ALP 12.3%
Incumbent MP
Anthony Carbines, since 2010.
Geography
Northern Melbourne. Ivanhoe covers southern parts of the City of Banyule. Ivanhoe covers the suburbs of Eaglemont, Heidelberg, Ivanhoe, Rosanna, View Bank and parts of Yallambie.
Redistribution
Ivanhoe shrunk slightly, losing part of Macleod to Bundoora. This change reduced the Labor margin from 12.4% to 12.3%.
History
Ivanhoe was first created for the 1945 Victorian state election. In that time, it has alternated between the major parties, although it was predominantly held by the Liberal Party before the ALP gained it most recently in 1996.
Ivanhoe was first won in 1945 by independent candidate Robert Gardner, who was a journalist and community organiser. He held the seat for one term, losing in 1947 to the Liberal Party’s Rupert Curnow.
Curnow died in December 1950, and the 1951 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Frank Block.
Block was defeated by the ALP’s Michael Lucy in 1952. Lucy left the ALP in 1955 to join the Anti-Communist ALP, which became the Democratic Labor Party. He lost his seat at the 1955 election to the Liberal Party’s Vernon Christie.
Christie held the seat for eighteen years, retiring in 1973. The seat was won by race-caller Bruce Skeggs for the Liberal Party. He lost the seat in 1982 to the ALP’s Tony Sheehan, although later won the Legislative Council province of Templestowe in 1988, holding it until 1996.
Sheehan lost Ivanhoe in 1985, but later held the neighbouring seat of Northcote from 1988 to 1998.
In 1985, Ivanhoe was won by Vin Heffernan of the Liberal Party. He held Ivanhoe until his defeat in 1996. The seat had long been a solidly Liberal seat, but the 1992 redistribution made the seat notionally Labor. Heffernan managed to hold on in 1992, but in 1996 he lost to the ALP’s Craig Langdon.
Langdon held the seat for the next fourteen years, but in 2009 was defeated for Labor preselection, and then resigned from Parliament in August 2010, predicting that his successor would fail to hold the seat.
Langdon’s prediction was proven untrue, and Anthony Carbines won the seat as the Labor candidate in 2010. Carbines was re-elected in 2014 and 2018.
- Anthony Carbines (Labor)
- Sarah Hayward (Family First)
- Bernadette Khoury (Liberal)
- Sonja Ristevski (Animal Justice)
- Craig Langdon (Independent)
- Emily Bieber (Greens)
Assessment
Ivanhoe is now a reasonably safe Labor seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Anthony Carbines | Labor | 18,800 | 46.4 | +10.5 | 46.5 |
| Monica Clark | Liberal | 13,084 | 32.3 | -7.7 | 32.0 |
| Andrew Conley | Greens | 5,962 | 14.7 | -0.9 | 15.0 |
| Craig Langdon | Independent | 1,969 | 4.9 | +0.0 | 4.9 |
| Philip Jenkins | Democratic Labour | 660 | 1.6 | +1.6 | 1.6 |
| Informal | 2,030 | 4.8 | +0.2 |
2018 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Anthony Carbines | Labor | 25,244 | 62.4 | +9.0 | 62.3 |
| Monica Clark | Liberal | 15,231 | 37.6 | -9.0 | 37.7 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: north-east, north-west and south-west.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 61.9% in the south-west to 70.1% in the north-west.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 12.6% in the north-east to 15.3% in the south-west.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| South-West | 15.3 | 61.9 | 8,656 | 21.9 |
| North-East | 12.6 | 65.2 | 6,001 | 15.2 |
| North-West | 14.3 | 70.1 | 4,874 | 12.3 |
| Pre-poll | 15.0 | 59.9 | 15,212 | 38.4 |
| Other votes | 18.0 | 62.5 | 4,823 | 12.2 |
Election results in Ivanhoe at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.
This is the sort of seat the Liberals would be hoping to be competitive in to form majority government.
Agree ham, this seat is a must especially after the redistributions which have abolished seats that would traditionally stay with LNP. If the LNP which to get back into office I Victoria they will need to win seat like Ivanhoe, Eltham & Yan Yean.
Greens outpolled Liberals in a few booths at the federal election – Bellfield, Ivanhoe, Heidelberg, Heidelberg Heights, Olympic Village. TOther booths not much difference. Liberals get a lot of their margin over Greens from Ivanhoe East (which always seemed like a little pocket of Kew north of the Yarra), and Viewbank and Yallambie where the “inner north” feel truly gives way to middle ring suburbia. This is of course with several competitors for the right wing vote including Liberal Democrats.
I think this will be the Greens best seat where they are still in a distant 3rd. To threaten Labor here you’d want a teal who’s actually recommending preferences (like Claire Ferres Miles in Casey at the federal election) eating into the Liberal primary vote and a preference snowball.
I predict a classic ALP vs LIB contest with Labor winning easily.
@John. I’m not surprised that the Greens outpolled the Liberals federally. The Liberal vote crashed whilst the Green vote surged in inner-city and middle-ring suburbs in Melbourne. Realistically, I don’t think a teal would run here or have a good chance at winning. I agree that a teal or a more centrist independent could knock off Labor but only if the primary vote is high enough to make it to the 2CP.
Not sure I’d call this a seat the Liberals need to win to form government – since the boundaries took something close to their current form (the very strong Labor area of West Heidelberg used to be in Preston), they’ve only won the seat once, at their high-water mark in 1992. It was a Labor seat under Liberal governments in 1996 and 2010.
I live in the neighbouring seat of Bulleen and now this seat very well. I do think it is a classic Lib/ALP contest however, it is not to be noted that areas such as Eaglemont/most of Ivanhoe are strong Teal territory which are elite suburbs on par with Kew, Malvern East, Mont Albert, Beaumaris etc. It is true that that prior to 1992 when the West Heidelberg Public Housing area was not included Ivanhoe was a safe Liberal seats which only fell to Labor in landslide elections such as 1982. Ivanhoe maybe the most unequal seat in the state with a huge gap between West Heidelberg on one hand and Eaglemont on the other. The rest of Ivanhoe includes standard middle class Yallambie and Macleod and more Upper middle class areas such as Viewbank/Rosanna as they are close to the River. Ivanhoe was lost in 1996 due to controversy surrounding the future of the Austin Hospital. While the Libs did not need Ivanhoe to form a majority government in 2010 it is important to remember there are fewer seats in the Eastern suburbs now so they need to aim higher in other areas still i feel they will win Eltham, Monbulk, Macedon and Bellarine before this and if they ever move back to the centre maybe even Albert Park.
Good analysis @Nimalan although I think Albert Park is destined to become a Greens seat where the Libs always poll top two but never enough to win.
@ Entreprenuer, i think you maybe right here regarding Albert Park the Libs could theoretically get 44% of the primary here in the future if they are back to the centre but loose on preferences. No matter who moderate the Libs could become i dont think they can make inroads into St Kilda. I think there is a future scenario where Labor comes a distant third here but elect the Greens from Second place. There is really no base for the Labor party left. Only 15 years ago Labor was getting about 76% of the TPP at the Sandridge booth.
Incidentally, you can still find evidence that West Heidelberg used to be in Preston (in the form of fading 1985 ‘Carl Kirkwood – ALP for Preston’ stickers on power poles) if you know where to look.