Jagajaga – Australia 2025

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

Kos Samaras said at today’s National Press Club address that this is the most stable seat in Melbourne in terms of primary vote for Labor and one seat they dont have to worry about. i actually live close to this area. In Hindsight, it makes sense, it generally high income but not super rich like Kooyong, no new housing estates so not mortgage belt, not a lot of young renters rather it is is stable area of homeowning nuclear families. It has decent Public Transport unlike Menzies and Aston. The area is socially progressive but not radical so more about supporting refugees rather than taking sides on overseas conflicts or defunding the police. The area has low crime rates and does not have much ethnic diversity/ethnic tensions so what you end up getting is a rather satisfied population. I would say Boothby and Lilley have simmilar chracteristics which is why i said Boothby will be one seat Labor does not need to worry about.

@Nimalan, the seat is interesting as it is Middle Class (or upper middle class) Suburbia yet Cosmopolitan which I think is due to the the linear nature of the area which banks on the Hurstbridge Rail Line. There is however quite a lot of public housing around Heidelberg West with sizable Somali population.

@ Marh
Agree. Heidelberg West is the one part of the Seat which is very different to the rest of the seat. That area has high crime rates, i expect the Greens to do well there due to Palestine. However, the rest of the seat is more pragmatic progressive rather than Green Left. It is an area where they probably like how Albo is handling climate change, paid parental leave, same job/same pay etc. The seat does follow the Hurstbridge line as you correctly stated. If you drive to a suburb like Greensborough, Yallambie, Viewbank etc it looks like streotypical Middle Australia detached houses on quarter acres, parks, quite leafy a lot of children playing Auskick etc but is quite socially progressive on the Voice etc. I feel parts of Deakin are also like Jagajaga speficially Blackburn, Mitcham and Heathmont. I think with the notable exception of West Heidelberg Labor primary will hold up better than pretty much any other seat in Victoria.

Asmenzies I dragged further south in white so will this movesouth in Menzies territory. It will be in play soon

Seen some vic socialist signs around West heidelberg

I think a swing of at least 3% to the Liberals , despite Kate thwaites being a popular local member

@John, that depends on how Melbourne’s North Grows though. McEwen could move south closer to Craigieburn (depending how fast it grows there) which then shreds Hurstbridge which would have Jagajaga move North.

The growth atm is in the west. I’d expect mecewn to shed Macedon ranges and move further into whittles or nillumbuk. Given the deficit in the east and excess in Bruce it’s likely Menzies will continue shifting south and thereby jagajaga the same

That’s assuming that the number of seats remains the same, but there’s quite a good chance that Victoria gets back a seat in the next couple of cycles, in which case the new seat would presumably be somewhere in the north or west and existing seats would tend to move south and east.

Vic will get another seat back if not after this election then after the next assuming there isn’t an increase to parliament

Out of touch people who don’t care about the cost of living, particularly inner rich-people suburbs Ivanhoe etc. Wish I could move away from such a woke area but stuck here where my parents easily bought 25+ years ago and now thanks to Labor/Liberal can’t afford my own place.