GRN 1.7% vs ALP
Incumbent MP
Ellen Sandell, since 2014.
Geography
Central suburbs of Melbourne. The electorate of Melbourne covers the Melbourne CBD and the inner-city suburbs of East Melbourne, Docklands, Carlton, Parkville, North Melbourne and Kensington. The electorate covers most of the City of Melbourne on the northern side of the Yarra River, and a small part of the City of Yarra.
Redistribution
Changes were made to Melbourne’s northern border, losing Flemington to Essendon and Princes Hill to Brunswick, and gaining the remainder of Parkville from Brunswick. These changes increased the Greens margin from 1.3% to 1.7%.
History
There was a district with the name “Melbourne” in the original Victorian Legislative Assembly at the 1856 election, before being abolished in 1859. It was recreated in 1889 as a single member district that has existed ever since. The seat has a long history of being held by the ALP, who held it continuously from 1908 until 2014.
The recreated Melbourne district was won by Geoffrey Carter in 1889, and was won in 1900 by Labor candidate Edward Findley. Findley was expelled in 1901 for seditious libel after publishing an Irish article criticising the King in a radical union newspaper that he edited. He lost the following by-election, but went on to serve in the Senate from 1903 to 1917 and again from 1922 to 1928.
The 1901 by-election was won by Conservative candidate James Boyd, who supported conservative state governments, including serving as a minister from 1907 to 1908, when he stepped down. He was elected as a federal Liberal MP in 1913 and served until his defeat in 1919.
Melbourne was won by Labor candidate Alexander Rogers in 1908. He held the seat until 1924. He was succeeded by Thomas Hayes, who held the seat until 1955. That year, he left the ALP and joined the new ALP (Anti-Communist), the precursor to the Democratic Labor Party, but was defeated at the 1955 election.
The seat was then held by the ALP’s Arthur Clarey from 1955 until 1972. In 1972, Melbourne was won by the ALP’s Barry Jones. He held the seat until 1977, when he resigned to run for the federal electorate of Lalor, which he held until his retirement in 1998. He served as a minister in the Hawke government and went on to serve as National President of the ALP.
The seat was then filled by Keith Remington from 1977 to 1988, and Neil Cole from 1988 to 1999.
In 1999, Melbourne was won by Bronwyn Pike. She served as a minister for the entirety of the Bracks and Brumby governments. The seat of Melbourne was considered very safe in 1999, with Pike winning 63.8% of the two-party vote. In 2002, the Greens first stood in the seat, running Dr Richard di Natale, who polled 24% of the primary vote and reducing Pike’s margin to 1.9%, which remained almost exactly the same in 2006. Di Natale went on to stand for the Senate in 2007 and was elected to the Senate at the 2010 federal election.
The Greens had come close to winning in 2002 and 2006 on the back of preferences from the Liberal Party. In 2010 the Greens stood barrister and human rights advocate Brian Walters. At the 2010 federal election, the Liberal Party continued their track record of preferencing the Greens ahead of the Labor Party in Labor-Greens inner-city marginal seats in Sydney and Melbourne, which saw Adam Bandt elected as the Greens MP for the federal seat of Melbourne.
Bandt’s election, and the ensuing hung parliament which saw the Greens in the balance of power in the Senate and Bandt sharing the balance of power in the House of Representatives, triggered a backlash in the Liberal Party. In the Victorian state election three months later, the Liberal Party reversed their position on preferencing the Greens. In the inner-city Labor-Greens marginal seats of Melbourne, Richmond, Northcote and Brunswick, the Liberal Party preferenced the ALP ahead of the Greens.
In the seat of Melbourne, Pike suffered a swing of almost 9% on primary votes, with 4.5% going to the Greens and 5.9% going to the Liberal Party. This resulted in the ALP on 35.7%, the Greens on 31.9% and the Liberal Party on 28%. Despite the swing away from the ALP and towards the Greens and the Liberal Party, the Liberal preference decision helped Pike increase her two-party margin over the Greens from 1.9% to 6.2%.
Overall, the Liberal-National coalition won a narrow victory over the ALP, with 45 seats to the Coalition and 43 seats to Labor, with no seats going to independents or minor parties. Pike has followed the trend of other senior Labor MPs John Brumby and Rob Hulls in resigning from her seat, triggering a by-election.
