Werribee by-election, 2025

@nether portal realistically once Jacinta Allen loses and likely resigns the liberals could win Bendigo East

@Trent: 1 The 2021 Victorian state redistribution has actually abolished net two seats in eastern Melbourne (Keysborough, Mount Waverley and Ferntree Gully were abolished while Pakenham was created, Ashwood can be regarded as ex-Burwood, Glen Waverley can be regarded as ex-Forest Hill, Berwick can be regarded as ex-Gembrook) and replace them with seats in Melbourne’s outer north and west. Due to the fact that population growth is much higher in Melbourne’s outer north and west than in the east, successive redistributions will continue to shift seats from the Liberals’ traditional heartland in the east to the Labor heartland in Melbourne’s west and north, making it more and more difficult for the Liberals to win government without winning seats in Melbourne’s west and north.

2 There is no indication to suggest that the VIC Liberals have regained support that they have lost since 2010 in their traditional heartland in Melbourne’s east , which include seats like Glen Waverley, Box Hill, Ashwood, Ringwood, Bayswater. There seats are trending towards Labor because of higher density housing, more milllenials and Gen Z voters moving there in search of more affordable housing, and Chinese Australians continue punishing the Liberal Party for the federal Liberals’ hostile rhetoric towards China. It’s possible that the Liberals could lose Hawthorn if John Pesutto is no longer the candidate. Pesutto is about to be defeated in an upcoming leadership spill, meaning he is unlikely to contest the next state election.

Considering Victoria’s political geography and the farce the VIC Liberals are currently in, the VIC Coalition certainly won’t win the 2026 state election. Jacinta Allan will make history in becoming the first woman to lead a party to win a Victorian state election, while also marking the first time Victorian Labor has won four consecutive elections. I wouldn’t be surprised if VIC Labor remains in government beyond 2030.

The current pendulum suggests that on uniform swings, the VIC Coalition needs a 53% 2PP in order to win govt, which the VIC Coalition has not achieved since 1996. I doubt the Coalition would ever win a majority in VIC again. I think the only possible way for the Coalition to win government in VIC is if independents or a new party (such as the West Party) win a large number of seats in Labor’s heartland in Melbourne’s west and north, and successful independent or minor party candidates backing the Coalition to form a minority government.

Last but not least, the “It’s time” factor would not work in an opposition’s favour if the opposition could not present itself as a credible alternative government. This was partly the reason why the Liberal Party was in government in VIC for nine terms and 27 years between 1955 and 1982. Considering declining party loyalty among younger generations, it’s unlikely that any party can be in government for nine four-year terms or 36 years this century, however this is evidence that the “It’s time” factor will not automatically push voters into voting for the opposition.

Great analysis Joseph, I 100% agree with all of that!

@joseph realistically they probably cant achieve that on 2pp basis but that doesnt matter you just need to win a majority of the seats by a fraction. you dont even need to win the 2pp to win government. the liberals likely wont achieve a landslide win this time around but can hopefully force labor into minority with the greens and after 4 years of that slide into government. Victorian seats are also set to be redistributed again after the 2026 election.

The issue is that the a Labor-Greens government is less risky for Labor than in other jurisdictions. Victoria is the most progressive jurisdiction after the ACT. There is not really a resource industry like Coal that can cause a revolt and there are less white working class areas in Victoria compared to the rest of the nation. Plus Victorian Labor is pretty progressive even in a majority for example already committing to 95% Renewable electricity by 2035 effectively ending Coal Power, already committed to Treaty, Net Zero by 2045. If Labor-Greens had a majority Labor does not need to offer much to get Greens support, they may offer funding to bike paths, some expansion of National parks etc, If Teals win Hawthorn for example it does not hurt Labor as it just takes off a Liberal held seat.

The latest Liberal shenanigans will help the ALP BUT the Libs for once might be doing something smart – having their leadership ructions over Christmas will largely keep them out of the public eye and whoever is leading after Friday may have put it behind them by the time the focus comes back on politics at Australia Day. Should John Pesutto lose, he is probably not in a position to keep rocking the boat afterwards. Moira Deeming will probably be let back into the party room but hopefully will not be rewarded with a front bench position. Even if she was, she probably wouldn’t last until the election anyway – everything tells me that she won’t be able to help herself, will overstep and get pushed out – nothing so far also suggests that her political antennae are well tuned.

But getting back to polls … if you look at the latest Redbridge (the others are fairly similar) – the ALP were polling 30% (down 6.5% since 2022), LNP on 43% (up 8.5%), Greens 14% (up 2.5). Using my crude measure of going through every seat and adjusting the seat vote accordingly – it is actually surprisingly accurate – you get a picture where the Libs could get over the line in 2026.
First category is seats they can win with a margin: Ashwood, Bass, Bayswater, Glen Waverley, Hastings, Pakenham, Ripon, Yan Yean – 8 seats.
Second Category is seats they would just win: Bellarine, Bentleigh, Box Hill, Eureka, Melton, Monbulk, Niddrie, Ringwood, South Barwon, Sunbury – 10 seats

That would get the L/NP to 46

Mordialloc and Point Cook are too hard to tell

And then there are four seats where they would fall short – Cranbourne, Eltham, Frankston, Macedon
The Greens could get up in Northcote and Preston if things go badly for the ALP but again not so sure.

There is a path there for the Libs but a lot would have to go right for them.

@Joseph that’s way over the top mate. Labor isn’t gonna be in power forever. If Labor is in past 2030 then they will face a historic landslide defeat like NSW Labor did in 2011.

