Bradfield – Australia 2025

That is true Mick Quinlivan, but as our host here at the Tallyroom has said, there is no need to do that in a preferential system.

Just rank the candidates in the order that you would like to see them elected. Full stop. Easy pezy. Only the candidates that are advantaged by you not doing so, will tell you that you should do any different.

There is still value in tactical voting in Australia in certain circumstances because the more primary votes a candidate receives the more likely they are to make the final count. In the case of teal seats, I’d say it is accepted that they draw votes from a broader coalition of voters (including disillusioned or ‘soft’ LNP voters), while Labor/GRN voters are a more established bloc who are more likely to preference the LNP at or near the bottom of their tickets. Therefore a voter could theorise that the best way to unseat the LNP candidate is to ensure the independent makes the final 2 and likely receives a stronger preference flow than an ALP or GRN candidate might if the independent’s preferences are distributed.

Each teal has maybe 30 to 40 % votes from.other groups such as alp and greens.
The roughly 10% they take off the liberals allows them to win

It might be presumptuous or premature of me to assume that Boele is economically conservative given her consultancy and business background. She’s like Allegra Spender.

I expect Boele is more like Bob Katter as Katter declares that he will always provide Confidence and Supply to the Coalition unless if Labor is narrowly short of a majority and Coalition is way behind like it was planned to do during the 2022 election (although Labor ended up winning a narrow majority)

What rhe independents do is not possible to guess
I would not like to have to rely on Bob Katter to form a govt

@Maxim (and anyone else with like thoughts).

We have been over this issue 1000 times on this site. Whilst your facts are correct the conclusions you draw are highly questionable. I’m sure our host Ben will grace us with renewing his post or comment on the topic from 2022, sometime before the coming federal election. My thoughts are below.

It is stating the obvious to state that “the more primary votes a candidate receives the more likely they are to make the final count”. This is nothing more than basic mathematics. It can also be used in the alternative argument to say that “one should vote for their preferred candidate, as if everyone else does the same and your preferred candidate gets a lot of votes, they may make the final two, and may win on preferences”.

We don’t need to “accept” anything about the flow of preferences – we are best to look at data available. Yes, the teal or other IND will get more preferences from other parties than Labor – however it is about a 5% difference (75% to 70%) so the margins are small and the possibility of it making the difference of who is elected, very small.

You refer to “certain circumstances” but of course we do not know whether these circumstances will fully exist prior to the election. They did not in Bradfield in 2022 – the Teal IND lost anyway. So any Labor (or Green) voters who did decide to vote tactically achieved nothing but made it look like their preferred party has less support in the area than they actually do – not helpful to advance your goals.

How as K.Bonham has often said, not everyone that switched primary vote from Labor and Green to a Teal IND in 2022, did so with a tactical intention – perhaps they simply preferred the Teal candidate to any other candidate. However, when breaking down the Teal primary vote as Mick Quinivan has attempted to do, it is wise to look on a seat by seat basis and not rely on averages (and certainly not rely on a very this analysis- I think it was the AES report) that concluded that most Teal support came from Labor and Green. In North Sydney and Bradfield, the defection of Labor voters was much smaller – only approx 7% of the total voters moved to the IND (based on c/w Senate vote). In most other seats it was 15% or higher.

Voting tactically in the Australian system risks missing the opportunity of your most preferred candidate winning the seat, whilst you bank on your 2nd most preferred candidate maybe getting up. The likelihood of that bet paying off is minute, and you have no guarantee it will be worthwhile when your 2nd most preferred candidate gets to parliament, as Mick states above.

That’s a long way of saying the data mostly supports what I said, which wasn’t that voters should vote tactically but that there are still (perceived or real) reasons to do so.

If the flow of preferences wasn’t such a strong issue why would most current teal seats be notionally LNP-held in a contest with Labor? The fact is in 2022 there was a strong resentment of Scomo’s Liberals and people were motivated to oust them in seats that were perceived as unobtainable by ALP/GRN, and that’s the key point – while you state that it’s unproductive to risk your own party’s ambitions in the seat you are voting in the case in 2022 was that many voters were more motivated to get rid of a Liberal incumbent.

