Lindsay – Australia 2016

LIB 3.0%

Incumbent MP
Fiona Scott, since 2013.

Geography
Western Sydney. Lindsay covers most of the City of Penrith, stretching from Londonderry in the north to Mulgoa in the south.

Redistribution
No change.

History
Lindsay was first created as part of the 1984 expansion of the House of Representatives, and has always been held by the party of government, making it one of the longest-standing bellwether seats.

The seat was first won by the ALP’s Ross Free in 1984. Free had previously held the seat of Macquarie since 1980. Free served as a minister from 1991 until his defeat in 1996 by the Liberal Party’s Jackie Kelly.

Kelly won the seat with a swing of almost 12%, destroying Free’s margin of over 10% after the 1993 election. Kelly was disqualified from sitting in Parliament six months after winning her seat due to her RAAF employment and failure to renounce her New Zealand citizenship, and Lindsay went to a by-election seven months after the 1996 federal election, where Free suffered another swing of almost 5%.

Kelly served as a junior minister in the second Howard government and as John Howard’s Parliamentary Secretary during his third term. Kelly announced her retirement at the 2007 election, and the Liberal Party preselected Karen Chijoff, while the ALP preselected David Bradbury, a former Mayor of Penrith who had run against Kelly in 2001 and 2004.

Three days before the 2007 election, a ramshackle attempt by the Liberal Party to paint the ALP as sympathetic to terrorists was exposed in Lindsay, when ALP operatives caught Liberals red-handed distributing leaflets supposedly from an Islamic group praising the ALP for showing forgiveness to the Bali Bombers. The husbands of both the sitting member and the Liberal candidate were amongst those caught up in the scandal. The scandal dominated the final days of the campaign, and Bradbury defeated Chijoff comfortably, with a 9.7% swing.

Bradbury was re-elected in 2010 despite a swing to the Liberal Party, with Lindsay being a focus of much of the national election campaign. In 2013, Bradbury lost the seat to Liberal candidate Fiona Scott, with a further 4% swing towards the Liberal Party.

Candidates
Sitting Liberal MP Fiona Scott is presumably running for re-election.

Assessment
Lindsay is a key marginal seat, and will be a focus of the election, as it is in most campaigns.

Polls

  • 51% to Labor – Reachtel commissioned by NSW Teachers Federation, 19 April 2016
  • 54% to Liberal – Galaxy commissioned by Daily Telegraph, 11 May 2016
  • 54% to Liberal – Reachtel commissioned by Fairfax, 9 June 2016
  • 52% to Liberal – Newspoll, 13-15 June 2016
  • 52% to Liberal – Reachtel commissioned by AEU, 13 June 2016
  • 54% to Labor – Reachtel commissioned by NSW Teachers Federation, 20 June 2016

2013 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Fiona Scott Liberal 40,882 46.6 +3.3
David Bradbury Labor 34,212 39.0 -5.5
Andrew William Wilcox Palmer United Party 4,517 5.2 +5.2
David Lenton Greens 2,679 3.1 -1.7
Andrew Green Christian Democratic Party 2,449 2.8 -0.2
Jeffrey Wayne Lawson One Nation 1,901 2.2 +2.2
Mick Saunders Australia First 610 0.7 -0.5
Geoff Brown Stable Population Party 408 0.5 +0.5
Informal 7,837 8.9

2013 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Fiona Scott Liberal 46,446 53.0 +4.1
David Bradbury Labor 41,212 47.0 -4.1
Polling places in Lindsay at the 2013 federal election. Central in green, East in yellow, North in blue, West in red. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Lindsay at the 2013 federal election. Central in green, East in yellow, North in blue, West in red. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into central, east, north and west. North covers the rural booths including Londonderry, while East covers St Clair. West covers the booths on the other side of the Nepean River plus Mulgoa and a few other booths in between.

The Liberal Party won large majorities with 58% in the west and 59% in the north.

Labor won a slim 51.4% majority in the centre, the largest population block in the seat, plus a large 57.5% majority in the east.

The Labor vote is generally stronger at the eastern end of the seat, and the Liberal vote is stronger as you head further west.

Voter group LIB 2PP % Total votes % of votes
Central 48.6 25,835 29.5
West 58.2 19,692 22.5
East 42.5 10,021 11.4
North 59.4 9,965 11.4
Other votes 55.3 22,145 25.3
Two-party-preferred votes in Lindsay at the 2013 federal election.
Two-party-preferred votes in Lindsay at the 2013 federal election.