The 2012 by-election was won by Labor’s Jennifer Kanis in a very close result. Kanis won the seat by a 1.5% margin after preferences over Greens candidate Cathy Oke. Oke topped the poll on primary votes but Kanis benefited from stronger preference flows and won.
The Greens struck back at the 2014 general election, with Greens candidate Ellen Sandell defeating Kanis. Sandell was re-elected in 2018.
- George Palackalody (Liberal)
- Ellen Sandell (Greens)
- Michael Janson (Family First)
- Laylah Al-Saimary (Independent)
- Colleen Bolger (Victorian Socialists)
- Rabin Bangaar (Animal Justice)
- Steven J. Smith (Freedom Party)
- Rebecca Thistleton (Labor)
- Nicola Foxworthy (Reason)
Assessment
Melbourne is a very marginal seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Ellen Sandell | Greens | 15,755 | 38.8 | -2.6 | 38.8 |
| Jennifer Kanis | Labor | 14,568 | 35.9 | +6.7 | 35.2 |
| Darin Schade | Liberal | 6,920 | 17.1 | -7.0 | 17.4 |
| Leo Close | Reason | 1,513 | 3.7 | +3.7 | 3.9 |
| Lawrence Pope | Animal Justice | 830 | 2.0 | -0.1 | 2.0 |
| Benjamin Rookes | Liberal Democrats | 410 | 1.0 | +1.0 | 1.1 |
| Peter Hanlon | Independent | 328 | 0.8 | +0.8 | 1.0 |
| Kim Fuhrmann | Aussie Battler Party | 233 | 0.6 | +0.6 | 0.6 |
| Others | 0.1 | ||||
| Informal | 2,004 | 4.7 | +1.2 |
2018 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Ellen Sandell | Greens | 20,816 | 51.3 | -1.0 | 51.7 |
| Jennifer Kanis | Labor | 19,741 | 48.7 | +1.0 | 48.3 |
2018 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Jennifer Kanis | Labor | 30,521 | 75.3 | +4.8 | 75.0 |
| Darin Schade | Liberal | 10,036 | 24.8 | -4.8 | 25.0 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: north-east, north-west and south.
The Greens won the two-candidate-preferred vote narrowly in the north-east (50.8%) and north-west (50.4%), while Labor narrowly won 50.6% in the south.
The Liberal Party came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.3% in the north-west to 21.7% in the south.
| Voter group | LIB prim % | GRN 2CP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| North-West | 10.3 | 50.4 | 7,477 | 20.4 |
| North-East | 18.1 | 50.8 | 3,549 | 9.7 |
| South | 21.7 | 49.4 | 2,645 | 7.2 |
| Pre-poll | 19.1 | 53.1 | 15,563 | 42.6 |
| Other votes | 19.1 | 51.4 | 7,330 | 20.0 |
Election results in Melbourne at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Greens vs Labor) and primary votes for the Greens, Labor and the Liberal Party.
Greens hold with a swing towards them, Labor’s chance to gain this was in their high tide in 2018.
Interested to know if the Royal Park Campus of RMH will close with the new Arden campus being built. I can’t seem to find any information on this but this sits on prime land.
Labor candidate has been pretty active, out and about all weekend handing out flyers. Seems to be the same resource spend as they did in Melbourne federally, with corflutes already up at every property that had them for Keith. Though I presume the flooding in Kensington may push the Green vote up there. Greens likely hold.
The Liberal best performing areas in this seat and the federal seat of Melbourne seem to be Docklands and East Melbourne despite both places swinging against the Libs at recent state and federal elections. I don’t know about Docklands as it’s only a new development but is it fair to say that in the past the Libs may have won the East Melbourne booth considering along with Docklands the Libs got 41% primary vote in both areas in the 2014 state election.
In the federal election, the Liberal vote halved in Docklands from 33% to 16%. Bandt’s primary was 48%.
Docklands strikes me as being very similar to Rhodes in Sydney. Key differences are the size of the Chinese population (43% in Rhodes, 22% in Docklands) and proximity to the CBD. The performance of the Greens and the underperformance of the Liberals in Docklands are quite remarkable considering its demography.
@Nicholas the Libs’ drift towards the hard right and social conservatism is extremely toxic here, particularly in Docklands and Southbank in neighbouring Macnamara. These used to be relatively strong for the Libs but in the past 2 elections the Lib vote completely collapsed.
I guess Docklands would be similar to somewhere like Pyrmont in Sydney. Inner city old portside/industrial area that’s been turned into relatively affluent CBD apartment living.