That’s not to say there wasn’t genuine support for teal candidates on their own merits and the attraction of having an unaligned MP representing the seat.

You make a fair point on ‘certain circumstances’, but in some cases in 2022 it was quite clear tbh, what with a 1v1 debates between Liberal and Teal candidates, the dead campaigns of alp/grn in those seats, the vast sums and volunteer efforts that were very visible etc. In my home electorate of Wannon for example I know with almost certainty which two candidates will make the final count

I think you will find they were 1v1 debates because the Labor candidate wasn’t asked….

The reason why most current teal seats be notionally LNP-held in a contest with Labor is because they were very safe Liberal seats to begin with – but not all were. There are oddities – Warringah is pretty 50/50 but no one knows it because Steggall’s primary is so high and the Liberal vote has fallen so far – she didn’t need tactical voting to get her home.

I agree, many voters were more motivated to get rid of a Liberal incumbent. But there was no guarantee it would work, and look at the make up of Parliament – it hasn’t made a difference to who formed government.

If you prefer an IND MP to a major party one – that’s fine, vote for the IND – that’s cool. But there’s no need (even if people tell you there is or you perceive there might be) to vote for anyone else than you preferred candidate and party. If the IND gets sufficient primary votes other than yours, your preference will get them home (or at least to where they otherwise would have got to). If they don’t, then your candidate might win, if not this time, then the next.

The teal vote in their seats was about 2% higher then Labor 2ppp

It does make for an interesting point because ultimately many of these seats would have been future/current ALP targets, now there is significant potential for these seats to be irreparably sandbagged by independents who sit to the right of Labor even in future cycles where Labor may well have won them (and indeed perhaps needed to win them) in order to form majority government. Short term Liberal problem but longer term if these seats stay in independent hands for a while it’s probably Labor’s loss ultimately

In the formerly safe metropolitan Liberal seats that are now held or threatened by the Teals, there are a lot of former Liberal voters who are happy to vote for the Greens or definitely a Teal but not vote Labor (like Jodie in Dons Party). The vast majority of the Teal vote are former Labor and Greens voters – some might be tactical but others are ‘soft’ – parked until a better candidate comes along. The 2pp shows that most of the Teal seats would have been won quite comfortably by the Libs. The Teals had a few things going for them in 2022 that are not an issue in 2025. Scott Morrison after Covid and the fires and his own unique smarminess inspired a
special loathing amongst the voting public especially in the well informed North Shore and affluent areas. Incumbency acts as a lightning rod and on issues like women and integrity he was one damn big lightning collector. The Libs in NSW had some endorsement issues and the Teal candidates were ‘made in a lab’ for those seats. 3 years on – Albo has the incumbency and the economy is not good. Post Gaza the public mood has become brittle and Peter Dutton has probably read the public mood better. He is a known quantity – and disliked by many – but is starting to seem like the so called ‘unelectable’ John Howard of 1994 and 1995 – and we all know how that
ended. I think – except possibly for Monique Ryan and Kate Chaney – the Teals are safe and there is no gaurantee what worked in 2022 will work again in 2025 in seats they don’t hold.
PS: I wonder if Labor would have won in 2019 if there had been a different leader to Bill Shorten – another politician who inspired a loathing.

This will be a close one. I would have expected a Coalition loss if Mundine was selected in lieu of Kapterian. At this juncture, I would expect a rather narrow victory by Kapterian.

Labour would / will never win Bradfield…. Teals a good chance.

Separately, I was at a small private function yesterday (which coincidentally was Australia Day) in the seat of Warringah (used to be part of North Sydney) and the local “comedian” did a welcome / acknowledgement to country to the traditional owners of the lower north shore – the Liberal party! There was also a reference to the “invasion” of the teals. While some may think such parodies are in bad taste, the way it was presented, with a real twist in the tail, was actually both amusing and provocative.

