Macnamara – Australia 2025

Jewish voters are a significant but at 12% of the roll are not necessarily a decisive constituency in whether Labor or the Greens win in Macnamara. Jews are not a monolith and do not vote solely vote on a party’s position on Israel/Palestine. Greens positions have probably already been factored in the Jewish and broader vote over the years so doubt Israel/Palestine will have as big an impact here as people assume it will.

I totally agree Malcolm.

The biggest threat to Josh Burns is a general ALP to Liberal swing, reflecting Labor’s decline in support in Victoria since 2022 and a far better Liberals candidate who is actually campaigning, which drops him to third place.

If anything, the uncompetitive position of the Liberals and framing a vote for Labor as the only way to keep the Greens out is probably his best chance to contain that swing and perhaps even pick up some Zionist Liberal voters who might vote tactically to not risk the Greens. It helps him consolidate the non-Greens vote.

I don’t know why the party would throw that away by doing something as silly as making the Liberals a viable, competitive alternative and having to then compete on both flanks.

(Far better Liberal candidate compared to 2022 is what I meant, not compared to Josh Burns)

@Trent One thing that I will say that could determine how big (or small) the swings will be this time around is whether Josh Burns has a personal vote and whether or not he’s been a good MP or not.

I’ve noticed that at least for Macnamara, I haven’t seen a lot of sniping or gaslighting between the main candidates, well not yet anyway. I see that Josh Burns seems to be doing his own thing and promoting hisrecord and community connections rather than talk excessively about Greens and the Liberals, which was unlike his predecessor who sniped the Greens nonstop for eons. He seems quite competent and outspoken for his community and I don’t think he’s going to get any hate votes and could potentially benefit from any votes that could go from Greens to Labor directly (of which there definitely will be).

As I said before, Labor just needs to stay in 2nd place at least when it gets to 3CP and he’ll make it.

Yeah even as a mostly Greens voters myself, Josh Burns is a good, active, respectful MP. He doesn’t lower himself to the level that Michael Danby did. He doesn’t snipe, or attack opponents really at all.

In the 2022 race, him and Steph Hodgins-May actually seemed to have a very mutually respectful, friendly competition between them. You could see at candidate events they actually agreed on most things and genuinely seemed to get along.

Like in 2022, while I will vote Greens, I’ll also be happy if Josh Burns retains as well. He is a good MP and I think a very decent person.

Labor are certainly at no risk whatsoever of losing a 2CP race, should they stay in the 2CP. That’s a given, and they will win a 2CP comfortably against either opponent.

I just feel like Burns’ biggest risk of dropping out of the 2CP would come from an ALP to LIB swing moreso than an ALP to GRN swing (the Greens’ vote will likely be stagnant or reduce a little), and his best way to contain any potential ALP to LIB swing is to paint the Liberals as uncompetitive and a vote for the Liberals as risking the Greens.

If they run an open ticket, they make the Liberals competitive (not in a 2CP against him but against the Greens) which would undermine that, give the Liberal campaign momentum, and probably increase their vote at his expense making it more likely he misses the 2CP. It’d be very dumb.

Trent,
I think the problem Labor has in a seat like this, is that if they’re trying to claim the Greens are too extreme/radical/ anti-Semitic/supporting of terrorism/whatever, it will just raise the question “Well why are you preferencing them and giving them chances to win, then?”

An open ticket at least gives them some way out of that bind.

@Mark, but they are arguing similar about Dutton & the Liberals to. Not about anti-Semitism but more broadly about his Trump-like agenda being extreme, and that is more relevant to ALL of the electorate, not just 10% of it.

The Jewish community is very tight-knit with a lot of effective ways to get a message across to that 10% (between Jewish news, synagogue services, community leaders, school newsletters, etc).

It would be very easy for Labor & Burns to formulate a clear message to that 10% of the electorate about WHY a traditional HTVC preferencing the Greens is the best chance of keeping the Greens in third place, while explaining they don’t have to follow it anyway, and that it’s a tactical decision because making the Liberals competitive actually increases the chance of a LIB v GRN count (which even with an open ticket the Greens would still be favoured in).