East Melbourne was always a more affluent residential enclave, in the middle of some significant parklands, so was for a long time the only Liberal holdout in this area. In stark contrast to the working-class-turned-trendy-Green suburbs like Richmond or Collingwood next door.
I agree with the comparison to Pyrmont (or more recently Barangaroo) in Sydney. One demographic change that has occurred recently in Melbourne CBD and Docklands recently is that there has been a shift from Double Income No Kids (DINKS) to international students. The oversupply of apartments has accelerated this trend. In Melbourne CBD the SEIFA score has dropped recently. Whilst the St Kilda Road, South Wharf etc remains quite affluent compared to Melbourne CBD. East Melbourne is an old money affluent are simmilar to maybe Centennial Park in Sydney.
Median weekly rent:
– Docklands: $490
– Barangaroo: $1,400
I’d say Docklands is more analagous to suburbs surrounding Green Square (Zetland, Waterloo, Alexandria) in NSW terms of demographics and housing, even though Green Square is not a waterside suburb and is much further away from the CBD. The population here has boomed over the past 10 years. Pyrmont is a far more established suburb with more established apartments. It’s also a lot dearer to live there. Barangaroo’s population and size are small and is super posh.
As usual, everyone is totally wrong. This seat is clearly a safe “Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews Party” pickup.
Being serious though, I do expect it to be a Grn/ALP contest, and I am very interested in seeing how Liberal preferences will flow compared to past elections and other electorates.
I don’t think preferences will matter too much here with a Greens primary likely to move into the mid 40s.
I don’t think Sandell is anywhere near as popular is Bandt is, and from what I’ve seen, the Labor candidate has been running a fairly active campaign, as was the case federally.
I think Sandell retains but it won’t be anywhere near as lopsided as is the case with Bandt’s seat federally.
After the floods and the protests laws I expect the Greens to increase their margin here, I’m not sure if its in this electorate but I’ve heard the LNP preferencing the Greens above Labor which help them as well.
Agree Hugo/Telling, Ellen Sandell doesn’t have as much of a profile compared to Adam Bandt. However, that won’t be much of an issue with the expected decline in Labor vote statewide and the demographics of inner suburban Melbourne favouring the Greens over Labor.
I predict Greens gain a modest swing in their favour, both in primary and 2PP terms.
Although the margin could increase as high as 10%, making it a safe seat, if Liberals do preference Greens as Bob indicated.
It’s interesting how the federal seat of Melbourne and the NSW state seats of Balmain and Newtown all have margins of over 10% (vs ALP), whilst in metro Melbourne, Victorian state seats have low margins.
In NSW, the Labor Party was in shambles and uncompetitive throughout the 2010’s, especially since their primary vote crashed in 2011. The VIC Labor Party was more successful electorally and is also a lot more progressive and therefore could better compete against the Greens.
NSW Greens also have OPV which has significantly helped. VIC Greens have had to contend with Liberals preferencing Labor.
At federal elections, Adam Bandt benefited from:
1. Liberal preferences in 2010 when Labor came first on primary votes.
2. A federal Labor Party that was electorally underperforming during the 2010s.
This allowed him to win and entrench his vote, despite compulsory preferential voting.
He also had the early mover advantage by becoming the first lower-house (single-member electorate) Greens MP, which allowed him to build a profile and score a 10%+ 2PP margin (either vs ALP or LIB).
Sandell is the new Greens leader. Moving the leadership to the lower house is potentially a good move. But Sandell nearly lost her seat in 2018 and has had a primary vote swing against her twice – unusual for Greens MPs after being elected. I don’t think she’s been a particularly strong performer. In a party with very few career politicians, she’s one of them – went straight from student politics to Greens staffing and campaigns to being an MP. Not going to be well positioned to broaden the base, but that was theoretically true for Bandt as well I guess.
@Ben Raue someone appears to be impersonating William Bowe from The Poll Bludger and promoting conspiracy theories, incel sites and discrimination.
Yep I just saw. Same person who was impersonating me.
@Ben Raue how could you tell? Can you see their IP?
