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This seat was once a close marginal seat, I’d say now with the demographic trend Labor should hold here fairly comfortably still could see a small swing of 2-3% away from Labor.
In Chester’s were to retire and this lost the remainder of Macedon ranges this might be in play. I’d say remove Castlemaine but who are we kidding that would never happen
The Nationals are clearly putting a bit of an effort in here – they’ve got quite a few signs/billboards up and their ads started lobbing in my social media feed within 15 minutes of arriving in town. It’s the first time they’ve run since 2016 (and only the third since it became a Labor seat in 1998); when they do run, they usually struggle to get their deposit back.
It’s interesting that Bendigo and Ballarat have both trended strongly to Labor at both federal and state level over the last 30 years when comparably-sized centres in other states, if anything, have gone the other way. A bit of that is Melbourne spillover into places like Castlemaine but the cities themselves have trended similarly.
Without Castlemaine and Macedon Bendigo would be marginal and in play
The local Liberals got done in by Jeff Kennett in the 90s and the local Libs dropped the ball – and have never come close to picking it up since. Both cities have big public sector workforces so that leads to a Labor bias. Castlemaine / Daylesford have become big tree chsnge / Green destinations so Labor have an advantage. Michael Ronaldson having to step down in 2001 for heakth reasons did the Liberals no favours.
John, all the booths in the city of Bendigo are over 60% ALP. Taking out Castlemaine and Macedon would not make this a marginal seat.
BT – what similar sized cities in other states? Toowoomba is a similar size, (although oddly a lot of people outside Queensland have never heard of it) but that has always been conservative. Albury-Wodonga is a similar size. Perhaps that region would get more attention if they were in the same state, which would make an urban seat based on that area possible, and maybe more competive. Launceston is also similar, I’d agree that area is trending more conservative.
Ballarat and Bendigo are roughly similar in size. Toowoomba and Cairns about 30 % bigger. Albury – Wodonga marginally smaller than Ballarat and Bendigo with Launceston and Mackay just marginally smaller again.