ALP 12.2%
Incumbent MP
Kate Thwaites, since 2019.
Geography
North-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Jagajaga covers the entire Banyule council area and southern parts of Nillumbik council area, along with a small part of the Whittlesea council area. Key suburbs include Ivanhoe, Heidelberg, Eaglemont, Rosanna, Viewbank, Yallambie, Montmorency, North Warrandyte, St Helena, Watsonia North and Eltham.
Redistribution
Jagajaga expanded in two directions, taking in North Warrandyte from Menzies and part of Bundoora from Scullin.
History
Jagajaga was created for the expansion of the House of Representatives in 1984, and has always been held by the ALP.
Jagajaga was first won in 1984 by Peter Staples, who had previously won the seat of Diamond Valley at the 1983 election, before it was abolished in 1984.
Staples was appointed as a junior minister after the 1987 election, and served until a reshuffle in 1993, and served as a backbencher until his retirement at the 1996 election.
Jagajaga was won in 1996 by Jenny Macklin, and she was re-elected seven times, retiring in 2019. Macklin served as a shadow minister for the entirety of the Howard government. She was Deputy Leader from the 2001 election until 2006, when she was defeated by Julia Gillard when Kevin Rudd defeated Kim Beazley for the party’s leadership.
Macklin served as a minister in the Labor government from 2007 to 2013.
Macklin was succeeded in 2019 by Labor candidate Kate Thwaites. Thwaites was re-elected in 2022.
- Chris Parr (Liberal)
- Rae Ranchie (Family First)
- Jy Sandford (Greens)
- Kate Thwaites (Labor)
Assessment
Jagajaga is a safe Labor seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Kate Thwaites | Labor | 41,412 | 40.9 | 0.0 | 40.7 |
| Sahil Tomar | Liberal | 29,535 | 29.2 | -10.0 | 29.2 |
| Liz Chase | Greens | 16,855 | 16.6 | +2.3 | 16.7 |
| Maya Tesa | Liberal Democrats | 3,760 | 3.7 | +3.7 | 3.7 |
| Allison Zelinka | United Australia | 3,493 | 3.5 | 0.0 | 3.5 |
| Zahra Mustaf | Independent | 3,150 | 3.1 | +3.1 | 3.0 |
| John Booker | One Nation | 2,274 | 2.2 | +2.3 | 2.3 |
| Brendan Palmarini | Federation Party | 764 | 0.8 | +0.8 | 0.7 |
| Others | 0.0 | ||||
| Informal | 4,003 | 3.8 | +0.7 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Kate Thwaites | Labor | 63,122 | 62.3 | +6.5 | 62.2 |
| Sahil Tomar | Liberal | 38,121 | 37.7 | -6.5 | 37.8 |
Polling places in Jagajaga have been divided into three areas: central, east and south. “East” covers all booths in the Nillumbik council area.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 61.2% in the east to 68.1% in the south.
The Greens vote ranged from 16.5% in the centre to 20.5% in the east.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Central | 16.5 | 63.5 | 21,847 | 20.8 |
| South | 20.3 | 68.1 | 13,680 | 13.0 |
| East | 20.5 | 61.2 | 11,933 | 11.4 |
| Pre-poll | 15.1 | 60.4 | 37,339 | 35.6 |
| Other votes | 15.2 | 60.7 | 20,132 | 19.2 |
Election results in Jagajaga at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.
Labor hold, with Greens primary vote increasing but still staying in third place.
Curious to see, this isn’t a super-talked about seat, Labor has held it since inception but I’m curious to see what anyone thinks will happen here?
Labor should retain thanks to the socially-liberal vote around Ivanhoe and Eltham. But I think the Liberals will get a swing.
The ABC mortgage/household/rental stress map showed this seat presenting highly for all 3 interestingly enough
Vic Socialists could do well here
The incredibly strong Labor booths in West Heidelberg, Heidelberg and Heidelberg Heights with big areas of public housing have always been the bedrock of the Labor vote. I have never been sure why the Libs have not been able to do better around Eltham and Montmorency. They are quite comfortable and leafy. It was for the Libs a bit like Melbourne Ports / Macnamara or Isaacs – they could get close but never close enough – stuck at 45%. In the last few elections, I don’t think they have even tried – resources had to go into Kooyong and Higgins instead.
Agree that the Vic Socialists could do well in the western parts of the electorate but not elsewhere.
@redistributed – Eltham is actually quite progressive. There is a notable artist population (Montsalvat) and the overall leafy, affluent nature of the area means a lot of tree-changers and also in general environmentally conscious people.
While the Libs can make inroads they aren’t winning this seat anytime soon. If it crosses the yara into Menzies the just maybe
More likely that Menzies (which numbers-wise always needs to be the City of Manningham plus a bit more) would cross the Yarra into Jagajaga, as it did a couple of elections ago.
Although it doesn’t attract a lot of attention because it’s usually a comfortable Labor seat, this is quite an interesting seat to look at the finer details of because it contains a wide range of different demographics in different areas – there aren’t too many places in Australia where you’ll find as big a socio-economic contrast over a distance of a couple of kilometres as Eaglemont and West Heidelberg. Obviously the strong Labor vote in West Heidelberg and surrounds helps them, but so does the fact that they more or less break even in places like Eaglemont and Ivanhoe East where demographically-similar places south of the Yarra would be 60-40 Liberal (at least prior to the arrival of the teals).
Would be a very marginal seat without Heidelberg west. Ivanhoe through to Heidelberg is Liberal territory in a strong year for them like 2016. Kate thwaites has a high personal vote
I expect Labor will suffer a swing due to their over performance, above average swing here, last election.
A Voices of Jagajaga candidate will run here too.
I don’t think VIC Socialists ever run in electorates to the east. They didn’t run in Eltham or Ivanhoe last state election.
Well VicSoc ran in some Banyule council seats last year with an average of 4.5%, may have been testing the water.
If Labor loses Jagajaga then they would be down to about 50 seats anyway. They won’t lose this in the current configuration nor this cycle, but they will cop a swing of sorts due to the outer-suburban nature of its location.
Labor hold.
@BT the trend over the last few years is that the west of melbourne is growing faster then the East and in some eastern parts their has been a decline. thats why they abolished Higgins. Menzies would likely continue to be dragged further down into Whitehorse LGA and become more favourable to Labor and then Jagajaga become more favourable to libs as its crosses into Menzies. especially if they fix that horrid mistake of Melbourne crossing the Yarra into Southbank.
@tommo9 agreed
Even without the Heidelberg area booths this is still safe labor.
Eltham/Monty and Ivanhoe socially progressive areas that won’t be voting liberal, and haven’t for at least since the 90s.
Then you have the working class areas like Greensborough, Watsonia, Viewbank which labor usually gets around 60% TPP on a bad year, otherwise mid 60s The addition of north Warrandyte will benefit labor as that has a high greens primary vote. Most elections Liberals only tend to win a few booths like Ivanhoe east and lower plenty, but even those went labor TPP last time. I think a 4-5% swing back to the liberals which will be mostly an undoing of the big swing labor got last time. So basically a 2019 like result here is my guess