Bass is a Labor seat covering Launceston and the north-eastern corner of Tasmania.
The seat has a long history of being a key marginal seat, changing hands most recently in 2004 and 2007. Indeed Bass has had six members of Parliament since 1993.
Geoff Lyons won in 2010 after sitting Labor MP Jodie Campbell stepped down after one term, and he holds the seat with a 6.7% margin. Labor will face an uphill climb to retain Bass in 2013.
Hindmarsh is a Labor seat in the western suburbs of Adelaide, held with a 6.1% margin.
Steve Georganas won the seat off the Liberal Party in 2007, but will be in for a fight to hold on in 2013.
Goldstein is a Liberal seat in the inner south of Melbourne, covering Sandringham, Brighton, Hampton, Beaumaris, Ormond and Bentleigh.
David Kemp held the seat from 1990 and 2004, and has been held since 2004 by Andrew Robb. Robb is a senior Coalition frontbencher and a former Director of the Liberal Party.
Yesterday was the deadline for political parties to lodge an application to be registered in time for the federal election. Applications take at least three months, and must be concluded before the writs are issued in mid-August.
A lot of attention has been paid to Clive Palmer’s nascent political party, in part due to his wealth, his previous role as a major donor to and member of the Liberal National Party of Queensland, and the dramas of the last few days as Peter Slipper was first accepted and then rejected as a member.
While most of the attention has focused on Clive Palmer’s attempts, along with those of other prominent figures such as Bob Katter, there has been a surge of party registrations that could well reach the highest number ever.
Wannon is a Liberal seat covering the south-western corner of Victoria, including Warrnambool, Portland, Ararat and Hamilton.
Liberal MP Dan Tehan won the seat in 2010. Despite a relatively slim 5.7% margin, Wannon has been held by the Liberal Party since 1955.
Malcolm Fraser held the seat from 1955, and held it until 1983, when he resigned after losing a bid for a fourth term as Prime Minister. David Hawker held the seat from 1983 until his retirement in 2010.
Stirling is a marginal Liberal seat in northern Perth, including the suburbs of Balcatta, Carine, Nollamara, Scarborough, Stirling and Yokine.
Michael Keenan has held the seat since 2004. Before that, the ALP’s Jann McFarlane held the seat from 1998 until 2004.
Higgins is a Liberal seat in the inner eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Higgins covers South Yarra, Prahran, Toorak, Carnegie, Malvern and Glen Iris.
Higgins was held by Peter Costello from 1990 until his resignation in 2009, when the seat was won by Liberal candidate Kelly O’Dwyer. O’Dwyer holds the seat by only 5.4%, but should be comfortably re-elected.
Paterson is a Liberal seat covering areas near Newcastle in regional New South Wales. The seat covers East Maitland, Forster and Port Stephens.
Bob Baldwin holds the seat for the Liberal Party. He has held it by small but consistent margins throughout the 2000s after the seat swung back and forth at every election through the late 1990s.
Gilmore is a Liberal seat covering the NSW south coast, stretching from Shellharbour to Ulladulla, and including Kiama, Nowra and Jervis Bay.
Joanna Gash has held the seat since 1996. In 2012, she was elected Mayor of Shoalhaven, and will be stepping down at the upcoming election.
The pendulum orders every seat in the country by the swing required for that seat to change hands. By following the pendulum you can determine roughly how many seats will fall with a particular national vote. Antony Green has built a calculator which can work this out for you.
Following the pendulum only gives you a rough idea of what might happen. Some seats will swing more strongly, and others won’t, thanks to a whole bunch of factors including the incumbent MP, election issues, and demographics.
So how do we identify which seats could see larger-than-average swings and fall despite a seemingly ‘safe’ position on the pendulum?
One factor worth considering is how much the seat has swung since the last Coalition victory in 2004. While many marginal Labor seats swung back to the Coalition in 2010, a number of seats, mainly in Victoria and South Australia, swung even further to Labor in 2010.
There are fifteen seats where the cumulative swing from the Coalition to Labor at the 2007 and 2010 elections is greater than 9%. These are a good place to start when looking for the big swingers.
Read below the fold to find out where those seats are. Read the rest of this entry »