Paterson – Australia 2022

@NP agreed easy liberal gain.

@mick it will fall to the liberals in 2025

On paper this should be one of the easiest seats for the Libs to pick up. But I did notice the Hunter Valley votes >10% more Labor on a state level compared to federal results. If you adjust for the different TPP results, state and fed results are usually pretty similar, so the Hunter Valley massively stands out for the big difference. I do wonder if the Labor margin here might be at a bit of a low point.

This is one of the few seats where Labor is doing worse than 2004 (once you adjust for redistributions). Their primary vote is still over 40% here so they do at least have a lot to work with. I guess right now I’ll predict a surprise Labor win.

Further on my point above, it’s interesting that the Hunter Region seems to be broadly swinging against Labor federally but the exact opposite on a state level. Of the 9 seats in the Hunter Region on a state level: Upper Hunter, Cessnock, Lake Macquarie, Swansea, Charlestown, Newcastle, Wallsend, Maitland and Port Stephens, only Swansea and Lake Macquarie did worse in 2023 than at any election from 1999-2007. 7/9 are sitting on higher margins than they ever had during the Carr/Iemma years.

This is different to a lot of the other coal mining areas like Calare and Bathurst, Gippsland and Morwell and Narracan, and the QLD coal seats on a state and fed level, that are swinging against Labor on both a state and fed level. So I don’t think the Hunter Region is as done with Labor as the other regions.

@Drake at the last state election the Liberals endorsed a last-minute candidate for Port Stephens when One Nation had already announced their candidate and since NSW has OPV and conservative voters tend to exhaust their preferences the vote was split between the Liberals and One Nation.

There was no real campaign in Port Stephens despite it being a target seat because the candidate endorsement was rushed. This happened in some other seats too. Kiama comes to mind where Gareth Ward was re-elected as an independent (after he was expelled from the Liberal Party over pending criminal charges) and the Liberals endorsed Melanie Gibbons who was meant to be the retiring member for Holsworthy (Tina Ayyad was elected in Holsworthy, narrowly retaining the seat for the Liberals).

Similarly, in Cessnock (an unwinnable seat), the Nationals candidate was disendorsed over racist, xenophobic and homophobic comments he previously made on social media and in that seat the Nationals actually finished fourth, which was a surprise even though they were expected to finish third anyway (Labor easily won, One Nation was second (as expected) and Legalise Cannabis (quite shockingly) came third). Then in Wyong (which is a winnable seat when the time is right), the Liberals disendorsed their candidate Matt Squires was also endorsed for racist and homophobic comments on social media.

The NSW Coalition should start endorsing some candidates by the end of the year and all candidates should be endorsed by the end of 2026 (the next state election is in 2027). That way there won’t be the same fiasco there was last time.

@Drake in 2019 that wasn’t the case. For example Newcastle was won by Labor with a TPP vote of 67.7% while in 2007 it was 67.8% (and yes I’m talking about the state seat not the federal seat).

Even if you compare 2007 vs 2019 (an election where Labor did 4.3% worse)

You get
Lake Macquarie (7.6% worse in 2019, independent running now though)
Swansea (.2% worse in 2019)
Charlestown (2.2% worse in 2019)
Newcastle (.1% worse in 2019)

The other 5 seats: Upper Hunter, Cessnock, Wallsend, Maitland and Port Stephens, Labor did better in 2019 than 2007 despite doing 4.3% worse in NSW that election. Obviously some had different boundaries, and candidate factors, but this wasn’t just a 2023 thing.

I would say it has something to do with the members’ personal votes. If the Liberals were to win any seat in Newcastle it would be Swansea unless Greg Piper retired in Lake Macquarie, yet despite this the Liberals only got 52% TPP in Swansea back in 2011, yet in Charlestown they got 9.9%, which meant that more campaigning and less scandals could’ve saved the Liberals in Charlestown.

I think the Liberals could (in the future) win Maitland back. I think they could’ve won it in 2015 if Robyn Parker didn’t retire and/or the Liberal campaign there was bigger.