I can see IPs, but also they have tried a bunch of times to get posts up without moderation and usually fail, so I could see a pattern. I won’t explain it any more.
new polling has libs 10% ahead of on primary vote. at this rate wewill either see a coalition govt or labor minority at best
@ John
As mentioned before the Coalition needs about 45% Primary to win most seats in Victoria except maybe Ripon due to SFF. Right wing minor parties dont have much traction in Victoria. In the Narre Warrens and Cranbourne maybe the Libs can win with 42% primary due to large vote for Christian parties such as Family First however that means the Libs will still need to increase their primary vote by 15% from 2022 levels in those seats.
@nimalan tpp has them at 50-50. That’s puts it close and I dare say in a gettable position. The greens have increased there primary by two points and I dare say will get at least 2 seats off labor. If they get all four of those that are well within range and the coalition piks up all the marginals that puts labor into minority. But I doubt the libs can the additional 9 seats to form majority and I seriously doubt the greens will form govt with them but they would definitely be in the box seat to win in 2030.
@Nimalan They won 11 seats at the last election with less than 45% (many in teal type areas such as Hawthorn, Kew, Caulfield and Mornington) despite losing in a landslide. They even went close-ish in Melton despite getting less than a quarter of primary votes.
ATM I’d probably tip a Labor minority government in VIC with the Greens propping them up, but if this slide continues (remember the last poll had Labor at a 27% primary vote despite it being conducted before the CFMEU scandal broke, and Labor during early 2023 were polling upwards of 60% in the TPP) then the Liberals absolutely could win.
@ John, yeah i dont mean to be disrespectful to the Coalition the only point that i was trying to make was that in a state like Queensland the Coalition can win with a much lower primary vote for example in Capricornia, Flynn and Longman the Coalition can win with under 40% Primary as there is a right wing minor party vote which exceeds the Green vote
@ Scart
interesting fact about the Teal type areas, in those seats the Labor primary vote is very low under 25% in most cases except Caulfiled. About 25% of Teal preferences went to Libs and that was enough in a seat like Hawthorn, Kew etc. I think Melton maybe one exception where Libs can win with a low primary vote due to Local indepdents running and preferencing Libs ahead of Labor. Melton has a lot of local issues that is going against Labor. The main point is that it is really only Family First which has support in some parts of Outer Melbourne that can help Libs with a low primary vote. In seats on the Sandbelt, Eltham etc probably will need 45% primary as there is still support for right wing minors. I very much doubt the Freedom party will still exist in 2026 or any of the cooker parties.
The Greens will start this seat from behind. They aren’t likely to get Liberal preferences, so I’d therefore say that on current numbers this seat starts as notionally Labor. The Greens will need to get a primary vote swing to retain the seat, but the trend lines from the last few years are not promising. Sandell’s primary vote has gone down two elections in a row, and Bandt just lost despite having a “safer” seat in the same area and normally over performing Sandell’s numbers, so I therefore think this points to to large problems for the Greens here.
Depends on how the libs think. The state greens aren’t as radical and it forces Labor to spend resources on seats they could spend against the coalition. If Labor want liberal preferences the libs shouldn’t be giving them away for free.
Likely a Labor gain.
@ NP
The seat of Bentleigh has a large Jewish community so Libs can say they preferenced Greens last to win that seat.
John/Nimalan, I believe the Liberals will recommend preferences to the Greens so that they can defeat a Labor MP or candidate they do not like. This was the case with the state seat of Richmond in 2022 to prevent controversial candidate Lauren O’Dwyer from winning (she falsely claimed Aboriginal heritage which couldn’t be verified) and also in South Brisbane 2020 to defeat embattled MP Jackie Trad.
In other cases, the Liberals recommend preferences to Labor because they feel the Greens candidate and/or state party branch is seen as too extreme.
@ Yoh An
Further to your point. The membership of the Libs will get furious if they preference Greens ahead of Labor just like if they preferenced MVM ahead of Labor in Calwell, Watson or Blaxland it would have caused massive unrest and i would not be suprised if chairs were thrown but Liberal rank and file members at a campaign launch etc.
What I would say to her primary vote swing at least last time is that the swing towards VicSoc was significantly larger than the swing against her, and most of the VicSoc vote probably came from her, so it is quite possible that she actually gained votes from the other parties.
@Nimalan, I don’t think the Liberals will win Bentleigh regardless. It’s the 17th seat on the pendulum, so is really a must-win if they want to form government without winning seats on higher margins, but it’s still 8%, it’s in an area that has trended away from them and not really the type of area they are focusing on, and at a local level, I believe Nick Staikos is actually an incredibly popular local MP who will have a significant personal vote for them to overcome, moreso than in other seats on similar margins.
