Sturt – Australia 2025

Labor should have targeted this electorate in 2022 more as I reckon I could have fallen, its too early at this stage to say who the favourites here but it could got either way in 2025.

@Bob if Labor wins this seat and the Liberals fail to gain any other Adelaide seats (namely Boothby, where they had a retiring member (Nicole Flint) and although they finished ahead on primaries lost on TPP to Labor), then Labor will hold every federal seat in Adelaide as Sturt is the only Liberal seat in Adelaide (but in contrast, the Liberals hold every federal SA seat outside Adelaide except Mayo, which is held by Rebekha Sharkie for the Centre Alliance). Similarly, the Liberals only hold three federal seats in Melbourne (Deakin, Flinders and Menzies; Flinders is their only safe seat in Melbourne and even then only half of Flinders is actually in Melbourne) after their historic loss at the Aston by-election in April, one federal seat in Perth (Moore) and no federal seats in Canberra, Hobart or Darwin (while in contrast the vast majority of seats outside the major cities are Coalition-held). The Coalition still has a number of federal seats in Sydney and Brisbane (and plus they normally have at least some others in Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide) but most are in the outer suburbs.

@Nether Portal, Casey and La Trobe are also mostly in suburban Melbourne (much more so than Flinders), although I don’t see Labor picking up either of those seats on the current boundaries, despite Casey being very marginal.
Deakin and Menzies, particularly Deakin, will be ripe for the picking, with the caveat of the redistribution.

The AEC classifies Divisions as Inner Metropolitan, Outer Metropolitan, Provincial, and Rural.
Flinders and Casey are Rural while La Trobe is Provincial.
https://aec.gov.au/profiles/
Click on the profile for the Division you are interested in, then scroll down until you see ‘Demographic rating:’ on the left side of the screen.

Kind of ridiculous that the ABS and AEC can’t talk to each and align their classification of metropolitan, regional and rural. Anyone who know Casey knows that places like Chirnside Park, Mooroolbark, Lilydale, Upwey, Belgrave etc are very metropolitan. Also wouldn’t call Pakenham ‘provincial’ it is very much ‘the burbs’.

Sturt is perhaps the most winnable Liberal seat for Labor along with Deakin and Menzies (pending redistributions). If Aston could swing to Labor, then so should Sturt.

I believe the Liberals hold 4 out of 40-something inner-metropolitan seats (based on AEC’s definition) and Labor, Greens and teals hold the rest.

Sonja was a dummy candidate for the ALP, merely selected by the FEC, only two weeks out did the party realize it was winnable – this was evident with Albo’s visit with Gillard there instead of Boothby where funding, and grassroots power was high, Boothby also happens to be Gillards home. If a Jo Dyer who ran as a independent, but not a teal one, in Boothby ran in Sturt she would’ve won. Out of all seats in SA Sturt is the most likely to be picked up by the Greens.

Stevens is nervous as he should be, evident by him taking every chance to speak in the chamber this Parliament, shame it doesn’t translate to on the ground action.

Labor has got to be more optimistic about picking up Sturt, after their win at the Dunstan by-election. To be fair, the Liberal by-election candidate was a parachuted one. Candidate quality and local connections are important for 2025.

Federal means nothing to state. Sturt will depend on if Labor survives in the polls.

Sturt has a Tealish small l liberal demographic which is hostile to Dutton so along with Menzies, Deakin are probably the best pick up prospects for Labor.

@Votante to be fair the voter turnout was under 50%. Surely that had something to do with it.

I think Labor benefited from a serious Greens campaign in Dunstan. Greens will be short on LNP held target seats, and don’t seem to have the base they used to in Casey, so they would have good cause to target this seat.

@Nether Portal There are many votes still to be counted. The current count is low because SA is the only state that still treats pre-poll votes as declaration votes that are not counted on the night or on Sunday.

A large part of Sturt, especially the western parts, is like Higgins – wealthy, highly-educated, small l-liberal, no teal candidate in 2022 and had swings to Labor. As @Nimalan mentioned, this is a good target for Labor.

@Votante I live in the electorate and I think you’re pretty much bang on in terms of your description. The north of the electorate (Gilles Plains, Holden Hill) is a solid block of working-class Labor area, the West (Marden, Maylands, Kent Town) is small-l, teal territory with pockets of solid Liberal support around St Peters. The middle section is a mortgage belt (Tranmere, Hectorville, Magill) which also contains a big Italian/Greek population in the eastern side (Campbelltown, Rostrevor, Newton, Athelstone) which are usually Liberal but can swing.