Amusing – because it was satire which was very cleverly and wittily done.

Provocative in the sense that in 1787, the local indigenous population were doing what they had done for a long time, and then their world was upended and never to revert to what it was. The parallels for the north shore / northern beach liberals are pretty similar – wiped out and probably never to return. If one had suggested in 2015 that the Liberals would lose North Sydney (albeit now abolished), Warringah, Mackeller and Bradfield (remains to be seen) by the end of 2025 one would have probably been admitted to hospital under a mental health order.

On Bradfield specifically, a friend of mine is married to one of what I call “housewives of Northbridge”. These ladies generally don’t work, are aged 55-65, play golf tennis, children have left home, have plenty of time to socialize and be involved in local “grass root” politics. They are also generally socially and economically conservative but have a real concern about the environment and global warming – while they drive Teslaas the skiing trip to the Northern hemisphere is something that will not be compromised on (at least they don’t fly the private jet to Davos……). And they voted Teal in 2022. The feedback that I am getting is that the “housewives of Northbridge” are not as supportive of the Teal candidate in Bradfield as they were of Tink in North Sydney. The reason for this is that they “loved” Gladys and now Gladys’ candidate is in place they will vote for her over a teal (and Morrison is nowhere near Canberra).

Can’t see liberals making gains in Waringah or Mackeller. Dutton is not flavour of the month in these areas. Although I could imagine the NSW teals supporting Dutton in a minority situation.

Let’s wait and see.

2025 – another big year in politics.

Best

Pollster

On north Shore
Possible Bennelong alp retain
Possible.Bradfield teal win
Teals retain their existing 2 seats
Libs retain.Berowa

Pollster, just on the demographic that you described in the second half of your post, there is a colloquial term – “doctors’ wives”. The term “doctors’ wives” doesn’t necessarily refer to the wives of doctors or even a married person. It first arose in the early to mid 2000s to describe someone who votes Liberal, is well-off and generally fiscally conservative and form part of the Liberals’ voter base. Being relatively well-off meant that they could “afford” to vote on moral issues such as climate change and the war in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. However they probably held their noses to vote Liberal anyway. The Liberals had some concern as they could’ve switched to voting for Labor, Greens or Democrats back then.

Despite the talk of “doctors’ wives” making electoral waves over multiple terms, it really started to materialise first in 2019 with Zali Steggall winning Warringah and then took off in 2022 with the “teal wave”.

The teals dance to a different tune. The problem for the libs is that they are people who would have been endorsed liberal candidates”wets” of yester year. Now the liberals are about exterminating people of such views This is the liberal problem as they moved to the right they lost those people and they are likely to stay lost.

I am scratching my head at a lot of the comments concerning this seat.
Haven’t you looked at the recent polls?
Boelle may improve her primary vote,but it will depend on how many other candidates there are and whether Labor fields a candidate(they probably will to assist their senate vote).
But Capterian will improve on the Liberal vote last time,and may get to 50% on first preferences.
Mick Quinlivan,I believe Fletcher had a negative personal vote(if there is such a thing).I voted against him last time(but not for Boelle),but will be voting Liberal this time.

@Sabena “whether Labor fields a candidate or not” — Labor and the Coalition always field candidates in every seat in every lower house (except the past two elections in the territory seat of Gwoja in the NT; in 2020 it was Yingiya Mark Guyula vs Labor and no one else while in 2024 it was him vs the CLP, in both cases Guyula was re-elected).

This isn’t a by-election. Sometimes one major party (especially the governing one, in this case Labor) doesn’t field a candidate for a by-election if the seat is unwinnable as it’s a waste of money and resources. But in a general election both major parties, the Greens, some other minor parties and sometimes independents always field candidates. Even in the safest seats like Maranoa and Melbourne.

