Page – Australia 2019

Labor has a real shot at this seat but will be hurt by the absence of Saffin as candidate – someone I thought had one of the largest personal votes in previous Parliaments.

The Mayor of Lismore deciding to run for the State seat of Lismore rather than Page takes away another good candidate.

Labor can win this, but should preselect soon.

agree with pj….. but then again Harry Woods was seen as no chance….. demographics at the top end are helping labor all the time….

A straight switch between candidatures has just happened with regards to Smith and Saffin. After Sussex Street initiated its 40% weighting in favour of female candidates ruling on to the marginal state seat of Lismore (likely winner of April 22 preselection being Janelle Saffin) there had apparently been deals made to have Smith become involved in the preselection ballot for the federal seat of Page. Smith does have 2 other preselection candidates to contend with in Pat Deegan from Casino and Ballina Shire Council politician Keith Williams before he becomes Labor’s 2019 candidate.

Has Labor pre selected yet ?. Interesting Saffin could make no ground on Hogan except on the back of the Greens, & Animal Justice. Likewise Hogan seems to have benefited from the LIB Democrats. Or did he really ?

Hogan was probably saved by his re distribution, although if Page had been taken over the mountains (as i thought it ought to have been) it would be rock solid now.

Janelle Saffin has been preselected for the State seat of Lismore. I hadn’t realised that she had thrown her hat in the ring.

Not knowing anything about the Nat or Green candidate, I reckon this may put her as the front runner.

https://www.northernstar.com.au/news/janelle-saffin-gets-approval-to-run-for-lismore-se/3394616/

And indeed the Lismore mayor will be preselected for Page.

Two good draws for Labor. Page will be close.

https://www.northernstar.com.au/news/mayors-tilt-at-federal-politics/3389181/

PJ
Thanks. Isaac Smith looks to be a very strong candidate. IMV actually more formidable than Saffin. Page is pretty much always close, although the trend looks as if it is toward Labor. Hogan is supposed to be a worker, so it will be interesting to see if he has built a personal vote

Patrick Deegan has been pre-selected as the Labor candidate for Page.

http://www.northernstar.com.au/news/patrick-deegan-new-alp-for-page/3419302/

Deegan looks like a lovely bloke, Full of optimism, & idealism. His dedication to making a positive difference is impressive.

What is very un-impressive is him raising the subject of penalty rates (reduction). If ever there was a non issue, this has all the massive dimensions of a bee’s dick. OTH it is a large disincentive to small business employment.

All in all he will probably be a formidable opponent for Hogan

A bit of a surprise preselection in Deegan over Smith I’d have thought, but good to see members have their say, so good luck to him.

I went to uni up here many years ago and have a handful of friends still around. They say the local impression of Hogan is that he’s likeable and does the local stuff pretty conscientiously, but is not a policy work or ever likely to be promoted above backbencher.

Pretty much all of the good booths in Page for the Greens are in the City of Lismore, so they’ll probably preselect someone from that end to lay lay the groundwork ahead of the state campaign.

PJ
Actually the Greens have already preselected Casino based candidate Daniel Reid, although he grew up in Lismore.

Curious approach from Labor with their state and federal preselections on the north coast. I’m not sure they’ve ended up with the most strategically wise outcomes.

This was a real shock result in 2016. Most people, including me, assumed this was the most likely Labor gain of the election, and seat-level polling was very strongly in Labor’s favour. I’m not sure why the seat polling here was so much more off the mark than elsewhere. Not getting an adequate geographic spread across the seat in their samples? Not adequately weighting their samples to the age mix of this electorate (one of the highest proportions of over 65s in the country)? Results skewed by responses from people not enrolled, incl university students who might be enrolled elsewhere? I haven’t really got a good answer as to why there seemed to be more unreliability in the polling here.

Labor and Greens both seem to have opted for relatively low profile and seemingly inexperienced candidates, and I think both parties seem more focused on the state seat of Lismore. You’d assume this seat falls to Labor anyway if there’s any reasonable national swing. Absence of Saffin as Labor candidate should also help the Greens do maybe 2% or so better than they otherwise would.

Not sure preselecting Deegan for Page was a smart move for Labor, Isaac Smith would’ve been a far stronger candidate to challenge Hogan.

Personally believe the Nats will hold on here.

Since Kevin Hogan is on the crossbench as a result of the leadership spill yesterday, would that help him retain his seat against a likely backlash against the government?

Kevin Hogan cannot be seen as any thing other than np…. is the cross bench a stunt ? The proof is whether he recontests and does the nat party endorse a candidate against him

Kevin Hogan’s Cross bench move is meaningless as he continues to vote with Coalition. And don’t underestimate Deegan. He won a hotly contested pre selection by working hard across the electorate, visiting all branches several times and making personal contact with many members. Hogan is seen as a nice guy who just cuts ribbons and hands out grants.

