Solomon – Australia 2025

Any thoughts for this seat?

Hard to say it will certainly gain voters as it is under quota and Lingiari is over. It is surrounded by liberal voting booths in Lingiari so it will push it towards the clo but can they win ?

On the surface it looks like a lot of CLP voters deserted the CLP for the Liberal Democrats and the CLP didn’t get everything back in preferences. LD preferences split only 60/40 in favour of CLP. They also appeared top of the ballot paper so this might have inflated their vote.

If I understand correctly, the LD party has been deregistered so if it doesn’t contest the next election, the CLP should be able to get back some of that conservative-leaning vote, and when you add that to the likelihood there will be a correction after the Labor blowout result in 2022, the CLP should be able to get back some of its margin, though I doubt it’ll be enough to take the seat.

@gpps I think the crime crisis in the NT will damage the NT labor brand and if the clp can win the territory election in August next year an incumbent clp territory govt could give them a honeymoon vote. Especially if they can tackle that problem

CLP isn’t winning under Lia, she is unfit to be chief minister and she had her chance in 2020.

If they want to win. Make Senator Price the leader. They would win.

Labor’s margin in Solomon is inflated. It can be quite swingy but Lingiari is more of a battleground now given the current climate.

@Votante One caution I’d say is that Lingari will have a massive Indigenous enrolment increase which significantly favours Labor. I’d expect strong CLP swings in Alice Springs due to the crime crisis but this would be offset by the huge increase in Indigenous enrolment from the Voice referendum which would lean strongly to the ALP.

@dan m indigenous enrolment doesn’t equal votes for labor. The clp can surprisingly close to winning when running a white man against an indigenous woman in lingiari in 2022. With Jacinta prices increased profile she will either run here in 2025 or campaign with whoever does in 2025 either way it will be a target for the clp and they may well get it. If they can get other indigenous leaders out here to help like Anthony and warren Mundine it might well be a slam dunk.

Very interesting to see the large increase in the liberal democrats share, where were they placed on the ticket in 2022 and who did they preference?

@bob they finished 3rd. and they split 61.45 to 38.55 to the CLP

@John

What benefit would Jacinta Price get from moving to the Reps? She would be exchanging her guaranteed senate spot for a possible Reps seat.

The CLP caucus with the Nats and there’s nothing stopping the Nats leader /DPM from being a senator especially in opposition.

Even if she did have leadership ambitions she’d have better luck running for Lingiari as a leader (the way Campbell Newman and Luke Foley didn’t have reps seats despite being opposition leaders)

About Jacinta Price, she can remain as a senator as long as she wants unless she loses preselection for the CLP’s top senate spot. Why would she give that up to run for a Labor-held seat (albeit a marginal one) or even for NT Parliament? Perhaps if there is a strong mood for change (e.g. scandal-ridden sitting member, imminent landslide) then it’s worth running in Lingiari to bring it home for the LNP.

I mentioned that Lingiari is more of a toss-up than Solomon because of crime (a territory issue with federal implications) and indigenous issues. AEC says enrolment numbers have broken records in these three categories: the NT, amongst indigenous communities and 18 to 24 year olds. I wonder if high enrolment rates pre-referendum will translate to high turnout rates for the referendum and even high turnout rates for the next federal/NT elections.

@Daniel T why don’t you think Lia can win? I think she can. Opinion polling is unfortunately rare and only occasionally released in the territories, so we don’t know how popular or unpopular Natasha Fyles or Lia Finocchiaro are, though my guess is that Fyles would return a dissatisfaction rate; she seems unpopular (particularly in Alice Springs and Katherine, though they are normally the places where the CLP vote is strongest and the Labor vote is weakest). Jacinta Price probably won’t quit federal politics for the CLP leadership.