Climate 200 are claiming the Liberal primary here is 43% – that’s basically what Fletcher got if you account for the redistribution, they need to knock it down to about 41% to get across the line I reckon

Oh yes you can manage that:
The alp candidate in the 1982 Flinders by election was well known and disliked

@Sabena,

The national polls tell you very little about what will likely happen in this new version of Bradfield. In 2022, The Labor 2PP increased slightly, but went up 9-10% in North Sydney and Bradfield. In 2019, NSW and the nation moved away from Labor, but these areas swung >4%. In 2016, NSW moved away from NSW and the nation move substantially towards Labor, but these seats barely moved.

I strongly suspect these areas much prefer a moderate or NSW leader, to a QLD LNP leader….

Pollster makes some good points – the love of St. Glady’s in Northbridge still runs strong. The Liberal vote was depressed there last time because both the Teal and Labor candidate hailed from that suburb.

I suspect the Liberal vote will stay around where it is – can’t see is going below 42%. The Teal vote will be in the low 20’s – Boele primary may go up but that may be due to absence of another IND who got a few % last time.

I think Boele will struggle in the additional areas – she is holding her launch next weekend at Willoughby Park Bowlo so she’s certainly away of it. It will be interesting to see if there is a distinction between the old and new areas in the results. Tink may not be kicking herself for handing over to Boele – she was going to be up against Kapterian if North Sydney had survived and now the contest would have been the same just on different boundaries. Willoughby area is both the main supporter base of both

High Street, I disagree with your comment that “The national polls tell you very little about what will likely happen in this new version of Bradfield.”
There have been four occasions in 28 elections where the primary vote in Bradfield has gone in a different direction to the state vote-1980,1984,1996 &2004.The 2PP corrected this for 1980 and 1984 leaving 1996& 2004 as the only examples where Bradfield differed from the State trend.
Here is the table:
Seat swing State swing
1951 +7.3 +1.5
1954 -3.3
1955 +3.0
1958 -3.0 -2.8
1961 -4.3 -4.9
1963 +6.6 +5.9
1966 +0.4 +3.8
1969 -16.3 -7.0
1972 -1.7 -3.7
1974 +11.0 +3.4
1975 +5.6 +6.3
1977 -5.8 -3.8
1980 +2.5 -0.2 2PP -1.6
1983 -3.0 -4.1
1984 -2.9 +1.2 2PP -1.6
1987 +0.1 +0.5
1990 -8.0 -4.2
1993 +6.2 +2.7
1996 -5.0 +1.7 2PP +1.7
1998 -0.4 -3.1
2001 +2.0 +3.1
2004 -1.0 +2.6 2PP -2.7
2007 -3.4 -3.5
2010 +5.1 +4.1
2013 +0.4 +0.7
2016 -4.0 -4.7
2019 -0.8 -0.4
2022 -15.3 -4.5
Source:Psephos Australian Federal Elections since 1901

A further comment-in 1954 and 1955 there was no Labor candidate and Harry Turner was unopposed.

The size of the swing against Fletcher last time strongly suggests a correction this time,especially since Fletcher is not running this time.

High Street you said about Boele ” In the local magazine, The POST, she described herself as an “economic conservative”.
Let’s start with her CV which is here:
https://www.nicoletteboele.com.au/full-bio
As you will see her employment has,for the most part,been in the public sector and employment in the private sector has been in organisations that are not businesses in the true sense ie for making a profit.
Her policies are here:
https://www.nicoletteboele.com.au/about_nicolette
In her promotional material(in the mailbox yesterday) she names climate change as her number one priority complaining that the Government is lacking in action on it.She wants coal production to stop and the use of coal phased out.
She wants more funds for affordable housing and child care.
She says nothing about reducing government spending.
None of this is economically conservative-they place her(most charitably) as a person of the centre left.
Uncharitably it might be said that there is little to distinguish her from a Green candidate.

