Today’s post is the latest chapter in my series analysing the history of previous parliamentary expansions at a federal level. In my last post, I analysed how the pendulum changed during the 1948 redistribution. For this post, I am going to look at how MPs responded to this new map, which seats were left without a sitting MP at the subsequent election, and how the swing varied depending on whether an MP ran for the seat. I’m basically doing the same analysis for 1948-49 as this post was for 1984.
Excluding the territory members (who did not yet have full voting rights), the 1948 expansion increased the size of the House from 74 seats to 121. That’s an increase of 47.
There were also six sitting MPs who didn’t run for re-election at the 1949 federal election. So there were 53 seats without a sitting MP. That was over 40% of seats contested in 1949.
Of the 68 sitting MPs to contest the 1949 election, fifteen of them moved to a new seat. Despite Labor holding a majority of seats in the old House, a majority of these MPs were from the opposition. Five Labor MPs, six Country Party MPs, two Liberal MPs and two crossbench MPs moved to a new seat.
Twelve of these MPs moved to a seat with a safer margin than their existing seat’s new margin. Labor’s William O’Connor moved from West Sydney to Martin, but his new seat still had a 16.9% margin. Country MP Charles Davidson moved to the new seat of Dawson, which had a 1% Labor margin. He is the only example of an MP putting their career at risk to move to a new seat, but it worked out for him, gaining a swing of almost 10%.
Independent MP Doris Blackburn, who held Bourke, had the choice of Burke or Wills, and ended up going with Wills. Since she’s an independent, I can’t make an estimate of which seat would have been safer for her.
Of course there may have been sitting MPs with the opportunity to move to a safer seat who did not. To identify these, I’ve sorted through the other 47 open seats and identified whether there was a possibility of someone moving to that seat:
- 12 – Sitting MP switched to a new, safer seat
- 1 – Sitting MP switched to a more marginal seat (Capricornia)
- 1 – Sitting MP switched to a different seat, not margin available (Wills)
- 14 – Neighbours all had safer seats
- 7 – Neighbours stayed in other more marginal (but still safe) seats
- 3 – Neighbours stayed in a marginal seat
- 9 – No sitting MPs for that party in the vicinity
The vast majority of MPs who moved went to a safer seat, and very few MPs stayed in seat they could lose. Some stayed in a seat with a theoretically smaller margin, but still held a seat that was safe enough. There were just three MPs in properly marginal seats who stayed put. Those three MPs (in Werriwa, Henty and Flinders) were all re-elected.
Unsurprisingly, this had the effect of concentrating the open seats in the more marginal parts of the pendulum.
Coalition open seats were particularly marginal – almost 70% of Coalition seats held by margins of under 6% were open, as were 46% of Labor marginal seats.
So how did the swing vary based on incumbency? I have looked at the 47 seats with 2PP margins of under 6%. This includes 11 seats with an incumbent Labor MP, 9 seats with an incumbent Coalition MP, and 27 with no sitting MP. These were the average 2PP swings to the Coalition in each category:
- Sitting Labor MP – 5.37%
- Sitting Coalition MP – 7.81%
- No sitting MP – 6.82%
It does look like the presence of an incumbent did increase the size of the swing.
The Coalition ended up winning the 1949 election with a large majority. The Menzies-led Coalition won 74 seats, and Labor won 47. These slightly bigger swings wouldn’t explain anything close to the scale of this defeat.
