Solomon – Australia 2025

The 2024 election could be a litmus test on what’s going to happen in both seats as well as in qld especially given the govt could go as early as august

Greens actually cracked 20% 3 party preferred here. Not that it seems particularly winnable or anything just that’s usually the point where the party starts taking it seriously. It’s higher than “target seat” Sturt.

If Greens can break through at any seat in the NT election that could be cause to mount a campaign. I don’t think Greens will try all that hard in the NT until there’s a winnable senate seat though.

@ John (second)
It actually does not surprise me that Solomon is relatively good for Greens. If you look at Census Data many people will be surprised that it is actually better educated, more diverse and higher income than Australia as a whole. I think the CALD community exceeds the Indigenous community in Solomon. Darwin Waterfront precient is the 4th least disadvanataged part of Australia and is up there with places like Killara

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/27/liquid-assets-australias-most-advantaged-areas-clustered-around-water-in-sydney-census-data-shows

There would also be a lot of government employees in Darwin.

I wonder if the NT Crime Wave might hurt Labor in this seat and Lingiari as well? It possibly was why they have a high No Vote for The Voice (64% No) despite having a descent Yes Vote for Gay Marriage (65% Yes).

Very surprisingly, this is now one of the Labor seats where Labor don’t hold any of the overlapping seats at the state/territory level. There’s still a few ways for Gosling to hang on (and enough time for the new NT government to establish drag of its own)

I think both Scrymgour and Gosling are on their way out. Gosling admittedly does have paths to hang on but they are very slim so he’s going to need a lot to hold one. Scrymgour on the other hand looks done for, Alice Springs and Katherine had swings to the CLP overall but the Indigenous areas did vote strongly (and some even swung) to Labor.

To assume you can transpose nt election results to the 2 federal seats is silly.. they are 2 separate contests

Mick, although there was a fairly strong correlation between the two when looking at 2016 federal results for Solomon and Lingiari. Both seats recorded swings >5% to Labor (above the national average) and the subsequent Territory election was a wipeout for the CLP.

before the nt election i would have said labor hold but now im saying marginal clp gain

@Mick Quinlivan the margins will be lower than the 58% the CLP would’ve got in both seats but I would say Solomon might flip and Lingiari will flip.

What Albo would want to do to help save Lingiari would be to call a Royal Commission into the low turnout in remote Indigenous communities nationwide.

@NP im saying solomon will be a flip based on nt election results and that lingiari should be a flip but labor did slightly better there but given the low margin its gone in my opinion. how would calling a royal commission into turnout help him? albo doesnt care about the NT hes oly been thre twice in the last year and spent more time flyting to the NT then he did on the ground. he was missing in action at the NT election probably because hes poison. if the NT redistribution completes before the election then solomon is definite loss

I disagree people are fully aware as to what level of government they are voting for. Eg… look at the last wa election something like 70/30 2pp Labor way on this basis the libs would have been lucky to hold ANY seats. No one suggested that would be replicated and indeed it was not. The nt alp govt and the Albanese govt are at different stages of the electoral cycle nt election 3 …notoriously close or actual loss. Albanese Govt only in first term. Also it is Possible that the nt govt does some things unpopular which would not help their federal colleagues. To assume + 2 seats in the nt alone is sheer folly

Labor has consistently done better in fed elections in the NT than on territory results. Labor will not get a 42% TPP result in the NT federally (even in 2013 they nearly got 50%). At the fed election people will no longer be able to take their anger over the ALP NT gov. This seat has a massive margin, and you can’t just add fed or state gov results together. Labor got a landslide in the 2004 Qld state election and then did horribly in the 2004 fed election in Qld.

The interesting thing is that Antony Green did the calculations and Solomon was still more Labor than the seat of Lingiari on the territory results. He had:

Solomon: 42.8% ALP
Lingiari: 41.1% ALP

Which suggests Lingiari is more at risk

@mick a recent federal nt poll has confirmed that the federal result was close to a mirror of the nt election result

@John it would help Labor in Lingiari because remote communities mostly vote Labor, traditionally speaking (the geography of those remote communities is also a major factor though).

