Wentworth – Australia 2016

LIB 18.9%

Incumbent MP
Malcolm Turnbull, since 2004.

Geography
Eastern suburbs of Sydney. Wentworth covers Woollahra and Waverley local government areas, as well as eastern parts of the City of Sydney and northern parts of Randwick LGA. Wentworth covers the southern shore of Sydney Harbour as far west as Elizabeth Bay, and covers the east coast from South Head to Clovelly. Main suburbs include Bondi, Woollahra, Vaucluse, Double Bay, Kings Cross and parts of Randwick, Darlinghurst and Clovelly. Wentworth also covers Moore Park and Centennial Park.

Map of Wentworth's 2013 and 2016 boundaries. 2013 boundaries marked as red lines, 2016 boundaries marked as white area. Click to enlarge.
Map of Wentworth’s 2013 and 2016 boundaries. 2013 boundaries marked as red lines, 2016 boundaries marked as white area. Click to enlarge.

Redistribution
Wentworth lost Potts Point, Woolloomooloo and part of Darlinghurst to Sydney. These changes increased the Liberal margin from 17.8% to 18.9%.

History
Wentworth is an original federation electorate and has always existed roughly in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It has always been held by conservative parties, including the Liberal Party since its foundation in 1944.

The seat was first won by William McMillan of the Free Trade party in 1901. He was elected deputy leader of his party but retired at the 1903 election. He was succeeded by William Kelly, also a Free Trader. Kelly joined the Commonwealth Liberal Party and served in Joseph Cook’s ministry from 1913 to 1914.

Kelly retired in 1919 as a Nationalist and was succeeded by Walter Marks. Marks joined with other Nationalists, including Billy Hughes, to bring down the Bruce government in 1929, and was reelected as an independent. Marks joined the new United Australia Party in 1931, but was defeated in that year’s election by Eric Harrison, another UAP candidate.

Harrison held the seat for twenty-five years for the UAP and the Liberal Party. He usually held the seat safely, although he only held on by 335 votes in 1943, when feminist campaigner Jessie Street (ALP) challenged Harrison. William Wentworth also polled 20%. He later joined the Liberal Party and was elected in Mackellar in 1949.

Harrison had served a number of brief stints as a minister under Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies in the 1930s and early 1940s, and served as the first deputy leader of the Liberal Party from its foundation until his retirement in 1956. Harrison was a minister in the Menzies government from 1949 until 1956, when he retired.

Les Bury (LIB) won the seat at the 1956 by-election. He served as a minister from 1961 until 1971, serving as Treasurer under John Gorton and briefly as Treasurer and then Foreign Minister under William McMahon. Bury retired in 1974.

Robert Ellicott (LIB) was elected in 1974. He served as Attorney-General in the first Fraser Ministry and as Minister for Home Affairs from 1977 to 1981, when he resigned to serve on the Federal Court. The ensuing by-election was won by Peter Coleman. Coleman had previously served as Leader of the Opposition in the NSW Parliament, and lost his seat at the 1978 state election.

Coleman retired in 1987 and was succeeded by John Hewson. Hewson was elected leader of the Liberal Party following their 1990 election defeat. Hewson led the party into the 1993 election, where the party went backwards. He was replaced in May 1994 as leader by Alexander Downer, and he retired from Parliament in 1995.

Andrew Thomson won the following by-election. Thomson served briefly as a Parliamentary Secretary and junior minister in the first term of the Howard government. Thomson was defeated for preselection by Peter King in 2001.

King himself was defeated for preselection in a heated preselection campaign in 2004 by Malcolm Turnbull. The preselection saw a massive explosion in membership numbers for the Liberal Party in Wentworth. King ran as an independent and polled 18%, and Turnbull’s margin was cut to 5.5%.

The redistribution after the 2004 election saw Wentworth extended deeper into the City of Sydney, and Turnbull’s margin was cut to 2.5%. Turnbull managed to win the seat in 2007 with a 1.3% swing towards him, in the face of a national swing against the Liberals.

Turnbull had served as a minister in the final term of the Howard government, and ran for the Liberal leadership following the 2007 election, losing to Brendan Nelson. After serving as Nelson’s Shadow Treasurer he was elected Leader of the Opposition in September 2008. After a rocky term as Leader of the Opposition, Turnbull was defeated by Tony Abbott by one vote in another leadership vote in December 2009. Turnbull served as a shadow minister and then as Minister for Communications under Tony Abbott’s leadership.

In September 2015, Turnbull successfully challenged Abbott for the Liberal leadership, and became Prime Minister.

Candidates

Assessment
Wentworth is a very safe Liberal seat.

Polls

  • 58% to Liberal – Reachtel commissioned by Labor, 31 May 2016

2013 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Malcolm Turnbull Liberal 58,306 63.3 +3.8 64.4
Di Smith Labor 17,840 19.4 -1.7 18.8
Matthew Robertson Greens 13,455 14.6 -2.8 14.2
Pat Sheil Independent 1,054 1.1 +0.6 1.1
Marsha Foxman Palmer United Party 998 1.1 +1.1 1.1
Beresford Thomas Christian Democratic Party 431 0.5 +0.5 0.5
Informal 5,564 6.0

2013 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Malcolm Turnbull Liberal 62,359 67.7 +2.9 68.9
Di Smith Labor 29,725 32.3 -2.9 31.1
Polling places in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election. Bondi-Waverley in orange, Paddington in blue, Vaucluse in green. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election. Bondi-Waverley in orange, Paddington in blue, Vaucluse in green. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into three parts. Those booths in the Waverley and Randwick council areas have been grouped as Bondi-Waverley. The remaining booths have been split between Paddington in the west and Vaucluse in the east.

