Bega – NSW 2023

If Constance ran here he would lose because he couldn’t even win Gilmore at the federal election and his refusal to congratulate the Labor MP on her re-election isn’t a good standing point for democracy.

Labor will probably get a small swing against them unless of course they are on track for a majority government.

I think Labor is on track to majority govt with at least a 6% plus swing

Does anyone know why there was a 12% 2PP swing at the Bega by-election but a 6.4% 2PP swing next door in Monaro? Was it because it was on a lower margin and Labor threw more resources?

Because Monaro still retained allot of support for Bruz, thr national party brand is still strong out in country NSW, the fed election proved this also, all these factors went for the new Nats candidate. And the loss of 18 years personal support for Constance here explains why the swing was larger here in Bega.

It would not surprise me if Labor won thus seat.Monaro in 2023. Part explanation for Bega result.. swing to Labor.. loss of Constance’s personal vote.. Dr Holland’s personal vote and ongoing demographics which improved labour’s position in Bega

Michael Holland is a medical doctor and doctors gained a lot of respect and admiration during the pandemic.
Andrew Constance was probably seen as “opportunistic” for leaving the state seat to run for a federal seat. Perhaps these two factors helped Labor.

Michael Holland had a superior campaign in my opinion. He scored mostly 15% and even 20% swings in Eurobodalla Shire or everywhere north of Bermagui.

Before the by-election, Labor had never held Bega but since the turn of the century, the margin was always below 10% 2PP except in 2011.

Think..Kirsty mcbain would have won.most booths in both Bega and Monaro on federal figures

Kristy McBain’s successor as mayor of Bega Valley, Russel Fitzpatrick, is the Liberal candidate. No idea whether he has the same level of popularity. In 2021 he was outpolled by the endorsed ALP candidate but got the most votes of any ungrouped independent (13.15%). If I remember correctly McBain was known for stepping up during the bushfires which gave her a profile and popularity above and beyond a typical Mayor.

Is a year long enough to build up a personal vote? Joe McGirr was able to go from 25.4% to 44.6% in 6 months in Wagga.

So I think an ALP retain.

Dr Holland will hold probably
With a increased majority

Off-topic. But was Bega cheese made in this electorate?

The sitting member should hold, but how is a Liberal mayor of the Bega shire without an election? So does the other party take over the mayorship without an election, where is the democracy in that?

@Daniel T – yes Bega Cheese is made in the town Bega in the Bega Valley. It’s local government is Bega Valley council, and it’s state electorate is Bega.

Both McBain and Fitzpatrick were independents on council. I think McBain joined Labor shortly before running for Eden Minato. But it’s also quite common for political party members to run for council as independents. Bega Valley’s mayor is elected by the council. Looks like Fitzpatrick had the numbers.

Agree john, many party members can and do serve as independents when on local council.

One example is nick berman who served as independent mayor of hornsby council but lost to Matt kean when running for liberal preselection for hornsby state district in 2011.

Queensland may well be an exception particularly for larger councils like bcc as a majority of councillors are partisan.

Also another example being roy maggio in Ryde council, he is currently an independent but is a registered liberal member and had served as a Liberal councillor in his first term starting 2008 or 2012.

Daniel, election of mayor by councillors is common in Sydney and most of nsw. My former home council Parramatta uses this method and only a few use popular mayoral election. This is different from Queensland where a majority of councils elect mayor using a popular vote.

In SA and WA councillors are always independent even if they’re political party members and everyone knows they’re political party members.

I think in Victoria candidates will declare that they’re political party members but it won’t show up on the ballot paper (except City of Melbourne)? You can go to the Greens website and it will say who the Green councillors are (not the case in SA/WA)

NSW it’s a council by council basis and tickets can have party labels. Nats don’t run in councils but regional councils have plenty of Nat members. Liberals and Labor run in all the Sydney councils and other large urban councils, but it varies. Interestingly in Queanbeyan the mayor is a Labor member but independent, yet on the same council are endorsed ALP candidates (and they are allies).

I looked at which councils directly elect their mayor in this blog post last year.

In Tasmania and QLD, direct election of mayor is universal. In Victoria it’s only the City of Melbourne. In WA it’s a minority, in SA it’s a majority. Interestingly despite many councils using council election, the Lord Mayor of Parramatta is the only Lord Mayor in the country not directly elected. In most states there’s only one Lord Mayor, and that council always has direct election. In NSW there are 4, but Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle all use direct election.

Ben, I guess the title of ‘Lord Mayor’ instead of just mayor is used for the largest or most important councils which are mostly those covering the CBDs of the state capitals.

