Sturt – Australia 2025

@Votante The Greens always overestimate their gains. At the QLD state election they said they were confident of winning 10 seats, when they only picked up one.

@Jimbo there are many factors that work towards a Labor flip in this seat. Not withstanding the popularity of the Labor brand in general in SA (Albanese isn’t disliked here like he is in Queensland for example), the Greens making inroads in the Norwood and Kensington areas will help fuel Labor through preferences. North of the Torrens River is strong Labor voting territory which I expect to stay stable. The other thing is that Clutterham and McCusker have both been door-knocking everywhere, but James Stevens almost seems to be winging it with a less than prominent campaign. The Teal candidate throws a spanner into the works but I doubt it’ll make a huge impact.

If the Greens increase and Liberals decrease by any measure with Labor staying stable then it’s quite likely Labor wins. For the first time in forever this seat is genuinely in play and as a resident of Sturt I say bring it on.

@Tommo9 It will be a challenge for Stevens to hold this seat, his parties policies are at odds with where a lot of Sturt now leans. The demographics changed over the years and leans more progressive. Saw that with the Green vote increase in 2022. Possibly his only hope is strengthening his primary vote in the southern booths.
Interesting to see a Teal candidate in the ring for this election. She could be a surprise king/queen maker for this seat. Will be interesting to see how Claire Cutterham goes, good pick here I think.
Has any polling been done specifically on Sturt?

I would have called the seat in play in 2022. Now it’s probably the most likely opportunity for Labor to pick up a seat from the Liberals. And I expect they will as long as current polls hold – SA hasn’t been getting any better for the Liberals since 2022 and this is a seat that has trended left over time.

According to Kos Samaras, Sturt has the eight largest number of commonwealth public servants among all federal seats. The Coalition’s policy to slash the commonwealth public service can cause backlash in Sturt and may well help them hand the seat to Labor. https://x.com/KosSamaras/status/1906172304931094660

@joseph these people probably voted labor in 2022 anyway

I’ve lived in the blue-est bits of this electorate for most of my life. Anecdotally, there was a bipartisan endearment toward Christopher Pyne, but James Stevens has basically the opposite. My street’s currently lined with Labor, Green and Teal corflutes on houses that once belonged to very loudly Liberal neighbours. Even with polling showing otherwise, I still feel change in me bones.

Is there polling showing otherwise? I’ve felt from before the start of the campaign that this was a decent chance for Labor and now I’d even say I think it’s a likely win.

@Sturtgorl I agree with you. People are assuming that Sturt will hold because Newspoll or whatever is showing a supposed 2PP swing back to the Liberals compared to 2022 in SA which also puts Boothby in play which I doubt as well. Labor’s not going to lose Boothby and unlike the other Labor seats in the outer suburbs Sturt is more inner-city/middle ring and has been moving towards the left since the last cycle. Both Labor and Greens have doorknocked extensively and especially in blue ribbon areas. It’s ripe for picking. The swings are more likely to be in Makin, Spence and Kingston which are similar to that of North/Western Melbourne and Western Sydney.

Also for anyone’s interest, Labor’s drawn pole position on the ballot with the Liberals on 3rd, Cooper (Teal) on 4th and Greens last. A donkey vote will benefit Labor and that could be all it takes to unseat Stevens given the razor thin margin.

The polling for SA shows a small move of <0.5% to the Liberals but it hides the differences between regions. I mentioned earlier that I reckon that the outer suburbs (Spence and Kingston, both safe Labor seats) will swing more to the Liberals.

It looks like Labor is better planned and has a better candidate this time around. I was rereading some comments in this thread.
Kent Davidson on page 1 said "Sonja was a dummy candidate for the ALP, merely selected by the FEC, only two weeks out did the party realize it was winnable".

@AA, "The Greens always overestimate their gains."
I read comments saying that targeting this gives the SA Greens something to focus on.

I actually can’t see a single reason for the Liberals to be favourites here. SA has a popular Labor government winning recent by-elections with big swings, this is an area that has trended towards Labor over recent elections, James Stevens seems to be a rather anonymous MP, it looks like Labor is taking this as a serious prospect when it might have been more of a stretch in 2022, and the latest election polling is now showing Labor with potentially a relatively similar nationwide vote to 2022. If what we’ve witnessed over the last state and federal electoral cycle of inner to middle urban areas trending Labor holds, that puts this seat in the Labor pickup column even with a status quo nationwide 2PP.

There’s still time for polls to change but as it currently stands I can’t see this tiny Liberal margin holding up.

By that, I mean that I don’t see how the current polls support the case that the Liberals hold. I’m not saying that it is a lock based on the current numbers.

@Adda There were two Yougov electorate specific polls this year that showed Lib ahead in sturt, one of them was released after the nation wide 2pp started to drop for the Coalition, but was probably gathering data prior to this. That’s what I was referring to – I just don’t think it reflects reality.

On a similar note, Sportsbet has odds for Labor in Sturt at 3.1. They also suspended bets for Labor in Sturt for most of last night – might’ve been a little too popular?

Albanese has been here twice now I think during the campaign

Given the polls showing a swing back to ALP, strong labor brand in SA and how the LNP have done poorly in metro seats e.g in the WA election like Churchlands I’d expect ALP to pick up this seat

dare i say this is a likelier ALP gain at this stage than any potential LNP gains are likely for them – maybe gilmore is the exception, or aston but i consider that a little differently.