121 COMMENTS

  1. Although it is still early in the campaign, this is another seat where I think the Libs are in front. Once a local member dug in, this was a seat that had very minor swings all throughout the Howard years and the Libs are really benefiting from demographic change here.

  2. W of S
    Yeah, agree with all of that. This is another un altered seat that ought to have been adjusted. The western part of Mc Mahon is much more homogenous, with Lindsay, than the St Marys area.

  3. @Winediamond Totally agree. I firmly believe that AEC badly botched the redistribution, particularly in my own seat of Cook jumping the Georges River for the first time in decades.

  4. W of S
    Yes i totally agree WRT Cook. How could there possibly be a shared community of interest between the shire, & St George??. FFS!!!!
    . All the people i know in St George are incensed even more.

  5. Lindsay, Macquarie, Chifley and Greenway didn’t need much change, so it was always unlikely that St Clair would be removed from McMahon.

    Either Cook or Hughes needed to jump the Georges River. I thought Hughes was more sensible, but I (kind of) understand the logic of moving Cook.

  6. Dramatic redistribution so often happen like the absurd 07 one for greenway which was essentially just trying to win Louise the seat

  7. @MC it is different when you’re on the ground here. As Winediamond has pointed out, the two communities have almost nothing in common and it is a running sore for the people around here. Again, I understand the logic but…

  9. I can see the Liberals holding this, Turnbull has already visited the electorate, which makes me thing the Liberals will do a fair bit of pork barrelling here.

  11. David Bradbury managed to hold onto this seat against Fiona Scott in 2010, despite a 5% swing against him, with his hold attributed to a sophomore swing to him. He lost all that at 2013. I think Fiona Scott may well get the same surge but whether she holds on from 53%, given that Bradbury was up around 55% (correct me if I am wrong) so the 2% difference will be tough.

    This is a coin-flip but expect this to be decided on the outskirts of Mulgoa.

  12. Hawkeye
    Perhaps that 2% will be balanced by new voters (with large mortgages).
    Bradbury was incredibly arrogant, & unlikeable. Remember the radio interview debacle. ” Do you know who i am ?””” !!!. Scott couldn’t be more the opposite, Scott has also run twice before, which is a factor.
    I see the libs being favourites here, by quite a margin

  15. Absolutely laughable that the Coalition thinks this seat is in danger of falling or that Labor think they can get it (and I’m a Labor man usually.) Labor will not win this seat until they’re headed for gov. They may pick up 12 seats, as some are suggesting but this will not be on of them.

  16. Last poll I say on Lindsay actually showed Liberal up 53:47 on 2PP. Fiona Scott holding up well.

  18. Newspoll has 2PP at Lib 53%, ALP 47% which suggests no movement in the last couple of weeks from whatever the poll is that hawkeye refers to

  19. We need to bear in mind that Newspoll does not ask respondents to whom they will be allocating their second preference. Preferences are allocated in accordance to preference flow at the previous election. Therein lies a big problem given that almost 30% of the electorate have indicate a desire to not vote for either of the major political parties. Thus this time around preferences of minor parties will be absolutely critical and who can accurately predict where they will flow?

    According to #insiders Barry Cassidy Labor’s own internal polling has them either dead even or just ahead in every marginal electorate throughout the country. Furthermore Cassidy state’s that unlike Newspoll, Labor’s own internal polling did ask respondents where their second preference would be directed.

    How onto your horses methinks this election will be a cliff hanger and possibly even a change of government is not out of the question if #insiders Cassidy is correct.

  20. I feel that if Labor is to win this seat in the future, they’re gonna have to put up an outstanding candidate. This seat is notoriously hard to predict, partially due to the broad socioeconomic demographics

  21. Labor will fall short in many marginals and that will be why they lose the election. Our elections are almost becoming like the US. There’s states there that vote one way all the time and a handful decide the election. We are becoming like that here.

  23. FTB, you have the Greens, Xenophon, Independents, Palmer/Katter/One Nation challenging the major parties in their own safe seats now. Whatever you think of their respective policies, at least they are providing different options for voters, and reducing the number of “unloseable” seats.

