Altona is going to the polls to elect a successor to former Education Minister and Transport Minister Lynne Kosky. The Liberal Party has bucked the tradition of major parties not contesting by-elections in another party’s safe seat, running a candidate in the by-election. It seems extremely unlikely the Liberals could win, but this will be seen as a barometer of support in Victorian politics leading into a state election year, with a state election scheduled for late November 2010.

I will be participating in a liveblog at independent news site theangle.org tonight as the results come in. You can expect coverage elsewhere from Antony Green at ABC Elections and William Bowe at the Poll Bludger. You can read more about the by-election at ABC Elections, The Angle and Poll Bludger.

State electoral district of Altona, indicated within Melbourne's electoral districts, showing results of the 2006 election.

Maltzahn is a former City of Yarra councillor from 2004 to 2008 and is currently the Executive Director of a local women’s health service.

In regards to the preselection, Maltzahn said that “people get climate change. They want the government to make real change. I’m running to help make that happen. We’re also seeing more and more Greens elected, including, with Adele Carle’s win in Fremantle, in lower house seats. Winning Richmond is a real possibility.”

Richmond is the second most marginal Labor/Greens seat in Victoria, behind the state seat of Melbourne. The seat mostly covers Maltzahn’s City of Yarra, with the exception of small parts at the northern end of Yarra LGA.

Richmond is held by ALP Minister for Housing, Local Government and Aboriginal Affairs Richard Wynne, who has held the seat since 1999. Richmond has been a safe Labor seat since 1908, with the exception of the 1955 election when the sitting Labor MP was re-elected for the DLP for one term.

The Greens first came close to winning in Richmond in 2002, when Gemma Pinnell polled 28.6% of the primary vote and produced a two-candidate-preferred result of 53.1% for the ALP over the Greens. In 2006, the Greens went backwards slightly on the two-candidate-preferred vote, with the ALP winning 53.6%. There were swings against both Greens and Labor on primary votes towards smaller parties, in particular local Socialist councillor Stephen Jolly, who polled 5.6%, which largely contributed to a 3.9% swing against the Greens, who ran then-Yarra councillor Gurm Sekhon, and 1.1% against Wynne.

Maltzahn’s preselection is another in the long line of preselections for potentially winnable seats that the Greens will be conducting over the next few months. Lee Rhiannon and Richard di Natale have already been preselected for the Senate next year, with similar preselections in Queensland, South Australia and the ACT expected soon. In addition, there will be preselections for one winnable seat in the South Australian Legislative Council and four winnable seats in the NSW Legislative Council. The Victorian Greens are currently preselecting lead candidates for all eight Legislative Council regions, all of which are winnable. And, of course, we’re still waiting on preselections for the state seats of Balmain, Marrickville, Melbourne, Brunswick and Northcote.

Update: Greg Barber and Colleen Hartland have both been preselected to run for second terms in North Metro and Western Metro respectively. Yarra Ranges Councillor Samantha Dunn is running for Eastern Victoria region. The other five regions are yet to be concluded.

Update 2: Colleen Hartland hasn’t actually been preselected yet, but she is the only candidate in Western Metro.

In a moment of synchronicity, three of Australia’s four pollsters have released federal voting intention polls, all clearly showing a collapse in support for the Coalition and possibly spelling the end of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership.

As for the details of each poll, I’ll simply quote William Bowe’s summary over at Poll Bludger:

• Arriving a day earlier than usual, Newspoll shows that the Coalition recovery detected a fortnight has come to end, with Labor’s lead back out from 53-47 to 56-44. The parties have also exchanged three points on the primary vote, Labor up to 44 per cent and the Coalition down to 37 per cent. However, the real shock is that Turnbull’s personal ratings have suffered what Shanahan calls “the single biggest fall in the survey’s 25-year history”, his approval rating plunging from 44 per cent to 25 per cent while his disapproval is up from 37 per cent to 58 per cent. Fifty-two per cent do not believe that John Grant received prefential treatment from the Prime Minister against only 24 per cent who do. Kevin Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister is up from 57-25 to 65-18.

• ACNielsen, which is hopefully back to monthly polling as we enter the second half of the term, has Labor’s two-party lead up from 53-47 to 58-42. Labor’s primary vote is up two points to 46 per cent and the Coalition’s is down six to 37 per cent. Fifty-three per cent say the OzCar affair has left them with a less favourable impression of Malcolm Turnbull, whose approval is down 11 points to 32 per cent with his disapproval up 13 points to 60 per cent. Turnbull comes third on the question of preferred Liberal leader with 18 per cent, behind Peter Costello on 37 per cent and Joe Hockey on 21 per cent. Rudd’s lead as preferred prime minister is up from 64-28 to 66-25, and his approval rating is up three points to 67 per cent.

• Galaxy has Labor’s primary vote up a point to 44 per cent and the Coalition’s down two to 30 per cent. Sixty-one per cent believe Kevin Rudd has been open and honest about the OzCar affair, while 51 per cent “believed Mr Turnbull had been dishonest or somewhat deceitful”.

Any trend towards the Opposition has been completely decimated, with support for the ALP back towards the region of 56% two-party-preferred, which would give the party 100 seats on a uniform swing.

The Galaxy poll was also positive for the Greens, with the party gaining one point to 12%. This follows the Morgan poll of Friday giving the Greens 8.5% (up 1.5%) and state Newspolls in NSW and South Australia performing strongly for the party. In the case of Nielsen, the poll shows a 6-point decline in the Coalition’s primary vote while only giving 2% extra to the ALP, suggesting that the vote for Greens and Others has increased.

These polls have for the first time raised the possibility of Malcolm Turnbull being replaced as Liberal leader, with the Nielsen poll asking voters about potential Liberal leaders, producing the result of:

• 37% Peter Costello
• 21% Joe Hockey
• 18% Malcolm Turnbull
• 10% Tony Abbott

Short of the Coalition following the example of the Western Australian Liberal Party and coaxing Peter Costello out of retirement to lead the party, this puts Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey in poll position to become the party’s third Leader of the Opposition, barely halfway through the parliamentary term.

There have only ever been four federal Leaders of the Opposition to never lead their party into an election, being John Latham (1929-31), Alexander Downer (1994-5), Simon Crean (2001-3) and Brendan Nelson (2007-8). If Turnbull was to join their ranks, it would be the first time that a party would dispose of two leaders without going to an election.

In other news:

• Former left-wing independent federal MP and footballer Phil Cleary has announced he will be running as an independent candidate in the seat of Brunswick at the next Victorian state election. Cleary was formerly federal MP for Wills, which overlaps with Brunswick.  Brunswick’s sitting MP Carlo Carli will be retiring at the election, and the seat is only held by the ALP by a margin of 3.63% over the Greens. If Cleary runs and wins a solid 10-20% of the primary vote, largely from a different constituency to the Greens, and preferences the Greens, the seat would quickly overtake Melbourne, Balmain and Marrickville to become the party’s next best hope to take a single-member electorate after winning the Fremantle by-election earlier this year. Update: I’ve slightly jumped the gun here. Cleary has only announced that he is considering running. Apparently he has done this before.
• Embattled South Australian Liberal leader Martin Hamilton-Smith is facing a leadership challenge in a scandal remarkably similar to the scandal engulfing Malcolm Turnbull. Shadow Minister for Emergency Services and Correctional Services Mitch Williams has resigned from the Liberal frontbench and announced he will stand in any future leadership contest, although he does not seem to be pushing for an immediate challenge. It is now nine months before South Australia goes to the polls in March 2010, while a poll yesterday puts the ALP on 64% in Adelaide, a 1.4% swing from the 2006 result.