Page – Australia 2019

NAT 2.3%

Incumbent MP
Kevin Hogan, since 2013.

Geography
North coast of NSW. Page covers the towns of Lismore, Kyogle, Casino, Grafton, Nimbin, Woolgoolga and Yamba.

History
Page was first created for the 1984 election. The first member for Page was Ian Robinson (NAT), who had previously been member for Cowper since 1963. Robinson was defeated in 1990 by Harry Woods (ALP) after 27 years in federal parliament.

Woods was defeated by former state minister Ian Causley (NAT) at the 1996 election. Wood proceeded to win the by-election for Causley’s former state seat of Clarence and went on to serve as a minister in Bob Carr’s second term.

Causley served in federal Parliament for eleven years, retiring in 2007. The ALP preselected former state upper house MP and advisor to Jose Ramos Horta, Janelle Saffin, while the Nationals preselected former Mayor of Maclean Chris Gulaptis. Despite a 5.5% margin for the Nationals, the ALP won Page on a 7.8% swing.

Saffin was re-elected in 2010, but lost in 2013 to Nationals candidate Kevin Hogan. Hogan was re-elected in 2016.

Candidates

Assessment
Page is a very marginal seat. Labor has a real shot at gaining back the seat.

2016 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Kevin Hogan Nationals 46,327 44.3 -2.2
Janelle Saffin Labor 36,471 34.9 -1.0
Kudra Falla-Ricketts Greens 11,649 11.1 +2.1
Mark Ellis Liberal Democrats 4,199 4.0 +4.0
Anna Clare Ludvik Animal Justice 2,984 2.9 +2.9
Bethany Rachael Mcalpine Christian Democratic Party 2,982 2.9 +1.0
Informal 4,181 3.8

2016 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Kevin Hogan Nationals 54,717 52.3 -0.8
Janelle Saffin Labor 49,895 47.7 +0.8

Booth breakdown

Booths in Page have been split into six parts. Booths in the three main towns of Lismore, Grafton and Casino have been grouped together. Booths in Coffs Harbour council area and the remainder of Clarence Valley council area have been grouped as “South”. Booths in the remainder of the north have been split into north-east and north-west, with those around Casino grouped as north-west and those around Lismore as north-east.

The Nationals won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in four areas, ranging from 51.3% in Grafton to 55.3% in the north-west.

Labor won 52% in the north-east and 56.2% in Lismore.

The Greens primary vote ranged from 4.2% in Grafton to almost 18% in Lismore and the north-east.

Voter group GRN prim % NAT 2PP % Total votes % of votes
South 8.9 53.9 21,020 20.1
North-East 17.9 48.0 14,273 13.6
Lismore 17.8 43.8 11,159 10.7
Grafton 4.2 51.3 8,504 8.1
North-West 13.4 55.3 5,301 5.1
Casino 5.2 54.2 4,451 4.3
Other votes 12.4 53.3 8,644 8.3
Pre-poll 9.2 55.4 31,260 29.9

Election results in Page at the 2016 federal election
Click on the ‘visible layers’ box to toggle between two-party-preferred votes and Greens primary votes.


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34 COMMENTS

  1. Labor has a real shot at this seat but will be hurt by the absence of Saffin as candidate – someone I thought had one of the largest personal votes in previous Parliaments.

    The Mayor of Lismore deciding to run for the State seat of Lismore rather than Page takes away another good candidate.

    Labor can win this, but should preselect soon.

  2. agree with pj….. but then again Harry Woods was seen as no chance….. demographics at the top end are helping labor all the time….

  3. A straight switch between candidatures has just happened with regards to Smith and Saffin. After Sussex Street initiated its 40% weighting in favour of female candidates ruling on to the marginal state seat of Lismore (likely winner of April 22 preselection being Janelle Saffin) there had apparently been deals made to have Smith become involved in the preselection ballot for the federal seat of Page. Smith does have 2 other preselection candidates to contend with in Pat Deegan from Casino and Ballina Shire Council politician Keith Williams before he becomes Labor’s 2019 candidate.

  4. Has Labor pre selected yet ?. Interesting Saffin could make no ground on Hogan except on the back of the Greens, & Animal Justice. Likewise Hogan seems to have benefited from the LIB Democrats. Or did he really ?