In short – that 10% tight knit Jewish community is much easier to communicate a message & strategy to, that not only explains the preference decision but encourages a tactical vote, than having to justify to the other 90% of the electorate (in the face of attacks by the Greens) why they have made a decision to make the Liberals competitive.

labor are reportedly considering open ticket HTV in Macnamara to appease the jewiish population meaning they wont advocate any preferences beyond first preference.

@John as mentioned in the comments above, running an open ticket in Macnamara would be a silly idea that could gift the seat to the Liberals. it would be a costly own goal for Labor considering at this stage minority government is the most likely outcome.

And Greens definitely have ads ready to blast them into seats like Wills, Calwall, Cooper, Western Sydney electorates, Brisbane and Perth. it will cost Labor in Macnamara and cost them primary votes else where.

The only people who would be pleased by Labor running an open ticket are those who never would have voted for Labor to begin with.

100% agree patreon_57.

Check out this article from the Jewish Independent:
https://thejewishindependent.com.au/fears-jewish-liberal-voters-could-deliver-electorate-to-greens

This angle is by far Labor’s best chance to win the seat. This is local Jewish media, advocating that Jewish Liberal voters tactically vote Labor to keep the Greens out, because the Liberals can’t win.

A month of this being blasting throughout Macnamara’s 12% Jewish community by newspapers, community leaders, school newsletters, through rabbis and synagogues, and by Labor themselves, is by far Labor’s best chance at retaining the seat by limiting an ALP to LIB swing that could reduce them to third place.

The comments on that very article, indicate a belief that if Labor simply “didn’t preference the Greens”, that dilemma could be avoided. Which of course isn’t true, because the Greens would probably still beat the Liberals with an open ticket anyway (just by a slimmer margin).

But that false sense of security would actually drive those voters to the Liberals, which would come directly at the expense of Josh Burns’ primary vote, therefore increasing the chance he falls to third place.

If Labor did that, they would be incredibly stupid. “A vote for the Liberals risks the Greens” is their golden ticket to retain the seat, and an open HTVC throws that away.

@patreon yes but labor is trying to save the seat if they fall out of the 2pp they wont care who wins and tbh having the liberals win would actualy help them win it back in 2028. thats not actally true though ecause there are jewish australians who vote labor and will not if they support the anti semitic greens.

Probably agree Trent, the Greens will easily win the seat if it becomes a GRN vs LIB 2CP count. Whilst the preference flow from Labor to Greens is likely to be muted somewhat (falling below 50%, similar to what happened for Fannie Bay in NT 2024), the Liberals will need a primary vote lead of at least 10% to win and the best they can probably achieve in Macnamara is 5% or so.

with an open preference ticket it gives the liberals a better chance then if labor was recommening preferences to the greens however i think it will still be a greens win. liberals would never hold this seat long term. labor is better off asking to remove the caufield tail and make it a lab vs grn seat to win on liberal preferences

@john I think the main point though is that there’s a false belief (pushed mostly by Liberal interests who want Labor to lose) that an ‘open ticket’ would help Labor hold onto Jewish voters, but in practice it would do the opposite because it would remove the incentive for a tactical Labor vote and probably just increase the Liberal primary at Labor’s expense, therefore knocking Labor out of the 2CP.

I’m not sure that removing the Caulfield tail would actually drop the Liberals to third place though, considering they don’t come third in either Albert Park or Prahran which it would almost entirely overlap with on those boundaries. It probably would have in the 2022 election but that was unusually bad for the Liberals who basically forfeited the seat that year.

The greens will win here regardless. Labor’s already done damage to push the greens into the count against the liberals so the green vote would have to drop as well.

Yeah I still lean towards a Greens gain in what I think will be a VERY close 3CP count between Labor & Greens, but if Labor were to really push the “a vote for the Libs delivers the Greens” angle hard, that would be their best chance of tipping that 3CP count in their favour by consolidating the anti-Greens vote, in my opinion.

If they don’t run that angle hard – which an open ticket would kill – they are almost certain to be excluded in my opinion. They actually need to gain Jewish Liberal voters to offset an ALP to LIB swing elsewhere that would almost certainly reduce them to third place.

