This is the final chapter in my series of booth results posts. As requested, I’m looking at the only three Labor seats were the incumbent MP retired, all in a cluster in south-western Sydney: Fairfield, Cabramatta and Liverpool.
There’s been a strong trend of MP retirements affecting the swings at this election, and these seats are no exception.
Liverpool and Cabramatta were the only Labor-held seats to have a swing to the Coalition. In Liverpool, Paul Lynch was one of the longest-serving members of parliament. The member for Cabramatta hadn’t been there as long, but the party had a messy and drawn-out preselection for that seat.
Swing data thanks to William Bowe’s estimates of 2019 results by 2023 polling place.
The swings in Fairfield aren’t particularly impressive, but the change at the border is noticeable.
There was a central band of Liverpool and Cabramatta where swings to the Liberal Party exceeded 10%.
Toggling to the second map does show, however, that Labor is still quite comfortable in these seats. Much as the Liberal Party is still in solid control in Castle Hill and Kellyville despite large swings. The new MPs for these seats will now have a chance to build a personal vote and restore their party’s huge margins at future elections.
The new election pendulum shows Liverpool having 8.4% and Cabramatta at 11.8%. There are seats with wealthier and older voters that have much higher margins. At least 10 seats that went Liberal 2011-2015 now have Labor margins higher than that of Liverpool. The Labor PV in Fairfield dropped but their 2PP rose.
The largest swings to the Liberals were in areas with large public housing estates e.g. Sadleir, Miller, Cartwright, Bonnyrigg, where a local independent split the vote. This could be Perrottet’s (or Dutton’s or Morrison’s) appeal to lower-class, religious, CALD voters. There were large swings to the Liberals in Cabramatta and Canley Vale possibly due to an independent splitting votes. There was possibly a Dai Le effect where independents (that I have never heard of, and have no connection to Dai Le) got good showings in Liverpool, Cabramatta and Fairfield.
Areas west of Cowpasture Road e.g. Cecil Hills, are very Christian (especially Catholic and non-Anglican Christians), a bit wealthier and with lower-density housing, and were redistributed into new electorates. Such suburbs swung to Labor more or less in line with the state.
@Votante interesting point about the suburbs with high public housing swinging towards the liberals. similar areas outside of the liverpool area (in macquarie fields, campbelltown, mount druitt etc.) had reasonable swings to labor. labor probably has a significant brand issue in the area due to the whole kristina keneally debacle. i’m not too familiar with the area – are suburbs you mentioned like sadler and miller *majority* public housing (like claymore or airds where >90% are) or do they simply have a larger proportion of public housing than neighbouring areas?
Cartwright, Sadleir, Miller are about 40% public housing. It isn’t as high as in Claymore or Airds or Daceyville (in the east) where Labor’s vote held up. I find the 15% to 23% swings TO the Liberals very intriguing and I can’t exactly explain why.
Labor has been off-putting and in the pits because of the Kristina Keneally debacle and last-minute preselections as well as a Labor-turned-independent running.
it’s also weird that villawood had such a large swing to labor. federally it falls in the division of blaxland and the villawood booth had a swing to the liberals (6 or 7% i believe). it also has a high proportion of public housing. maybe the whole kristina keneally thing didn’t have as much of an impact here than it did in the booths which lie in the fowler electorate?
“maybe the whole kristina keneally thing didn’t have as much of an impact here than it did in the booths which lie in the fowler electorate?”
Villawood is entirely in the seat of Fairfield at the state level. The ALP had widely publicised preselection problems for the state seat of Cabramatta which I presume affected their vote there. I doubt this (or Keneally – voters can differentiate between federal and state problems) would be an issue for the voters in Fairfield.
FWIW, there is one Villawood booth in Fowler, which the ALP won 56-44 2CP against Le. The same booth they won in Fairfield 71-29 against the Liberals.
@ Louis, interesting point. Villawood is a very poor ethnically diverse suburb. However, the poorest suburb in Sydney is said to Yennora by income part of it is in Fairfield while part in Granville the booths around Guildford also had huge swings to Labor.
Liverpool was the safest Labor seat in the state following the 2011 wipeout. Its margin is now half what it was then.
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