    Hogan was probably saved by his re distribution, although if Page had been taken over the mountains (as i thought it ought to have been) it would be rock solid now.

  5. PJ
    Thanks. Isaac Smith looks to be a very strong candidate. IMV actually more formidable than Saffin. Page is pretty much always close, although the trend looks as if it is toward Labor. Hogan is supposed to be a worker, so it will be interesting to see if he has built a personal vote

  6. Deegan looks like a lovely bloke, Full of optimism, & idealism. His dedication to making a positive difference is impressive.

    What is very un-impressive is him raising the subject of penalty rates (reduction). If ever there was a non issue, this has all the massive dimensions of a bee’s dick. OTH it is a large disincentive to small business employment.

    All in all he will probably be a formidable opponent for Hogan

  7. A bit of a surprise preselection in Deegan over Smith I’d have thought, but good to see members have their say, so good luck to him.

    I went to uni up here many years ago and have a handful of friends still around. They say the local impression of Hogan is that he’s likeable and does the local stuff pretty conscientiously, but is not a policy work or ever likely to be promoted above backbencher.

    Pretty much all of the good booths in Page for the Greens are in the City of Lismore, so they’ll probably preselect someone from that end to lay lay the groundwork ahead of the state campaign.

  8. PJ
    Actually the Greens have already preselected Casino based candidate Daniel Reid, although he grew up in Lismore.

  9. Curious approach from Labor with their state and federal preselections on the north coast. I’m not sure they’ve ended up with the most strategically wise outcomes.

    This was a real shock result in 2016. Most people, including me, assumed this was the most likely Labor gain of the election, and seat-level polling was very strongly in Labor’s favour. I’m not sure why the seat polling here was so much more off the mark than elsewhere. Not getting an adequate geographic spread across the seat in their samples? Not adequately weighting their samples to the age mix of this electorate (one of the highest proportions of over 65s in the country)? Results skewed by responses from people not enrolled, incl university students who might be enrolled elsewhere? I haven’t really got a good answer as to why there seemed to be more unreliability in the polling here.

    Labor and Greens both seem to have opted for relatively low profile and seemingly inexperienced candidates, and I think both parties seem more focused on the state seat of Lismore. You’d assume this seat falls to Labor anyway if there’s any reasonable national swing. Absence of Saffin as Labor candidate should also help the Greens do maybe 2% or so better than they otherwise would.

  10. Not sure preselecting Deegan for Page was a smart move for Labor, Isaac Smith would’ve been a far stronger candidate to challenge Hogan.

    Personally believe the Nats will hold on here.

  11. Since Kevin Hogan is on the crossbench as a result of the leadership spill yesterday, would that help him retain his seat against a likely backlash against the government?

  12. Kevin Hogan cannot be seen as any thing other than np…. is the cross bench a stunt ? The proof is whether he recontests and does the nat party endorse a candidate against him

  13. Kevin Hogan’s Cross bench move is meaningless as he continues to vote with Coalition. And don’t underestimate Deegan. He won a hotly contested pre selection by working hard across the electorate, visiting all branches several times and making personal contact with many members. Hogan is seen as a nice guy who just cuts ribbons and hands out grants.

  14. I don’t why the pundits are saying this is a National hold, This is a seat that would easily be gobbled by Labor if they are on track for 85-90 seat Majority, This seat would fall easily, His move to the crossbench would likely have Hurt him also the Divisions in the National party at the moment about leadership hurts Marginal National seat holders

  15. It’s was reported in the Australian that the Nationals internal polling suggest they will struggle to retain Page from Labor and withstand Independent Rob Oakshott in Cowper. The polling also suggested NATS leader Michael McCormack has little public profile with the public.

    Labor favorites in Page on Sportsbet at $1.55 to Coalition at $2.35.

  16. @PN, Despite that, Barnaby would have done much worse as leader, Because of his wife/sex scandal. Its better to be not known than disliked, This seat should be gained by Labour however i think only narrowly, Last time allot of of predicted an easy Labour gain as polling was consistently showing Janelle ahead here. But the Turnbull factor gave Hogan an upset victory, This time Turnbull is not around so this will be very hard to retain. Infact i think they have a better shot at gaining Herbert (Even though i think Labour will hold that) Than keeping this.