Even if you compare Upper Hunter (which does have a Nat incumbent) with the booths within Hunter (no Labor incumbent and no Nat incumbent) Labor is still doing better on a state level. They easily won the Singleton booths in Upper Hunter but lost them in the seat of Hunter. Very curious in just how much better Labor does on a state level vs fed.

Either federally the Hunter Region will start reverting back to normal, or on a state level Labor will start to see massive swings against them here.

@Drake the reason Labor does better there at state level is because there is little difference between NSW Labor and the NSW Liberals on climate policy, as opposed to at the federal level.

@Scart I agree. The NSW Coalition and NSW Labor have the same climate policies so these voters go to Labor economic and business issues whereas on the federal level Labor is a lot more progressive on environmental issues than the Coalition.

But this doesn’t really help really urbanised seats like Newcastle. Labor does roughly the same in Newcastle as it does in Charlestown, Newcastle and Wallsend combined. Paterson and Shortland are where the difference is.

Lake Macquarie is also uncompetitive because of Greg Piper. The Liberals usually do well in some suburbs there like Catherine Hill Bay, Coal Point, Valentine and even Warners Bay. They are also usually quite competitive in Port Stephens which is a typical marginal seat.

@Drake you’re also wrong about Singleton:

Labor TPP in Singleton (NSW 2023):
* Singleton EVC: 55.64%
* Singleton Heights Public: 61.23%
* Singleton High: 61.50%
* Singleton Public: 49.15%

So one of those booths is a Nationals booth. The biggest booth was the EVC which Labor narrowly won.

Labor TPP in Singleton (federal 2022):
* Singleton Heights Public: 54.57%
* Singleton High: 48.74%
* Singleton PPVC: 46.30%
* Singleton Public: 43.20%

So only one of those booths is a Labor booth.

Singleton is a coal-mining town like Muswellbrook. Singleton Heights is basically a big suburb of Singleton.

Scart is 100% correct. The main divide between Labor and Liberal in NSW is not social policy and rightly or wrongly it seems that NSW State Libs have made the calculation not to risk their affluent heartland in the North Shore, Northern Beaches and Vaucluse to potentially win Labor heartland seats rather they focus on Service delivery etc.

The reason for the state vs federal difference is comprised a multiple of factors poor candidate choices late candidate choices conservative vote splitting due to opvand nsw social policy being no different to labor. Compared to federal liberals who have made it clear they support mining and the coal industry vs labor who want to close it down. Albo recently approved 3 coal mines here in Hunter valley I suspect to avoid any backlash like the decision to cancel a gold mine in calare which is not in contest here it would be political death to oppose those kind of projects. The hunter region should swing closer to the coalition in 2025. Seats like Paterson hunter and short land will be in the coalitions sights. Off shore wind is also a major issue that will hurt labor here.

@ NP
Paterson contains
1. 100% of Maitland
2. 82% of Port Stephens
3. 25% of Cessnock
4. 6% of Walsend
5. 6% of Newcastle

i will post the booths late tonight

Booths
1. Aberglassyn
2. Abermain
3. Anna Bay
4. Ashtonfield
5. Beresfield
6. Chisholm
8. Corlette
9. East Maitland
10. Fern Bay
11. Gilleston Heights
12. Kurri Kurri
13. Lemon Tree Pssage
14. Lochinvar

15. Medowie
16. Maitland
17. Metford
18, Millers Forest
19.Morpeth
20. Nelson Bay
21. Pelaw Main
22. Raymond Terrace
23. Rutherford
24. Salamander Bay
25. Shoal Bay
26. Somerset
27. Tanilba Bay
28. Tarro
29. Telerah
30,. Tenambit
31. Thornton
32. Weston
33. Wirrenda Medowie
34. Woodberry

u mean maitland or maitland lga cuase not all maitland lga is in paterson

John, I think Nimalan is referring to which % of state electoral districts fall into the relevant federal seat. I.e the state seat of Maitland is wholly contained within the boundaries of Paterson federal district.

