Werribee by-election, 2025

I seem to remember that this was one of the electorates that the liberals threw a lot of money at and it barely moved. I’m confused I thought there was a swing to Labor here in ttp or maybe I was thinking about another Labor seat out this side of the Yarra.

@ SpaceFish
Yes Liberals campaigned hard here and did have a good candidate. What happend is in 2018 an independent made the 2CP but in 2022 the Libs did. The Libs did get a primary vote increase but Labor held steady this led to a notional TPP swing from 2018 to 2022 to Labor probably due to a preference flows more than anything.

Yep correct. Labor’s primary vote was steady (down -0.6%) but the 2PP increased from 9.1% to 10.9%.

I think this is the sort of seat that will see a pretty big swing to the Liberals. 11% is probably a bit too much of an ask but they could definitely cut that margin to under 5% and if they do – particularly if Pesutto gets replaced prior to the byelection – it will give them a lot of confidence to gain seats like Melton, Sunbury, Point Cook and Yan Yean and probably embolden those who believe the Liberal Party’s future is in the outer suburbs. Especially if the Liberals do better here than they do in Prahran (which I fully expect they will).

@Nimalan, Tim Pallas underperformed in 2018 because to the State Government proposing a Youth Detention Centre nearby which had opposition to residents leading to the proposed centre to move further away.

@ Marh
Fair point. Werribee got a lot of focus in 2022 state election

I wonder if Joe Garra ran here like he did in 2018 (He ran in Point Cook in 2022)?

Could be Joe Garra or maybe Paul Hopper, local businessman whose family are well known and have a nearby suburb named after them.

im saying labor retain. 4-5% margin

If the Liberal civil war continues there could be a swing away from them. It amazes that each time they seem to make some inroads something seems to flair up.

Labor retain with a 4-5% margin seems like a reasonable prediction to me.

Of course, SpaceFish is right that how the Liberal civil war plays out over the next couple of months could have a big impact.

i think Labor will be happy to win with 1% Swings at by-elections are generally bigger than General elections. Ipswich West recently and Bass Hill in 1986 are examples where the swing

Federal TPP here (2022):

* Labor: 62.5%
* Liberal: 37.5%

Labor did 1.6% worse here on the state level in 2022 than on the federal level in 2022. This seat is entirely within the federal seat of Lalor, which is also a safe Labor seat.

i dont think there was as much of anti-lockdown backlash here that was more concentrated in the more deprived seats such as St Albans or parts of Greenvale (Meadow Heights)

@Nimalan the swings here were still big federally but not as big as in the poorer suburbs.

@ NP
Yes you are correct a bit like McEwen where there anti-labor swings. The issue is that there a high % of young children here and homeschooling etc would have been a big challenge.

@SpaceFish Hardly anyone, particularly out here, gives a stuff about Moira.

The odds of a TPP swing against the Liberals is zero.

@Nimalan Yeah I think this definitely could somewhat resemble Ipswich West

@ Scart

Dont take it the wrong way, i am not undermining Pesutto but a lot of the right flank are. Some Liberal supporters including on tallyroom support Moira. I think they are going in for the kill shortly including on Friday’s party room meeting. Credlin called for his resignation and met with Brad Battin in an Italian restaurant recently

It is not the last time we will hear about Moira if she readmitted to the party room which i think is a good chance we will hear more about puberty blockers, gender ideology in schools, Abortion, Babies born alive, repealing conversion therapy laws, stopping Pride flags on Public property and less about the economy/debt.

Yeah like I said in one of the other threads, I don’t think the issue is whether the electorate cares specifically about Moira Deeming or the Deeming vs Pesutto court case, because it appeared to have no impact whatsoever on the Liberals’ polling.

It’s more that the fallout of all that, whether or not a leadership spill occurs, how it plays out if it does, who ends up being leader, will have an impact on whether or not voters see the Coalition as a viable alternative government (which over the past year or so it seems they have) or whether they return to being seen as a bit of a basket case, and the outcomes could also have different impacts on different areas.

For example if Battin wins a leadership spill this Friday, and the party appear to unite behind him at least on the surface in the next month or two, it probably won’t have much impact on the Werribee byelection at all but it probably kills any positive swing they may have got in Prahran.

If Pesutto just hangs on but loses all his influence and it’s chaos for the next two months, it’ll probably hurt them in both Prahran & Werribee and make them appear a less viable alternative again.