The problem is this whole thing rests on a huge house of cards. Jewish voters, in order to keep out the Greens, have to vote for Labor who recommend you giving your second preference to said Greens? It is saying one thing to QLD miners and another to urban climate change activists, but in the same seat!

I sort of get your logic Trent, but if Labor are recommending preferences to the Greens, why would Jewish voters (or any voters for that matter) think there is any difference between them? At least an open ticket would flag some distance between the ALP and Greens and work in conjunction with running a vote for Libs get the Greens angle. Hard to do that when you are also telling everyone vote Labor get Greens.

And before you query, yes, I do see HTV cards as much in terms of signalling where you stand as much as a recommendation for voting.

Personally, I would ban the handing out of HTV cards, but would have very very lax savings provisions that would pretty much emulate OPV.

These Jewish voters though know that they don’t have to follow that preference recommendation, and of all the different cohorts within an electorate that a party needs to be able to communicate a message to, the Jewish community is quite possibly the absolute easiest since it’s quite a tight-knit, insular community with its own very localised media.

I don’t mean “insular” as an insult so please don’t take it that way, and I’m also not making that comment in relation to the broader Australian Jewish community either. It is specifically the Jewish community in Macnamara which is actually quite different to what you find in Wentworth, Kooyong, Goldstein and the former Higgins, as it is predominantly Orthodox and EXTREMELY observant. Until I lived in this area, I had no idea about it myself. They even have their own ambulance service, based in Caulfield North.

There are so many channels – Jewish news, schools, synagogues, community groups, Jewish organisations, businesses, etc – where Labor can easily get a clear message out to explain that the decision is actually the best hope of defeating the Greens.

I think that’s a factor that is overlooked as well. It’s hard to effectively get messages out to an electorate of 110,000+ mostly disengaged voters when messages are flying left, right & centre from all parties and candidates so I understand how non-locals might view the problematic optics of Labor’s HTVC with the Jewish community the same way, but a very tight-knit commmunity of around 11,000 who are very concentrated in a small area with their own entire ecosystem of news, schools & businesses is much easier to communicate a message to.

And it would be much easier for Labor to deal with that problem (if it even is one), than it would be to try to counter the inevitable Greens attacks across the rest of Macnamara, Wills, Cooper, etc with no clear way to get an effective message across.

Not only does Labor running an open ticket in Macnamara not helping to keep the Greens out, it will also hurt Labor electorally in Macnamara and beyond. Ultimately preferences are decided by voters, not candidates or parties. Labor voters who want to preferences the Liberals over the Greens will preference the Liberals over the Greens regardless of whether the how-to-vote card recommends them to preference the Greens over the Liberals or is an open ticket. Even with an open ticket, Greens will still beat the Liberals anyway, just by a smaller margin.

The problem with running an open ticket is that it makes the Liberals look competitive, which weakens the case for Liberal-leaning anti-Greens voters to strategically vote Labor to keep the Greens out. This will boost the Liberal primary vote at Labor’s expense, making it much, much harder for Labor to stay ahead of the Greens. I agree with Trent in that the uncompetitive position of the Liberals and framing a vote for Labor as the only way to keep the Greens out is Labor’s best weapon to retain the seat. Running a campaign saying voting Labor is the only way to keep the Greens out can even help Labor boost its vote by picking up some Zionist Liberal-leaning voters who might vote tactically to keep the Greens out.

What’s more, if Labor runs an open ticket in Macnamara, Greens may well retaliate by running ads saying “Labor has refused to preference Greens in Macnamara to help Peter Dutton” in seats like Wills, Cooper, Brisbane, Canberra etc, causing electoral damage beyond Macnamara.

100% agree with all of that.

I’m not sure I agree with the logic that is outlined above as the best means for Labor to retain Macnamara. It is true from a game theory standpoint that a voter whose preference order is Liberal – Labor -> Greens should place a vote for Labor first when it’s assumed that Liberals cannot win, but that requires the voter to both be willing to consider strategic voting and to be convinced the Liberals cannot win. Aside from the fact that very few voters fit the profile of strategic voters, when it comes to issues as hot-button as the current Middle East situation in the Jewish community, it is quite reasonable to assume that voters who prioritise each party’s respective stance on the conflict are the least likely to make compromises with their vote on those assumptions.

