Sandringham – Victoria 2022

Looks like.a slightly.more pro Labor version.of Brighton

@ Mick, i would say that Brighton and Sandringham are similar, the main difference is that Brighton has a small but very solid left-wing area in Elwood but Sandringham has more bellwether territory along the Frankston line which last time voted solidly Labor but can sometimes like in 2010 vote entirely Liberal.

It is definitely a bit less green than Brighton but like Brighton, still has bayside suburbs and a wealthier and older-than-median population.

The 0.4% margin is misleading. The Libs nearly lost it in 2018 because of an indepedent candidate plus a “Danslide”. I’m not expecting a “teal wave” at the Vic election.

Former Bayside Council Mayor Clarke Martin is looking like he will run as a “teal” independent in this seat in November.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/teal-candidate-poised-to-take-on-liberals-in-state-seat-of-caulfield-20220816-p5babr.html

I’ve noticed an interesting trend while looking at booth results.

Sometimes when there are two nearby booths in the same neighbourhood but one is a public school and one is a private school, the results can differ greatly (public school better for Labor).

That tells me it’s probably less to do with which one the voter lives closest to, but more to do with parents voting at their own kids’ school.

Two good examples I have come across are:

* The Black Rock (Black Rock Primary) and Black Rock South (St Joseph’s Primary) booths here. Nearby, but Black Rock had a 52% Labor 2PP and Black Rock South had a 57% Liberal 2PP.

* The Elwood (St Columba’s Primary) and Elwood North (Elwood Primary) booths in Brighton, where the ALP 2PP was 66% at the private school and 76% at the public school despite them only being about a block apart.

@ Trent, i have noticed that same with in Catholic schools in my own electorate. For example at the Federal election May in the suburb of Lower Templestowe St Kevins PS had 63.4% TPP to Libs (swing of 4% to Libs against electorate and state swing) while the Templestowe Heights PS had 54% TPP for ALP (Swing of 8% to the Labor) both schools are walking distance from each other . A 17% points difference
In Doncaster East, St Peter and Paul PS had 55% to Libs while Beverley Hills PS had 54% to ALP. A 9% difference again both schools are walking distance from each other.
It will be interesting if there is a pattern with booths in churches.

@Nimalan. There’s this theory that suggests a phenomena like this. I think it’s the Polling Place Priming Effect. I read that in the US, polling booths in churches make people more likely to vote conservative, whilst polling booths in schools make people more likely to vote liberal, or progressive.

Whilst the priming effect is probably real, I think Trent’s right on that.

Parents are more likely to vote at their own kids’ school, and the parent body at a Catholic or Private school will tend to be more conservative.

Seconding Expat’s comment. While I’m sure that there is a component of voting where the priming effect is in play at particular polling places. I also think that polling place selection is part of some voters partisan expression, either implicit or explicit; especially when there is various polling places available to them at a similar convenience.

Outside of schools, you would expect regular church attendees to favour their own church should it be offered as a polling place, even if it isn’t their closest or most convenient polling place. Amongst this church-attending demographic, there would be some common political attitudes, maybe heightened social-conservatism which would favour some parties more than others.

I’ll be providing some commentary on the 2022 Vic Election in context of the old Protestant vs Catholic split in a moment.

@Trent, interesting that you mention this because I’ve been observing voting trends in the lead up to this election based on the old Catholic vs Protestant split in Australia. In Victoria, it seems to still at least play an observable and perhaps implicit part of voting trends. The most Anglican divisions (according to the 2021 Census) overlap considerably with the safest Coalition divisions – biggest numbers are in Regional Victoria and the Sand-belt: Gippsland, Mornington, Brighton, Sandrigham, etc. Whereas the most Catholic divisions are some of the safest Labor seats, these are throughout North & West Melbourne – historically home to the poor and working class. Niddrie, Sydenham, Sunbury, Essendon, etc. This can be explained by the role that the Catholic Church played in Australian social-justice for the working poor throughout the 20th Century. It was also the denomination favoured by many of the Southern European migrant groups amongst Australia’s working poor at the time. Catholicism today still has a partial presence in some Victorian Labor factions, but most notably within the DLP.