I was told recently that to have a Lord Mayor, a city needed to have a cathedral although I would assume this is more of a customary prerequisite than a statutory one – if indeed I was even informed correctly.

“Lord mayor” is a title given by the monarch I think.

I wrote in the Monaro thread that being a professional athlete could be a vote booster. I wonder how big the doctor effect is on voting generally and how much bigger the swing may be compared to the average candidate in other seats. Dr Michael Holland scored a 12% swing at the by-election.

Federally, Dr Michael Freelander scored a 12% swing in 2016 in the federal seat of Macarthur. Sophie Scamps and Monique Ryan won blue-ribbon Liberal heartland seats in 2022.

I think being a medical professional running for elected office will help somewhat as you will be seen as being outside the political space. I believe it helped Dr Fiona Martin win Reid in 2019 against Sam Crosby, although demographics of the district also played a role in her winning the open seat with minimal swing against the Liberal Party.

However, Dr Martin suffered a big swing against her for the 2022 election, resulting in her defeat. Although primarily it was caused by a number of gaffes she made during the campaign trail, combined with unpopularity of the Liberal Party with ethnic Asian voters.

The voters of South Wolumla will be critical in delivering a win for either party.

Bega like Eden Monaro is trending labor. In.a better electoral climate in 2019 constance who was the sitting mp retained the seat. There is also a tendency for a sitting mp to build a personal vote. Both these factors now favour Labor. Labor to hold.. I expect Dr Holland to hold this electorate most times unless there is a big swing to the liberals

Wouldn’t count Russel out on this race. He’s very popular locally. Couple this with Dr Holland having the reputation of being a “part time MP”. Furthermore, this is traditionally a Liberal seat.

Seat is seriously in play.

Stew… you are wishful thinking mate. The by-election Was a change of member election for Bega.. 3 times now has voted labor twice in Eden Monaro and once in the by-election. Dr Holland will retain this seat and not lose it again unless there is a fairly empathic change of govt maybe 3 elections into the future

I don’t think Stew has wishful thinking, mate. Watch this place , Fitzy is a dark horse and will Dr.Holland a run for his money. If the statewide wing isn’t too big against the liberals, Fitzy will win Bega.

The statewide swing will be in the range of 6 to 8% in my opinion. And Labor will outpoll the coalition in primary votrs

Bye elections often give a false guide to the upcoming elections in tbe same seat. I wouldn’t just whack on the statewide swing from an opinion poll here.

Agree LNP Insider, assuming a 5% or so 2PP swing from the previous general election result then the Liberals would still retain this seat narrowly. Russell Fitzpatrick is quite a decent, strong challenger so he shouldn’t be counted out. I would say Bega is a tossup seat where Labor has a slight edge at the moment.

I would also say Andrew Constance as the sitting mp had a personal vote which was lost to the liberals when he was no longer the candidate . Now Dr Holland is the sitting.mp with a 5% margin. All things being equal I would expect him to retain. Maybe with a slight swing his way.

Watch this seat carefully on election night, I think that Russell Fitzpatrick has a better chance at winning than most of us have given him credit for.

Will probably buck the state wide trend perhaps going back to libs that would make it game over for a Labor majority

No Labor will retain

The Greens candidate, Cathy Griff, is also quite popular and sits on Council. Russel Fitzpatrick is not as well-known as McBain was, and he is the Mayor of a Shire which has just voted to increase rates by 43%.

I suspect that the Mayoral effect won’t be as high this election as it was for McBain, and that the Greens will increase their percentage by 2 points, which will flow on to stymie some of the bleeding from Dr Holland’s reduced primary (which is because most see him as a part-time MP (mostly because I’m told he has had a chronic and serious illness since taking office).

Fitzpatrick is incredibly popular in the Bega Valley Council area, being instrumental in many local issues, including fighting for local health funding. Both candidates are mostly unknown in the Bateman’s Bay area, however, the Liberal branding has recovered there significantly since the byelection.

Conservatively predicting a 3-4% swing to the Liberals on byelection numbers, but wouldn’t be shocked if the Liberals pick this up.

@stew agreed there will be a swing back to the liberals here whether its enough to change back to liberal remains to be seen. if the coalition is able to regain this along with barwon and murray possibly lismore but that ones more line ball libs will be well placed to form govt assuming htey can stem the losses to labor

Council does not equal state election vote. Constance had a personal vote esp round Batemans Bay this is now lost to the liberals
I would expect Mr Holland to improve his vote so this.is likely. Labor hold. Oh the liberals have also a big Kiama problem which will infect the coast…….