If Pesutto loses a leadership challenge then resigns and there’s also a Hawthorn byelection, they can no doubt say goodbye to Hawthorn as well and it changes the game completely.

So it’s more the fallout of it all and what will play out over the next month or so, more than just whether people care about the actual Deeming issue itself.

@ Trent
I suspect if there is a Hawthorn by-election. Labor may not run and will give a clear run for the Teal.

@Nimalan December 17, 2024 at 2:04 pm

i think Labor will be happy to win with 1% Swings at by-elections are generally bigger than General elections. Ipswich West recently and Bass Hill in 1986 af German ethnicityre examples where the swing

LNP ran a candidate of German ethnicity in Ipswich West [Darre Zanow], an area with a lot of people of that background. Added to that, the resigning MP had had issues in his office and the Palaszczuk Gov’t was on the nose.
So, protest vote.
IIf there’s significant Greek voters in Werribee and the seat’s in some danger, i’d expect Labor to fund a Greek indie to take from the Liberal PV.

Tony Burke denying Kellie Jaye Keen a visa to travel to Australia and presumably have another go at Pesutto.

Absolutely. If they didn’t run in Prahran, they won’t run in Hawthorn.

@ Gympie
Thanks for letting me know about the German Community in Ipswich, much appreciated and interesting. Regarding Werribee i am not sure how many people have Greek ancestory it does not appear in the Top 5 and in terms of languages spoken at home it will be less than 1.4%. I think my seat of Bulleen has the largest % of people with Greek ancestry at 10.1%
There is a very large Indian community in the new housing estates while the older parts are more Anglo

@ Nether Portal

As i mentioned to Scart it is not me that is undermining Pesutto it is the right flank of your own party that are doing this. Labor does not need do anything and the Liberals will preselect another Timothy Dragan i have no idea if Puberty Blockers are legal or not as i dont spend time to check but i hear about on the right wing media that shows my lack of interest in it. Regarding what is taught in schools i am i my 30s now so it has been a while since i was in school. The issue is that some on the right want a clean break from the Andrews era and feel an economy only campaign by Pesutto is Labor lite. They want to revist things such as Victoria’s 2030 emissions target, Net Zero target, Euthansia laws and overturn some of Andrews reforms on LGBT matters.

While Moira Deeming has been on the cross bench she is actually been voting with Labor government.

Exactly. She’s a Labor plant.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say a “plant” but I think she definitely leans more towards that DLP political position where she’s a Liberal more because of their social conservatism than their economic policy, so sitting as an independent is likely to support a lot of Labor legislation that doesn’t relate to social policy / culture wars.

Yeah, but Andrews and the rest of Labor said even worse things about her than Pesutto did, and she didn’t sue any of them.

@ Scart
Who will fund a case against Daniel Andrews/Labor like many right wing Liberals did against Pessuto. The Unions/maybe even taxpayer funds will fund a defense if there was a hypothetical court case. Sky after Dark has not caused Andrews to loose a strand of hair. Andrews increased his majority in 2022 even after Credlin did a Chris Lilley style mockumentary “The Cult of Daniel Andrews” and Peta Credlin crashed his Covid press conferences.

@Nimalan I wouldn’t say Labor increased their majority in 2022, but they did have a net gain of one seat (though so did both the Coalition and the Greens). There was a big primary vote swing against Labor though as well as a decent TPP swing away from Labor as expected given the big swing to Labor in 2018 so regardless of COVID there would’ve most likely been a swing to the Coalition on TPP.

For the Coalition to win a state election in Victoria they need to pick up those key marginal seats in the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne and sandbag the ones they already hold like Pesutto’s own seat of Hawthorn. It is a battleground similar to how the key to winning a NSW state election these days is winning key marginal seats in Western Sydney, many of which are very ethnic.

@ Nether Portal
The Parliamentary majority is determined by the number of seats not by TPP or primary vote. This is why John Howard won the 1998 election despite losing the TPP, Labor got big TPP swings in the wrong areas often regional/rural seats with high ONP vote like Gippsland, Wide Bay etc while the mortage belt did not swing to Labor.
In 2022, the Coalition did get gain of 1 that is due to the Nats gaining 3 independent held seats. The Liberals actually had a net loss of seats despite a swing to them. If 2/3 independent held seats were not gained by the Nats the Coalition would have had a net loss of seats despite a TPP swing. The Coalition went backwards in marginal Eastern suburbs seats of Bayswater, Box Hill, Glen Waverley Ashwood and Ringwood. They also went backwards in Bass and lost the seat notionally and despite gaining Nepean that was cancelled out by losing the neighboring seat of Hastings. The swing was therefore wasted in the wrong place it is what happened to Hillary in 2016.

