Phelps it is irrelevant.
If the preference flows between both ALP and Phelps are very strong it is irrelevant.

But a voter who prefers Phelps to Liberals should probably consider putting her higher than the ALP. That’s a fair consideration.

Also, I imagine there is some ultra small sweet spot of a couple hundred votes where a Liberal voter might consider putting the ALP 1 just to hope they beat Phelps by those couple hundred votes. An ok strategy if you and your ten mates do it, bloody terrible if you and another 4000 people think its a good idea.

thanks Andrew… would be a limit on lib tactical voting… is 1 alp 2 lib in the hope you get labor into 2nd place… 4000 is in excess of 5% of the formal vote… would be hard to organise by word of mouth….. and for the libs to put out 2 htv… would be very confusing

Kerryn Phelps is in it for herself and no one else. She must be tired of following the rules of the AMA. We are doomed no matter who wins this race today. The revolving PM’s office door just keeps turning. With a new face each time it stops. No matter who wins today the status quo still remains.

Anthony Green on ABC TV just now has called the vote a Phelps victory.

As usual, the liberals have made a really bad decision to nominate dave sharma AGAIN for this sear. He will not win, Phelps will beat him again by a wider margin than she did last time. She will prove to be a popular local mp. And since the coalition is toxic atm, the victoria election proved that, She should win because of the Labor tide, Im not sure whos betting on sportsbet but whoever is, i have to ask what your on, Because he has no chance of winning here, IND retain, Christine forester would have been better off here,