  24. Agreed Mark Mulcair, lots to be hopeful about. Imagine if you told someone before the 2010 election that Higgins, Batman and Grey would be hotly contested in 2016. It doesn’t seem like any category of seat is entirely safe for a major party any more (although plenty of individual seats still are.)

  25. ReachTEL poll out a few minutes ago show’s a big swing to Labor. Result is Labor 54 Liberal 46. Game on for Bill methinks.

  26. It should be noted that all of these NSW polls were Commissioned polls by the NSW teachers union.

  27. @MM Indeed. I am skeptical of their veracity given how they are completely at odds with all polls seen previously which pointed to a narrow Liberal lead. Unless opinion has swung dramatically towards the ALP in the last week that is.

  28. The amateur psephologist in me is kind of hoping some of these commissioned seat polls are correct. Liberals winning Melbourne Ports and Lilley, Xenophon winning nearly every seat in SA, Labor/Greens winning unlikely safe Liberal seats.

    But deep down, I know most of these are probably rubbish……

  29. @MM ikr. It would be a fantastic experience to see Warringah fall to the ALP and Gellibrand to the Coalition one day too!

  30. What polls have said that Labor would win a safe Liberal seat?

    To be fair to the NSW Teacher’s union, another Reachtel poll last week from the AEU had the Liberals on 52% and they released it. No evidence they are being biased with selectively releasing polls.

  35. NSW Teacher’s Federation: One of the most militant unions in NSW running a poll. Me thinks some Gonski Push-Polling going on here.

    Compared to the trend of the rest of the polls, it is definitely an outlier.

  38. My prediction: Like Robertson, Penrith-based Lindsay has voted with Australia as a whole since 1984. Likely Liberal hold, considering the government will likely be returned.

  39. Anton the National polls are 50-50 and you seem to expect the Libs are going to hold all their marginals given that they gained them with 54-46 split at the last election? Well short of devine intervention, and I know ScoMo has been on the royal telephone, your notion simply defies logic.

    Many seats are going to fall as we are in uncharted waters given such a high percentage of voters who are not voting for either of the major parties. We know SA is bleak for Lab, but the same applies for the Libs as well seat wise. Vic I think will hold up for Labor, though no gains likely. WA should show a sizeable swing to Labor and NT as well. Six seats are very much in play for Labor in Qld. And as many as 10 seats in NSW also. Tas shows 1 likely Lab gain but another two possible. Factor in a few surprises on both sides as well and we have an election on a knife edge. This election see’s a very volatile electorate. Methinks the notion of who votes where may well be rewritten after this one!

  40. @JH I disagree completely. Comparisons have been drawn between this election and 1998 and I think it will shape up very much like that – close, but Labor falling well short.

    The key saving grace for the Coalition this time is incumbency and that’s what will save them. Anton’s Lindsay prediction is completely sound. Looking at history, in 1998 the Libs only suffered a 0.4% swing. This was much lower than the national swing of 4.6% and the statewide swing of 4.1%. This would seem to indicate that sitting MPs can dig in here quite well.

    Labor will not win because they are not doing well in NSW. The state has moved well out of the Labor fold in the last 20 years, stopping them from competing in crucial marginals. I doubt the ALP will win more than 2 or 3 in NSW (beyond the lucky redistributions). In 1998 the ALP won the statewide 2PP and still did not win a majority of seats, so I struggle to see how Labor could be competitive when at 48 – 49% as polls predict.

  41. It seems obvious that the Daily Telegraph and their incessant anti-Labor vitriol is the key factor in the Libs winning in NSW marginals. As is the Courier Mail in Brisbane. Take out the Murdoch propaganda and the Libs would struggle to ever win Govt.

  42. Wreathy I expected better of you than that flawed appraisal.

    To expect the status quo to be maintained is nonsense. Even on your extrapolation of polling, if Labor’s vote in NSW has risen from 46% in 2013 to 49% now, an extra 3% points, and you suggest Lib marginals of 2% and less are safe is fantasy land stuff. Even my Lib mates readily concede that there will be significant casualties on their side. Whilst I admire your Lib stoic resolve it flies in the face of reason by virtue of the compelling stats.

    The question of incumbency is a vexing one. Historically I would agree, but this is a first term government that has failed the electorate miserably. The Lib’s catch cry is stability. Well all know that Malcom enthronement was a stopgap measure to ward off electoral armageddon. Such was the toxic nature of the previous incumbent who is still the pin up boy of the conservative MP’s.

