ALP 8.4%
Incumbent MP
Luke Gosling, since 2016.
Geography
Solomon covers the Darwin metropolitan area, as well as the nearby city of Palmerston.
Redistribution
Solomon gained the Palmerston suburbs of Farra, Johnston, Mitchell, Yarrawonga and Zuccoli, unifying the Darwin-Palmerston area in one seat. This change reduced the Labor margin in Solomon from 9.4% to 8.4%.
History
The Northern Territory first elected a Member of the House of Representatives in 1922, but this person was only given full voting rights in 1968.
The seat was held by the Country Party and then the Country Liberal Party from then until 1983
Labor and then the CLP each held the seat for one term from 1983 to 1987, before Warren Snowdon won the seat for the ALP in 1987.
Snowdon lost the seat for one term in 1996 before being returned for one more term in 1998.
The 2000 redistribution saw the Northern Territory gain a second seat for the first time, and the seats of Solomon, covering Darwin and Palmerston, and Lingiari, covering the rest of the territory, were created.
In 2001, Country Liberal candidate Dave Tollner won the seat by only 88 votes. In 2004, he increased his margin to 2.8%. The 2007 election saw Tollner lose his seat to the ALP’s Damian Hale, by a slim 0.3% margin.
In 2010, Hale lost his seat to Palmerston alderman Natasha Griggs, running for the Country Liberal Party. In 2013, Griggs won a second term, despite a 0.35% swing back to Labor.
Griggs lost in 2016 to Labor candidate Luke Gosling, and has been re-elected twice.
Assessment
The Northern Territory has been represented by two seats for the last two decades. Up until the 2019 election, Labor had always been weaker in Solomon than in Lingiari, but that has now changed. Solomon now looks like a reasonably safe Labor seat, although it may be prone to more volatility.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Luke Gosling | Labor | 21,775 | 39.5 | -0.5 | 38.8 |
| Tina Macfarlane | Country Liberal | 13,771 | 25.0 | -13.1 | 25.7 |
| Aiya Goodrich Carttling | Greens | 8,164 | 14.8 | +3.0 | 14.5 |
| Kylie Bonanni | Liberal Democrats | 5,839 | 10.6 | +10.6 | 10.4 |
| Emily Lohse | One Nation | 2,948 | 5.3 | +5.4 | 5.4 |
| Tayla Elise Selfe | United Australia | 2,628 | 4.8 | +1.9 | 4.8 |
| Others | 0.3 | ||||
| Informal | 2,011 | 3.5 | -0.9 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Luke Gosling | Labor | 32,726 | 59.4 | +6.3 | 58.4 |
| Tina Macfarlane | Country Liberal | 22,399 | 40.6 | -6.3 | 41.6 |
Booths have been divided into three clear parts. The town of Palmerston stands apart from the City of Darwin. Within Darwin, there is a clear divide between the south and the north of Darwin.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 52.5% in Palmerston to 64.7% in North Darwin. Labor polled 57.5% of the pre-poll vote, which made up a majority of the turnout.
The Greens came third, with almost 18% in North Darwin and South Darwin and 11.7% in Palmerston.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LDP prim | ALP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| North Darwin | 17.8 | 9.2 | 64.7 | 10,136 | 17.3 |
| Palmerston | 11.7 | 9.5 | 52.5 | 5,995 | 10.2 |
| South Darwin | 17.7 | 11.3 | 60.3 | 4,875 | 8.3 |
| Pre-poll | 13.4 | 10.7 | 57.5 | 32,352 | 55.2 |
| Other votes | 15.7 | 10.6 | 57.1 | 5,205 | 8.9 |
Election results in Solomon at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Country Liberal Party, the Greens and the Liberal Democratic Party.
@ SpaceFish
Only issue is there is no Gurantee she will win while the CLP will always win one Senate spot so it is a risk like for Andrew Constance.
Also this seat is very well educated so may not warm to a populist like Jacinta Price
Also this is first time Labor won a fourth term in this seat so since the seats creation in 2001, Labor has now held the seat for the majority of the seat
price wont run here they arent gonna risk her on a marginal seat especailly one thy dont control. the only way she runs for a lower house seat is if they can find her a safe seat too run in which means moving her out of the nt
@john Jacinta for Dickson in 2028
yea a) it would need to a be a safe liberal seat. and b) i doubt the people of dickson would take too kindly to that anyway
inb4 an independent pulls off a David Pocock in the NT and the CLP is wiped out
I wonder is it statistically easier to get a senate spot or a lower house spot in the NT?
@ John
What about Jacinta for Cook it is is the only safe Capital city seat? The only others are regional seats like Barker, regional seats such Durack, Wannon etc
@SpaceFish well as others have said there’s no guarantee she’d win so I don’t know why she’d give up a safe Senate spot for a marginal House one. She also lives in Lingiari I think. As for other seats I highly doubt she’d move outside the Territory.
“I don’t know why she’d give up a safe Senate spot for a marginal House one.”
To become prime minister.
@Nicholas I don’t think that’ll happen, the CLP base is too big in the Territory unlike in the ACT.
@nicolas labor would probably lose their senate spot to an ind before the clp. unlike in the act the clp are actually competitive in the nt. they can realistically win bothlower house seats
Liberal Party stuck wasting their time fighting the last war – Identity Politics.
The game now appears to be Team Politics.