Instead, there is the counterargument that recommending an open ticket signals to these voters that Labor is visibly taking a break from the Greens as a result of their stance on this issue. That could lead them to be more open to traditional persuasion strategies in placing a vote for Labor.

I don’t think it’s really clear which strategy is better from the perspective of retaining Macnamara, and there’s certainly some potential for backlash in other seats. But I can see the latter being better from the perspective of retaining the Jewish community by avoiding difficult questions or accusations of Burns being a turncoat, or similar.

For what it’s worth, my current prediction is that Labor retain this seat. I’m doubtful that Sonya Semmens is going to be as impressive a candidate as Steph Hodgins-May – she didn’t have a great result in Higgins in 2022. I also believe Josh Burns should get an increased personal vote as a result of his increased profile from the conflict, plus Labor did considerably better than the Greens in this area during the 2024 local elections.

@Adda, I’d say the council results were more mixed on that front.

Elwood Ward was just a clear ALP v GRN contest where the Greens won the primary vote but the ALP incumbent (current and former mayor) won on preferences.

Balaclava Ward was also just a clear ALP v GRN contest with a similar primary vote but ALP narrowly won on preferences.

Conversely, in Alma Ward was really a contest between the Greens (who came second) and a Greens-like independent (who came first on primaries and won), whereas ALP finished last with only 10%.

In Lakeside Ward the Greens came second to a conservative RoPP candidate.

In St Kilda Ward neither did well because independents dominated but Greens finished ahead of Labor.

Up north in South Melbourne, ALP did better.

So I’d say it’s pretty close.

Also Higgins isn’t a great comparison, Sonya Semmens did very well around the Chapel St area but that seat took in a lot more traditional ALP v LIB suburbs like Carnegie, Glen Huntly, Murrumbeena, Ormond, Ashwood, Malvern East etc.

Interesting assessment I’m saying this is a genuine 3 way race along with Whitlam and Rcihmond. I e moved Brisbane to a lib or lab gain but a certain greens loss.

I’d say with a regular Labor HTVC, this would be around 50/50 Greens or Labor.

With an open ticket, maybe more like 50% Greens, 35% Labor and 15% Liberal chance.

Open ticket increases the chance of a GRN v LIB 2CP in my opinion, but also increases the chance the Libs win that.

Whoever thinks that an open ticket for Labor would win them the electorate is truly off their meds. Looking at those who are advocating for it and no surprises it’s some old school former Labor dinosaurs like Phillip Dalidakis. Who knows maybe even Michael Danby’s had a hand in this.

Josh should stick with his guns and go with whatever the party preferences. Even with Greens 2nd on the preferences it won’t help the Greens as much as if they went with a free-for-all open.

The most recent Newspoll basically has the primaries unchanged from 2022. What’s the chance of the Libs falling to 3rd here? I think the Greens really needed the Labor vote to probably collapse more, and the Libs to recover more to win here. Tipping Labor for now.

You are 100% correct Adda, the logic here works both ways, and I tend to think the open ticket logic is more persuasive.

@Tommo9, I agree with you. I also think it’s telling that most people advocating for an open ticket (outside of that Danby / Dalidakis / Lupton circle within Labor), including in the comments, are mostly Liberal-leaning voters, or Liberal politicians, or Liberal-biased media outlets, or Liberal-aligned lobby groups.

@Drake, I think the rebound in Labor’s polling has probably brought this back to a genuine 50/50 tossup for me. I think Macnamara had a very candidate & campaign specific factor in their 2022 collapse though which probably accounted for at least 2-3% on top of whatever the anti-Morrison swing was, and that 2-3% at the very least should rebound. Whether more of that comes at the expense of Labor or Greens, or if there is Greens to Labor movement to cancel it out as well, is the big unknown. So I’m calling a genuine 50/50 tossup right now.

* In the Liberals’ 2022 collapse that is supposed to say.

