IND 3.9% vs LIB
Incumbent MP
Zoe Daniel, since 2022.
Geography
Inner southern suburbs of Melbourne. Goldstein covers the entirety of Bayside council area, and parts of Glen Eira and Kingston council areas. Key suburbs include Sandringham, Brighton, Hampton, Beaumaris, Ormond and Bentleigh.
Redistribution
Goldstein expanded slightly east, taking in part of Bentleigh East from Hotham and part of Moorabbin and the remainder of Highett from Isaacs.
History
Goldstein was first created in 1984, but is considered a successor to the previous Division of Balaclava, which existed from the first federal election in 1901 until its abolition in 1984. The two seats have a perfect record of having never been won by the Labor Party, and they have been held continously by the Liberal Party and its predecessors since the two non-Labor parties merged in 1909.
Balaclava was first won in 1901 by Protectionist candidate George Turner. Turner had been Premier of Victoria from 1894 to 1899 and again from 1900 until early in 1901, and was the state MP for St Kilda. Turner was Treasurer in Edmund Barton’s first federal government. He won re-election as a Protectionist in 1903 but he accepted the role of Treasurer in George Reid’s Free Trade government in 1904, which effectively saw him switch parties. Turner retired in 1906.
Balaclava was won in 1906 by Independent Protectionist candidate Agar Wynne. Wynne was a former minister in Victorian colonial governments. He joined the newly created Commonwealth Liberal Party in 1909 and served in Joseph Cook’s government from 1913 to 1914. Wynne did not run for re-election in 1914, although he returned to Victorian state politics from 1917 to 1920 and briefly served as a state minister.
Balaclava was won in 1914 by Liberal candidate William Watt. Watt had been Premier of Victoria from 1912 to 1914, and became a federal minister in 1917 as part of the new Nationalist government led by former Labor prime minister Billy Hughes. Watt was appointed Treasurer in 1918 and served as Acting Prime Minister when Hughes traveled to the Versailles peace conference in 1919.
Watt, however, fell out with Hughes upon his return. He was appointed as a representative of the Australian government at a conference on reparations, but Hughes’ constant meddling led him to resign as Treasurer and return to Australia as a backbencher.
Watt was one of a small group of rebel Liberals who ran as the Liberal Union party in 1922, and won re-election. They rejoined the Nationalists after Hughes was replaced by Stanley Bruce, and Watt became Speaker, serving in the role until 1926. He retired from Balaclava in 1929.
Watt’s retirement triggered a by-election, which was won by Nationalist candidate Thomas White. White served as a minister in the Lyons government from 1933 to 1938, and served as a minister from the election of the Menzies government in 1949 until his resignation in 1951.
Balaclava was won at the 1951 by-election by Liberal candidate Percy Joske. He held the seat until his resignation in 1960, when he was appointed as a judge on the Commonwealth Industrial Court. The 1960 by-election was won by Ray Whittorn, also from the Liberal Party. He held the seat until his retirement at the 1974 election.
Balaclava was won in 1974 by Ian Macphee, who served as a minister in the Fraser government from 1976 to 1983. In 1984, the seat of Balaclava was abolished and replaced by the seat of Goldstein, and Macphee won the new seat.
Macphee was a Liberal moderate, and took Andrew Peacock’s side in his conflict with John Howard throughout the 1980s. Macphee served as a shadow minister under Peacock, but was sacked in 1987 by Howard. He was defeated for preselection before the 1990 election by right-wing candidate David Kemp.
Kemp won Goldstein in 1990, and immediately went onto the opposition frontbench. Kemp joined the ministry upon the election of the Howard government in 1996, and served as a minister until three months before his retirement in 2004.
Goldstein was won in 2004 by the Liberal Party’s Andrew Robb, who had been the party’s Federal Director at the 1996 election. Robb was re-elected four times before retiring in 2016.
Robb was succeeded in 2016 by Tim Wilson, a former Human Rights Commissioner. Wilson was re-elected in 2019.