A problem for the Liberals in Victoria is that since their 2010 win – which was the slimmest possible 1 seat majority – there is 1 less seat in the eastern suburbs (with Mt Waverley & Burwood essentially merged into Ashwood), Prahran is now off the cards, and the 4 traditional ‘sandbelt’ marginals that usually decided the election are a lot harder for them to gain.

So if we’re to look at their path to victory now, they need to gain 17 seats:

– Like NP says, they need to sandbag all the marginals they already have. I don’t think this will be a problem with the possible exception of Hawthorn, but assuming they retain Hawthorn, this still has them needing 17 more seats;

– The 3 most obvious gains are in the outer southeast: Pakenham, Bass, Hastings. It’s pretty safe to say all 3 of these will be LIB gains. This reduces the chase to 14 seats;

– Outside Melbourne (or in one case here a least mostly outside Melbourne), there are really only 2 realistic seats they can gain which they don’t already hold: Ripon & Yan Yean. These reduce the chase to 12 seats.

– Then you have their traditional heartland in the eastern suburbs. Labor now hold 5 seats covering the territory that was all blue in 2010: Glen Waverley, Box Hill, Ashwood, Ringwood, Bayswater. These are going to be a little harder as 3 of them are on margins of more than 6% (up to 7.5%). Even if they manage to win all 5 of these seats, they still need 7 more to form government.

– Without the sandbelt or Prahran, this is where they need to start looking to the north & west suburbs for the first time in decades. Probably the most winnable seats are Melton, Sunbury, Greenvale, Niddrie and Werribee (depending on how the byelection goes), but these go up to margins of over 10% already, and even if they were to win all 5, they’re still only on 43 seats with really nobody to form a minority government with.

At that point, they still need to find 2 seats elsewhere – in the sandbelt where the margins start at 8% but this area is trending away from the Liberals, outer southeast which could be ripe to swing towards the Liberals but the margins start at 8.3% (Narre Warren South), etc.

But even that is a best case scenario in which they hold Hawthorn, win all 3 outer southeast marginals (they should), both Ripon & Yan Yean, all 5 eastern suburbs seats on margins up to 7.5%, plus 5 northwest Melbourne seats deep in Labor’s heartland.

Polling has Labor’s primary vote around -9, but the Liberal primary vote is only polling around a +3 which is translating to roughly a 5% 2PP swing. So winning seats held on margins over 8% in both the eastern suburbs and outer northwest is a very big ask.

The electoral map is really not the Liberal Party’s friend in Victoria, especially compared to 2010.

@ Trent
I largely agree with you with a couple of points
1. I would describe Yan Yean as Outer Suburban seat not a regional seat
2. I think it very hard to win without at least half of the sandbelt
3. Ripon barely swings and may become the Bundaberg of 2026
4. I am very skeptical if the swing in Greenvale can be sustained. Labor now has a sitting Member.In 2022, it would have had a margin of 22% meaning that even if the Libs won it 1 vote in 2026 it has had a 22% swing over 8 years. Also this has some very economically deprived areas, if there was less debt i would say Labor will splash cash around to hold the seat. If Libs just get 45 seats and Greenvale was one of them i suspect it will be a very unstable government like the CLP government of 2012 in the NT. The people of Greenvale are economically left wing and the MP may want a DLP style government. Also need to factor the big Muslim population in this seat and a swing back to the left with recent events.
5. I think Cranbourne is probably the next possibility more than the Narre Warrens. Cranbourne is a volatile mortgage belt areas and promising a Clyde rail extention may help.
6. The Narre Warrens barely had a swing last time and it is a more settled area these days with no infrastructure grievance like Melton so think swing will be less than state average.

Yeah I agree with all that Nimalan. I think even talking about seats like Cranbourne and the Narre Warrens is getting into very ‘wishful thinking’ territory for the Liberals, and seats like that are what it would take to form government, it’s a very low possibility that they have a realistic path at all.

Especially since that path I described which was still only 15 of the 17 seats required to form government, was really a “best case scenario” that included winning EVERY seat I see as being somewhat realistic but that included seats like Greenvale which are highly unlikely. And getting into Narre / Cranbourne territory would be required on top of winning those 15!