I see the 2024 election as favouring the CLP despite the betting odds. As I’ve said before there’s not much for Labor to gain and the CLP is set for big swings in Alice Springs and Katherine, as well as probably Palmerston and southern Darwin. Port Darwin will likely go from Labor to the CLP, which might hurt Labor given that the member for Port Darwin (Paul Kirby) is a Cabinet minister. Fannie Bay (Michael Gunner’s old seat) is also a seat the CLP will try and gain. Then there’s Fong Lim and the second redistribution proposal has it taking a fair bit of Spillett (Lia’s seat and the safest CLP seat in the Territory), which is already a marginal Labor seat but this could turn it back to the CLP due to it taking it parts of Spillett. All this alone would give the CLP three gains and Labor three losses, which means the CLP would once again be present in Darwin. Then there’s Araluen, an independent-held seat. Robyn Lambley (ex-CLP, ex-Palmer United/UAP, ex-TA) may be popular but she came within a bee’s dick of losing her seat to the CLP candidate (Damien Ryan, former Mayor of Alice Springs and the party’s candidate for Lingiari in 2022, which was also within a bee’s dick of flipping from Labor to the CLP). And then Daly could be a tossup too; if the CLP manages to persuade more Indigenous voters who previously voted Labor to vote for them (which is something they have done gradually and increasingly since they won the 2012 general election, largely due to many Indigenous people voting CLP in seats like Arafura and Arnhem) then they can win back Daly, despite the fact that they lost it at a by-election (though Daly, along with Spillett, was one of the two seats the CLP won in 2016 until they got Namatjira from redistribution and five other seats as gains). Something tells me that Barkly, although on a tiny margin and had a monster swing to the CLP on both primaries and TPP in 2020, will stick with the CLP.

My prediction for the swing in Alice Springs and Katherine is at least 10%. I predict that the CLP will gain (or have at least a relatively good chance of gaining) the seats of Araluen, Daly, Fannie Bay, Fong Lim, Goyder, Port Darwin and maybe also Drysdale. If the swing is big enough they may even gain Karama, but it’s unlikely.

Any thoughts on what other seats could change hands?

@John CLP Senators caucus with the Nationals but CLP MPs/candidates are split: in Solomon they caucus with the Liberals and in Lingiari they would caucus with the Nationals (this is not an assumption, this is fact as the Nationals had a page for Damien Ryan endorsing him in 2022 for Lingiari, and Natasha Griggs (for example) caucused with the Liberals when she was the member for Solomon).

Also, why is nobody talking about the fact that the Liberal Democrats may have gotten voters in the NT because ex-CLP Senator Sam McMahon was at the top of the Liberal Democrats’ Senate ticket in the NT?

Anyway, back to my other question, what seats do you guys will change hands at the 2024 NT general election?

@douglas the house is seen as the more prestigious position as it’s the house that decides government and they may choose to run her there if they believe they can win the seat its the reason why people move from the senate to the house because it’s seen as a better place to be (don’t ask why) although yes they may not want to risk it but it is up to her ultimately where she wants to run

Robyn Lambley wasn’t ever a member of the UAP – she left the CLP in 2015 and won pretty handily as an independent in 2016 (had a 13% swing towards her relative to the 2PP) – it’s more likely that the attachment to the Territory Alliance brand resulted in the swing against her instead.

@Nether Portal, as GPPS above mentioned, LDP was number 1 on the ballot paper. This would’ve misled many Liberal voters to vote for LDP by accident. On top of that, there was a surge in votes for parties like UAP, ON and LDP in NT and nationwide off the back of the pandemic. The CLP primary vote crashed but LDP’s surpassed 10% in Solomon.

I doubt voters were swayed too much by the senate ticket when voting for a HoR candidate. In Lingiari’s HoR race, LDP came fifth, behind ON and slightly ahead of UAP, despite having the same senate ballot papers.

Seems John isn’t the only one eyeing up Price for the Prime Ministership. This came out today in the SMH.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/albanese-just-spent-364-million-to-make-jacinta-price-pm-20230928-p5e8a9.html

A totally bizarre misunderstanding of how politics in this country works. The author seems to think that the pathway for Price to PM is as simple as changing houses and changing parties (both of which are possible). The error lies in that she seems to think that the leadership of the Liberal Party is within reach of not only a woman, not only an aboriginal woman but an aboriginal woman from the Northern Territory! The only leader of a federal conservative party not from a state in the eastern time zone was Alexander Downer. This is Sir Joh all over again and, perhaps like Joh for Canberra, may wind up damaging the coalition.

federal conservative major party* (FT/A-S, Protectionists, Liberal, Nationalists, UAP, Liberal II)

Don’t post a full news article for gods sake.

@doyglas if I Marion scrymjour I’d be worried. Jacintas face will be at every polling station in Lingiari for 2 weeks. Especially if the labor govt goes down in August

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/aus2025/solomon2025/comment-page-1#comment-793693

Senator Price is clearly the biggest winner out of the referendum and that has increased her chances of becoming Liberal leader, at some point in the next ~20 years. It by no means guarantees it, but it certainly increases the chances. Getting a sufficiently safe seat would be required, a seat including central Darwin like Solomon does might be a bit marginal. A third territory seat (presumably containing mostly a combination of Palmerston and Darwin surrounds), requiring either a significant increase in the size of the Parliament or an increased minimum for the NT, would likely make that significantly easier.