@Nimalan thanks, will calculate now.

State level TPP here (2023):

* Labor: 69.2%
* Liberal/National: 30.8%

Labor did 15.9% better here on the state level in 2023 than on the federal level in 2024.

Note that the Nationals contested Cessnock and the Liberals contested the other seats.

Due to the Cessnock and Port Stephens candidate issues, I’ll calculate 2019 results too.

@ NP
Much appreciated. Can you do an adjusted figure taking into difference the statewide results NSW Labor did better than Federal Labor as well.

@Nimalan I’m not sure what you mean by that.

@ NP
NSW State Labor got 54.26% Statewide in NSW in March 2023. Therefore, Paterson would have voted 14.94% more Labor than the state as a whole. Federal Labor got 51.42% of the TPP so the difference between what Federal Labor got in Paterson in May 2022 and the statewide figure is the Adjusted result.

Here’s something slightly different: the difference between Labor’s 2pp vote in the current Paterson (notional up to 2013) and NSW as a whole. (A bit like the Cook PVI in the US, except I’m comparing the state instead of the whole country.)

2004: 7.0
2007: 6.3
2010: 7.9
2013: 4.7
2016: 11.2
2019: 6.8
2022: 1.9

Average is about 7%. Dipped a bit in 2013 (Abbott landslide), went way up in 2016 (retirement of Baldwin, Labor actually treating the seat as winnable), back to average in 2019, then the bottom fell out in 2022. Clearly something went wrong here for federal Labor. NSW swung 3.2% to Labor, while Paterson went 1.7% the other way – that’s nothing to to do with state results.

State level TPP here (2019):

* Labor: 60.6%
* Liberal: 39.4%

Labor did 5.6% better on the state level in 2019 than on the federal level in 2019, but 0.1% worse on the state level in 2019 than on the federal level in 2016.

There was a swing of +8.6% to Labor in Paterson at the 2023 state election, but a –1.7% swing against Labor at the 2022 federal election. Candidate issues played a large part in the large swing in 2023. While it’s unknown why Paterson swung to the Liberals in 2022 (especially since the One Nation vote dropped, though it mostly went to the Liberals), the federal Coalition government’s support of the upgrades to Newcastle Airport (including the construction of an international terminal, which is currently in progress), which is located in Williamtown, could be one reason why.

@Bird of Paradox Paterson also became a notional Labor seat in 2016 because it became entirely based in the Greater Newcastle-Maitland urban area (based in Maitland, Port Stephens and Kurri Kurri). Before that it included coastal and rural towns on the southern part of the Mid North Coast such as the twin towns of Forster-Tuncurry. That’s why it changed so much in 2016.

@ Nether Portal
What Bird of Paradox stated is what i am looking at something like the Cook PVI. I think the swing to Libs in 2022 in Paterson would be partly because Liberals campaigned here Scomo visted the seat. Hunter and Shortland did swing to Labor in 2022 but less than the statewide swing. In 2022, in NSW the biggest swings to Labor notionally occurred in Tealish seat and seats with a high Chinese Australian population, some seats that Labor already held like Macquarie and Eden Monaro had big swings to Labor as well so even if Paterson did end up swinging to Labor it would probably have still been less than the statewide average.

NP: yes, hence me using the redistribution-adjusted figures (booths that were in Hunter or Newcastle before 2016). In the graph in the main article, the continuous green/red line, rather than the discontinuous red line. It’s always above the blue line (NSW as a whole), but moves much closer in 2022.

Labor managed to get a 10% swing in 2016 on top of the 10% the redistribution had already given them – there were two different things going on that year. Even taking the redistribution into account, 2016 was a notably good year for Labor here, and 2022 was a notably bad one.

@Bird of Paradox @Nimalan ah makes sense.

It would be interesting to see the Cook PVI expand to Australia (including its predictions) despite having a different voting system to the US.