Wilson was defeated in 2022 by independent candidate Zoe Daniel.
Assessment
Goldstein is marginal, but Zoe Daniel as a first-term independent will likely benefit from a personal vote. History suggests that vote could be quite big.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Tim Wilson | Liberal | 39,607 | 40.4 | -12.3 | 39.6 |
| Zoe Daniel | Independent | 33,815 | 34.5 | +34.5 | 31.3 |
| Martyn Abbott | Labor | 10,799 | 11.0 | -17.3 | 13.6 |
| Alana Galli-McRostie | Greens | 7,683 | 7.8 | -6.2 | 8.4 |
| David Segal | Liberal Democrats | 2,072 | 2.1 | +2.1 | 2.4 |
| Catherine Reynolds | United Australia | 1,840 | 1.9 | -0.1 | 2.1 |
| Lisa Stark | One Nation | 1,239 | 1.3 | +1.3 | 1.4 |
| Ellie Jean Sullivan | Hinch’s Justice Party | 589 | 0.6 | +0.6 | 0.5 |
| Brandon Hoult | Sustainable Australia | 443 | 0.5 | -1.2 | 0.4 |
| Others | 0.2 | ||||
| Informal | 3,487 | 3.4 | +1.2 |
2022 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Zoe Daniel | Independent | 51,861 | 52.9 | 53.9 | |
| Tim Wilson | Liberal | 46,226 | 47.1 | 46.1 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Tim Wilson | Liberal | 53,750 | 54.8 | -3.0 | 53.7 |
| Martyn Abbott | Labor | 44,337 | 45.2 | +3.0 | 46.3 |
Booths have been divided into four areas. Polling places in Bayside City or Kingston City have been split into three areas. From north to south, these are Brighton, Sandringham and Beaumaris. Booths in Glen Eira council area have been grouped together.
The Liberal Party narrowly won the two-candidate-preferred vote in Brighton. The three other areas include booths added from neighbouring seats, but in those areas the combined independent and Labor two-candidate-preferred vote was a majority, ranging from 53.3% in Beaumaris to 58.8% in Glen Eira.
| Voter group | ALP prim | IND+ALP 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Glen Eira | 18.0 | 58.8 | 16,440 | 15.2 |
| Sandringham | 15.1 | 58.0 | 12,688 | 11.7 |
| Brighton | 7.9 | 49.9 | 10,427 | 9.7 |
| Beaumaris | 9.8 | 53.3 | 7,813 | 7.2 |
| Pre-poll | 12.3 | 53.3 | 37,614 | 34.8 |
| Other votes | 15.6 | 48.1 | 23,069 | 21.4 |
Election results in Goldstein at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Independent or Labor vs Liberal), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, independent candidates and Labor.
In 2022, Daniel gained +652 on provisional, absent and pre-poll declaration out of ~6500 votes. She’s currently 1,313 behind.
I agree it would be difficult for her to catch up to Wilson. However, is it all over?
Do we know how the #s of these vote categories are tracking compared to 2022?
@Truth Seeker You can find the current numbers if you scroll to the bottom of the page on the AEC’s virtual tally room. At present there are a bit over 6500 “envelopes awaiting processing” across all those vote types, so it sounds like Daniel would need to do at least twice as well on them as she did in 2022. Seems a big ask to me, current numbers considered.
Apparently there are 10,000 various votes still to count. Unless most of those are Zoe’s family it doesn’t seem likely that she would get close to the 60% required
Thanks Dryhad. The data offering of non AEC websites has been so good I haven’t ventured to the AEC yet haha! By my calcs, this would close the margin by 691 votes. Current gap 1320. So she’d need a very very big ask to me. But final margin may be as small as ~630 votes give or take.
