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.
noone said the nats were disadvantaged by the libs running i saod they were disadvantaged due to the anti- lib/coalition sentiment in the electorate generally. so im saying people chose to vote labor over both coalition parties because of the sentiment in the country.
@Wl yes that happened in Kalgoorlie and Pilbara in WA election in March. If the Nats had of finished on top of the Libs they would have won both those seats
i think Labor will be in trouble in Pilbara come 2029 given labors attitude towards the north-west gas project which will directly impact jobs if they cancel the expansion
@john I’m sorry, I misunderstood what you meant by “they should leave Bendigo to the nats”. Thanks for clearing that up and sorry for the confusion.
254 votes in it
@Dryhad np. but yea the nats have gotten closer then the libs ever could the libs can never win this seat but the nats have a chance. the lib -> nat preference flows are higher the nat -> lib as there are more people who will put nat -> lab -> lib then there are lib -> lab -> nat
206 vote margin, but there are only 259 votes left to count. The question will be whether this goes to an automatic recount or not.
Daniels would need 81% of the remaining votes to break in her favour at this stage. I don’t see that happening
a few more votes counted today – margin 204 to Wilson
What is the story of those 21 provisional votes that have been hanging out there for weeks? Are they in the count or not in the count?
Wilson’s lead over Daniel is now down to 128.
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-31496-214.htm
lead now 131
Daniel saying she will wait for a full distribution of preferences then consider a recount
Tim Wilson seems to have done best around Brighton.
The final results are in with Tim Wilson winning by 260 votes. Would be good to know how it came in from 444 – must have been a mistake somewhere. Zoe Daniel is still refusing to concede. She has been saying that the recount figure of 100 is arbitrary – which it is – and should be adjusted with growth of enrolments. However, when the votes have been checked multiple times and the margin is 260 then what would a recount uncover. Frankly, she is starting to look like a goose and sore loser.
Zoe Daniel has requested a recount to the AEC.
You’re absolutely right, she looks like a sore loser and she is acting like a spoiled child.
Literally every media outlet has had this as a Liberal gain for the past few weeks ever since those postals were coming in Tim Wilson’s favour. The fact she seems to think there’s 261 uncounted votes that will magically appear and help her, it’s straight up delusional and silly.
If constance couldn’t get one in 2022 she won’t get one now. Sore loser
Zoe Daniels would probably be better off running for the electorate of Sandringham in next year’s VIC elections. That’s where most of her support base (and votes for her) is and I think they’d be willing to vote her in.
Yeah he wouldnt be missed
The member for sadringham i mean😂
This is a solid result for Tim Wilson and the Liberal party, and it should definitely put some wind into their sales after their landslide defeat. Despite having Dutton as leader, someone whom inner city people seem to dislike even more than Scott Morrison, and despite the overall swing away from Liberal at the election, Wilson was still able to win against an incumbent independent – Daniels being someone who wasn’t scandal-plagued, nor seen as unpopular, and should have had a sophomore surge advantage.
In fact, the overall results for the Liberals in the Teal seats don’t seem all that awful to me. Monique Ryan had a swing against her and only held on by 0.6% against a candidate who seemed to have a very bad campaign. That suggests to me that an experienced campaigner like Josh Frydenberg would have won had he run. Bradfield should have been a clear cut Teal win given the retirement of a long-serving incumbent and the redistribution reducing the margin to only 2.5%, and yet the Liberals are quite competitive. If the Liberals can do this well against the Teals in such an unfavourable environment, they definitely have good prospects winning back the Teal seats in the future.
Wilson had a solid campaign and it’s really paid off.
@ NP
I also think Libs Pro-Israel stance helped here as well as Kooyong and Bradfield which were close
@Greens Political Party Supporter – the sitting “teals” in Warringah, Mackeller, Wenworth and Curtin all seemed to increase their margin. Seems Melbourne was where they had a tough time
Most of the other independents that got close seemed to be in safe Labor seats (Bean and Freemantle)
For Goldstein particularly, the issue of Israel and anti-semitism was a factor. As others have pointed out, Tim Wilson got big swings around the north in Caulfield and Brighton and at Brighton PPVC.
I don’t think Zoe Daniel was good at converting Labor voters in Moorabbin, formerly of Hotham or Isaacs, into teal voters. On the other hand, Jerome Laxale in Bennelong really got ex-teal voters to vote for Labor.
I gave some guesses in the election wrap-up thread as to why the Melbourne teals fared worse than the Sydney teals.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/60426
@Nimalan potentially, as the teals didn’t really speak about Israel/Palestine while the Greens went full anti-Palestine. At least with the Coalition they’re not pro-Netanyahu or pro-IDF just anti-Hamas, anti-antisemitism and pro-Israel’s right to exist.
@Votante I personally think the Sydney teals did better because they were actually affective. Monique Ryan was essentially a Labor/Greens puppet.
With her bleating and being a sore loser I wonder if Zoe Daniel is setting herself up for a three year Climate 200 funded “we was robbed” campaign.
That won’t do her any good if anything people wil probably see her as a sore lover and she’ll lose again
One other thing to remember when comparing the outcomes of the VIC vs NSW Libs is that the NSW Libs, as an executive unit, are basically broken, to the point where the VICs actually have control of the NSW Libs, via Fed Exec.