The mind boggles at the stupidity. Prof Ian McAllister of the Australian National University is quoted on ABC website as saying as saying:

“People are making quite sophisticated judgements about how to unseat the sitting member … and they’re prepared to get together with people they wouldn’t normally get together with to defeat that MP.”

The way to unseat the sitting MP is to preference them last. It’s been that way for >100 years, since the introduction of compulsory preferential voting. It’s not in the slightest way “sophisticated”.

If you prefer IND then ALP then LIB, order them in that way. If you prefer ALP then IND then LIB, then order them in that way. If you want to keept eh sitting member in Bradfield, go LIB first and either IND/ALP or ALP/IND.

It’s really not that hard…

It appears that Warren Mundine has been accused of making disrespectful comments after losing Preselection, sore loser much

@caleb the comments relate to him saying she got it because she is a woman. and he claims to have texts to back his claim

Wonder if he would have tried that on if he had won preselection but lost in the general

@maxim tbh i would prefer mundine but i think given the teal threat gisele was the best candidate to put up this time around. we absolutely need him in parliamanet though.

People will tactically vote as to who is best to beat the liberal candidate. This means it will be a teal liberal candidate

In 2022, especially where Liberal seats turned teal, the teal vote was largely driven a combination of Labor and Green voters who voted tactically, more so than Liberal voters who had swung away.

According to a 2022 SMH article reporting on the AES, “The study found the majority of teal independent voters were tactical voters intent on unseating incumbent Liberal MPs. Of teal voters, 31 per cent had backed Labor at the 2019 election while 24 per cent had supported the Greens”.

They might have voted teal because of the hype and the campaigning. Also they knew that being in an ‘always Liberal’ seat, Labor weren’t going to win anyway so they may as well roll the dice with a teal. Add to this group, there were those who put the teal ahead of the Liberal.

The majority of votes for the teal were Labor green and left of centre voters bit this did not give them victory
. The key to a win was the votes they could take of the liberals up to approx 10%

the liberal vote will iikely hold this time around due to the fact the anti liberal swing should reverse this time around and even with the loss of paul flethcer the fact the liberals have pre selected a moderate woman should help them hold the seat

As I have said before the AES study was based on an average of vote movement in all seats with Teal IND’s – it is just not accurate for the North Sydney and Bradfield results, where the Teal IND’s got no more than 25% and the Liberal primary vote was down 13-15%. A Teal IND would have got 3-5% primary even if not one had switched from anywhere, as there is always a small bucket of habitual IND/Other voters.

The majority of the Teal IND primary vote in North Sydney and Bradfield came from the Liberal column – just look at the results and stop taking a poor interpretation of the results from the AES.

@Mick Quinlivan

Have you read nothing of what I have posted above on tactical voting?

It is not needed in Australia under a CPV system. People need only vote for candidates in the order they prefer them. The ONLY candidates advocating you should do otherwise are the teal IND’s, who benefit from Labor and Green voters falling for this fraud.

@Votante – point taken re “doctor’s wives” and “housewives of Northbridge”. One difference is the doctor’s wives never became politically active and supported a group (party) like the teals.

Zali taking Warringah was a watershed. In a world where Abbott stood aside rather than keep running, one could imagine Zali being a very successful liberal candidate / member for Warringah. I suppose the advantage of being independent is that the teals have been able to push a stronger renewables agenda – although they have not been able to implement anything (as Whitlam once said: “only the impotent are pure”!).

Separately, it is interesting to note, for what it is worth (or not), that the Teals have never defeated a female sitting member or a female endorsed candidate who is replacing a sitting member.

And a big thanks to Ben for co-ordinating this fantastic site.

Best Pollster

regarding the Teal, in 2022 most of the wins seemed to be Teal candidates beating Liberal “moderates”
I guess to the voters the choice is
– elect a “moderate” Liberal who might agree with you but do nothing due to the LNP leadershipt

or

– elect a teal who is pretty much aligned with the “moderate” Liberal but has slightly more chance of getting their policies through

Australia’s CPV system is one of the better ones on offer and avoids much of the insanity of first past the post systems, but it doesn’t fully remove the ability for people to use tactical voting. As I understand it, no voting system can completely do so.