@Mick Quinlivan @Drake I agree it won’t be anywhere near 58% TPP as I said before but I would still tip the Coalition to win the federal TPP in the Territory.

Good point about Queensland in 2004 too; similarly, federal Labor recorded its worst TPP performance in Queensland since 1996 in 2019 yet Queensland Labor won the 2020 state election.

In Lingiari i would say Racial Polarisation will be more an issue than Solomon and i dont think White Votes and Indigenous voters are on the same page in Lingiari

@yes well based on the nt results the clp won 4 seats in lingiari labor won 4 and an independent 1 so i still think lingiari will flip especially since they got so close in 2022 which was a good year for labor and went against the national swing. we should be getting state breakdowns this month for the other mainland states to see how bad its gonna be. but even now i cant see any path to majority for labor they are simply gonna shed too many seats to the libs and maybe even the greens and with very few seats to offset them there will be a net loss of seats and abor can only afford to shed 3 before going into minority. i still think the libs can ge tanywhere between 8-12 and there was recent internal polling showing the libs doing very well in some seats in vic which is labors best and libs worst state.

@John @Nimalan when the Queensland and ACT elections happen should I do a map of results in each seat but using federal boundaries?

I already did a map of the Voice referendum but using NT electorates (posted on the general NT page). Queensland would be harder with 93 electorates but I can focus on specific areas (e.g Brisbane).

As for Lingiari, it seems that the Aboriginals around Alice and Katherine are more conservative-voting than in remote communities.

It would’ve been interesting to see results for the same-sex marriage plebiscite by town and LGA (as it was as a postal survey) to see how the predominantly Christian Aboriginals of Lingiari living in the missions and towns outside Alice and Katherine vote on social issues not directly related to Indigenous people.

@john yes on qld but i dont know why youd bother in act

It’ll be worth waiting for the preference distributions tomorrow but I’d sound the warning for Labor on Greens and even progressive indie preferences. It looks like the Greens -> Labor preference flows at the NT election have gone down quite a lot. As have the Labor -> Greens votes, that’s why the Greens missed out in Fannie Bay and I’d say it’s also why Labor missed out in Casuarina. Greens -> Labor preference flows in the NT at the fed in 2022 were already a bit lower than nationally, but if they replicated the rates from the NT election in 2025 I think Lingiari would already be gone even on the same primaries.

The Greens did well in Alice, Katherine and Nhulunbuy in 2022 and Marion only got in last time thanks to their decent preference flows against the phalanx of minor right candidates.

Territory Labor’s legacy on fracking and water could have a long tail.

@Josh I wouldn’t call the Greens’ federal performance in Katherine in 2022 “great”. In Katherine East they did well but in Katherine and the Katherine PPVC they only did what I would describe as “okay”.

The Greens were second on the ballot in Lingiari in 2022, so they may have got some donkey votes from people who didn’t want to vote for the majors but didn’t know who to vote for (remember donkey voting is quite common in Indigenous communities due to the lower levels of education and knowledge of the candidates, so being first on the ballot is a big bonus which is why in Leichhardt the Socialist Alliance did so well but preferences flowed 39% to the LNP because the Socialist Alliance was first and the LNP were above Labor).

Also, what stopped Labor winning Casuarina was the CLP getting 45.1% on primaries. That led to the CLP getting 51.7% of the TPP vote.

The CLP have preselected Lisa Bayliss, a police officer and daughter of former CLP Minister Daryl Manzie. A good shot of a gain for the CLP here considering Territory Labor’s absolute shitshow in Darwin + Palmerston at the recent territory election.

This should swing back to the CLP for sure, last time the swing was shockingly big.

Whatever resentment there is against Territory Labor will subside a bit hy next year, and it’s quite possible the CLP territory government’s honeymoon will be over too.

The Greens seem to be alluding to taking this seat seriously following on from the territory campaign. Unlikely to win but it will help Gosling to hang on.

@blue honeymoons tend to last 6-12 months but yea the swing will not be as big given people have taken their anger out on the territory govt already.