Ryde – NSW 2023

I’m very impressed that the difference in the recount was so small.

The suggestion that “Perhaps electronic voting is a solution” is really quite alarming and should not be ignored. Electronic voting makes it harder (indeed, impossible) to verify that every vote is correctly and accurately counted. While others are quite correctly pointing out the impressively low error rate in Ryde means that there is categorically no problem that needs a solution here, it also bears repeating that electronic voting is not a solution to any problem ever and should be rejected in no uncertain terms whenever proposed.

With that said, I would also like to point out an interesting feature of the recount which I am aware of due to having scrutineered. Several of the previously-informal ballots which were recounted as formal were in the form of a clear unbroken sequence of numbers together with some crosses against candidates not voted for. These had been data-entered in a way that faithfully recreated the marks on the ballot, numbers for numbers and “x” for crosses. Once data-entered, the computer assessed them as informal, but during the recount the Commissioner ruled that the voter’s intention was clear and that they should be counted as formal and the crosses disregarded. So I wonder if perhaps the counting program shall be altered so that it interprets ballots in this form this way.

What is Jordans faction? Moderate or conservative? If he is a right-winger he is a 1-term wonder. The party needs young moderates to revive.

I still don’t understand why this seat ”leans liberal” what are the demographics that make this seat lean towards the conservatives? I question it because this was a safe Labor seat prior to 2008. Has this seat changed, or have the parties changed?

Daniel, I would say Ryde and its overlapping federal seat Bennelong are technically ‘swing’ seats that generally vote quite close to the average statewide 2PP. The Liberal lean observed in recent elections may be indicative of a personal vote factor for the sitting MP’s (Victor Dominello and John Alexander respectively).

With both MP’s retiring, the open seat contests were much more vigorous, and both were won by margins less than 1%.

Likewise, prior to 2008 was when popular Labor MP John Watkins held the seat. As a result, he too managed to incorporate a personal vote and help make the seat safer than what it normally should be.

Ryde based seats.. tend to be able to swing a lot and loyal to sitting mps… when an mp retires they can shift

I want to pull Daniel T up on something that has been irking me for some time and it is the overtly simplistic attitude of referring to the Liberal Party as “The Conservatives”. This might stem from him being based in Queensland, especially where the National Party (the senior party in Queensland) was incredibly conservative.

Granted that there is a conservative faction within the Liberal Party but the same can be said for Labor, where the dominant faction of the Labor Party in NSW is Labor Right. I would put it to Daniel that the Liberal Party in NSW leans more socially centrist in their standing. It is a far cry from where they stand in Queensland or Victoria.

This idea that politics is One-Dimensional, as has been suggested, is overtly simplistic and lacks the requirement that there are multiple facaets of politics that can dictate where a political party can sit. The bare minimum that you would want to look at politics is 2-Dimensional, comparing their social positioning versus their fiscal positioning.

Enough of that mini-rant. In terms of Ryde itself, Yoh An and Mick Quinlivan are correct. Ryde itself is a swing area. Geographically you can see significant shifts in voting habits along Victoria Road from East to West. There are also 2 key demographic shifts that are occurring significantly in the area:

1. The continually rising East Asian Vote in the area, especially Chinese and Korean, centered around Eastwood and between Macquarie Park and Ryde. These East Asian Voters have tended to be socially conservative but are very sensitive to racial issues (as reflected from the strong Unity Party vote back in the day when the NSW Liberal Party was at their most socially conservative and the first coming of PHON).
2. The increasing Student vote based around Macquarie University. There are continued developments of new units around the university within walking distance of the University. This is now starting to spill past the Epping Hotel (not a bad pub).

IMO, I think this seat, state and federal, would notionally sit as a marginal Liberal Seat (including Bennellong). It reflects that this seat is now vulnerable for the Liberal Party to lose when they are set to lose government.

