Throughout this week, and perhaps the next, I will be posting booth maps for interesting seats, or clusters of seats. I will be doing this while also tracking the election results as seats continue to be called. But these maps generally just show the ordinary election day votes, so shouldn’t change much, outside of corrections.
For today’s post I’m starting in the inner north of Melbourne. There are three seats in this area that were Labor vs Greens contests this year: Melbourne, Wills and Cooper.
The first layer of the map shows the 2CP swing. I should note here this is my own calculated swing. The AEC had issues with properly calculating the previous 2CP in thirteen seats where new areas were added to a non-classic seat, which I explained here. When I first made this map using the raw AEC swings, it showed big swings to the Greens in the parts of Wills that were previously in Melbourne, rather than swings against.
This layer is fascinating, because the Greens actually gained swings in lots of places. Small swings were made in much of Cooper, but not at the southern end, particularly those bits added from Melbourne. There were also big swings against the Greens in the areas moved from Melbourne to Wills, but the Greens gained swings everywhere else in the seat. After all, the Greens did get closer to winning Wills, so you’d expect positive swings. There were enormous double digit swings to the Greens in the northern end of the seat, around Fawkner and Gilroy.
Every single booth in Melbourne has a swing against the Greens, with the biggest swings around Richmond.
The pattern is interesting if you look at the 2CP percentages. The Greens still won all of the booths in the south-eastern corner of Wills, despite the swings to Labor. In Melbourne there is a clear east-west divide, with Richmond and the newly-added areas south of the river giving Labor a majority. Despite the large swings to the Greens, Labor still won the northernmost booths, but not by quite as much.
Finally I’ve included maps showing the Greens primary vote swing and percentage. Probably the most interesting is that while the Greens 2CP was similar in Richmond and south of the river, the Greens primary was much lower south of the river. This seems to be due to a higher Liberal primary vote south of the river. While many of these votes would have flowed to Labor, they didn’t flow by anywhere near 100% and thus it contributed to a higher Greens 2CP relative to the primary vote than they achieved in Richmond.
If you have suggestions of other seats (or a cluster of geographically and thematically linked seats) please let me know.
Yes, I think it is safe to say that the Socialist Equality Party is as far-left as it gets, at least in terms of parties who have actually run candidates in recent times. They’re another level beyond the Socialist Alliance and Victorian Socialists.
i have actually never seen the Socialist Equality party.
Socialist Alternative you can see on University Campuses
I used to remeber Socialist Alliance even as a child they used to sell their newspaper at Preston Market
There was a society at Macquarie University that was affiliated with the SEP. It seems they no longer exist. From what I could tell, it was much smaller than the “main” socialist society which is affiliated with Socialist Alternative.
(Incidentally, there were also two Liberal societies when I was there, and now there is only one. Each claimed to be the “real” Liberal society. I don’t know the full story behind that.)
@Nimalan: The Socialist Equality Party are ultra leftist Healyites. They used to be known as the Socialist Labor League. They are at the weekly Palestine rallies. They still view state capitalist regimes (read: China, and North Korea) as Socialist. They don’t sell papers, as they hand out leaflets with articles on them, and refer people to their website: the world socialist website.
Hahaha so I just dug this up doing some Googling about the societies I was talking about. It’s a good example of how, well, the SEP and SA don’t like each other, to say the least.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/03/yjrj-j03.html
(The IYSSE was the society affiliated with the SEP. Macquarie Socialists is affiliated with Socialist Alternative.)
@ No Mondays
Thanks for the info i am guessing SEP is much smaller as i havnt really seen much while Socialist Alernative and Socialst Alliances are more visable
Apparently, Victorian Socialists are seeking to go national and want to replicate their model in other states. I suppose there will be rebranding.
@Nimalan. The SEP are a blink and you miss them group. They are tiny. I spoke to a member of theirs at the public housing class action hearing. She wrote an article for their website. They have a weekly table on Swanston Street at the Palestine rallies.
Larissa Waters is the new Greens leader. Given she was an environmental lawyer and lessons learned from the election, she might pivot the party back to more conservationism or environmentalism. For the Greens to be competitive at the HoR level, they would have to win voters in a small geographical area rather than spread-out areas. It could mean upper-middle class inner-city people. Since Waters is a senator and not a MHR, she may be more willing to negotiate and compromise.
She said in her presser that she would like Adam Bandt back. If Bandt makes a political comeback, it might be to the senate unless Labor is really on the nose in Melbourne.
Victorian Greens will have an open spot in the senate in 3 years since Lydia Thorpe is no longer a party member
It has been mentioned in the press that there has been talk of Lydia Thorpe returning to the Greebs party room. Not sure why they would do that as she would just be a disruptive distraction.
The Greens losing Melbourne, Griffith and Brisbane and Tim Wilson winning Goldstein has blown apart the shibboleth that once elected Greens and Teals cannot be dislodged.
I thought Lidia Thorpe once said she wasn’t seeking another term. Just this week, she ruled out returning to the Greens.
@Votante so basically she’ll never be elected again, thankfully.
If the voice referendum did not happen Lidia Thorpe will still be in the Greens she only left because of one issue.
If Lidia Thorpe hadn’t left the Greens I suspect the Greens would have done even worse this election, given a poll found her to be the most disliked politician in Australia.
Clearly with the new boundaries Wills is more left wing than Melbourne and the Greens came closer to winning Wils than Melbourne. The Liberal vote of 12.9% in Wills was the lowest in the country I believe? What are the chances Labor has a 2PP of over 80% in Wills once that distribution is done. Anyone know when that is?
@Adam, there are more deep Green booths in Wills due to the redistribution of Carlton North and Fitzroy North. There were big swings in Glenroy and Fawkner likely because of the Palestine issue and the Greens’ better connection with the working class.
The Liberals got an even lower primary vote in Fowler.
@ Adem
Yep the boundaries have made Melbourne take in more Tealish territory south of the Yarra. Wills does not have any Tealish territory but has more classic purple (Lib/ALP) areas around Oak Park/Pascoe valye
I imagine at least some Liberal-leaning voters in Wills have been voting for Khalil. He would be somewhat palatable to them, and would be seen as a way of fending off the Greens.