Realistically I think in a good election, the Liberals could potentially pick up around 12 seats but getting much more than 40 is just really difficult on the current electoral map.

In 2018 Labor would have had margin of 22 percent in Greenvale I mean.
I agree they should target Nidderie and Sunbury though

Melton, Niddie, Yan Yean and Sunbury are the 4 seats in the outer north & west that they should probably focus on.

Very hard for them to focus on seats like that while still trying to erase 6-7% margins in Box Hill & Ashwood and 8%+ margins in the sandbelt though! And that there lies their biggest problem I think.

They also just don’t have anywhere near as many resources as Labor who have incumbent MPs and the ability to pork-barrel while in government. And they still need to put resources into sandbagging very marginal seats like Hawthorn & Caulfield too.

I think the reason the CLP government of 2012–16 was unstable was because of all the scandals. The current CLP government is stable despite holding some remote seats (Barkly, Namatjira). However Barkly includes the major town (by Territory standards) of Tennant Creek and Namatjira includes the outer suburbs of Alice Springs which are conservative hence why I don’t think Namatjira is a seat Labor will bother targeting.

As for Victoria, they would be looking to look at what Lia Finocchiaro did in the Northern Territory. She led the CLP to a landslide victory over an aging Labor government that had its flaws (just like the Andrews-Allan government) and appealing to a wide variety of voters across the Territory, urban, rural and remote (as evident by the mixture of seats they have), whilst still being stable and moderate and not focusing on culture wars or climate wars and instead focusing on issues like the economy and crime.

While obviously Territory politics are unpredictable as hell and very different to the politics of more urban states (Territory politics are probably more similar to those of PNG and Pacific Island countries except the Territory has two major parties and PNG and most Pacific Islands (except Fiji) have heaps of different minor parties and lots of independents), I think it’s still a good example of what to do to win back government. Remember many of the seats the CLP won were safe Labor seats and some of them flipped to be safe CLP seats (Karama was on a fairly safe 8.3% margin for Labor as of the 2024 redistribution but at the actual election the CLP won it with a safe 12.1% margin after a massive +20.1% swing to the CLP on TPP).

Agree Trent and Nimalan, the Liberal Party/Coalition strategy of targeting the outer suburban, non-professional type districts will only get them just over halfway to winning government (max net gain of 10 seats). Even when this strategy was employed in Queensland 2024 (focus on law-and-order issues), the LNP still only won just four Brisbane seats, all outside the BCC boundary (Redcliffe and Pumicestone in Moreton Bay council, along with Capalaba and Redlands in Redland City council). All the key middle ring BCC based districts (Aspley, Mansfield and Mt Ommaney) stuck with Labor.

TBH, I think that regardless of whether a conservative party is led by a moderate (like Pesutto) or someone more hardline (like Dutton or Trump), working class voters are still consistently trending their way.

I think Werribee is on a knifes edge.

One option for the Victorian Coalition is to target some more regional type districts (seats like South Barwon and Eureka), which is what the Queensland LNP did successfully. A caveat is that these seats don’t have the focus on primary industries that the Queensland regional seats possess, and they are also not having major crime issues like Townsville.

@ Nether Portal
I am not saying that the CLP should not win any remote seats i am saying it should be an icing on the cake. In 2012 the CLP did not really win enough Darwin based seats. That is what i am saying so if the Libs win 52 seats and Greenvale is one of them that it is not a problem but if they win the bare minimum of 45 including the Greenvale then there maybe issues. Greenvale has a lot of refugees etc in the poor parts. The NSW Libs won Campbelltown in 2011 but that was icing on the cake so when they lost it in 2015 they did not care. It is the same Labor won Hawthorn in 2018 landslide but they did not need to worry about.
@ Yoh An, seats like South Barwon, Wendouree are trending progressive with tree/sea changers. I will not compare them to Rockhamption/Mackay etc. They are more left wing today than in the past.

Agree Nimalan, Victoria is different from Queensland in that the regional type seats are almost the polar opposite (instead of a focus on primary industries, they are dominated by government/service-based industries instead). As a result, the voters in these seats will not be receptive to a hardcore conservative message and therefore the Coalition is severely restrained as to which seats are favourable for them to target.

@ Yoh An
If the Libs were more moderate and focused on Fiscal conservatism then they could target seats like Monbulk and Eltham but these seats are more socially progressive.

Agree Nimalan, Victoria today is a tough state for the Coalition to win in. It is similar to the US states of Virginia or Colorado which Trump never managed to win in his 3 elections (starting in 2016).