Interestingly, divisions which have historically been the most Anglican are rapidly declining in religiosity, with an increasing proportion of their population specifying a form of “No Religion” on the Census. The “teal prospect” divisions curiously appear amongst the divisions with the biggest declines in numbers of Anglicans. The likely story behind this decline is likely the gradual death of elderly WASP.

Astute analysts of the 2021 Census might have picked up that Catholics have now surpassed the Anglicans as the common religious denomination in Australia. The truth is the numbers of Catholics have remained relatively stable in the past decade, partially being buoyed by the arrival of new Catholic migrants but also by the entrenched institutional representation of Catholicism across many aspects of Australian society including their school systems.

The caveat to all of this however is the increase in favour of the Coalition amongst Catholic groups because of their shared proclivity towards social-conservatism. This was expressed in the rise of Tony Abbott as a Catholic figure of the Coalition. Until now however, the most historically Catholic divisions have still largely voted for Labor with very safe Margins, especially throughout Sydney and Melbourne. Part of the Coalition strategy on sticking to social-conservative positions is the hope that they can receive favour in these sorts of divisions. Their main struggle in these divisions is that they are also very multicultural today, with high-numbers of people who speak languages other than English at home. By doing this, they are also losing favour with the aforementioned existing Coalition divisions which are increasingly irreligious and increasingly liberal.

All of this to say, I briefly glanced at a few different 2022 Federal election booths in Melbourne a few weeks ago, comparing public schools, Catholic schools and non-denominational private schools. I didn’t have enough time to look in great deal, but on the surface it appeared Catholic schools seem to favour Labor slightly better than non-denominational private schools. Public schools seemed to best favour Labor. Much of this almost feels like comparing apples and oranges though.

Another thing I looked into was the presence of Catholic schools and Protestant schools, I didn’t really look at voting trends, just made the observation that there was roughly more Catholic schools in the North and West and Melbourne. And slightly more Protestant & non-denominational schools in the East and Sand-belt. Keep in mind that this is just me scanning aimlessly around Melbourne on Google Maps, trying to get a sense of its demography from a far.

It seems now Bayside LGA is the strongest LGA for the Libs in Metro Melbourne and this was always one of their heartlands. The reason this seat is not the second safest metro seat after Malvern is that the Labor party retains such strong support along the Frankston line part of this seat which is in essence part of the Sandbelt bellwether and in essence is more like Bentleigh etc. The Frankston line is the bedrock of this government and is what put Andrews into power in 2014 and terminated that Bracks/Brumby era in 2010. There has been a lot of focus on removing level crossings etc on this line compared to other parts of Melbourne. This makes it difficult for a Teal to win this seat even through at the federal level much of the same demographic moved to voting for a Teal. if the seat of Brighton excluded Elwood it maybe competing with Malvern for the safest Liberal seat.

@Nimalan The Libs have equally strong margins in Manningham LGA as well on state figures but unlike in Bayside LGA there was essentially no swing there this time since the Lib vote held up quite well there in 2018.

@ Dan M, Good point about Manningham LGA it was in essence a status quo result. Although i would point out that in both Bulleen and Warrandyte the Libs were forced to preferences on this occasion unlike in 2018. It will be interesting to compare Bayside LGA with Manningham LGA to see ultimately which one has a higher TPP for Libs?

@Nimalan Unlike in 2018, there are a lot of right wing minor parties preferencing the Libs. Obviously on federal figures it’s a different story. The TPP Lib vs Labor vote in Bayside held up quite well (could be due to the teal) but in Manningham it crashed with one of the largest TPP swings to Labor in the state.

@ Dan, True more right wing parties including FFV etc. Manningham does have some parts particularly along the southern fringe (south of George Street) which are more like Whitehorse/Monash etc. As a local resident what i would say is that the areas that are hilly and have good views tend to be more affluent while the more flat areas are more standard middle class so there always some booths that are Red in good years for Labor. My old PS (Doncaster Gardens) was strongly Red at the federal election and had a bigger swing than in Chisholm. Bayside unlike Borondoora tends not to be diverse and goes not have much renters etc.