@Bazza I think that 10,000 number is assuming every postal ballot issued is going to be returned, which they never are. Furthermore, the postals that have returned and been counted (nearly 20,000 of them) favoured Tim Wilson 61-39, so I think it’s doubtful even if a large number of postals do yet come in that Daniels will receive much of a benefit from them. There’s a bit over 7,000 ballots yet to be counted including a number of postals, and there may yet be some postals arriving but not too many more at this point.
I’ve lost a lot of faith in the ability of media outlets to project seat results after this election. I hope we see some more sophisticated models in the future. Probabilities would be nice!
What does it mean for a seat to be “called”? Based on the flip-flopping we’ve seen on the ABC, it feels like the confidence interval is much too small. Or their model is just way off.
Dryhad
That 10,000 doesn’t include postals not yet received only those in hand – it also includes informal and disallowed votes. Zoe Daniel as to get a minimum of 60% of the rest of the votes – it is not going to happen. She has managed to make herself look like a real goose – first claiming victory prematurely and now not conceding. The latter is a case of real sour grapes and should she run again she will be reminded of it. Best to keep a dignified silence and then concede when it is time.
I think she’s holding out because of her premature celebration and also because of the shock result. It is probably unlikely there’ll be a massive swing to her on late postals, absent and provisional votes given that ordinary and postal voters swung away.
@redistributed Adding informals to the total declaration votes yet to be processed and calling that votes still to count is a bizarre thing to do – it might be better for Daniel’s prospects if she was expecting every postal ballot to be returned instead. There might be ballots yet saved from the informal pile but no way do they make a significant net difference to the result at this point.
Do we think Wilson has this seat for the foreseeable future or that the Teals will have a serious go at it again next time?
You’d think now they’re in opposition it will make it harder for the teals given she will also be without staff now. I’d say Wilson hold. I also think hammer can get Ryan on a second try. The libs will also target Curtin and mackellar next time
Tim Wilson has posted on Facebook that he will not be running for the Liberal leadership, ending speculation he planned to do run.
Anyone know why Zoe Daniel lost her seat? I remember the comments saying she was more likely to hold on then Monique Ryan.
@ SpaceFish
Israel is cited as a reason Also Goldstein does not have a large Chinese community like Kooyong which would have saved Monique.
@Nimalan,
Looking at the Caulfield the Liberals did get swings to them however, the swings were all over the electorate and it appeared Labor’s primary vote went up. It’s possible that Labor preferences didn’t heavily return to Zoe this time?
@ SpaceFish we also need look at postal and prepoll trends for the Jewish community as many dont vote on polling day due to the Sabath,
Once all votes are declared we can see the Two Candidate preference flow as well.
Agree Nimalan.
Polling day results in Caulfield will almost entirely be from either non-Jewish voters or at least non-observant Jewish voters, because they are not allowed to vote on Saturdays. The area around Caulfield in particular is very Orthodox so are extremely unlikely to be captured in the polling booth results.
While postal votes always lean more Liberal, that shouldn’t necessarily translate to bigger swings to the Liberals – if anything probably smaller swings since the Liberal vote would already be more baked in – but in both Macnamara & Goldstein the postal vote actually had the biggest *swings* to the Liberals on top of already having the highest Liberal vote overall.
To me this is an indicator of a pretty substantial swing to the Liberals within the Jewish community.
But Nimalan also makes a great point that the difference between Goldstein & Kooyong may not just be the Jewish community, but actually the Kooyong having a much bigger Chinese community than Goldstein which possibly helped Monique Ryan.
Goldstein was always the one the liberals expected to win.
Goldstein is my seat. Perceptions ate important. In Caulfield there were perceptions with some people that Zoe Daniel could have done more on the anti semitism front. This likely hurt her in postals. Additionally the Liberals were out early. I think last time Tim Wlson was caught on the hop. This time I think the reverse happened.
@John, not sure about expected, personally I thought Curtin would more likely flip, but I do agree this would be second. The Victorian teals just didn’t do well enough in their office.
