Wills – Australia 2025

I honestly think the Greens could win here.

@SpaceFish this is the most likely Greens gain.

Agree and Peter Khalil will not be popular and is probably a liability like Danby here. If Labor does hold on i wonder if they will look for a chance to replace him with a more left-wing member like they did in neighboring Batman/Cooper when they got the chance.

I’m surprised they didn’t move Khalil to Maribrynong and put a left candidate in Wills

@ Darth Vadar
I actually had a discussion with John on the 2022 Maribyrnong thread i suggested Labor should have done exactly that

Perhaps when Shorten announced his retirement they should’ve moved Khalil to Maribyrnong and had Jo Briskey contest Wills as she is from the left.

Either way Bob Hawke will be spinning in his grave when the inevitable happens (aka the seat falls to the Greens), and yes I know the boundaries weren’t the same as when he held the seat but it still had Brunswick and Coburg when he was the member IIRC, both of which are now Green areas.

@ Tommo9
The boundaries are not too different from when Hawke. i have included a link so you can check historical maps. Back then included parts of Essendon & Moonee Ponds (more affluent areas with a decent Liberal vote). These boundaries are more left-wing than in the past

https://pappubahry.com/pseph/aus_stats/?plot=map&year=2013&colour_by=informal&multiple=max&geo_map=1

If yard signs could vote the greens would win big here. Samantha is everywhere in some parts of the electorate

If Wills/Cooper was east-west – north of Bell Street – rather than north-south, Khalil would be safe and wouldn’t have to move to Maribyrnong. I think Cooper and Wills should become east-west seats because of the Bell Street demographic divide.

Agreed with Jesse, sooooo many yard signs here. Samantha is clearly running a big campaign. Alas yard signs don’t vote so still not a done deal here

Ian,
Demographically it might make sense to have Wills and Cooper east-west, but almost all of the communication lines in the inner north still run in a north-south direction. Apart from Bell Street, all of the east-west roads in this area are fairly minor.

In fact, there is very limited communication across Merri Creek once you get north of Bell Street. Even if a southern seat kind of made some sense, the northern seat would be very much in two disconnected parts.

Mark
Absolutely, there is no bridge above bell street until near the ring road. Absolutely couldn’t make a north of wills/cooper electorate. Tbh the current layouts make so much sense idk why the aec would ever touch them

Seeing a lot of campaigning going on here. Greens seem to have a very big ground game. ALP seems to have started recently and are flyering at train stations. Feels like it is about to get busy

Northcote and Brunswick aren’t even that similar demographically. Brunswick is much grungier and Northcote is much bougier (lots of boutiques etc, fsncy restaurants). Northcote has more families, while Brunswick is a bit younger. Brunswick has more of an Islamic community which is pretty much non-existent in Northcote, and Brunswick is far more radical politically.

Adam, agree. some of the council results in Merri-bek were very interesting. One of the wards was 56% greens, 17% Vic Soc 20% Labor. Those are numbers people in Darebin could only dream of

Greens gain. Local and demographic factors who have it in for the Labor Party (but aren’t inclined to vote Liberal) are going to bite Labor/Khalil firmly in the arse in this electorate. Don’t think even a ‘left’ Labor candidate would be enough to save them either.

Victorian Socialists have just announced that they will not be running a candidate in Wills, instead they will be supporting Socialist Alliance’s perennial candidate, former VicSoc candidate and incumbent councilor Sue Bolton. Together VicSoc and SocAll received 6.4% in 2022, whether Bolton will reach that alone or most of the VicSoc vote will go the Greens is yet to be seen.

im still not convinced the greens will win here. they will certainly throw everything at it but the greens vote hasnt moved since the last election on national polls even in victorian sub natonal polling. i think the margin will be small maybe 2-3% but i think khalil will hold on due to the fact he will get the centre right votes to keep him in office.

I wouldn’t trust state-wide polling to determine anything regarding how the Greens may go in a particular seat, since they really only run hard with very targeted campaigns in their target seats.

Polls adjust more broadly for demographics and location type such as inner, outer metro, regional etc but they would completely miss the factors that are specific to an individual seat campaign.

still i dont think the greens will overcome the 4.6% margin in one go. maybe 2028 at this stage in my opinion

@john Do you think Liberal voters might preference the Greens ahead of Labor to ensure there’s 1 less Labor member sitting in Canberra and improve a Liberal minority negotiating position? There might be enough there to get the Greens over the line.

@witness No not a chance im sure if they could go back they wouldnt be putting Bandt into the seat of melbourne in 2010 either given the greens radicalism of late and antisemitic behaviour they have no chance of getting lib preferences. a greens member is the same as a labor member because the greens will never back the libs for inoirty govt so it doesnt improve the libs position. im sure if they did the greens would win but they wont

liberal voters can do whatever they please but the liberal party wont be preferencing the greens above labor

They did in the 2022 state election, but can almost guarantee they won’t in 2026 now. That will make seats like Pascoe Vale, Preston and Footscray pretty safe for Labor again.

@adam the state greens arent as radical and focus on the state issues and i personally agree with preferencing the state greens in order to hurt state labor.

The Vic Liberals had a put Labor last campaign in 2022 which meant that they had the Greens before Labor on their HTV cards. Generally Liberal voters put Labor before the Greens.

Witness, I can’t add much more to what John and Adam have said – there will be a small number of Liberal voters who preference the Greens ahead of Labour in all seats, but that is a very small number and unlikely make a difference.

Trent, I think you massively overstate the ‘local factors’ – particularly when most of the local factors that drive the Greens vote is demographics. What I thought we found in QLD State is the Greens lost votes in the inner city and gained in some outer suburbs – whether that is a change in the demographics or the demo’s have moved is a more interesting question that probably cancels itself out in this seat.

More broadly, the one issue that the Greens seem to be hanging their hat on here I am not convinced is the winner for them they think it is.

Yes votante but that was state labor and state greens. They seem to be far less radical and are less focused on the woke agenda.

The Greens really need to get this division locked away before it gets redistributed back north of Park Street. They may not have much of an opportunity in 27/28 if they end up using their 2010-2013 playbook in the potential upcoming minority government.

I think 4.6% is a relatively difficult margin to overcome for them. They seem to have made no inroads in polling despite having a disappointing almost centre-right Labor government in power in a time when populism is on the rise. That said, this is the seat where their support for Gaza/Palestine will have the greatest electoral benefit and they have a well-known candidate in Samantha Ratnam, so it’s quite possible for this to flip alongside Macnamara.

Labor will need really tight Liberal preference flows to even hope to hold on. Last time it 73:27. As Lib HTVs will be hard to find, then Labor might have to resort to handing out for the Libs to get that preference flow up.

Labor would never go that far. Given their recent behavior most libs will be following the it and preferencong labor