The final boundaries for the ACT were released today. There was one small change on the Bean/Canberra boundary in the Woden Valley area, where the remainder of the suburb of Phillip was moved from Canberra to Bean. This made no change to the margin.
I’ve now published the final ACT map, as well as the final Victorian and South Australian election maps, and you can download them all from the maps page.
I’ve now started work on my guides for federal seats in South Australia and the ACT, but I will wait to do the Victorian seats until the official maps are released on July 13. There were enough changes, and they were described vaguely enough, that I’ll want to check that the boundaries are correct.
I’m still regularly posting a seat guide every day. Today’s seat guide was the Western Sydney seat of Chifley. There are only two more seats in NSW to publish, and I’ve now published every seat in Queensland, WA, Tasmania and the NT (although I will post new guides to the five by-election seats once the results are finalised). Once I finish New South Wales on Thursday, I’ll be posting guides to the Senate races, and then ACT and South Australia seats through mid-July. So please keep an eye out, and join in the numerous conversations taking place across many guides.
The new seat of Canberra should most likely be a Labor v Green seat, after all the seat of Bean is basically the old seat of Canberra.
Looking at the results of the 2013 election when the Greens had a serious play for the second senate seat this would genuine 3 way battle.
That being said with the most mediocre candidate Labor should win Canberra fairly easily.
My guess would be 60-40 Labor over Greens.
The notional 1st preference tally I can find says:
Bean Labor 44.4%, Liberal 37.3%, Greens 13.6%, Others 4.7%
Canberra Labor 42.5%, Liberal 32.9%, Greens 18.7%, Others 5.9%
Fenner Labor 46.0%, Liberal 33.3%, Greens 13.0%, Others 7.7%
A full 3PP count would be ever so slightly better for the Greens. They basically need to shift 1 in 3.6 Labor voters in Canberra, 1 in 2.9 in Bean, or 1 in 2.8 in Fenner to win. So Canberra is clearly the most likely seat, but that’s a tall order. In 2010 Adam Bandt shifted 1 in 4.3 Labor voters and then in 2013 with the advantage of incumbency he shifted 1 in 3.3.
It’ll be interesting too see what happens to these boundaries in the future considering there’s not much land left to be developed in Gungahlin (in Fenner), and Molonglo Valley (in Bean) is now the new area where most of the land is being released for development. If Molonglo’s population grows and Gungahlin’s population growth slows down, Bean might end up being too big and Fenner too small (especially considering that Bean is currently over quota and Fenner under).
It could actually work quite well though, because then they could move the rest of Woden Valley (Phillip, Pearce, Mawson, Isaacs and Farrer) from Bean to Canberra, and shift the southern parts of Belconnen (Hawker, Weetangera, Macquarie, Cook and Aranda) from Canberra to Fenner. Then all of Woden Valley and most of Belconnen would be in single electorates, plus the division of Canberra would be more focused on the inner parts of Canberra.
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