Now Goldstein as come screaming back in with the margin now down to 401 votes. Probably only about 1,600 votes left and not a provisional counted so probably unlikely to be in the recount zone but closer than previously thought. However, if I was Tim Wilson, better to be 400 votes up than 400 votes down.
@Mike, there was a 6% swing on postal votes which is much bigger than the overall seat swing.
Did you think Tim Wilson would mount a strong comeback?
I’ve read Israel or antisemitism and a strong Liberal postal vote campaign were factors.
Some months ago there was polling that suggested that Zoe Daniel was in trouble and that Monique Ryan would hold on. It didn’t seem plausible at the time but seems to have come to pass.
Gap here is now 302 votes
i always predicted that the libs would win and every one just said was blowing tim wilsons trumpet
@john did you make any other predictions about this election?
Ryan attended a community forum with Hamer and announced she is a Zionist. I think Allegra Spender also announced for Zionism late in the campaign.
Clearly, following suit was always a bridge too far for Daniel.
@bazza yes but they were based on the polls from prior to the campiag launch and predated the trump effect, and labors scare campaign/vote buying and the libs screwing up
I’m pretty sure you were still predicting a hung parliament and the Liberals with >65 seats up until the end John. It’s not as if there aren’t hundreds of comments to show that.
yea but again i was basing that on polls prior to the start of the campaign as i didnt have much time to follow polls and stuff after it due to work. so i was basing that on the wrong data/information
reports that Tim is trying to mobilise scrutineers via his “Goldstein Blue Tsunami” Whatsapp group to knock out informal votes he claims are being given to Daniels. Tim claims he is an expert at this but unfortunately is not able to be involved due to being the candidate
Zoe Daniel is still going hard. I live near a count centre and for the past week our street has been clogged with cars, a third of which have Zoe Daniel paraphernalia.
15:12 Wilson leads 293 with 687 left to count – surely this, while mathematically possible, is insurmountable for Daniel? Needs about 70% to break to her, or have I calculated incorrectly?
Gap down to 293
This afternoon is danger time for Wilson. If a tranche of 3 different types of votes arrives at once, they’ll be counted at different tables. With only 2 or 3 scrutineers they’ll have to concentrate on postals and the others will be counted without scrutiny.
I can absolutely believe that Wilson is enough of an election junkie to know every line of every process of counting votes.
John, mate.
You can’t just predict the weather, get caught in a hailstorm, and then blame the calendar.
You didn’t just miss the mark. You loaded the dart backwards, hurled it into traffic, and now you’re blaming “work” for why it didn’t hit the board. You weren’t slightly off. You were confidently, repeatedly, and proudly wrong — in full view of everyone, across hundreds of comments, in all their ineditable and permanent glory.
And now? You’re retreating behind the weakest excuse in the game: “Well I didn’t have time to look at the updated data.”
I only wish this website had a search function for the comments, because trawling through the receipts would be delicious. The predictions. The smug certainty. The 50-comment threads insisting Labor was doomed and Dutton just needed a few more nuclear power stations in Maranoa and Parkes to secure government.
Imagine the sheer volume of confidently incorrect takes we could screenshot, catalogue, and mount like butterflies in a museum of hubris.
Until then, we’ll just have to rely on memory — and the comments that age like milk in the sun.
Hi Ben – I’m not sure where the best place to leave a comment on this is as I couldn’t find a contact link – I notice every comment I make requires moderation and often gets published quite late – I get that this is a super busy period so maybe not reasonable to expect publishing right away but this makes it very difficult to partake in discussions in real time – hence why I timed my comment from earlier.
Is there a rule I’m not following or some log-in thing I need to be doing?
Cheers.
Gap has narrowed a little bit more. I can see it getting very close, but Wilson just pipping it. The direction of travel is like Bradfield, but Wilson has a little more room to play.
@RT your comments are the most smug on this site by some distance. Please learn to be less verbose when you gloat. This isn’t the floor of Parliament, and you’re not Keating.
