Today’s map covers five contiguous seats in northern Sydney which ended up as contests between the Liberal Party and independents. Only one of those independents won, but two others came close, and all five technically fall into the “marginal” category.
This area stretches from North Shore all the way to Pittwater.
Swing data thanks to William Bowe’s estimates of 2019 results by 2023 polling place.
New independent MP Michael Regan won every booth in Wakehurst, and I can’t detect much of a geographic pattern – the north-east has some of his best booths and some of his worst.
The independent candidate barely broke through in Manly, winning just three booths narrowly.
The other three seats all have a clear geographic divide.
North Shore Liberal MP Felicity Wilson won all the booths in the Mosman area (the east of the seat) while the western end of the seat voted for the independent.
The split in Willoughby was more north-south, with independent Larissa Penn winning the south of the seat.
The independent won the northern parts of Pittwater.
Hi Ben, great map. Just wondering if it possible to add notional ALP/Lib result to booths like you did pre-election for these seats
Willoughby result is interesting – two trends in the results, if you compare them to the byelection results from last year.
The northern booths definitely swung away from James, but he still won them.
The opposite is for the south – and a few booths switched outcomes (Northbridge being the standout).
In Willoughby, if this was an election where your vote wasn’t determined by the Northern Beaches Tunnel this time, the swings were either a move to Labor (time for a change, or maybe attitudes towards China), or you’d got the proverbial off your liver in your by-election vote and were moving from Penn and returning home to the Liberals (particularly in Northbridge).
If your vote was driven still by by-election dynamics (Tunnel, Gladys’ departure, bus issues,etc) then you stayed with Penn, or voted Griffin 1, Penn 2.
Griffin picked up better results in Chatswood but Penn lost ground in Northbridge, and to a lesser extent other parts of the south. Although it is a small booth, her best booth at the by-election (the Naremburn Community Centre) had a reasonable swing to Liberal. Labor exhaustion rates and preference leakage helped save James.
James also survived because of his work rate over the last twelve months. Neither of the other two preselection candidates (Giles-Gidney or Sloane) would have survived.
The teal candidate in Pittwater most likely would’ve flipped the seat with CPV. She won most booths, including all booths north of Newport. Labor preferences weren’t enough to help her.
Lane Cove was the only seat with a teal candidate who didn’t make the final two. I knew she wouldn’t come close to winning but was surprised that Labor made the final two. It could be the more suburban areas of the western part of Ryde and the older-than-average blue-ribbon Liberal areas of Hunters Hill and Woolwich that made it difficult for a teal to compete in. Labor came second on primaries and got a huge boost following preferences from the Greens and then from the independent.
Interestingly, the strongest Liberal booths mostly fall inside Warringah – Zali Steggall’s seat. In 2022, she won just every booth by a mile, though to be fair, she had a sophomore surge and strong personal vote as well as a hard right Liberal opponent.
I maintain my doubt of teals winning in inland electorates at the state and federal level in metro Sydney, given the weakness of the teals and strength of the Liberals in Lane Cove (the seat) as well as in Terrey Hills. Wollondilly is perhaps an exception, though Judy Hannan didn’t use teal colours and it’s debatable whether she is a teal.
@ Votante
I actually think Rory Amon did quite well even though it he would probably have lost if there was CPV. i say this as the Liberal primary is quite high. It is important to remember that this was an open seat and this is when a party is most vulnerable to a challenge. I would give the Victorian comparison of Mornington and Kew when a Teal ran the Liberal primary dropped and Rory Amon actually got a higher primary vote than the Victorian Libs got in Kew or Mornington. At the Federal election even Frydenburg who did the best against the Teal had a lower primary vote than Amon despite a higher profile.
I think Votante is on the money with this, with regards to OPV and CPV. Interestingly with Pittwater, this has always been the strongest area for Independent voting (it was the area that swung the hardest to Alex McTaggart when he won the Pittwater By-Election after John Brogden’s resignation). On a fun note, I used to enjoy seeing what would happen with the old Scotland Island Booth. I wonder which way Piers Ackerman and Kristina Kennelley would have voted. It also shows how poorly Jason Falinski campaigned for Mackellar at the last Federal Election.
Looking at Wakehurst, you can see that Toby didn’t do a good job at campaigning around Cromer, Narraweena and Beacon Hill. It would appear that he went too hard around Frenches Forest and neglected the rest of the seat. Cromer, Narraweena and Beacon Hill was traditionally Brad’s strongest areas and Regan’s weakest areas in NBC so for Toby to underperform there is disappointing.
Within Manly and the Mosman end of North Shore, it shows that James Griffin and Felicity Wilson are probably the ideal Liberal Candidates for the Seat and shows that the Liberal Party have put themselves so far on the back foot for Warringah (federally). I think that Zali will get through the next federal election but I would be saying that 2028 would be the year where you could see the Liberal Party return, unless they find a candidate with a strong enough profile and fit to be able to win the seat back.