  17. Janelle was very popular…. now will be the state mp for Lismore this will help the alp candidate…….. esp if she is part of a new labour Government

  18. The Sportsbet odds have tightened a little in favour of the Liberal Party to $1.64 Labor and $2.05 Liberal.
    It will be interesting to see how the market develops closer to the election day. It will also be interesting to see how accurate the betting market is as a predictor.

  19. I think Labor are going to lose some of the effect of the swing, due to the fact that Janelle Saffin will lose her personal vote in this electorate. With her not running (given her new position), this seat will be a lot tighter than what the polls had originally suggested.

    At this point, I’d say a coin-flip

  20. Hawkeye
    What will be crucial here is the Green vote. If you combine it with Animal Justice it was a massive increase in 2016. I feel without any evidence that a high water mark was reached.

  21. Very close seat, Nats may be hampered from having to spend resources defending the safe seat of Calare from the SFF, but the loss of Saffin running also may hurt labor.

    Currently I’d predict a narrow ALP gain.

  22. I would expect an increase in green votes in this seat as many Saffin supporters would switch. Her popularity, especially with the green/left voters will have kept them with the ALP but I would expect much of Saffin’s personal vote to swing Green.

    probably not sufficient to make a difference though.

  23. This campaign seems a little quieter than usual. A few letterbox items from both Nats and Labor, but only postal vote material came from Nats which is interesting. Hogan also seems to have a lot more TV ads – don’t think I’ve seen any locally-tailored advertising from Labor, which they have done in past years. Nothing from Greens. The independent has some TV ads and shopfront. I don’t think she’s a chance, but will presumably poll somewhere around the same level that the last significant independent polled here in 2001 – ie 5-10%. I don’t know what’s going on here but I’m not getting the impression Labor are doing enough, so either think they have it in the bag or have given up, and I’m not sure which it could be, but I won’t be betting on Labor to win this time. Greens vote may tick up a couple of % relative to whatever their national trend is due to Saffin not being Labor candidate, but it’s not a significant Greens campaign here – the candidate spent the last six months working in Sydney.

  24. Yeah the lack of campaigning here seems interesting, this feels like a key contest in NSW. I remember reading Nats “insiders” saying it was 50/50.

  25. Interesting comments on here and other seats (and a few I noticed in the NSW campaign) around lack of campaign activity. With online and social media advertising able to narrowcast to very specific geographic areas and demographics, a better measure of campaign activity is probably asking locals what they’re seeing on their Facebook feeds, rather than the old fashioned billboards, corflutes etc.

    This will be a good one to watch during the count. I’m told that Kevin Hogan has done a lot to buck the (expected) trend against the NSW Nats, but the Green vote and Labor gain of Lismore would be a big concern for him.

  26. All the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen has said the opposite. The Nats are reportedly confident of holding on here. I would agree with that assessment too, especially considering the strength of an incumbent in a rural seat and the fact that Saffin is not running again. Naturally you don’t write off a seat with a ~ 2% margin, but I would be surprised if Labor won here.

    To be honest, I wouldn’t be looking to Lismore as evidence of spectacular ALP performance. They barely got over the line when they should have done much better. That was *with* a high profile candidate too.

  27. Well, what I’m seeing on my Facebook feed is ads for Dave Sharma and even one for Tim Murray, which isn’t particularly helpful.

  28. I’m also surprised that Page hasn’t featured more as it is ripe for an ALP pick up given climate change, waters & health issues through out the region. I’d expect the Green vote to increase but will it be enough to help the ALP?

  29. Yappo
    The combined Green AJP vote increased more than 30% last election What would push it higher ?

  30. Well I clearly listed 3 issues of which the first consistently polls as a major issue in coastal parts of this electorate. I would expect that the Green vote should increase a few % overall and pushing 20% in Lismore and NE areas. Of course that could be off set by a similar decrease in the ALP vote given candidate change though Saffin is out there campaigning too. However, though Hogan is popular the Nat vote also has the potential to decrease a few % given the general unhappiness in NSW regarding water, cost of living and health issues coupled with the presence of a UAP candidate which will lead to some leakage of prefs.

    This could’ve been in play if they ALP had put more resources into it but it still might be closer than we expect.

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