So, as a local, just thought I’d give an update on the ground…

Drove around the southern end of the electorate yesterday and today (Kensington, Hazelwood Park, Glen Osmond, Burnside area) and I could not believe my eyes. The majority of the corflutes in front of people’s houses were Katie McCusker (Greens candidate) ones, and this is in the bluest of the blue parts of Sturt where the old money and Anglo-Celtic population resides. As I drove around to the Fullarton area I spotted one James Stevens one and then another one around Rose Park/Toorak Gardens, but even in those areas they were outnumbered by the Greens corflutes and the odd Teal ones. However, to my surprise, no Labor ones even though it’s a ‘target seat’ for them, unless if they didn’t do corflutes for this campaign and purely rely on doorknocking?

Can’t believe I’m about to say this but I think the Liberals are not going to win this one, period. They’ve been outnumbered by the left in one of their safest areas which suggests the tide is turning in the electorate. The question is whether or not Labor or the Greens will breakthrough and win. Greens have flooded the rich southern end of the electorate (which also includes Norwood and Kent Town) but Labor still holds a decent sized vote in the north of the electorate. I think whoever out of Labor or the Greens finishes in 2nd place on the night will win but Labor has a better chance as the cooker vote (One Nation, Trumpets, FF) will not favour the Greens as much as Labor, and with a decent Greens vote it should give Labor the leg up to win. Conversely if the Greens make 2nd place then it will be a solid Greens win as Labor’s vote won’t dip below 25% and preferences will flow strongly that way. Teal has no chance IMO despite the attempt.

Corflutes doesn’t translate to votes. Maybe people don’t want their houses targeted for supporting the liberals.

@Tommo9, I don’t think The Greens would win Sturt as the seat voted No to the Voice and almost certainly that most No Voters would put Greens below both Liberal and Labor on preferences plus it has a large CALD community (second highest in SA to my knowledge) with large Italian, Chinese and Indian communities in the seat which are demographics that don’t tend to do normally well for minor parties.

The Greens get respectable numbers but this is too socially mixed of a seat for them to get the edge over Labor. If this were split into 2 different electorates it’s not difficult to imagine a genuine 3-way contest could happen in the southern portion of the seat (perhaps it would be similar to Ryan, though a local may dispute this). As it stands, though, it can only be a two party contest and one that Labor seems to have the clear edge in.

metro Adelaide has changed
should labor win this seat…… last held 1969……then the libs hold no Adelaide seats

Re coreflute game: On this site we were reliably told of how the Liberals had next to no presence in Prahran – we all know how that ended up..

Likewise during the Voice referendum I was living in Geelong, I’d say ‘yes’ coreflutes and paraphernalia outnumbered that of ‘no’ about 100 to 1, again – we all know what happened.

This seat will probably end up like Higgins in 2022. Labor wins, with a strong Greens vote.

The Higgins analogy is a good one. I think you might be right. Greens and Labor both ramping up campaigns here (and the teal though I’ve heard less about her) might be enough together.

I thank everyone for their contributions and I agree with the general consensus that Labor should win this one overall. I don’t think the Liberals have any chances now particularly given Labor and Greens have run intense doorknocking and corfluting campaigns in the southern blue ribbon end which is the strongest Liberal area. If the Greens are making inroads at the Liberals’ expense in the southern end whilst Labor holds up in the north it’s game over for James Stevens. This will be a Brisbane/Higgins 2022 situation where the Liberals might top primary votes but won’t win and Labor/Greens (of which I think it’s going to be Labor) will win it on each other’s preferences.

On the corflutes, it’s an interesting situation IMO. The reason why I thought it might’ve had an impact was because we actually got doorknocked by the Greens one weekend and had a productive conversation (side note, they were very nice people). At the end of the convo they asked us about whether or not they can put a corflute up in our front yard to which I said no but thanked them for asking. If this is been replicated across the electorate and in the southern end, it suggests to me that the people who usually voted solid Liberal are openly endorsing Labor or Green or Teal candidates and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t allow the corflutes to go up. The fact that there’s so many of them in the bluest areas speaks volumes IMO about the transition into an inner-city swing seat than the classic blue ribbon seat.

If the prepoll exit poll’s even remotely right this is absolutely gone for the libs.

I’ve done my prepoll in Modbury (which is in Makin) on Tuesday. I had a look around to gauge the sentiments. Most people were elderly people voting early, but what struck out to me the most was that most people were taking Labor HTVCs over Liberals, something like 5 to 1.

I know that Makin is safe for Labor but the amount of people taking Sturt ones was surprising. Given prepolls should generally favour conservatives, then this seat would be gone for Liberals by convention. Having said that, I’m not 100% convinced the exit poll is that accurate given that the same exit poll had Labor losing Corangamite, which I seriously doubt given they haven’t cocked anything up down there.

Can you do prepoll outside your electorate? Presumably most of the people doing it in Makin are from the north, which is a bit stronger for Labor, but that sounds like a thumping.

yes you can. tommo i think corangamite can be lost given the state of labor in vic and i think sturt is gone too

Even in Vic their position’s improved recently, In Corangamite, Bruce, McEwen and Chisholm according to poll bludger both labor and lib pvs increased according to exit polls, so if that’s true doubtful they can overturn the margin there.

its not over until may 3rd when the maority of people vote. in that 9 days anything can happen remember the exit polls at the start of the qld election that tightened dramactically after the polls closed?

Yeah I know, by “if that’s true” I meant if that is representative of the actual swing there, including election day. I 100% agree that anything can happen, Albo could be exposed as linked to a terror attack for all we know (not at all suggesting that he is, just an example of a wild, election altering event).

The major party true believers come out early on pre-poll in my experience. Later on next week the wider demographic starts joining in more, ALP vote too high and GRN vote too low in many of the samples to be realistic

youve also got totake int account its still school holidays so there will be alot of absent voters. most people whove made up their mind are getting voting out of the way as its between 2 long weekends atm