With respect to Willoughby, I agree with the consensus that Tim James has worked his rear end off in the seat and done an amazing job to retain the seat against the general momentum. I think I can explain the abnormal vote within Northbridge as being his natural presence in the seat. His Electorate Office is situated at the top of the run from Northbridge itself, at the intersection of Strathallen and Sailors Bay Roads. Having that stare down the road all the way is basically free advertising. It is one of the best-located Electorate Offices I have seen.
Will be interesting to see whether independents rear their heads again in the northern suburbs of Sydney in four years time. It’s clear there is some structural discontent with the Liberal Party in this area at multiple levels of government. Will ALP governments galvanise Liberals support in this area or will the Liberals’ metropolitan electoral woes continue?
I was expecting teals to do better in the NSW election than they did in the VIC election. A lot of the seats that were targeted in VIC were places Labor did quite well in 2018, like Mornington, Caulfield, Brighton, Sandringham, Kew and most importantly Hawthorn which they won (from Pesutto of all people).
Meanwhile in NSW, Labor (or the Greens) wasn’t going to get a sniff at these seats given their 25%-ish margins (2019 figures, against Labor/Greens, Notional figures for NS who had an Ind 2019 too) in Willoughby/Pittwater/Wakehurst/Davidson/Wahroonga/North Shore. (This suited the “Teal” seat profile in Feds). Though I admit OPV would have fared badly for them.
IDK what happened with Manly in 2019 though (12.9% margin against Greens 2019, which is still safe but is noticeably much lower than neighbouring seats). Is it the loss of Mike Baird’s personal vote? Some of Abbott’s stenches extending to him? Or is it the candidate’s own mother of all people campaigning against him?
While we are at it, I find it funny that on 2019 figures at least, that Manly, Pittwater and Vaucluse have the Greens do noticeably (i.e. by like 2%) better than Labor when each are pitted to a notional 2pp count against the Libs. This isn’t the case even in the other “teal” seats like North Shore, Wakehurst, Willoughby etc. While this would mean f*** all in who gets elected (Too safe of a seat), does that mean anything about the “nature” of those 3 seats?
@SP – If anything, this election confirms that the Hard Right of the Liberal Party really has no place left on the Northern Beaches and it is something that the party needs to accept. It also confirms that you do need genuine “people persons” to campaign for you, which explains why Jason Falinski lost Mackellar. Having watched him throughout 2022, he was one of the worst campaigners I have ever seen.
It also shows that Local Council is now starting to establish itself as a genuine stepping stone towards a potential run for State Government, especially given that the 3 Northern Beaches Seats (excluding Davidson as this is effectively a North Shore Seat Now) now have current or former Local Councillors as their representatives. I was very much opposed to the Liberal Party running endorsed candidates on Council, due to the churn of resources and the risk of factional in-fighting. It appears that the latter is now relatively resolved, but the former remains a major concern.
@Leon – Labor’s brand is generally cactus on the Northern Beaches and has been since 2011 (they can’t even get a single councillor on NBC). The only area where it holds up is in Wakehurst, especially around Dee Why West/Cromer area, where the majority of the old industrial areas still remain. The demographic changes that has been occurring in the Northern Beaches has seen the Labor vote collapse, in favour of the Greens. This is especially the case in Pittwater the further you go up the Peninsula (due to gentrification) and in Manly (with a large contingent of younger beacher-lovers with money, centered around Manly), along with some gentrification around Curl Curl. I would imagine that the Pittwater Situation would be very similar to Vaucluse but happy to be corrected on that.
It is very different to the North Shore, where the predominant demographic battle is more conventional and tends to be more “old money” scenarios of Liberal vs Labor. This area hasn’t really experienced the demographic changes that other places have experienced. Where the shifts tend to occur in these seats is more around the NIMBY Issues, especially when it comes to transport infrastructure from the Northern Beaches.
Finally, in terms of Manly, there is an element of the loss of Mike Baird’s Personal vote in the area. He is still very popular in the area and there is some over-arching issues with Abbott and Deves hanging around. But I think you will find that, for Griffin, it will be a case of “if he didn’t lose the seat now, he will never lose the seat”. The Teals had their best opportunity to win Manly and didn’t get it.
I think some reasons that the teals did well in northern sydney in the 2022 federal election was
– “moderate” MPs had no impact on the rest of the party – so no point voting them in if they are just a vote for conservative policies
– un-alligned candidates (Deves and previously Abbott) whose personal politics didn’t align with the voters
In the state LNP there wasn’t such an issue in that the moderate faction had plenty of sway over the running of things. Griffin was aligned with that faction so kept up his vote. I am guessing Stokes would have held Pittwater more easily. Not sure if Hazzard would have held on to Wakehurst or not (but guess it would have been closer)
@Nimalan, I was surprised that the margin in Pittwater was only 0.7% since Rory Amon scored 44.7% on primaries. This means the rate of preferencing from Greens/Labor to the independent was really high and the exhaustion rate was low. Rory got just enough preferences just to scrape across the line. Just imagine if no votes were exhausted like when there’s CPV!