Or she could end up in a Qld seat…

There won’t be a third NT seat in the foreseeable future. Both Solomon and Lingiari have way less than the average electorate. This is according to the referendum enrolments. Lingiari is the larger of the two with 80,000 or so electors whilst every mainland electorate has over 100,000. Solomon will have to expand and take pieces of Lingiari at a future redistribution.

The entitlement of seats per state/territory are based on population, not enrolment. Since the NT has a relatively low enrolment rate, using enrolment data makes it look worse, but it also means that the recent enrolment improvements won’t help them. And yes, they are a hell of a long way from winning a third seat.

She should run in Leichhardt or Durack if she has to switch states. Grey is feasible since Ramsay will likely retire next time or in 2028.

She is not a ”Liberal” she sits with the Nationals. it may be called the ”Country Liberal” party, but she is with the Nats. she would first need to switch to the Libs and the coalition would have to approve of this move, as I believe a former MP for Groom wanted to switch to the Nats but was blocked.

Mundine may try again in a seat himself, but not Gilmore. Constance should not run again if he becomes senator.

If the CLP lose in 2024, which is likely. Then I suspect there will be pressure for Price to switch to territory politics and she could lead the party to a Campbell Newman style wipeout in the 2028 territorial election. she is popular.

she could potenitally make the seat safe by running for it. she wont run in qld or wa as it would be seen as a parachute and the only real connecting seat in qld is kennedy and that looks to be held by one katter or another

Senator Price has gained celebrity status as the poster girl for the No campaign but I don’t think it will hold up post-referendum. Indigenous issues will be on the table post-referendum, unlike the republic issue which got buried pretty quickly. I still believe future elections will be fought on bread and butter issues like housing, cost of living and even climate change. I think according to polling I saw, the voice was the most important issue for <5% of people.

Her choices for a HoR seat are limited. If she switches parties from CLP to an interstate equivalent, it would be seen as a parachute. Barnaby Joyce switched from QLD Senator to MP for some NSW seat but at least he grew up in his electorate. Maranoa (Littleproud's seat) and Kennedy (Katter's seat) are out for Price.

Agree Votante,
While Senator Price, is currently adored by the Conservative base. I dont know how well she can articulate bread and butter issue like you mentioned. Alice Springs is very different from places like Leppington, Ellenbrook, Pakenham and Mango Hill places where elections are won and lost. Remember Winston Churchill won a World War but was voted out because in peace time people’s priorities were different. George H.W Bush won the Cold War and the Gulf War but was voted out because it was “the economy, stupid” as Bill Clinton aptly put it.

I don’t think she would become leader any time soon. But she would likely be campaigning with Lia Finocchiaro and the CLP in 2024 as opposed to Dutton (like how John Howard campaigned with Dominic Perrottet and the NSW Liberals in 2023 and how Josh Frydenburg campaigned with Matthew Guy and the Victorian Liberals in 2022). My understanding is that the two are friends, both CLP and both from the NT plus if Price is popular in Alice Springs it could be a winner.

The 2024 NT general election is a real tossup. The CLP certainly has a shot though. There just isn’t much more for Labor to gain, especially given that it’s unlikely they’ll hold on to Fannie Bay, Fong Lim or Port Darwin (Blain, Daly and Drysdale are tossups too). The CLP would, however, have a big swing to them in Alice Springs and Katherine, I assume. Normally Katherine is a very safe CLP seat but was shockingly lost in 2016 due to the distribution of preferences (Willem Westra van Holthe, the Deputy Chief Minister under Adam Giles (who also shockingly lost his Alice Springs-based seat of Braitling due to TPP despite having a higher primary vote), lost simply due to preferences and Labor held it with a 0.5% margin until they lost it (as expected) in 2020). Interestingly the irregular polling in 2016 predicted that the CLP would retain Katherine and Spillett (most polls also predicted Braitling) and they would lose all of their other seats, yet they retained Daly and Spillett and lost all their other seats.

The fact that the NT Labor government has been in government for eight years now means that there could certainly be an “it’s time” factor.

About Gilmore though: Andrew Constance should run there again. He almost won the seat. Given his popularity in the region, he should also campaign with the NSW Liberals’ candidates for Bega and South Coast for the 2027 state election (when they are announced). South Coast was a shocking loss for the Liberals; interestingly they had a fairly decent primary vote lead over Labor yet lost the seat to Labor with a 2% margin. Weird.