For example, if you’re a voter who would prefer a Labor/Greens member to the “conservative” independent, but your main priority is ensuring that the Liberal candidate loses, you may not necessarily want your preferred candidate to make it to the final 2. You may be better off by voting for your preferred candidate to lose if you have reason to believe that enough of the independent-preferring voters would still also prefer the Liberal candidate over the Labor/Greens candidates. You don’t want your Labor/Greens candidate to make it to the final 2 only to lose, when you could preference a “reasonable” alternative that can siphon more votes off the Liberal candidate.

For Labor/Greens/other progressive voters, the assumption that preferencing independents is a safer way to defeat the Liberals seems to be a reasonable one for now:
– For all divisions with independents in the final 2 (excluding Clark and Fowler), the LIB/NAT 2PP margin vs. ALP is greater than the LIB/NAT 2CP margin vs. IND
– For the 7 divisions in NSW where the ALP candidate was eliminated at 3rd place, votes then flowed from between 70.59-83.64% to the IND candidate, whereas for the 3 divisions in NSW where the IND candidate was eliminated at 3rd place (Hughes/Hume/Page), votes then flowed from between 63.07-66.39% to the ALP candidate

In these independent-vulnerable Coalition divisions, there seems to be 5-10% of the electorate who vote IND ahead of LIB/NAT ahead of ALP.

I agree that Labor/Greens voters shouldn’t just assume that they cannot win and go and preference an independent ahead of their preferred candidates, but it’s definitely a factor at play in the current political alignment. This is especially true in Bradfield where the Independent only performed better than Labor by 2.32% (LIB 6.55% 2PP compared to LIB 4.23% 2CP in 2022).

Bradfield going red would be a remarkable occurence but would not be out of the question if a Dutton-led government crashes and burns in 2028 or 2031. Interesting times ahead.

There is also a ‘least worst’ factor that needs to be taken into account. I don’t want to vote for X so I have to decide who is better out of Y or Z. Then comes along A and they are a much better fit for me than X,Y or Z and I can still put X last. This is where a lot of the Teal vote – A – has come from in these formerly safe Liberal seats. They can mop up those for whom all of X, Y and Z were the ‘least worst’ option. They have also shown that in the Teal seats, there are only small core Labor and Greens votes – and over time those core Green votes may exceed Labor.

I tend to agree redistributed – a lot of the Teal vote were previously voting tactically for Labor/Greens to get the Liberals (or more realistically the Nationals) out, and when the chance came to vote for someone more ‘like them’ they jumped at the chance.

Teals win votes from Labor and the greens directly and indirectly via preferences. But the key is what votes they can take off the liberals Approx 10%.

Yes, Yes, Yes, @Angus, we understand it all – the point is that it’s not worth it. As you correctly point out, there is some small statistical window where it can make a difference to who wins the seat, but to this small window you need to multiply the following small probabilities:
– there will be a hung Parliament (i.e, there will not be a majority government for either side) x by
– there will be a scenario where the extra IND you help get elected will be different to a scenario where your IND does not get elected x by
– your IND MP actually supports with a Confidence vote the party our your preferred MP, rather than the party that has historically won the seat and got a bigger primary vote.

Even if ALL that ends up happening, you are materially damaging the prospect of the candidate of your preferred party winning in future election. Voters need to think very hard if that is what they want

@MLV – I tended to agree with redistributed – much minor party anti Liberal vote is an inch wide but a mile deep and as soon as a non Labor candidate comes along that is a good option, they embrace them quickly.

However he went rogues with his final statement that “there are only small core Labor and Greens votes – and over time those core Green votes may exceed Labor”.

This is a Bradfield seat page. In Bradfield and North Sydney the Labor primary vote in the HoR in 2022 was 17% and 21% – not a small core and far in excess of what was achieved in other Teal seats. Also more than double what the Greens got. The average Teal seat stats do not apply.

