Grayndler – Australia 2025

ALP 17.4% vs GRN

Incumbent MP
Anthony Albanese, since 1996.

Geography
Inner West of Sydney. Grayndler covers most of the Inner West council area (except for the Balmain peninsula and a small part of Ashfield) and small parts of the Canterbury-Bankstown and Strathfield council areas. Main suburbs include Annandale, Ashbury, Ashfield, Burwood Heights, Croydon Park, Dulwich Hill, Haberfield, Leichhardt, Marrickville, Petersham, Sydenham, Hurlstone Park, Summer Hill and Tempe, and parts of Newtown.

Redistribution
Grayndler shifted west, losing Balmain, Rozelle and parts of Lilyfield to Sydney. Grayndler then gained Tempe and southern parts of Hurlstone Park, Dulwich Hill and Marrickville from Barton, and also gained Ashbury, Burwood Heights, Croydon Park and the remainder of Ashfield from Watson. These changes are estimated to increase the Labor margin over the Greens from 17.1% to 17.4%, but reduced the margin over the Liberal Party from 28.9% to 26.7%.

History
Grayndler was created in the 1949 redistribution, and has always been held by the ALP. The seat was first won by Fred Daly, who had previously held the nearby seat of Martin since 1943. Daly was a highly popular MP and served as a minister in the Whitlam government before his retirement in 1975.

The seat was won by Tony Whitlam at the election following his father’s dismissal as Prime Minister in 1975, but he was replaced by Frank Stewart at the 1977 election following the abolition of Stewart’s former seat of Lang. Stewart had previously served as a minister in the Whitlam government, and had been in Parliament since 1953. Stewart died in 1979, and the following by-election was won by the Assistant General Secretary of the NSW Labor Party, Leo McLeay.

McLeay held the seat until the 1993 election, serving as Speaker from 1989 until 1993. At the 1993 election he was forced to move to the neighbouring seat of Watson in order to free up Grayndler for federal minister Jeannette McHugh, whose seat of Phillip had been abolished.

McLeay held Watson until 2004, and McHugh retired at the 1996 election, when the seat was won by another Assistant General Secretary of the NSW Labor Party, Anthony Albanese, after Albanese had arranged McHugh’s move to Grayndler in 1993.

Anthony Albanese has been re-elected nine times. He served as a senior minister in the last Labor government, including a brief term as Deputy Prime Minister in 2013, and then served as a senior shadow minister until he become Labor leader after the 2019 election. Albanese led the ALP to government in 2022, becoming Australia’s 31st prime minister.

Candidates

Assessment
Grayndler is an extremely safe Labor seat on a two-party-preferred basis, and also very safe against the Greens. The Greens have done quite well in parts of this seat in the past at a state and local level, and the Greens cut Albanese’s margin to just 4.2% in 2010 (admittedly with the help of Liberal preferences). It seems likely that this seat will become more marginal when Albanese departs but he should easily retain the seat in 2025.

2022 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Anthony Albanese Labor 50,723 53.6 +2.8 52.7
Rachael Jacobs Greens 20,846 22.0 -0.5 21.0
Ben Zhang Liberal 15,111 16.0 -5.8 17.8
David Smith United Australia 2,101 2.2 +1.0 2.9
Paul Henselin One Nation 1,449 1.5 +1.5 2.3
Sarina Kilham Independent 1,973 2.1 +2.1 1.5
James Haggerty Fusion 1,222 1.3 +1.3 1.0
Michael Dello-Iacovo Animal Justice 1,148 1.2 +1.2 0.9
Others 0.0
Informal 4,483 4.5 +0.3

2022 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Anthony Albanese Labor 63,413 67.1 +0.8 67.4
Rachael Jacobs Greens 31,160 32.9 -0.8 32.6

2022 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Anthony Albanese Labor 74,571 78.9 +5.0 76.7
Ben Zhang Liberal 20,002 21.1 -5.0 23.3

Booth breakdown

Polling places in Hasluck have been divided into four areas around major suburbs: Ashfield, Leichhardt, Marrickville and Petersham.