    The feedback I get from Lib supporters, and I have discourse with a lot of them, is that while they detest Malcom, he is a burden that they presently have to carry for the moment. Should the Lib’s prevail in this election by a slim margin expect the knives to be out for Malcom very quickly. The only caveat I can see is if the Lib’s have a crushing victory as they did in 2013 and even you would have to concede that likelihood is optimism based on hope rather than reality.

    Image if you will Presdient Trump, British PM Boris Johnson, and the Hon Cory Bernadi as Prime Minister. Scary isn’t it? We live in difficult times and a post election Lib political bloodbath is not what need’s. Still you might have a different view!

  43. Wos, Labor seem to falling short in Western Sydney, but they appear to be holding up well and very competitive in other parts of NSW.

  44. I am hearing that Western Sydney is very doable for Lab. The Next seven days will be crucial in the marginals as undecided voters make up their minds. Clear choice I believe, either a post election Lib leadership bloodbath, or stability with a new Shorten Government. Interesting days ahead.

  45. @JH I dispute your claim entirely. While I provided stats and figures, you gave me anecdotes. It doesn’t matter how much Labor’s vote has risen. History dictates that if they are below 50% they are:
    A) performing much worse than what they used to in what used to be one of Labor’s strongest states.
    B) unlikely to win a majority of seats here – regarded as the essential key to forming government. NO government has won an election without a majority of seats in NSW since 1961. This is especially the case in Western Sydney, where Labor are reported to be falling well short.

    Your point regarding the government’s failure is entirely subjective. I bet that ALP supporters in 1998 said the same thing. ‘Howard has failed the electorate miserably and thus his incumbents will not get any extra vote’. We both know how that turned out. The simple fact is that no matter how loathed a government is, incumbency and personal votes do help as I suspect they did in 2013.

    The Libs were never going to have a crushing victory again. History tells us this. Lightning rarely strikes twice (1977 is the classic exception) by virtue of the way the Coalition often enters government. Usually it is on a wave of dissatisfaction. Thus, at the subsequent election the tide has to come back again. The only question is by how much.

    @MM I agree. Figures for Labor look very favorable in Page, Eden-Monaro, Dobell and Paterson. But I doubt this is enough for them to win the election.

  46. I have to echo Mark here. I believe Page, Gilmore and Eden Monaro are all in trouble. Then Paterson and Barton due to redistribution.

    Sydney’s demographics have rapidly changed in the last 20 years. Lumping all of Western Sydney into a Labor heartland of middle class and working class is a huge mistake. New housing estates, young families where stents are uni educated and property prices escalating has changed several seats. Lindsey and Reid are more naturally Liberal leaning. Banks to a lesser extent and parts of MacArthur.

    Turnbull appeals to these younger aspirational voters in the middle class and upper middle class. I think that is why Lindsay and Reid won’t change hands. I am not as confident about Banks but I have it on the Liberal column. MacArthur I think goes to Labor.

    This is also why I am watching Parramatta and Greenway with interest.

    By the way I think the demographic changes help Labor in Hughes and Macquarie, though not enough to win them, and possibly in the two Central Coast seats (I don’t have as much knowledge of that area).

  47. Sorry about the above smart phone typos.

    I should add that I think the Medicare campaign misses the marlin Lindsay etc, but it does resonate in regional seats and certain working class seats (Robertson, Dobell, Longman)

  48. Wreathy time will time will dispel one our propositions. Should it be mine. My heartiest congratulations to you will be forthcoming and you …………????

    As an aside Labor has one elections before with 48%. Granted from incumbency though. Enjoy the next 6 days. I know I will.

  49. @JH Indeed 😀

    In response to your aside, you are absolutely right. They have won with less than 50% of the 2PP nationally, but never in NSW. That is, unless you count 2010 as a win…

  50. Wreaty a bit of arithmetic and my apology to the locals.

    Say Lab gains 7 in NSW, 6 in Qld, 1 in NT, 3 in WA, 1 in TAS and 1 in Vic. Nats loose 2 in NSW to independents. Lib’s loose 2 in SA to NXT.

    Is the election is as clear cut as you would think with that scenario, given that I have been very modest with my target seat tally?

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