The demographics have changed in these places, with greater numbers of tertiary educated voters and a stronger focus on government/service-based industries. These types of voters are put off by a right-wing populist message, so the conservative party has to change its attitude and shift to an economic based narrative instead. I believe the Republicans did employ this strategy successfully in the Virginia governor election of 2017, where Glenn Youngkin narrowly won (he campaigned more on cost-of-living factors, crime and education, the traditional narrative used by the conservative parties rather than the fringe culture war issues).

Correction, should be the Virginia governor election of 2021 which Glenn Youngkin won.

There are 8 seats across Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong. Since 2002 – the best the Libs have managed was one of those – South Barwon – in 2010 and 2014. To achieve a workable majority – the Libs have to win more than one of these. The Libs went into the 1999 election holding 6 of the 8 and lost 4.
Yes there have been demographic changes in those seats but South Barwon, Bellarine, Eureka and Bendigo East (post Jacinta Allan) could and should be winnable. One issue that may be a contributing factor to the current condition is the state of the Liberal Party in those cities. I would not be surprised if they have been allowed to run down or a run by some right wing rump centred around Bev McArthur and others.

Here is an example of a scenario where the Coalitio gains a majority government in 2026: https://jmp.sh/YEuxPbAM

There are still two Red Walls, which I will refer to as the Eastern Red Wall and the Western Red Wall after their geographical locations in Melbourne.

Here’s a scenario based on that map:

It’s December 2026, and after a sweeping victory for the Coalition, John Pesutto has been sworn in as the new Premier of Victoria. Labor is still searching for a new leader to become the next Opposition Leader, so Jacinta Allan is the caretaker Labor leader. The Deputy Premier in the Allan government, Ben Carroll, has lost his seat of Niddrie to the Liberals.

Here’s what happened at the election:

1. The Liberals gained lots of seats from Labor in the Eastern Suburbs and strengthened their hold on the seats they already held there. However, there is still an Eastern Red Wall, consisting of the seats of Clarinda, Cranbourne, Dandenong, Mulgrave, Narre Warren North, Narre Warren South and Oakleigh.
2. The Western Red Wall still stretches from Eltham (which is now a very marginal seat) up to Kalkallo, down through Essendon (bypassing the inner-city) and out to Geelong. It bypasses Niddrie and Sunbury too (which are now Liberal seats), which were never really part of the wall, and Melton has broken free from the wall.
3. The Liberals gained seats in the outer Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne too, including Bass, Hastings, Monbulk, Pakenham and Yan Yean on Melbourne’s eastern urban fringe.
4. In Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula, Labor held on to the seats of Geelong and Lara but lost Bellarine and South Barwon to the Liberals.
5. The Liberals have also gained Eureka and Ripon, the two seats that completely surround the entirely Ballarat-based seat of Wendouree, which Labor held onto.
6. Labor held on in Jacinta Allan’s seat of Bendigo East and the neighbouring seat of Bendigo West as well as in Macedon. However, it wasn’t at all a walk in the park for Labor in Macedon.
7. Labor went even more backwards in Morwell, which is now a safe Nationals seat, which used to be a mining seat.

@ Nether Portal
I think that is a realistic scenario but requires everything to go right
1. Unlike QLD where 52% of the population lives out of Brisbane and the LNP was able to form government with so few seats in Greater Brisbane this scenario is not possible in Victoria as 76% of the population lives in Greater Melbourne
2. If there are any stunts like what KAP did to the LNP with Abortion for example if the DLP’s Adam Somerryk or Renee Heath said they will being an Abortion repeal bill. Victorian Labor will do what Steven Miles did in the 4 Sandbelt seats, Macedon, Eltham and Monbulk. In such a scenario Libs can probably only win 1 of those seats. They can still win Yan Yean, Sunbury, South Barwon, Bellarine Niderie even with such a scenario
3. Eltham, South Barwon, Bellarine, Monbulk and Macedon are more socially progressive seats, Pro-Climate, LGBT etc so to have a chance at winning these they will need to have a mouthgag on some of the right-wing MPs
4. Need to be prepared for a Bundaberg scenario where a sitting MP survives on local popularity Ripon is the most likely candidate as it is seat that barely swings and not a bellwether but they maybe a surprise
5. For this reason a good back up seat will be Cranbourne, Eltham

* they can still win Yan Yean, Sunbury, Melton and Niddrie even with Abortion being an issue like what happened in QLD.