@Nether Portal

I am not sure South Coast was a shock loss. It had a retiring Liberal MP and i believe much of the margin was inflated for that reason. It was held for one term during the Carr years by Labor and influx of sea changers has improved the South Coast for Labor. Also before the Bega by-election i said as seats such as Bathurst, Drommoyne and East Hills are drifting away from Labor long term this is an area Labor needs to make inroads to compensate.
Bega/South Coast, incumbency is critical ironically i feel Libs could win East Hills back before South Coast.

@votante he was living in south qld near the border anyway and hes the member for new england where he grew up also tony windosr was deeply unpopular due to him supporting the labor mintoriy governemtn and any coalition candidate could have won.

Despite being urban, Solomon voted 64% No for the Voice Referendum. I wonder if it has to do with the recent “crime wave” reported in Darwin which stirred more anti-Aboriginal sentiment amongst non-aboriginals and increased support for more conservative handling of Indigenous Issues (e.g. Northern Territory National Emergency Response)?

Darwin is no Sydney or Melbourne. By that logic, we should be surprised that Groom, Herbert, and Leichhardt voted No.

But Darwin is a territory capital so more government workers should counter some No vote and is more Labor Friendly unlike the three you mentioned.

After all Clark in Tas had a Yes vote despite both Darwin and Hobart sharing the status of being a small capital city.

Plus Darwin is no “less educated” city with 26% having a Bachelor Degree, just around the national average

I don’t have a satisfactory response to your point about government workers, and it is an interesting point about the relationship between government workers and politics. The conventional wisdom appears not to hold in Darwin. I lived in Darwin and I certainly got the impression that it’s more socially conservative than it is progressive.

As for your point about the relationship between party politics and the referendum result, I would point out that Townsville and Cairns have been friendly to Labor at the federal in the not-too-distant past, and that Cairns, Barron River, Mulgrave, Townsville, Thuringowa, and Mundingburra are all held by Labor at the state level.

I never said Darwin was as progressive as Sydney and Melbourne, I only said Darwin’s conservativism is more law and order type rather than the religious right type seen in Queensland given Darwin supported Gay Marriage above the national average (Solomon is 65% Yes)

In order to bring Solomon closer to quota wouldn’t it be better to take in the Christmas and cocos Islands that way the land borders don’t have to chopped and changed and can just remain the same

are we expecting a nt federal redistribution post?

What could I possibly say about an NT federal redistribution? They haven’t commenced it yet, the data hasn’t been published.

It was just asking if we were expecting a post about it when it does

Maybe, not a high priority.

Agree Ben – the NT federal redistribution will probably be minor in nature, just tweaking the boundary in Palmerston to transfer a few suburbs from Lingiari to Solomon since Lingiari is now over quota and Solomon is under.

CLP gained this in 2010 because of the unpopular Paul Henderson who would be defeated to the CLP in 2012.
CLP was at risk here in 2013 because Natasha Griggs was controversial and didn’t really garner a personal vote other MP’s do. (This was one of the few seats Labor got a swing to and was considered a possible gain along with Brisbane and Gilmore)
CLP lost this at 2016 because of Natasha Griggs and the CLP government heading for a landslide defeat about 50 days later, There was an incident involving her and some cameraman and it was posted to YT, I’m sure it didn’t help her.
CLP basically ran dead in 2019 and 2022.

CLP will win this again when they regain government federally. If they cannot recover ”Teal” seats. this is a must for majority along with Lingiari. As others have pointed out, this isn’t ”progressive” like many places in Sydney and Melbourne.

@Daniel T the CLP have a better shot at winning Lingiari than they do at winning Solomon.

You also have to remember that the Liberal Democratic Party (the Liberal Democrats) is now called the Libertarian Party (the Libertarians), so there won’t be the same confusion among voters (the Labor/DLP confusion currently will still remain among voters). The Northern Territory had an abnormally high Liberal Democrat vote in 2022, not just in the Senate where ex-CLP Senator Sam McMahon unsuccessfully ran for re-election as a Liberal Democrat, but also in the House of Representatives, particularly in Solomon. This is the mostly reason why the CLP’s primary vote dropped so much in Solomon, because the Liberal Democrats had such a high vote (over 10% I think).

I agree that the CLP has a better chance in Lingiari than Solomon. The margin in Lingiari is very thin. It depends on whether the electorate has warmed up to the new-ish MP Marion Scrymgour.

Both seats are quite swingy and generally don’t have high margins. The current 9% margin is highly unusual and it could be a reflection of Luke Gosling’s personal popularity but it may have been inflated by LDP splitting the votes of CLP voters.