I don’t why the pundits are saying this is a National hold, This is a seat that would easily be gobbled by Labor if they are on track for 85-90 seat Majority, This seat would fall easily, His move to the crossbench would likely have Hurt him also the Divisions in the National party at the moment about leadership hurts Marginal National seat holders

It’s was reported in the Australian that the Nationals internal polling suggest they will struggle to retain Page from Labor and withstand Independent Rob Oakshott in Cowper. The polling also suggested NATS leader Michael McCormack has little public profile with the public.

Labor favorites in Page on Sportsbet at $1.55 to Coalition at $2.35.

@PN, Despite that, Barnaby would have done much worse as leader, Because of his wife/sex scandal. Its better to be not known than disliked, This seat should be gained by Labour however i think only narrowly, Last time allot of of predicted an easy Labour gain as polling was consistently showing Janelle ahead here. But the Turnbull factor gave Hogan an upset victory, This time Turnbull is not around so this will be very hard to retain. Infact i think they have a better shot at gaining Herbert (Even though i think Labour will hold that) Than keeping this.

Janelle was very popular…. now will be the state mp for Lismore this will help the alp candidate…….. esp if she is part of a new labour Government

The Sportsbet odds have tightened a little in favour of the Liberal Party to $1.64 Labor and $2.05 Liberal.
It will be interesting to see how the market develops closer to the election day. It will also be interesting to see how accurate the betting market is as a predictor.

I think Labor are going to lose some of the effect of the swing, due to the fact that Janelle Saffin will lose her personal vote in this electorate. With her not running (given her new position), this seat will be a lot tighter than what the polls had originally suggested.

At this point, I’d say a coin-flip

Hawkeye
What will be crucial here is the Green vote. If you combine it with Animal Justice it was a massive increase in 2016. I feel without any evidence that a high water mark was reached.

cannot pick the result here………… very close

Very close seat, Nats may be hampered from having to spend resources defending the safe seat of Calare from the SFF, but the loss of Saffin running also may hurt labor.

Currently I’d predict a narrow ALP gain.

I would expect an increase in green votes in this seat as many Saffin supporters would switch. Her popularity, especially with the green/left voters will have kept them with the ALP but I would expect much of Saffin’s personal vote to swing Green.

probably not sufficient to make a difference though.

This campaign seems a little quieter than usual. A few letterbox items from both Nats and Labor, but only postal vote material came from Nats which is interesting. Hogan also seems to have a lot more TV ads – don’t think I’ve seen any locally-tailored advertising from Labor, which they have done in past years. Nothing from Greens. The independent has some TV ads and shopfront. I don’t think she’s a chance, but will presumably poll somewhere around the same level that the last significant independent polled here in 2001 – ie 5-10%. I don’t know what’s going on here but I’m not getting the impression Labor are doing enough, so either think they have it in the bag or have given up, and I’m not sure which it could be, but I won’t be betting on Labor to win this time. Greens vote may tick up a couple of % relative to whatever their national trend is due to Saffin not being Labor candidate, but it’s not a significant Greens campaign here – the candidate spent the last six months working in Sydney.

Yeah the lack of campaigning here seems interesting, this feels like a key contest in NSW. I remember reading Nats “insiders” saying it was 50/50.

Interesting comments on here and other seats (and a few I noticed in the NSW campaign) around lack of campaign activity. With online and social media advertising able to narrowcast to very specific geographic areas and demographics, a better measure of campaign activity is probably asking locals what they’re seeing on their Facebook feeds, rather than the old fashioned billboards, corflutes etc.

This will be a good one to watch during the count. I’m told that Kevin Hogan has done a lot to buck the (expected) trend against the NSW Nats, but the Green vote and Labor gain of Lismore would be a big concern for him.

All the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen has said the opposite. The Nats are reportedly confident of holding on here. I would agree with that assessment too, especially considering the strength of an incumbent in a rural seat and the fact that Saffin is not running again. Naturally you don’t write off a seat with a ~ 2% margin, but I would be surprised if Labor won here.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be looking to Lismore as evidence of spectacular ALP performance. They barely got over the line when they should have done much better. That was *with* a high profile candidate too.

Well, what I’m seeing on my Facebook feed is ads for Dave Sharma and even one for Tim Murray, which isn’t particularly helpful.

I’m also surprised that Page hasn’t featured more as it is ripe for an ALP pick up given climate change, waters & health issues through out the region. I’d expect the Green vote to increase but will it be enough to help the ALP?

Yappo
The combined Green AJP vote increased more than 30% last election What would push it higher ?

Well I clearly listed 3 issues of which the first consistently polls as a major issue in coastal parts of this electorate. I would expect that the Green vote should increase a few % overall and pushing 20% in Lismore and NE areas. Of course that could be off set by a similar decrease in the ALP vote given candidate change though Saffin is out there campaigning too. However, though Hogan is popular the Nat vote also has the potential to decrease a few % given the general unhappiness in NSW regarding water, cost of living and health issues coupled with the presence of a UAP candidate which will lead to some leakage of prefs.

This could’ve been in play if they ALP had put more resources into it but it still might be closer than we expect.