Burt – Australia 2022

Labor hold.

@NP il agree to that but im saying it will become marginal and a possible 2028 target

@John maybe but this seat is quite working-class and it includes suburbs like Armadale which traditionally vote Labor. Interestingly when the seat was created in 2016 it was actually a notionally Liberal seat but Labor gained it at the election that year. Matt Keogh is the seat’s only member.

Also, I was the first person to comment on this thread. It had no comments at all before today. None. Zero. I looked at every seat’s page and this was the only one with no comments, so I commented on it.

The other thing about this seat that it attracts more working class immigrants and by WA standards has a high % of Muslims. There was a huge swing in 2016 just like Macarthur that year. Antony Green said on election night in 2016 the huge swing was due to the fact it contained a lot of areas where the Labor party did not bother campaigning for sometime and once they did they discover there is all these voters. I sometimes describe this as hidden voter phenomenon.

@Nimalan what other cases of the hidden voter phenomenon are there?

I will note that Macarthur was likely a redistribution thing. Campbelltown has always voted Labor (except at the 1968 and 2011 NSW state elections when the Liberals won the seat of Campbelltown) but the boundaries of Macarthur haven’t always made it a seat that’s entirely in southwestern Sydney. It used to include the suburb of Camden which is now in Hume and it also used to include the Southern Highlands region (the region that includes the towns of Bowral, Mittagong and Moss Vale) which is now in Whitlam.

Similarly, Macquarie is another seat that depends a lot on boundaries since the Hawkesbury (which includes some semi-rural suburbs like Windsor, Pitt Town and Kurrajong which are considered part of Greater Sydney) votes strongly Liberal and the Blue Mountains votes strongly Labor, so the further away you get from Katoomba the less progressive the voters are.

@ NP
Macarthur was another example as Labor did not really campaign in 2013 as it was a bad year so their vote was suppressed. Once the distribution made it more Labor friendly they campaigned strongly.
The Libs could benefit from it in a good year in a seat like Jagajaga/Issacs where are there middle class/affluent areas so if the Libs campaign could come close or even win.
I think the Aston by-election maybe another example it was often a seat Labor never really bothered for at least 10 years. Aston does have some Labor-friendly areas along the Belgrave line so once they campaigned hard it benefited them.
Antony Green also said in 2022 on election night the big swing in WA was another example as Labor was confident they started to devote resources in many WA seats. In a nutshell, it is the premium that occurs when a party starts to campaign in an area they did not previously see as viable but has potential.

There will obviously be a bit of correction swing away from Labor due to 2022 being a Mark McGowan election rather an Labor/Albo election win. That said though Labor will probably hold though but swings in Southern River and Harrisdale will be bigger than elsewhere.

Not sure if the Liberals have selected a candidate but wont be surprised if its former Gosnells Mayor David Goode or Kevin McDonald. McDonald was the Liberal candidate for Thornlie and current Councilor in Gosnells.

i think it will be a labor hold but the coaltion should ride the anti labor sentiment in 2028 at a state and federal level and win this seat in 2029

Burt was a Liberal seat notionally at its creation but it was an almost certain ALP gain. It was carved from normally ALP-voting parts of Canning and Hasluck, with the landslide 2013 result also reflecting the popularity of incumbent Liberals Don Randall and Ken Wyatt. The Liberal Party would have needed another landslide to have “retained” it in 2016.

Jeremy Buxton is a 100% right. In 2013, Labor would not have campaigned to take Liberal held seats and focused on saving the furniture, Labor primary vote would have been allowed to take in such areas. If you read the tallyroom 2016 thread for Burt prior to it being contested. It was widely accepted by all commentators that it was going to a Labor gain. As Jeremy said the Libs needed a second landslide to retain it. It is why i also think Bullwinkle is almost a certain Liberal gain barring a disaster.

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/archive/aus2016/burt2016

@Jeremy Buxton

100% agree – Don Randall was the only Liberal, at least in my lifetime (I was born in the late days of the Hawke Government) to win Armadale the suburb.

If Randall hadn’t passed away in 2015, there’s a good chance he’d have contested and won Burt in 2016.

@ AK
Looking back at your comments in 2016 you correctly predicted it the result .