The Liberal Party won a comfortable majority of the primary vote in all three areas, ranging from 57.5% in Bondi-Waverley to 76.4% in Vaucluse.

Labor came second, with a vote ranging from 11.9% in Vaucluse to 23.4% in Bondi-Waverley. The Greens came third with a vote ranging from 9.2% in Vaucluse to just over 16% in the other two areas.

Voter group LIB % ALP % GRN % Total votes % of votes
Bondi-Waverley 57.5 23.4 16.4 23,166 27.9
Paddington 63.0 18.5 16.2 17,304 20.8
Vaucluse 76.4 11.9 9.2 12,194 14.7
Other votes 65.5 18.1 13.4 30,370 36.6
Liberal primary votes in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election.
Liberal primary votes in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election.
Labor primary votes in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election.
Labor primary votes in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election.
Greens primary votes in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election.
Greens primary votes in Wentworth at the 2013 federal election.

20 COMMENTS

  3. I’d be interested to see how this seat goes when Turnbull steps down. It was pretty marginal before the 2007 election IIRC….

  4. morgeib
    It would stay in the Liberal’s hands fairly comfortably, the only reason why it was marginal was due to the de-selected Liberal MP Peter King contesting as an independent in 2004, he achieved 17% and his preferences leaked to Labor.
    As for the result in 2007, a subsequent redistribution added areas from Sydney, such as Darlinghurst, Kings Cross and Woolloomooloo which are naturally Labor leaning marginal areas.

  5. Gah, that’s an error. For some reason some booths are mis-sorted. That 82 belongs at Dover Heights. Will correct and update a new map tonight.

  7. Even on the old boundaries the current margin makes it now look surprising that Labor got fairly close in 2007, though at the time there was a high-profile Labor opponent and Wentworth was expected to be a close race. Turnbull’s personal vote over time seems to have added some additional fat to the margin.

    Whoever is the Liberal candidate it would be almost inconceivable for Labor to win this seat on current boundaries.

  8. @Malcom
    The area’s that leaned Labor-Green in Wentworth were redistributed out such as Kings Cross, Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst, and even those areas I feel were heavily affected by Turnbull’s personal vote. Before they were put back into Wentworth in 2006 they leaned towards Plibersek, I’d imagine she would pick those booths up pretty easily.

    If any was to happen i’d suggest the Greens would come a distant second. In the state election they came second in Vaucluse, the booths in the state seat of Sydney were won by Greenwich, but on upper house results the Greens came second, and they do reasonably well in Coogee, especially around the northern part of that electorate which is in Wentworth around Bondi.

  9. Turnbull will hold this easily. However, there was a poll here recently that showed a 10% swing against him. Still a comfortable retain of course, but indicative of the slide in personal popularity that the Prime Minister has experienced.

  10. a 10% swing here is a bad look……. this the seat is voting normally again….. the Turnbull gloss has worn off? what happens with the inevitable by election…..?

  12. One way to kill off the Greens would be for the Greens to take Wentworth but for Libs to still form government with Abbott or Morrison as leader. The LNP’s right wing faction could kill 2 birds with one white-ant

  14. I doubt that the Greens would get ahead of Labor in Wentworth. They’d need more than 7% out of the 9% of “other” preferences to flow to them over both Labor and Liberal. CDP voters will almost all have preferences flow to Liberals. If we assume that CDP gets 1% of the vote (0.5% from 2013, plus half of the PUP vote that is “not Liberals, but right-wing”), then the Greens would need to get 7% out of 8%, which means they’d need to get about 88% of the preference flow. I just don’t see that happening – it’ll be more like 60-70% at most.

    So Labor stays in front, if the Morgan polling is accurate.

    Doesn’t mean that Turnbull shouldn’t be concerned. If 80% of preferences flow to Labor, then Turnbull loses, at 47.7%. Turnbull would need at least 27.5% of the preferences to flow to him, to keep his seat.

    Realistically, though, I suspect that this poll is inaccurate, because I’m sure there are a lot of people in Wentworth who want to register their discontent with the Liberals in general, but would prefer Turnbull over any other possibility in the Liberals. Stating intention to vote for someone other than Turnbull would be a neat way to register that discontent without risking something worse.

  15. hard to believe this is right.
    ……… Turnbull down 21% ALP up 8 greens up 7 oth up 9
    This suggests a huge swing…….. 12 to 16% swing to Alp and pm in danger in his own seat

  17. Interesting to see a very minor swing away from the PM? Unlike elections in the 90s and 00s, the margin all things considered, still looks very beefy.

    Thoughts?

  18. Turnbull must still be popular amongst his constituents, even if he has changed since getting the top job. Plus, he is a good fit for this bit of Sydney, and Wentworth lost some weaker Liberal territory at the redistribution.

  20. IK Paul Keating and Julia Gillard got huge swings to them in their first elections., around 10% or so.

    Although I don’t think there was much more to be had out of the margin here…

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