ALP 3.3%
Incumbent MP
No incumbent MP.
Geography
Bullwinkel covers parts of eastern Perth and regional areas immediately to the east. The electorate stretches from Greenmount and Forrestfield out to Grass Valley and Beverley.
Bullwinkel covers the Beverley, Kalamunda, Mundaring, Northam, Toodyay and York council areas, and parts of the Armadale, Gosnells and Swan council areas.
Redistribution
Bullwinkel is a new seat, taking in parts of Burt, Canning, Durack, Hasluck, O’Connor and Swan. Almost half of the population of Bullwinkel was previously in Hasluck, while another 22% were in Swan.
History
Bullwinkel is a new electorate created as a marginal Labor seat, primarily taking areas from the seat of Hasluck. Hasluck had alternated between Labor and Liberal from 2001 to 2010, before being held by Ken Wyatt for four terms from 2010 to 2022. Labor’s Tania Lawrence won the seat in 2022 amidst a huge swing to Labor across Western Australia.
The areas now contained in Bullwinkel have tended to hew closely to the statewide two-party-preferred vote in Western Australia, although it often leans slightly towards the Liberal Party.
Assessment
Bullwinkel is a very marginal seat, even with the very strong Labor performance in Western Australia. Labor doesn’t have a sitting MP to defend the seat, so there is a good chance the seat will swing back to the Liberal Party and they could win here.
| Party | % |
| Labor | 34.4 |
| Liberal | 32.5 |
| Greens | 10.7 |
| Informal | 5.5 |
| One Nation | 4.1 |
| United Australia | 2.7 |
| Western Australia Party | 2.5 |
| Independent | 1.7 |
| Federation Party | 1.6 |
| Nationals | 1.3 |
| Liberal Democrats | 1.1 |
| Australian Christians | 1.0 |
| Animal Justice | 0.6 |
| Great Australian Party | 0.4 |
| Informed Medical Options | 0.1 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Party | % |
| Labor | 53.3 |
| Liberal | 46.7 |
Booths in Bullwinkel have been split into four parts. The sparsely populated east has been grouped together. The urban booths in the Perth area have been split into north-west, south-west and west.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in the western areas, ranging from 53.5% in the south-west to 55.7% in the north-west. The Liberal Party polled 53.9% in the east.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 8.7% in the east to 14.1% in the south-west.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| West | 11.3 | 55.3 | 16,811 | 17.6 |
| North-West | 13.7 | 55.7 | 14,881 | 15.6 |
| South-West | 14.1 | 53.5 | 6,034 | 6.3 |
| East | 8.7 | 46.1 | 5,071 | 5.3 |
| Pre-poll | 10.1 | 52.8 | 31,503 | 33.0 |
| Other votes | 11.3 | 52.5 | 21,042 | 22.1 |
Election results in Bullwinkel at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.
I’m sorry, are we actually going by a poll that says Nats are 22% and Labor are 15% here? Yeah, no.
@scart ive got libs winning Bullwinkel, Tangey and Curtin. Pearce and Hasluck will be interesting to watch. The Wa election was fought on state matters like the economy which is going well thanks to mining and gas. Labors Nature Positive laws federally as well as the teals and greens plans to cancel coal and gas projects wil harm labor federally. Labor cant rely on Roger Cook to be the rockstar help McGowan was. Also the libs choice of candidate in tangey will help along with the fact the Scomo and his unpoplarity ad anti wa vibe are gone. voters will be judging albo on his record not roger cook
@adda simply reporting the results as i read them
Tony Barry during ABC’s WA state election night coverage said he is only putting Bullwinkel as a Liberal gain. He didn’t seem too certain about the Liberals winning Tangney and Pearce.
Looking at Pollbludger projected figures here, which are gonna wobble around a bit, plus a few of my own rubbery preference estimates.
In Kalamunda, Labor turned 33.5% primary into 49.6% 2pp, a gain of 16.1%. The Greens are on 13.6%, so maybe 11% came from them (assuming an 80/20 split to Labor). There’s another 5% of 2pp gain to explain. It certainly didn’t come from the minor right (One Nation / Christians / Shooters), there’d be some from Legalise Cannabis but they only got about 3% (let’s say 2% from them), so that leaves about 3% which must have came from the Nats. That’s a third of their prefs going to Labor! (WA Nats prefs have a habit of leaking to Labor like this.)
Repeat that at the federal election, and depending on what Davies ends up polling, that could be an extra 2-3% of 2pp for Labor that doesn’t appear to make sense to east coast eyes, and it could end up making the difference.
@bird the minor right would still leak preferences to labor one nation preferences arent as strong to libs as greens are to labor and it varies from election to election. usually round 65-70% to libs though
Nats to Libs preference flows aren’t as strong as one might believe.
If state results were replicated, I think the Nats would be in fourth place. This is because the Nats didn’t do well in urban areas. They fell behind the Greens in Darling Range, Forestfield and Kalamunda. Also, the Nats had little incentive to fight for the lower house seat. The Nats seemed to spread into new territory to drive up the LC vote, following the WA one-vote, one-value reforms.