Red team just won, Teal team isn’t going away, Green team still has broad numbers, Liberal needs to pick a colour.
I suggest White team, though I doubt they’ll go there.
For reference, the chariot racing teams of the Roman Empire were Red, White, Blue, and Green, they were also political factions.
By the 6th century in Byzantium only team green [Veneti] and team blue [Prasini] had any influence, so even then the 2 Party system eventually prevailed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots#:~:text=In%20531%20AD%20some%20members,see%20Riots%20for%20more%20detail).
Someone commented earlier on that there are government employees in this electorate, I wonder if that was what helped Labor over the line and are there a large portion of them here. I am curious as to why Labor faired poorly in this electorate compared to Lingiari especially since the sitting member Luke Gosling was elected back in 2016.
@SpaceFish, we’ll have to wait until the turnout figures are released from Lingiari to determine that. The problem with Indigenous turnout is serious and the AEC isn’t doing enough to address it. All these enrolment campaigns for the Voice referendum yet so few actually turned up to vote in it or in any of the subsequent elections.
As I discussed before the CLP did quite well on the territory level last year in Lingiari and did even better in Solomon yet the federal party hasn’t been able to gain either since 2010 when the long-term incumbent Labor territory government was on the nose and lost in 2012.
There was also a big swing to Labor last time so the popularity of Lia Finocchiaro in the Territory is probably what held up their vote in Solomon and in the Senate. Dutton’s done poorly in Lingiari, some of the booths in Katherine have barely been won by the CLP yet on the territory level these would be safe or very safe booths.
I think the crime issue has pushed voters right here long-term which perhaps explains why it moved so far towards the CLP in a year that was quite bad for the Coalition. In the territory election Labor held up best in the Indigenous areas…
Labor won this seat with 51.3% TPP against the CLP’s 48.7%, a –7.1% swing away from Labor. We’ve already established that at the Territory general election the CLP got 58.7% of the TPP in Solomon, which is 41.3% for Labor, so Labor did 10.0% better on the federal level than they did on the territory level.
Here’s the Labor TPP by territory electorate, with the difference from the 2024 NT general election in brackets:
* Blain: 47.5% (+19.6%)
* Brennan: 45.7% (+19.6%)
* Casuarina: 60.1% (+10.8%)
* Drysdale: 44.5% (+9.5%)
* Fannie Bay: 57.9% (+5.5%)
* Fong Lim: 45.5% (+3.0%)
* Johnston: 55.5% (+2.6%)
* Karama: 55.9% (+17.2%)
* Nightcliff: 67.2% (+2.1%)
* Port Darwin: 54.1% (+15.8%)
* Sanderson: 52.3% (+4.5%)
* Spillett: 39.8% (+19.4%)
* Wanguri: 54.9% (+13.9%)
Interesting to see here that if preference flows from 2022 were applied here, Labor would have won by just 58 votes.
Overall here the result was definitely good for the CLP even though on territory results it would have been a comfortable win. Knocking off a 8% margin was always tough so the result was excellent considering the federal results and Luke Gosling’s popularity.
It is a good result for the CLP but Lingiari was not eventhough it was talked about as a potential CLP gain.Soloman is a classic swing seat so certainly the CLP can win it.
@james i think we can also assume the national swing against the coalition blunted their gains here
@John – absolutely agreed. If the Coalition was polling 51% 2PP or at worst case 47-478% 2PP I think they would have won it. I’ve also heard that Luke Gosling is quite popular here so that likely hurt the CLP’s prospects. Lisa Bayliss though proved herself as a formidable candidate and I can see her entering parliament some day.
I also do feel that the teal candidate, Phil Scott, may have acted as a spoiler candidate to some extent in taking away crucial votes for the CLP, especially in the northern suburbs booths where he polled in the teens.
@james well the way preferential voting works he didnt matter because he didnt make the tcp
his vote seems to have come mostly from the alp and the greens. anyone know the preference flows?
Earlier on, I thought the closeness of the result was due to Dutton’s announcement to beef up defence spending given its military presence here.
It is possible that the CLP benefited from a teal candidate who had split the non-CLP votes as well as the absence of LDP, whose name in the past confused voters.
vote splitting doesnt usually apply though cause in pa preferential system unless that particualr party/candidate makes the count as a result of the vote splitting that vote would end up back with the maor party anyway? vote splitting onl y really matter sin OPV or FPTP systems
I’d say the territory result was the main factor, given the military is pretty conservative anyway so Dutton wouldn’t need to convince them to vote for the Coalition anywhere.
As for Lingiari, poor campaign and big gap on territory results, still winnable for the CLP though. I think Dutton’s toxicity could be a reason though given that many of the Aboriginal people there either didn’t vote or may not have known Dutton’s views given how much voter disconnection there is in Lingiari.
I remember early on in the Voice campaign after the referendum was called there were several interviews done in Aboriginal communities in the NT and northern WA, many didn’t know what the Voice was or that there was a referendum.
@ NP
TBH Liginari is very hard to do polling in so thats why i did not want to make a prediction about it pre-election. Also a hard seat to go door knocking in. The other thing 2022 margin may have been deceptively low due to Warren Snowdon retiring and for the first time no incumbent MP. Marion Scrumgor may have been able to now establish some personal vote
@Nimalan potentially, though I feel that could be overcome.