Labor’s primary vote ranged from 47.9% in Ashfield to 56.7% in Marrickville.

The Greens came second, with a primary vote ranging from 19.6% in Ashfield to 28.4% in Petersham. The Liberal Party vote ranged from 9.6% in Petersham to 22.6% in Ashfield, outpolling the Greens in Ashfield.

Voter group GRN prim ALP prim LIB prim Total votes % of votes
Marrickville 23.6 56.7 11.5 14,586 14.0
Ashfield 19.6 47.9 22.6 13,625 13.0
Leichhardt 20.8 52.4 19.0 10,674 10.2
Petersham 28.4 54.6 9.6 10,369 9.9
Pre-poll 19.4 53.9 18.7 38,492 36.9
Other votes 18.8 49.4 21.7 16,707 16.0

Election results in Grayndler at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Labor vs Greens and Liberal), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Greens and the Liberal Party.

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31 COMMENTS

  4. @SpaceFish do you reckon he might lose his seat? As bonkers as that sounds it might well be possible given we’ve seen double digit swings in places where the incumbent is facing a big challenge in recent elections, notably NT where Eva Lawler as chief minister lost her seat.

  5. Spacefish and Tommo, for Albanese to lose or be seriously challenged in his seat will require the Greens to nominate a strong candidate. In 2013 which was a poor environment for Labor, Albanese still won easily as the Greens selected a weak candidate in far-left activist Hall Greenland.

    Also, Grayndler is different from Drysdale as Eva Lawler held a swing or conservative leaning district whereas Grayndler is solidly left wing.

  6. Furthermore, the Liberals will also need to recommend preferences to the Greens (similar to 2010 when Albanese was held to a sub 5% margin)

  7. Yoh An and Tommo, at this stage I could see Albanese holding on with an above average swing against him. I agree with Yoh An, maybe a high profile Greens member, Liberals directing their preferences out of spite so Labor has to spend time here and the current situation worsening for Labor then maybe he could lose but even then that’s a stretch. I don’t think the Greens are taking NSW as a whole seriously at the moment has they have a better chance of winning seats in Victoria and QLD.

  10. The contest will switch back to ALP vs LIB. The redistribution has cut out the heavily Green-voting Balmain peninsula and has added in more suburban, not-so-Green suburbs in the south and west like Tempe, Enfield, Burwood Heights and Croydon Park.

  11. @Votante if the race is between ALP and LIB then Albo should retain with daylight between him and 2nd place. The inner western suburbs, be it hard left or solid left, aren’t Liberal friendly territories and anything that the Greens lose out on will benefit Labor as it’s more working class, industrial than the affluent, inner-city Greens in Balmain.

    On the flip side we could see Plibersek ceding some ground to the Greens with Balmain added to Sydney from Grayndler and some of her base in the eastern side ceded to Wentworth.

  12. @Tommo9, I agree that the Greens would be more competitive in Sydney than in Grayndler. I’m predicting that the Greens primary will be higher in Sydney. I see both as Labor holds until at least Plibersek/Albanese retire.

    There might be a swing away from Albanese but it’ll be in the western part. I hear that Labor’s vote in the inner-city is holding up well. It’s the middle and outer-suburban electorates that will swing away.

  13. Mick – we saw Josh Frydenburg (who was widely touted as the next Coalition leader) lose his seat to Monique Ryan in 2022. Anything is possible!

  14. I have a feeling that Albo will step down as Labor leader sometime after the election regardless of the result.

  15. You’re not the only one. Nikki Savva wrote about this in the SMH a few weeks ago, saying that Albo should step down next term.

  16. @Votante: The contest for Grayndler will still likely be a Labor vs Greens one. Can’t see the Liberal primary vote recover to get the Liberals into the final two. The Liberal Party led by Dutton is extremely unpopular among inner city voters.