@Clarinet: I agree. On primary vote swings last time, the Greens were only -1.3% but Labor were -5.1% and the Victorian Socialists got 5.5%. So it’s reasonable to assume most of the Greens’ -1.3% swing went to VS and came back via preferences, contributing to their large 2CP swing.
However, I agree that if the Liberals preference Labor this time – which based on this year’s federal election I think they will because they made such a song & dance about it – this will be a lot closer and might be more like its 2018 margin than its 2022 margin. I would still predict a Greens hold, but a marginal one.
Richmond on the other hand is a different story. I think that could easily flip back to Labor.
@Trent I agree about Richmond. Gabrielle de Vitri seems very polarising and the electorate’s trending back to Labor (As explained by the massive swing to Labor in the federal election). She only got over the line last time because of Liberal preferences. If the Liberals preferenced Labor then the Greens wouldn’t have won Richmond last time, let alone this time.
Melbourne is interesting. Ellen Sandell seems much more likeable and sensible without hitching herself onto the outrage wagon and the electorate of Melbourne (State seat) seems to overlap with the strongest Green areas in the federal seats. It’ll still be competitive but much better for the Greens. Brunswick I think will be an easy Greens hold given the demographics.
Prahran will be the interesting one. Depending on Rachel Westaway’s profile and popularity this could be competitive. Naturally it’s a Greens territory but if they cannot buck the trend of going backwards in the state election next year then Labor could benefit at the Greens’ expense, but I wouldn’t rule out Liberal hold either particularly with the incumbency effect.
@ Trent
Yeah i am not saying Libs will win Bentleigh but i cant really see a path forward without it. Often people argue the Narre Warrens and Cranbourne are the alternative but that area was a killing field for the libs at a federal election on May3rd. The Narre Warrens are more ethnic and have a larger Muslim population than than the Sand belt and there is no local issues hurting Labor like there are in Melton corridor . The Area already has good PT and Roads.
Living in the seat of Prahran I can’t see the Liberals retaining it from the byelection at all. There were so many byelection-specific factors that resulted in her extremely narrow win, that even one of those factors not being present would have flipped the result – let alone all of them not being present in a general election.
I’d say the byelection-specific factors in Prahran probably contributed a combined 6-7% to the Liberal 2CP.
And since winning the byelection, she has seemed to disappear. Haven’t heard from her at all. She wasn’t involved in the overlapping federal campaigns (for example Southwick was out with Benson Saulo constantly, didn’t see Westaway once), she wasn’t involved in the local advocacy events that all the other local, state & federal candidates, councillors & MPs were at, I don’t even know where her office is. So I don’t think there will be any incumbency factor.
She’ll only have been in the seat for 18 months and hasn’t been seen for the first 3.
I expect Prahran will be very similar to the 2018 result: close race between ALP & GRN at the 3CP, Liberals in first place with a mid-30s primary, but struggle to crack a mid-40s 2CP.
One thing the Greens have going for them in Prahran, is that at a federal level the Greens won the primary vote in pretty much every overlapping booth. If anything, you’d expect state Labor to do worse than federal Labor.
Obviously a big part of why the Greens lost Melbourne – and the 2CP in all the South Yarra & Prahran booths (despite winning the primary vote) – was because it was an ALP v GRN 2CP and Liberal preferences flowed very strongly to Labor.
But in the seat of Prahran, if the Greens make the 2CP it will be against the Liberals and therefore they will be the beneficiary of Labor preferences, and if the primary vote results are comparable to the federal election they will beat Labor at the 3CP stage.
So I think the Greens probably are favoured to win Prahran possibly moreso than Richmond & Melbourne due to Liberal preferences not being a factor, but with a strong candidate this is probably Labor’s best shot at getting back into the 2CP and winning it.
The assumption that the greens will go backwards at the state level in the inner city just as they did federally is a dangerous one to make personally. They are not ‘blockers’, the incumbent Labor government is unpopular/tired and the Liberals may seek to further destabilise the Labor campaign by directing preferences to the Greens in order to spread their campaign thinner.
Would it be conceivable that Labor and the Liberals agree to a preference swap in Prahran/Richmond or something similar? Labor would likely feel that if the Liberals hung onto Prahran they themselves would be in the hunt to win it off them in 2030 or beyond but are probably not well placed to make the count in 2026 if current trends hold.