Mia Davies might have more motivation to perform better than fourth especially since she wants to become the Deputy PM.
the nats/davies will finish at last 3rd if not 2nd. labor will probably finish 2nd/3rd, the libs first and the greens 4th
It reported in the Saturday paper Labor think they can will win Bullwinkel.
“Labor is taking great encouragement from the aggregate of the latest batch of polls, which give it a slight edge over the Coalition. Of particular interest is the Newspoll finding that a majority of Australians, 55 per cent, are not confident the Liberal–National Coalition is ready to govern Australia.
This ties in with Labor’s research that suggests a significant number of Australians aren’t buying Peter Dutton. According to party sources, this applies as much in Victoria as it does in Western Australia, where the Labor brand is riding high after the Liberals failed to mount the beginnings of a much-vaunted recovery at last weekend’s state election.
According to these sources, Labor in the west is on track to hold the four seats it won at the 2022 federal election and pick up the new seat of Bullwinkel, a finding at odds with a recent JWS Research poll.”
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2025/03/15/back-election-plan-albanese
@political labor thinks it can win majority govt. unfortunately they wont.
Didn’t Newspoll or some other decent pollster also find the majority of WA voters wanted to ‘give someone else a go’ at the federal level?
Labor have a great shot at hanging onto Tangey, but Bullwinkle is a stretch with no sitting member and the overlapping swings at the state level
This seat is outer eastern Perth + rural not areas Labor are going to outperform in, if the Liberals or Nationals aren’t winning this seat then they aren’t going to be gaining anything in WA.
@maxim exactly if it had a sitting member labor might have held on but the fact there is no member and the hybrid nture where the coalition will poll s]at least 60% 2pp in the central wheatbelt parts and at least 50% in kalamunda and very close in the rest i cant see how labor wins. federal issues will be in play like live sheep exports and the fact the nats have a huge warchest in wa means labor is not only fighting the libs here. labor also has to defend other wa seats like hasluck, pearce and tangey.
@malcom care to place a wager??
The state-wide polling shows Labor at around the same as at the last election. However, it doesn’t account for changes by region. I don’t expect uniform swings statewide. It could be that Labor gets swings in the inner-city and holds firm or sandbags their existing seats well.
Albo, Roger Cook and the Labor candidate, Trish Cook, were here today. Their internal sources and polling are probably telling them it’s worth a shot.
The alp can poll better in the Avon.
Valley. In 2022 got a good vote in Northam and only lost the Avon Valley by about 600 votes.
@mick how many times do i have to say this isnt 2022. labor polled only about 25% at the state election in northam. they clearly lost the avon valley in swan hills too. libs recorded good swing in the kalamunda and forrestfield parts too. im saying based on state figures its hard to see labor holding here due to no incumbency. the libs will likely win forrestfield in 2029. they should also be competitive in Swan Hills and Darling range. although i think darling range is gonna be harder to win as it will likely take in more of baldavis . although im think at some point the shire of murray may be moved into either Mandurah or Darling Range. (mandurah would make more sense though)
13 days of campaigning left! I agree that this seat is worth Labor fighting for; it’s a messy situation. For people who don’t know the area, towns like Northam and York have a lot more variety of opinions than someone hearing “WA regional” might imagine. The live sheep export ban is huge and a catalyst for votes, but only for people who care about it. Many other people silently acknowledge that it’s an inevitable part of change and progress. Mia Davies has made a good decision to endorse Labor’s mining production tax credits against Coalition norms, and she’s seen as a hard worker. But there’s also a narrative that she’s doing this for personal ambition; everyone knows this was the reason she retired from state politics, even if she played the long narrative about it. There really is a sense that WA Labor, ever since the 1980s, has supported the state and understands what is needed (heck, Roger Cook – who should really be one of the most progressive people to ever be Premier – has sold out the environment time and time again, although Albanese’s doing the same) which doesn’t extend to Albo’s party. And Basil Zempilas is no less divisive than Peter Dutton. (Suggesting we host the 2030 Commonwealth Games only a couple of years after the Victorian Government’s disgraceful debacle is… an odd choice, to say the least?) Meanwhile, although not specific to this seat, the Greens have been doing well thanks to numerous grass-roots fights around Perth and the south coast to save patches of land and endangered species from overdevelopment, often linked to big business or religious interests. I predict that the Greens vote will hold and the Nats leak a decent amount of votes to Labor in the preference count.
Nevertheless, even though I’m predicting only a tiny swing to the Coalition in WA, the stats here are inflated from 2022. I get the impression Matt Moran is proving a strong in-person candidate. I’m more interested to see how many Labor preferences go to the Nats if Labor finishes in 3rd.
Ultimately a Liberal pick-up seems most likely, with some tears and recriminations between the Coalition parties at the end of it all.
Sammy Labor have preferences the libs over the nats