    @SpaceFish: “At this stage I could see Albanese holding on with an above average swing against him”: Which swing are you talking about? Swing towards the Greens in a Labor vs Greens contest or swing towards the Liberals in a Labor vs Liberal contest? If you are referring to the former, you can’t compare Labor vs Greens 2CP swings with Labor vs Coalition 2PP swings. If you are referring to the latter, the Liberals are still very unpopular in inner suburbs of capital cities where the population have high levels of university education, high income and higher propotion of renters, which means the 2PP swing against Labor in an inner city seat like Granydler should be lower than the statewide or nationwide average. There will be swings from Labor to the Greens because the reforms made by the Albanese government were probably not ambitious enough for one of the most progressive seats in the country, but for Albanese to be threatened in his seat without the Liberal primary vote recovering to low to mid 20s, Albanese’s primary vote needs to drop below 45%, Greens primary vote need to approach 30% and the Liberals need to preference the Greens ahead of Labor. The latter two are very unlikely to hapen.

    @SpaceFish: The Liberals won’t recommend preferences to the Greens ahead of Labor, especially in a seat that is so safe for Labor and the Liberal Party vote is so low that Liberal preferences won’t make a difference to the final winner.

    John Howard and Stanley Bruce’s governments were both defeated in a landslide in the election where they lost their own seats, while Labor is not going to suffer a landslide defeat at the next election. Albanese’s margin in Grayndler right now is also much larger than the margin held by John Howard and Stanley Bruce before they lost their seats. Albanese should easily hold Granydler for as long as he likes, but when he departs, the Greens may get close or even win the seat.

  17. Albo obviously has a huge personal vote – the % difference in the Labor vote when the same booths are compared at state and federal level is huge. Same goes for Sydney too. When Albo and Tanya Plibersek retire – all bets are off and wuth right candidate the Greens are probably favoured. Should Labor lose these two seats they are quite possibly doomed to never form majority government again – they will have lost too many constituencies – inner cities, regions. They will be left with a rump of middle and outer suburban CALD seats – and some of them are not looking too secure.

  21. @Redistributed: Agreed. Albo’s personal vote should keep his primary vote above or close to 50%, which makes sure he will comfortbaly retain his seat until he retires.

  22. @joseph albo won’t lose grayndler and plibersek won’t lose sydney. Whe. They retire Labor has problems though

  23. Let’s say Albo retires. The Greens will pursue it and but would be difficult to flip. It depends on whether the Greens can top the primary vote or if they get to second place, behind the Liberals, they can get enough preferences to surpass the Liberals at the final count. Either way, they’d need to beat Labor on the 3CP count, that is, after all the micro parties are excluded.

    The part west of IWC as well as Haberfield are ALP vs LIB areas with the Greens coming third.

    @Joseph, fair point. I was thinking that the Libs hit rock bottom in 2022 and so the only way is up.

  24. @Votante: The Liberal vote may recover a little, but not likely to catch up with the Greens vote since the Greens vote will rise as well.

  25. I believe there’s talk that the Greens vote would drop like how it dropped in various inner-city council wards and state seats at elections last year. Redbridge polling for spring 2024 shows the Green vote will drop in Grayndler whilst the Liberal vote overtakes the Greens.

  26. The post election period will be more interesting than the result. No doubt that Albo will win. Unless there is a majority Labor win – a Lazarus moment – it is hard to see Albo being leader and/or PM at the election after 2025. The danger for Labor will be a destabilising by election which the Greens could very well win. Unless they win – the boat will rock so hard that it could capsize. Should he lose the leadership, he might just need to stick around to keep the boat afloat.

  27. The last time Greens seriously targeted this seat was in 2016. The Daily Telegraph intervened in Albo’s favour and confirmation that the LNP would preference Labor over Greens basically killed their chances.

    The candidate seems to doing some campaigning but not “winnable seat” level, and it isn’t getting much hype from the party. Combined with Greens vote softening in the inner west at other tiers, Albo isn’t going to lose much sleep over holding his seat.

    A byelection would likely be at a low ebb for Labor and Greens will get a clean run at the seat without the Liberals running. But like Batman 2018 there are plenty of ways for the Greens to screw an opportunity like that up – it will be a very bitterly contested preselection from a state party that has a relatively recent history of cutting off its nose to spite its face.

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