The South is much more interesting in that it’s your usually affluent new money with some of the most expensive housing in the state as well as a big proportion of retirees and wealthy people (Wattle Park, Beaumont, Hazelwood Park, Glen Osmond, Burnside), but it’s also home to some of the best primary and secondary schools in the state with a highly progressive vote coming from graduating students, which is why we’re seeing places like Kensington, Kensington Park, Norwood, Glenunga etc swing hard last time to Labor and winning a number of these booths. It was really the postals and the far south of the electorate (Myrtle Bank, Tusmore) that saved the Liberals from an otherwise blowout result. If Dunstan’s results were repeated federally then James Stevens will be in trouble next election given they’re bleeding votes to the Greens whose preferences will help Labor, maybe the Greens might even catapult themselves into 2nd place and win on Labor preferences.

@Tommo9, the big swing to Labor in Southern part of Sturt you referred is also due to the large Chinese Community which disliked Scott Morrison’s anti-China rhetoric.

This will be one of few loses for the libs

It’s pretty unlikely that the Greens can win this at the next election. I think this will require a two-election strategy – getting into a winnable position in 2025 in order to win the seat in 2028. For 2025, that would probably mean getting 3CP between Labor and Greens within 5-10 points (currently 13.3%) – aiming to get the Greens in a similar position Griffith was after the 2019 election (Greens being 7 points behind Labor in 3CP).

The reality is that Labor will likely throw the kitchen sink at Sturt so it’s unlikely Labor’s primary vote will fall enough for the Greens to get ahead of Labor. The Greens also don’t have an obvious area of strength where they are already outpolling Labor /Liberal like they have with other target seats. Not having a Green-strong area like Byron Bay, St Kilda or The Gabba will make it hard for the Greens to compensate for large “losses” in the suburban parts of the seat where Labor and Liberal will probably vastly outpoll the Greens. Perhaps Kent Town and Norwood will start emerging as these strong areas for the Greens, but they’re not there yet.

The other point I would make is a similar point that @John made in saying that a strong Greens campaign could benefit Labor and help them get elected here in 2025. How much harder or easier does that make it for the Greens to win the seat in 2028 or later? I am not sure.

Whilst I’m not denying state factors were at play, the by-election result in Dunstan is just the latest example of an inner-city, Liberal-voting electorates turning away from the Liberals to either Labor, Green or teal. This could be part of a trend. Dunstan stayed Liberal for so long most likely because of Steven Marshall’s personal vote. I do note that Dunstan tends to be swingy.

@Tommo9, you gave an interesting and informative analysis of the demographics. Since metro Adelaide’s density is low, the average electorate size is huge compared to those of other capital cities. Sturt covers a mix of demographics.

If the Greens can’t win booths in the west (Kent Town, Norwood) where there are more renters and teal-ish liberals then they won’t win Sturt given there are working-class suburbs, mortgage belt suburbs and affluent suburbs with large numbers of retirees and expensive realestate.

Greens have indeed declared it a target seat. Agree with Votante that if they’re not even solidly winning their “base” booths it will be difficult, although much of Sturt has an analogue in the 3 QLD seats Greens need to hold.

Real risk of campaign saturation here though (if both majors determine Boothby is in the bag and no strong independent emerges in Grey) which is something that drives voters back to their well established voting patterns.

@ Votante
Agree this is demographically mixed seat which is why there was no Teal who ran. Boothby is also demographically mixed and includes working class suburbs in the Central parts. The Teal who ran in Boothby flopped for this reason. Interestingly, Norwood was the seat represented by Don Dunstan and Steven Marshall won it from Labor in 2010 so probably not a heartland seat for the Libs.

3CP swing Greens need to overtake Labor

Sturt: 6.61%
Boothby: 7.14%
Adelaide: 9.33%

So I get why they would consider Sturt first, but even if Greens outpoll Labor, they wouldn’t necessarily win. Adelaide would be a seat that if the Greens were to outpoll Labor the Greens would win almost every time.

Thanks to Adelaide’s small population, this seat goes into different areas. It’s like placing the Melbourne seats of Kooyong, Higgins and parts of Hotham, Menzies and Chisholm all into one seat

The seat is Sturt btw