But isn’t the opposite also true Trent, that those advocating against an open ticket are Greens partisans?

The Greens will certainly retaliate and use it to their advantage in an attack on Labor to paint them as trying to help Dutton, not just in Macnamara but also in seats like Wills, Cooper, Brisbane, Griffith etc. They would be silly not to if an opportunity like that is handed to them!

@Trent

I get that point and there may be some truth to it, but it was also an inner city electorate that was always going to swing a lot. Griffith and Macnamara have tended to vote pretty similar in the past, and they both had nearly identical Lib 3CP:

Griffith: 33.91
Macnamara: 33.67

The main difference is in Griffith the Greens did a better job of eating into the Labor vote. For the Greens to win here they’ll probably need to win over a decent chunk of the Labor vote, or hope the polls are overestimating the Labor vote again.

Yeah I think it’s the latter that will be their best chance. An ALP to LIB “correction” based on the candidate/campaign factor from 2022 adding an extra 2-3% to an ALP to LIB swing is what the Greens would be hoping for; but at the same time it could have been the Greens just as much (if not more) who benefited from that Liberal collapse in 2022, in which case they would be the ones to go backwards more than Labor.

Will be interesting to see how much the dislike for Jacinta/Dan translates onto Josh. I suspect not as much as @Trent may think, but let’s see. As the map shows, we’re really three ridings in one: the Liberal-voting retirees & expats of Port Melb & Southbank; middle-class Elsternwick & Caulfield (where I am, and I sense will only galvanize around Josh in uncertain times – both economically and with perceived anti-Semetic threats); and the green-voting hipsters (rich & poor) of Albert Park, Elwood, St Kilda & Windsor. Hard to see any of those swinging significantly… some anti-state-Labor swing to Liberals maybe, but potentially offset by those fearing Dutton will exacerbate the Trump-crash. With youth increasingly priced out of this riding, I suspect the demographic is inching older not younger which will limit any swing to Greens. Another tossup!

PS – The other factor, as @Trent notes, is that Josh has been a very solid MP. Nice guy, accessible, productive. So there is a “safe pair of hands” aspect, which I suspect may hurt the greens slightly (who are already a “risky” vote in uncertain times).

Good analysis Carl. I mostly agree with all that.

I also don’t think there is a particular dislike for Jacinta/Dan around this area, other than among the already rusted-on Liberals. It may have been other people suggesting that.

My view of what the most likely cause of an ALP to LIB swing would be is probably just the candidate factor, because in 2022 the Liberals really forfeited this seat with a horrible controversial candidate, no advertising and didn’t even have volunteers at some polling places. They are putting in effort this time and that alone might give them a 2-3% boost. I think 2022 was an abnormal low for them.

I think the Greens vote will go backwards maybe 1-2%, and the question will really just be whether or not the Labor vote goes backwards more than that. Genuine 50/50 tossup at this point.

At the Jewish Community forum last night, Josh Burns really pressed the case that only he or the Greens can win, and regardless of what Labor do with a HTVC, the young progressive voters that dominate the electorate will preference the Greens ahead of the Liberals anyway, so only a vote for Labor can keep the Greens out.

Benson Saulo responded with a somewhat illogical statement that only a vote for Labor will elect the Greens because their preferences will go to them, which of course makes no sense not only because a Jewish Labor voter controls where their own preference goes, but because a vote for Labor increases the chance that their preferences are NOT distributed while a vote for the Liberals increases the chance they are.

Which of the two’s message resonates more will be important I think. Obviously Burns’ message is the correct and logical one, but Benson Saulo apparently got a very positive reaction to his response.

Cynically I feel like the Jewish people in Macnamara are really looking for a ‘sugar hit’ (for a lack of better term), thinking that by voting Liberals will punish Labor to ‘send a message’, when they don’t realise that 90% of the electorate do not share their views and that voting Liberals will give them the Greens who they despise. You’d think that the Jewish community would be much smarter than that, but according to the information reported from last night, it doesn’t seem like logic applies and people are working more with their emotions rather than their mindset.