The NSW Libs are so bad, they wouldn’t even be able to organise a cuddle at a swinger’s party.
Scamps, Steggall and Spender got a free run at this election, while IMO, Boele suffered from a combination of her spat with Climate 200 (yes, this actually happened) and her incident at the hairdressers.
It can’t be said that it is all bleak for the Libs in the Teal seats. There was a tiny swing to Zali Steggall so it is pretty clear there that peak Teal has been reached. The swing in Mackellar was larger but the Libs are in striking range and even moreso in Curtin. Wentworth is a bit of a funny one – Allegra Spender has won comfortably but it possible that she may have lost on the old boundaries. The AEC calculate a swing of almost 9% but it is hard to see how they calculated it being notional Liberal in 2022. If the Libs can get their act together they are not out of the hunt in 2028.
Wentworth is basically a marginal seat 2pp so in the short term having allegations spender holds off labor
Wouldn’t be shocked if Warringah is also Labor on the 2PP this time.
@Bumbalo it won’t be because it wasn’t last time and the swing to Zali Steggall was minuscule.
More votes than before—
yet still the air thins with doubt.
Was that the true peak?
@Hawkeye_au what happened between Boele and climate 200? Don’t think I’ve heard anything about that.
@Clarinet of Communists – Climate 200 pulled the funding for Berowra completely, and then pulled some funding from Bradfield, in order to help with Goldstein and Kooyong. The campaigns for Berowra and Bradfield were being run closely together.
There were some choice words about the campaign support and who was getting involved to “help”
Now that tim Wilson is more or less confirmed as the winner, I believe he will be the only liberal mp to hold an inner metropolitan seat in the next parliamentary term.
It might be the first time in history this has occurred, since other landslide Labor victories have seen the Liberals or their predecessor parties win pretty much all the teal seats (Goldstein and others like kooyong, Wentworth, warringah, Bradfield etc)
This is assuming nicollette boele wins bradfield, otherwise if giselle kapterian wins then the Liberals will have 2 inner metropolitan seats for the next parliamentary term.
I think zoe Daniel is finished if she runs again she will lose by a bigger margin time to move on.
Now I recall reading about Climate 200 concerned over Goldstein before the election.
Senate results in Goldstein – group primary votes:
LNP 43.5%
ALP 30.7%
Greens 11.6%
Legalise Cannabis 2.6%
One Nation 1.8%
@Yoh An, this might be the only Liberal seat mostly or entirely within 25km of a capital city CBD.
@Votante those are only the ATL Green votes, they got 12.5% of the total vote
@Indricothere, cheers. I misread the tables or mistyped. I believe that this was the best senate result for the LNP out of all teal seats. In Kooyong, the LNP was just under 43% incl BLT.
Partial recounting incoming – starts Wednesday.
https://x.com/AusElectoralCom/status/1926814454785699934
The Libs only gain at this election is going for a recount
Zoe Daniel will still not accept the result if it doesnt go her way
Daniel will win this in 2028
Bazza, I would doubt that because the environment in 2028 will probably be more neutral and feature a swing to the Coalition.
Other Liberals who sought rematches in 2025 (Andrew Constance, Trevor Evans, Lucy Wicks and Nicholle Flint) saw their vote go backwards compared to 2022, which is reflective of the anti-Liberal and pro-Labor mood.
Even under a favourable environment or general swing in their favour, some challengers who recontest following an election defeat may still not win. This was the case with Janelle Saffin in Page 2016.
@bazza what platform is she gonna run on? the same one she lost on this time?
In 2022 people were voting against the coalition and scott morrison because of issues like climate change and integrity. yet shes question the integrity of the aec. in another election this year when the coalition suffered further setbacks including having Dutton as leader she managed to get a swing against her and lose the seat. Why would people vote for her instead of Wilson next time when the Liberals will likely recover nationally and have a more popular leader?
@yoh i think the libs will hold this in 2028 and will probably win Kooyong and be competitive in both Mackellar and Curtin as well.
In a QT preamble last year, Daniel said she didn’t want her 17 year old son being sent to Ukraine with the ADF in some future deployment.
Given that many in the South Caulfield and other parts of Goldstein hail from that neck of the woods, it was a surprising comment, particularly from an ex jpurno for the ABC.
Did it cost her 261 votes? I’d say easily, on net, hard to say.
@John Weren’t you saying elsewhere that the teals were likely to win Bean and Fremantle in 2028? So is it that the teal pitch only has currency in Labor-held seats? You are prepared to believe that Goldstein’s result in 2025 is predictive for future elections but that every other seat will swing back to the Coalition uniformly. Is this result in Goldstein not itself evidence that national swings have local variation, especially when non-classical contests are concerned? Bazza’s prediction is wildly premature but you’ve made far more predictions with similarly dubious grounding – the guiding principle appears to be simply that you would prefer the Coalition win seats, so you predict that they will.
@dryhad teals tend to do better against incumbent members of the government. because people balme the government for their issues and problems and therefore are more likely to vote against them. they usually have very little reason to vote against oppositions and oppositions usually do better while in opposition unless there a serious underlying problem.