Pearce – Australia 2013

LIB 8.9%

Incumbent MP
Judi Moylan, since 1993.

Geography
Regional areas to the north and east of Perth. Pearce covers the entirety of Beverley, Northam, Toodyay, York, Chittering and Gingin council areas, and parts of Swan, Wanneroo, Kalamunda and Mundaring councils.

History
Pearce was created for the 1990 election, and in its short history it has always been held by the Liberal Party.

Pearce was first won in 1990 by Fred Chaney. Chaney had been a Liberal Senator since 1974, and had served as Leader of the Opposition in the Senate from 1984 until he left the Senate to take a seat in the House of Representatives. Chaney had also served as a minister in the Fraser government from 1978 to 1983. Chaney retired from Pearce in 1993.

Pearce was won in 1993 by Liberal candidate Judi Moylan. Moylan served as a junior minister in the first term of the Howard government, but has served as a backbencher ever since. In the last term of the Howard government she was part of a group of Liberal MPs who rebelled against the Howard government’s refugee policies.

Candidates
Sitting Liberal MP Judi Moylan is not running for re-election.

Assessment
Pearce is a safe Liberal seat, and should be easily won by Christian Porter.

2010 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Judi Moylan LIB 39,248 49.91 -0.52
Bill Leadbetter ALP 23,214 29.52 -3.63
Toni Warden GRN 10,414 13.24 +4.32
Darren Moir NAT 1,999 2.54 +2.54
Janet Broadstock CDP 1,691 2.15 +0.18
Ian Rose FF 1,619 2.06 +0.60
Chris Pepper CEC 456 0.58 +0.28

2010 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Judi Moylan LIB 46,292 58.86 +1.17
Bill Leadbetter ALP 32,349 41.14 -1.17
Polling places in Pearce at the 2010 federal election. East in yellow, North in blue, South in red, Swan in green, Wanneroo in pink. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Pearce at the 2010 federal election. East in yellow, North in blue, South in red, Swan in green, Wanneroo in pink. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into five areas. Polling places in Swan and Wanneroo council areas on the outskirts of Perth have been grouped into two areas. The remaining polling places have been divided into North, East and South.

The Liberal Party won a majority in all five areas, varying from 54.3% in Wanneroo to 67.6% in the north. The Greens vote varied from 9.6% in the north to 16.4% in the south.

Voter group GRN % LIB 2PP % Total votes % of votes
Swan 11.48 58.98 18,289 23.26
South 16.40 56.79 17,308 22.01
Wanneroo 13.19 54.30 10,557 13.42
East 10.37 63.89 8,612 10.95
North 9.60 67.57 3,790 4.82
Other votes 14.08 59.15 20,085 25.54
Two-party-preferred votes in Pearce at the 2010 federal election.
Two-party-preferred votes in Pearce at the 2010 federal election.
Greens primary votes in Pearce at the 2010 federal election.
Greens primary votes in Pearce at the 2010 federal election.
Two-party-preferred votes in the Mundaring and Swan areas at the 2010 federal election.
Two-party-preferred votes in the Mundaring and Swan areas at the 2010 federal election.
Greens primary votes in the Mundaring and Swan areas at the 2010 federal election.
Greens primary votes in the Mundaring and Swan areas at the 2010 federal election.
Two-party-preferred votes in the area around Butler at the 2010 federal election.
Two-party-preferred votes in the area around Butler at the 2010 federal election.
Greens primary votes in the area around Butler at the 2010 federal election.
Greens primary votes in the area around Butler at the 2010 federal election.

7 COMMENTS

  1. You bewdy – ye olde home towne! (York, which actually does do the olde englishe typeface more than it shoulde, and now keeps itself from dying out by tourisme and hobby farms. Being the oldest inland towne in WA is its only main asset.)

    Pearce is a very weirdly laid out seat. I lived 15 of the first 17 years of my life in either York or Northam, but the nearest I’ve ever been to the shire of Gingin is seeing the video to “Wide Open Road” by the Triffids. Until a couple of years ago, the road to Lancelin stopped in that town, and the only reason to drive anywhere past the edge of suburban Perth was if one of those towns was your destination. I also always found it weird that the local MP whose calendar was on our fridge was in Midland. (Wheatbelt folk often drive down to Midland for their city shopping, as it’s the junction of the Great Eastern and Great Northern Hwys, which partly explains that.) And the outer northern suburbs are a different place again. Clarkson is not Gingin is not Midland is not York.

    Prediction: less of a swing to the Libs than the state average, maybe even a small swing to Labor. Porter’s not a fluffy, harmless wet-liberal like Moylan was (I imagine she got a few extra preferences from hippies in the hills), and surely the Nats are gonna do a bit better than 2.5% this time. Labor come a distant third in state elections in the parts of this seat in Central Wheatbelt or Moore.

  3. Heh, he’s back. Three One Nation MLC’s were elected in 2001 (one for each non-Perth upper house region), and by 2005 they’d all quit the party, like almost all One Nation MP’s anywhere. Hough and one of the others formed something called the New Country Party, and tried to hold onto their seats under that banner. About the most polite way to describe their results is at least they did better than the CEC.

  4. This is a nice quiet thread. Apparently it’s been pretty quiet in my mum’s letterbox too. Something from Porter, and something from state Lib MLC Brian Ellis for some reason – nothing like the barrage of Liberal junk mail I’ve been getting lately. She rang up looking for advice on how to vote, and I think I’ve convinced her not to vote for Porter, the ex-One Nation PUP candidate, or the lunatic Rise Up Australia. I wish I could be more enthusiastic about saying “vote Labor!”… I did that last time, and assuming she followed that advice, her vote helped elect a Shooter instead of Max Trenorden. Oops. One day I’ll sit down with her in front of a computer and try to explain how the senate voting system works.

  5. Well, this is interesting. Labor played the old “run an 18 yr old uni student who grew up here” trick, and still got the only 2pp swing to them in WA. (Compare to Moore, the other safe Lib seat losing a sitting member, which swung 1.1% to the Libs.) Pearce is now 1.5% better for Labor than Stirling and 3.3% better than Canning, which were both held by Labor for some of the Howard years. Christian Porter doesn’t seem to have brought much of a personal vote with him.

  7. Also, as you pointed out yourself earlier in this thread BoP, Porter and Moylan are quite different, and Porter is more conservative.

    Maybe some people didn’t like the way he was parachuted in from the Tangney area?

Comments are closed.