But MLV, I also must take umbrage at what you said. This theory that much of the Labor vote in safe Liberal seats (or previously sate Liberal seats but not Teal IND held) is simply an anti Liberal vote is total crap – there is no evidence at all – especially in the new Bradfield. Do we sat this of Liberal voters in safe labor seats? Taken to its logical conclusion, when a party get 49.5%, they are not voting for that party, but against the one that got 51.5%. It’s a totally made up theory.

In the old North Sydney, the Labor primary vote in the Senate was 28%. The House vote was 21.5%. There was some defection (tactical or not – we do not know), but it was not a lot.

@high street the difference can be attributed to the teal running in the lower house and not the upper house some of labor senate voters obviously tactically voted for the teal candidate, the liberal vote should recover from last time due to the fact they have picked a moderate woman as the candidate.i dont know what personal vote Fletcher had or what effect that may have but if they lberals run a dont risk the teal voting for labor minority campagin and continualy challenge boele as to who she will support in minority govt they should win here

@High Street, there is a lot of evidence in Pol Sci that people tend to vote against something rather than vote for something. Possibly the most obvious example in Australia is the DLP – do you think the people who voted for the DLP and preferenced the Liberals really wanted the Liberals, or were they voting to keep Labor out? More generally, the history of the ‘right’ of Australian politics up to the rise of the Liberals was a bunch of warring parties fighting to be the ‘anti Labor vote’. In the end, we ended up with the Liberal party who have tried, not always successfully (Don Chip and Terry Meatherall come to mind) to merge two conflicting political ideologies (Liberal and Conservative) together in order to keep Labor out.

That said, I think my thesis still stands – just that in the two seats you mention the move was directly Lib to Teal, not via other parties. I also don’t know why you take umbrage (do you know what that actually means) but I don’t think my analysis is particularly off. And yeah, I do think a large part of the Lib vote in Labor strongholds, particularly where there has been a softening of the ALP vote, is anti Labor not pro Liberal (actually, I think a lot of that Liberal vote from ex ALP voters is really a vote for the Nationals rather than the Liberals, but that is another discussion).

Umbrage
noun
1.
offence or annoyance.

What a despairing view of society – no one votes for anything, just against the other thing….

@John,

I have to agree that the “don’t risk the teal voting for labor minority” campaign and continually challenge Boele as to who she will support in minority govt is a rationale strategy, as the left of center parties will be doing it as well.

I have to ask – do you live in northern Sydney? I get the sense round these parts (the north shore, not so much the northern beaches) that the Teal IND’s are seen for what they are – a splinter group from the Liberal’s. There is former Liberal party donors directly backing many of them and the candidates have extensive liberal party and supporting background. This is not Kooyong and the vibe is quite different. Monqiue Ryan is probably the highest profile of the 2022 Teals so people and media assume they are all like her, which is not the case. They really should just admit what they are and forma registered party of moderate liberals to campaign against the “conservative” liberals.
I would say there is quite a low level of perceived risk that Boele would support a Labor minority, amongst Bradfield voters. She’s already laying the groundwork to defend supporting the Liberal’s if it ever came to it.

@High Street

Your comments have a pejorative tone, despite the points that you raise being completely fine:

– The Liberal Party has changed, such is their right, and a significant group of people do not feel that the LNP are representing them anymore.

– More people are now voting independent, including ex-Liberal voters, in support of a better way of doing politics.

– Independent MPs are indeed not all alike, as you say. They are not a party.

– An independent candidate like Nicolette Boele is wise maintain her independent position as someone who can work collaboratively with either major party. This means that no matter what the overall election result, Boele can genuinely represent the people of Bradfield in the new parliament.

Alex they vote the same get photos together sign the same documents and get their funding from the same source they are effectively a party without officially being one

I don’t think most of the Teal candidates/MPs are interested in the political crap that being in a formal party would mean