I agree with Hawkeye and others that Tim James redeemed himself after the loss of Gladys’s personal vote and the massive swing at the by-election last year, though I did think that Labor and Larissa Penn running at the same time would split the non-Liberal vote. I thought Penn’s Nimby and anti-tunnel platform wouldn’t resonate well in Chatswood where most people are one of the following: renters, apartment-dwellers, students, young and mobile professionals, and above all, they all live on the other end of the electorate to the planned tunnel.
I knew that there wouldn’t be a federal-style teal wave though I thought Jacqui Scruby had a shot in Pittwater. They didn’t gain as much traction nor get the funding that federal teals had and they didn’t have the Morrison factor to work in their favour.
Hawkeye_au
Tim James electorate office is simply the same office that St. Gladys had – I don’t think you should ascribe any particular brilliance to him on that front. And I doubt many on the intelligent folk around Willoughby voted for him because if it. Tim James did work hard since the by election – that is acknowledged – I witnessed it several times first hand. He has lost 14% primary in the by-election and then didn’t get any of it back in he general, so performance is all relative. The best thing he had going for him was that Scott Morrison wasn’t Premier.
Votante – I really don’t know why Lane Cove was such a mystery to people. The Labor Senate vote last year across that state seat must have been around 30% and the LC vote this year has simply caught up with that, getting to 28%. Without the strong incentive for tactical voting, the Labor vote held up ok and made it hard for a Teal IND to get into second. People think the LAbor PV is in the toilet across this entire area – like it is on the northern Beaches, when its just not the case – just look at the numbers.
Two notable points: in Willoughby in 2015 the Greens beat Labor by about 100 votes and they both got around 16%. Now, with an IND taking 26%, it’s ALP 20% and Green 8% – basically the same as across North Sydney last year. Similar in Lane Cove – The Green vote seems to have blown a gasket around the lower north shore.
And of those that did stay with a Greens primary, across the 3 lower north shore seats, the Greens preferences flowed very evenly b/w IND and ALP, despite the GRN HTV recommending an IND.
@ Votante, it raise an important question how high does the Liberal primary have to be for them to defeat a Teal. I think the NSW election has taught us that a Teal will always take some primary vote from the Libs even if they are moderate although they can stop the bleeding and hold up relatively well. However, to win outright without the need to go preferences is very difficult if there is a well resourced Teal independent. If we look at Rory Amon’s primary vote it is actually slightly higher than what Felicity Wilson got in North shore and originally Marginally below what James Griffin got in Manly although one key differences is that the Teal primary vote is lower in those two seats so less exhaustion and leakage are they key for Teal victory. Interestingly if we look CPV situations in Bradfield the Lib Primary was 45% when a Teal ran but they won comfortable and Pesutto got less than 43% and won. However, Teal primary was low in those two cases.
@Insider, I haven’t looked at the LC results by seat but I take your word for it. I am convinced that Labor held up pretty well at the state election in seats with teal candidates. The drop in PV wasn’t as big as at the federal eleciton. In Warringah and Mackeller, Labor’s PV was below 10% (perhaps a sign of tactical voting), whilst in all state seats, Labor got double digits. Despite the double-digit PVs, the preference flows to the teals weren’t that strong due to exhausting and perhaps because Perrottet was more favourable than Morrison.
@Nimalan, you raised great points. The teal PV in Pittwater was way higher than in Manly, North Shore and Vaucluse. Seeing how low the Labor/Greens PV was in Pittwater may suggest tactical voting. The stength of the teal vote meant a much closer race than in other seats where there was a high-ish Labor/Greens vote and hence more potential for leakage and exhausting.
In Manly, it was always pretty clear that James would get in.
Redbridge did a number of polls hat supposedly showed Hackman creeping up pre-election – but not by enough.
As a result, Byron Fay and Simon Holmes Court of C200 panicked and adopted some really strange tactics, including
Letterboxing vicious attack ads on Libs. The Teals HATED this and publicly dissociated themselves from it.
Running advertising trucks around and around the electorate that said “Number Every Square” … this was parroted by Teal booth workers, even as they handed out their pre-printed JV1s
We will have to wait for the full Pref Data file (a fortnight away?) to be sure, but the evidence from scrutineering and the DOP of the eliminated candidates suggests that 31% to 52% of voters voted JV1.
Does anyone know when the TCP Analytical Tool will be available on the NSWEC website? Does that arrive before the full Pref Data file or at the same time?
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