Cook PVI for states and territories (2022, using TPP for the House):

* Australia: Labor ±0.0% (52.1%)
* NSW: Labor –0.7% (51.4%)
* Victoria: Labor +2.7% (54.8%)
* Queensland: LNP +6.2% (54.1%)
* WA: Labor +2.9% (55.0%)
* SA: Labor +1.9% (54.0%)
* Tasmania: Labor +2.2% (54.3%)
* ACT: Labor +14.9% (67.0%)
* NT: Labor +3.4% (55.5%)

Cook PVI for states and territories (2019, using primary votes in the Senate):

* Australia: Coalition ±0.0% (34.2%)
* NSW: Coalition +2.5% (36.7%)
* Victoria: Coalition –1.9% (32.3%)
* Queensland: LNP +1.0%
* WA: Labor +4.5% (34.6%)
* SA: Liberal –0.3% (33.9%)
* Tasmania: Liberal –2.2% (32.0%)
* ACT: Labor +3.3% (33.4%)
* NT: Labor +2.9% (33.0%)

Thanks Nether Portal
So using Cook PVI in 2019 on State results NSW Labor got 48% at the state election (Daley vs Gladys) so Paterson would have voted +12.6 Labor but BOP has determined on Federal results that is +6.8 Labor so we see a gap even in 2019. For QLD the difference between Federal Labor in May 2022 and State Labor in October 2022 was only 0.2% so i did not ask for a Cook PVI (Plus both use CPV). However, when comparing State and Federal results in NSW will be good to have a Cook PVI including Shortland, Hunter (when calculated).

Paterson is a certain liberal gain at the upcoming election

@Darth Vader not “certain”. Likely yes due to COL but not definitely certain. The election will be close so no seat is a certain gain.

My predictions for gains are:

* Coalition gains: Bennelong (notional hold), Bullwinkel, Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons, Paterson, Tangney
* Coalition “gains”: Calare, Monash
* Labor gains: Brisbane
* Greens gains: Wills
* Uncertain: Aston, Blair, Curtin, Deakin, Kooyong, McEwen, Menzies, Sturt
* Goes with government: Robertson

And of course:
* Government: Labor minority
* Confidence and supply: Greens, teals
* Opposition: Coalition
* Other crossbench: KAP, CA, Dai Le

Parramatta could also be an uncertain seat but I don’t think Dutton will campaign much there unfortunately despite it clearly being a target seat (so is Greenway but that’s too far out of reach for now).

my predictions are as before but i agree with Lord Vader that Paterson is a certain gain

Coalition gains: i agree with all your predictions Bennelong, Bullwinkel Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons, Paterson and Tangey. But il throw in Curtin, Aston and Robertson.

Labor gains il say Brisbane too atm.

Greens wont win Wills now in my opinion but they could win Richmond.

Uncertain. Blair (likely Labor hold but theyll lose it in 2028), Kooyong, McEwen (though im leaning towards a liberal gain more then labor retain), Sturt, Boothby, Goldstein, Chisholm, Dunkley, Parramatta, Hunter, Richmond, Ryan.

im saying Liberals should hold Menzies and Deakin mainly because if they couldnt win them in 2022 when Labor was at a highpoint federally and state they wont win now that the shine has come off and the Liberals are making up ground in Victoria.

Parramatta could swing in my opinion so I wouldnt write that off. Greenway id say more like a 2028 target. there are a bunch of other seats the libs could be competitive enough in 2025 to make marginal enough to win in 2028.

Atm id say 51/52% chance of a labor minority. Coalition needs to make up a bit more ground to tip it in their favour but i wont rule out an upset coalition win in either minority or majority.

Bellwethers are pretty much useless in hung parliaments as its the crossbench who decides government. In 2010 Labor won Robertson but only won government thanks to 2 disaffected ex Nationals whose seats would normally have sided with the coalition.

Paterson is mainly
Maitland and Nelson Bay state
Labor can win each of those seats by 10% plus in the right environment

@mick labors margin here is exteremely small and the redistribution did not help