Speaking of major landslides where something notable happened, there are a few types:

* 1996 federal election: working-class battlers shifted away from Labor
* 2011 NSW state election: electoral shift (Western Sydney became a battleground, ethnic voters turned to be more Liberal)
* 2012 Queensland state election: generic big landslide
* 2013 federal election: generic landslide
* 2021 WA state election: once in 1,000 years event
* 2024 NT general election: heavy defeat of a sitting government causing a wipeout in an entire region key to even being a credible opposition let alone a government (Labor wiped out of Darwin and Palmerston)

John Lister, a high school teacher, is Labor’s candidate.
Paul Hopper is running again as an independent.

@NP – even putting the pandemic aside, double landslides like in WA aren’t as rare as you’d think. Only go back a couple of decades and you had Neville Wran’s double landslides in NSW. Victoria I guess some might count 2018 and 2022 from a seats perspective as opposed to a votes perspective (where Labor got backlash in its heartland/”Red Wall” but kept its seat numbers up by keeping much of the Liberal heartland seats that it gained in 2018 while also gaining the likes of Glen Waverley/former Forest Hill, and swapping Nepean for Hastings). It’s also interesting to note how these double back to back electoral landslides all revolve around larger than life/charismatic leaders to voters – Wran in NSW, McGowan in WA, Andrews in Vic, as normally oppositions would recover after the first one.

@WL it’s not the double landslides that are extremely rare, it’s the fact that the WA Liberals nearly got wiped out in 2021.

@NP: 2018 and 2022 Victorian state elections are also major landslides where notable things happened. In 2018, the eastern suburbs of Melbourne were swept up in a “band of red” and the Liberal Party lost six seats in eastern Melbourne that were formerly its heartland. Labor won the seats of Hawthorn and Bayswater, which Labor had won only once before. Labor won the seat of Box Hill for the first time in 26 years. Labor also won the seat of Bass for the first time in history, when Bass and its predecessors Gippsland West and Westernport had never been won by Labor before. There is a trend of realignment away from the Liberal Party in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

The trend continued in the 2022 state election, where Labor increased its margin in four of the eastern Melbourne seats it gained from the Liberal Party in 2018 (Burwood replaced by Ashwood, Mount Waverley abolished, Hawthorn recovered by the Liberal Party, Bayswater notionally gained by Labor after redistribution making it notionally Liberal) and gained the seat of Glen Waverley (ex-Forest Hill) from the Liberal Party. The 2022 state election was also notable in the fact that there were large swings against Labor across Melbourne’s outer western and northern suburbs, which were the hardest hit by the pandemic, but Labor did not lose any seats in the area because seats in this area were ultra-safe before the 2022 state election. We will see in the 2025 federal election and the 2026 state election whether the swings against Labor across Melbourne’s outer northern and western suburbs were a one-time phenomenon or a long-term realignment, but I suspect that a long-term realignment is more likely, and the Liberal Party is treating it as such. That’s why the Liberal Party spent more resources campaigning in the west in the 2022 state election.

For the Coalition to win government, it will need to win back seats in Melbourne’s east AND start to win seats in Melbourne’s west and north. One thing is for sure, the trend of realignment away from the Liberal Party in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs won’t be reversed in one election, which should keep the Coalition out of government in 2026.

@NP “ If Labor is in past 2030 then they will face a historic landslide defeat like NSW Labor did in 2011”. There’s no rule that dictates a four or five-term government will automatically suffer landslide defeats at the next election. For state governments, they can even get a swing towards them at the end of their fourth or fifth term if the opposition party is in power federally.

This is exactly what happened at the 2018 South Australian state election. At that election there was a slight 2PP swing towards the SA Labor government despite SA Labor having been in power for 16 years rather than the sort of large swings towards the Liberal Opposition that you would expect for a government of this age. The Liberal Party only won a bare majority with 25 out of 47 seats because the previous redistribution had gave the Liberal Party a notional parliamentary majority (a notional 24 seats and 3 seats held by recontesting independents with underlying Liberal 2PP majorities). If there was no redistribution before the 2018 SA state election, Labor might have still won the election with a minority government and then secured a decisive victory in 2022 after two decades in power due to the Morrison Government’s unpopularity. Now the SA Liberals are back to 16 years in opposition I believe due to the loss of moderates like Steven Marshall and Vickie Chapman.

At the October 2024 ACT election, the ACT Labor government has been in power for six terms and 23 years and it did not suffer a landslide defeat or even loss of seats at the election. The Liberals were simply unelectable in the ACT because the ACT is too progressive. Even a moderate Liberal Party led by a moderate Asian woman like Elizabeth Lee was unable to lead the party to an election victory in the ACT.

The “It’s time” factor will only work if the opposition is electable and fit to govern. If the opposition is unelectable, voters will just drift to minor parties and independents like what’s happening in the ACT, where both the Labor and Liberal primary votes have been declining for three consecutive elections.

So when this being held

As of the last hour or so, Murdoch papers are reporting this will be held on 8 February, same as Prahran.

Bev Macarthur has been given a portfolio, Pesutto on the backbench, Southwick demoted. Leading moderate Jess Wilson has also been been demoted.

Moira Deeming while not yet been given a portfolio has been asked to campaign hard in Werribee

The impression I got from Battin’s announcements were that Werribee will be their priority on 8 Feb. It makes sense because they are competing directly against the government there.

Age reporting that there are 3 Liberals vying for the Werribee candidacy including businessman Rajan Chopra.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/businessman-the-first-name-to-emerge-in-liberal-contest-for-werribee-byelection-20250109-p5l33i.html

Also: https://au.headtopics.com/news/indian-australian-entrepreneur-seeks-preselection-in-64549329

Steve Murphy has been announced as the Liberals candidate for Werribee on Brad Battin’s Facebook.
Announcement: https://www.facebook.com/WerribeeLiberals