@ John
Last time you mentioned the two term strategy to force the Teals and Greens into backing a minority Labor government. All the teal held/Greens held seats (Ryan) are traditional Liberal seats what is the revised strategy now if Libs sweep all of them in 2028 that is still not near enough to form a even a minority Liberal government.
Nimalan, I think the Liberals/Coalition can still rely on an outer suburban/regional type strategy for winning minority government. After all, the few seats where they achieved swings in their favour were outer suburban and regional seats with voters from a blue-collar type of background.
Their first targets would initially be the seats they narrowly lost this time – namely Petrie, Hughes, Banks, Forde etc. If they hone their focus on a purely economic/cost of living narrative whilst avoiding fringe culture war rhetoric – then they will be able to target seats like Bendigo, Whitlam, Pearce, Werriwa, Gilmore and several others that sit on margins under 10%.
@ Yon An
I agree Werriwa, Whitlam are too close to comfort for Labor but the other seats you mentioned are seats that the Liberals held until 2022 so that is actually not new territory. However, how to deal with the Teals is the big question the hope was that they would be a close minority government and by the Teals backing in a Labor government they will be blamed. Now we are talking about a case that the Teals could survive until 2031. Bendigo was due to a hyper local campaign by the Nats which did not mention any Federal issues.
Down to 289
@yoh an they should leave Bendigo to the nats. has theyre not been a anti lib swing on the nats qwould probably have won. similarly the nats can contest whitlam again too. the libs managed a small swing in the current climate so if they clean up their act they should be able to win it the same with pearce
I hesitate to ask how you think the presence of a Liberal candidate on the ballot would have caused any voter to rank Labor ahead of the Nationals who would not have otherwise done so in the absence of the Liberals. I think anything in that genre is just wildly implausible under compulsory preferential voting; the number of actual voters who would change their vote due to this would be vanishingly small if non-zero.
because swing voters who might have thought voting for the coalition decided to vote labor instead its not about having the lib on the ballot but the general mood towards the libs and coalition in general.
No, you said they should leave Bendigo to the Nats. That wouldn’t have made Labor’s campaign against the Coalition any different. It wouldn’t have changed “the general mood towards the … coalition”. Anyone who voted for or preferenced the Nats did so with an understanding of the coalition agreement that’s been more or less constant for over a century. Nobody who would have been put off by their association with the Liberal Party would have had that feeling contingent on the Liberals actually running their own candidate in the seat. This is just a completely implausible supposition.
you obviously ddont understand people who may have voted/preferenced libs/nats changed to vote/preference labor instead
Putting it simply, while a clear minority, there are Nat voters who in a three cornered contest put Labor above the Liberals for various reasons despite them being in a coalition (and vice versa with Lib voters who put Nats below Labor). And in close contests, that minority can be the difference between winning on a 2PP/2CP or losing.
I might be wrong, but I recall reading that Green preferences to Labor were the highest by far, exceeding Lib/Nat preferences to each other where they faced off – at times helping Labor to win instead of either of them.
@WL the problem with inferring strategy for the coalition parties from this is that this is already handled by compulsory preferences. All those voters who prefer Nat>Lab>Lib or Lib>Lab>Nat are already capable of and presumably do express this preference in three-cornered contests. The notion that the Nationals would somehow be advantaged by the Liberals not running instead internalises the idea that those Lib>Lab>Nat voters would in the absence of a Liberal candidate vote National; I’m saying that given that we’re defining them as preferring Labor to the Nationals I expect they’d vote (or preference) Labor. Indeed, there’s even an argument that the Liberals actually running has a chance of getting these voters to take and follow a Liberal HTV card and thereby preference the Nationals (although, again, I think the actual number of voters whose behaviour would change under these circumstances is negligible).
Perhaps the Coalition would be better served by investigating why their voters are less willing to preference their long-term allies than Labor and Greens voters are to preference each other.