If the Greens get in purely because the people in Caulfield decided to vote Liberals out of spite for Labor it will literally be the biggest egg on faces this election.

That was my impression too from reading the Guardian blog of the event last night.

I don’t know how representative that audience was of the broader community, whether it was just stacked with Liberal partisans there to support Benson Saulo (Josh Burns made a joke that Benson “brought a lot of his friends along”) or whether the broader Jewish community have the same anger at Labor that was displayed last night.

But you’re right, and Josh Burns made a point of saying “We are a large and proud Jewish community but we are only 10% of the electorate”. They don’t have the numbers to decide a 2CP result and that’s the point he was trying to make. They are WAY outnumbered by young, progressive, heavily-renting voters in St Kilda, Windsor, South Melbourne, Southbank & Elwood who simply won’t put the Liberals above the Greens regardless of what Labor does with their HTVC.

Even an extreme backlash against Labor within the Jewish community will barely move the needle on 2CP terms, but could certainly swing a 3CP race that currently has less than 600 cotes between Labor & Greens.

I’ll also make the point that if the Greens do win the seat, organisations like Zionism Australia will have reaped what they sowed by so staunchly opposing every redistribution proposal to remove Caulfield from Macnamara, which in hindsight they should have supported to move the majority of their community OUT of a seat the Greens have always been likely to gain in the near future.

Thinking mathematically, if you assume probably 35% of the Jewish community voted Labor last time which I think is a reasonable assumption (it’s actually higher than Burns’ overall result), even if the Labor vote within the Jewish community completely crashed to only 15%, that’s only worth about 2% of the overall vote.

It’s more likely that an ALP to LIB swing within the Jewish community will max out at being worth not much more than 1% of the overall vote. Which could be critical in the 3CP count, but really have no impact on the 2CP count where the Liberals need a double-digit swing to win.

looks like a 1% swing LAB to LIB in 3CP would be enough to push ALP into 3rd place (assume Greens vote holds)

Open ticket rumour has been confirmed after ballot draw sees Labor ahead of Greens here.

https://www.australianjewishnews.com/burns-announcers-he-will-not-be-preference-in-any-other-party/

Shari Markson of Sky News says she has confirmed with Josh Burns and that Labor will be running an open ticket in Macnamara.

Good one Labor. GOOD ONE!

Can’t blame anyone else if they failed to listen and then failed to retain.

One observable effect of open tickets (not split tickets) is that it simply increases the informal vote due to voter confusion. This makes a 3CP order where Greens beat Labor more likely. I’m tipping Liberals>Greens>Labor with Greens to ultimately win the seat but it will be close. I could see unions or other progressive organisations handing out ALP 1 GRN 2 cards if Labor themselves won’t

i dont think informal vote will increase in Macnamara due to it being a high educated electorate just like the Teal seats. The issue is that it can be weaponised especially in Wills against Labor.

I presume there’s no data on how ALP preferences split in GRN-LIB contests without HTV guidance?

If assuming at least 2-1, then the Libs need to get to ~40% primary to win? So need a 6% swing on 3CP from last time.

Gut feel is they’d be just short of that now, but it drifts into being a very real likelihood if their general polling upticks.

It’s quite an idiotic move by Labor, as the community forum the other night – as well as a lot of comments on social media – seem to indicate that an open HTVC would have made no difference to whether or not Jewish voters stuck to Labor. They are angry at Labor and a swing was likely with or without an open HTVC

But he has just lowered their risk of a Greens win even further, and made those voters feel like the Liberals are more competitive, so those voters who may have been undecided are now more likely to vote Liberal.

Burns himself said on Wednesday that 90% of the electorate are not Jewish, they progressive voters in St Kilda, Elwood, South Melbourne, Windsor and Southbank who will overwhelmingly preference the Greens regardless.

The net result on the GRN v LIB contest will probably not be huge, because there will probably just be a number of people who would have voted ALP but preferenced the Liberals who will now just vote Liberal instead, having a neutral impact on the 2CP.

And with Dutton’s polling in the toilet right now, I don’t see the Liberal candidate getting back up to anywhere near a 37-38% primary vote now. Mid-30s will be the ceiling.