Over the next two weeks I’ll be picking clusters of seats and posting maps showing the swings in those seats at the recent NSW election, looking for interesting trends. If there’s a seat you’d be interested in seeing, please let me know! I have a few other ideas for blog posts, but most of them will need to wait for the results data to be finalised first.
The swings on the map are reliant on a dataset produced by William Bowe, who went to the trouble to map the 2019 results on to the 2023 booths, thus allowing swing calculations (much as Antony Green does for the ABC). The AEC performs this exercise and thus provides booth-level swings to the public, but for state elections you’ve got to do this work yourself.
First up I’ve picked my home seat of Parramatta and its two neighbours of Epping and Ryde.
The default map shows the 2PP swings by booth. The size of the font is scaled according to the number of votes cast at each booth (to be precise, the number of votes that didn’t exhaust). Booths with a larger swing are in a darker shade. Swings to Labor are in red, swings to the Liberal Party are in blue, not that you see any on this map.
The swings in this area peaked in the central suburbs of Parramatta, with swings of over 20% near the river.
I want to draw attention to the swings in Epping. The western half of Epping had previously been included in the seat of Parramatta, and the swings were much larger in this area, peaking at 22% in Carlingford.
Swings in Ryde were impressive, but were nothing like what we saw in Parramatta.
When you look at the actual result by toggling the map, the Liberal Party still won a lot of booths in this area. Very few booths were over 60% for either party, but Labor did get into solid support levels in the centre of Parramatta.
Swings in the booths/seats won by Independents would be interesting, eg, the seats where SFF MPs defected from their party – Orange, Barwon and Murray – and Wollondilly where an ex-Nationals and ex-Liberal member win, backed by Climate 200.
In Newcastle the swing against the Liberals seems to be under 4% most likely thanks to a strong local candidate. This contrasts with much stronger swings against the Liberals in neighbouring seats. It would be worth looking at.
It seems that 22% swing in Carlingford maybe due to new apartments being built there so it was already impacting on reducing the proportion of Liberal vote
Be great to see the swings in the Sutherland Shire (Holsworty, Miranda and Heathcote) that swung strongly to Labor. This wasn’t identified as a possibility in much of the pre election analysis.
Terrigal please.
I second the Sutherland Shire seats request.
Me Too regarding Sutherland Shire. I do believe if Labor is aiming for a majority government in 2027 they will target the 2 close Sutherland Shire seats.
Alright added the Central Coast to the list for Sunday week.
Holsworthy/Miranda/Heathcote is scheduled for Monday.
Thanks Ben. Love your work
Hi Ben, I’d love to see a results map for the Northern Sydney seats of Pittwater, Wakehurst and Manly!
Ben, I love the analysis.
Can you do Fairfield, Cabramatta, Liverpool? They’re Labor holds but the latter two saw massive swings to the Liberals.
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