Mick you’re clearly showing your ALP Sydney centric bias and complete disregard for regional NSW. I’ll start here – Kiama is not Bega, and lumping them in together is just disrespectful to the unique communities all along the Greater South Coast. It’s over a five hour drive from the northern end of the Kiama electorate to the southern end of the Bega electorate.

While I agree Constance had a strong personal vote, the Liberal branding is in a much better position now than it was at the byelection – especially in the Batemans Bay area. Hollands performance and record will hinder him this time.

Being well known on the local Council does help – can’t possibly see how it doesn’t. There has been a great precedent supporting the notion that being successful at a local council level does boost electoral chances.

@mick by elections are often lost by the government of the day. especially when it wont result in chnage in governemnt and are often used to stick it to the governemtn or when people hate having to vote again when its for things other then important reasons epect a swing to liberal and possibly change in member

Of course i know where Kiama and Bega are relative to each other. BUT the Kiama problem is a problem for the liberal party in terms of integrity… and this reflects maybe throughout nsw Sydney included.. the liberal party needs to clean up their local organisation

@ mick innocent until proven guilty. Heard of it? I’m guessing the liberal party is only half heartedly contesting kiama and ward is still popular and looks a chance to win. If he’s acquitted he will be welcomed back especially if perrotet is no longer leader.

@Stew I reckon you’re probably right that the Libs will pick up a couple of points here, especially considering how unusually low their primary was in the 2022 by-election.

I reckon Holland has a stronger base in the Batemans Bay/Moruya area than he does in Bega/further south. In fact, a lot of people south of Moruya see his advocacy for the Moruya hospital to be detrimental to their services, which won’t help him.

I also think Fitzpatrick isn’t as well-known as other Liberal candidates in the past, which has been demonstrated by him reanimating Constance to follow him everywhere on the campaign trail. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a few points readjusting to the libs from Labor, but probably on the face of it not enough to push them over the line, especially given the other right parties aren’t putting up much of a fight in this electorate.

The Liberal primary plummeted an extra 6% compared to the by-election and the ALP now hold Bega by a margin of 10%. Bega was not close to being a Liberal gain despite the commentary of some people in this thread. Noticing a site wide trend of people criticising Mick Quinlivan’s predictions but his predictions end up being closer to the actual election result than theirs lol.

“Bye elections often give a false guide to the upcoming elections in tbe same seat. I wouldn’t just whack on the statewide swing from an opinion poll here.”

The funny thing is that this literally occurred at this election. By election result + statewide swing = new post-election margin (give or take 1%)

Mick does have form of making overly optimistic predictions for Labor. But most of his critics tend to do the same if not even worse cheerleading for the blue team.

In this case, there seems to be quite a lot of wishcasting from the latter without much real reason to believe a popular MP like Michael Holland should be under threat. Still, the comment about not whacking a statewide swing on an opinion poll remains true. Most of the time it will be very different to the actual result (including the other seats from the Feb 2022 by-elections).

Bye elections usually go against the government. Last year,in the wake of Covid there were cohorts of people ‘giving the government a message’. The messages were entirely contradictory but the effect was the same, and Andrew Constance had a 7%+ personal vote. So for Fiona Kotvojs, despite being a far superior candidate, to hold the seat was a big ask and this latest result shows just how well she really did in that situation.
Michael Holland gets through on the ‘baby vibe’. Given the number of babies he has delivered over the years he has a huge number of women voters in his pocket, apart from those who have had bad experiences with him. Not that those skills are much use in parliament as his lacklustre performance has shown.

Getting the strong impression from this thread that Liberal fanpeople really do *not* like Michael Holland lmao. I guess getting a 15% swing over two elections in a year will do that.

Not a fan of how the ABC and other news sites etc. show swings between 2019 and 2023 rather than swings between the 2022 by-election and 2023, but I understand that for consistency across all electorates, they show the change between general elections.

I didn’t think Labor would lose any of their seats at this election, especially one that followed a big by-election swing and was already on a margin of 6%.

For the first time at a General election this seat has voted to the left of the state this is contrast to areas like Bathurst, Drummoyne etc which are moving away from Labor long term. It maybe the case this is now a seat that Labor cannot win without.

Don’t know it Constance had a personal vote of 7% but he certainly had one.He was nor indanger of losing Bega whilst the mp and his vote in Gilmore Waa a close run thing in an election where Labor gained government .This area is trending Labor at both state and Federal levela

@mick constance would have won this if he didnt resign to contest Gilmore as your saw federally he bucked the trend nationally and almost won gilmore and will most likely win if he runs again in 2025.