Agree with Hawkeye, it is not really a small l liberal area we need to remember that Bennelong actually voted against SSM in 2017 and this area is actually the more ethnically diverse part of Bennelong compared to the part in Lane Cove at a state level. I agree they were very sensitive about racial issues and this is why the Hawkish stance of the federal libs has done a lot of damage to the Liberal brand. Whilst i said it is socially conservative on issues such as SSM, safe schools etc it does tend to be well educated so is less likely to be populist for example anti-climate etc. A large number of Tech companies are based around North Ryde so this will be an area which would be pro-globalization etc. Another point about the Korean community is that they do tend to be Christian which is a bit different to the Chinese community where religiosity is not as high. An interest fact which is different to rest of East Asian is that South Korea largest religion in Christianity.

I see Labor winning Ryde in the next election. Labor governments at the state level especially have a habit of turning small first-term wins into second, or even third-term wins. I believe that this area – encompassing Bennelong, Ryde, and to a lesser extent Epping and Lane Cove, is going under a huge long term political realignment. In federal and NSW politics, it is usually the case that north of the harbour and west of Windsor Road and Old Windsor Road is all Liberal territory, but I can see that Labor is starting to make inroads. The fact of the matter is, for the most part, Labor is in national ascendancy, and even previously safe territory (10%+ at a state or federal level) will start to come under fire from Labor. Again, this is a very long-term shift, 2-3 decades at least, but I think the Hills, Hornsby, Ryde LGAs will turn a shade of purple. Lane Cove especially, was an amazing result for the ALP. But even in Epping, until the pre-poll came in, Perrottet was only winning by about 2.5%. This is not normal. Just like how Labor might be having a problem in the Cabramatta area, northern Sydney needs to be heavily addressed by the Liberal Party. And on Bennelong, it might very well see its first multi-term Labor MP, given I think Jerome Laxale is quite a good local member from what I have seen of him online.

I think Daniel T. referring to Liberals when talking about a liberal vs ALP issue as conservatives is reasonable. If he was talking about liberals vs Nationals it would be a different matter.

Bajoc – as I’ve said elsewhere, predicting a strong ALP result in state seat of Lane Cove wasn’t that hard. The swing there was actually no bigger than seats further east

@Bajoc i definitely agree that these three lga’s are seeing long term shifts towards labor even despite their relative social conservatism. what LGA’s/regions across the country do you think will see similar trends but towards the liberals in the long term? i note that cabramatta is seeing some shifts away from labor but this certainly does not appear to be to the benefit of the liberal party, and with peter dutton as leader i can’t see them being competitive here for the foreseeable future. penrith has seen sizeable shifts to the liberals recently but with swings against them in the northern beaches, eastern suburbs, inner city and more broadly metropolitan australia they really need to expand their base if they hope to be electorally successful in the near future.

Ryde is like a bellwether. It more or less falls into line with the Government, with a few misses, but generally more LNP than the statewide average. The northern and inland areas are traditionally socially conservative, partly due to the larger presence of nuclear families. The area is undergoing a massive shift with a lot of high-density residential buildings in Eastwood, Macquarie Park, Ryde and Meadowbank, and with it, a huge increase in renters and first-home buyers.

The last two MPs (John Watkins, Victor Dominello) really built their personal vote and shored up their margins. Bennelong, which covers most or all of Ryde, also gave John Alexander several terms before he retired in 2022. Given that Jerome Laxale won with a margin of 1%, methinks John Alexander would’ve marginally won it if he had run again.

The larger-than-average swing in 2023 may partly be because of the loss of Dominello’s personal vote. It is also a symptom of the Liberal Party’s turning away of ethnic Chinese voters and other Asian voters (e.g. Korean, Indian). I wrote in another thread that in 2019, the Liberals’ federal election and state election 2PP margins were inflated because of the negative gearing and franking credits scare federally and Michael Daley’s ‘Asians with PhDs’ comments. This might explain larger than average pro-Labor swings at the last federal/state elections as voters either ‘returned to Labor’ or were loyal Liberal voters switching to Labor.

I was surprised to learn that the Liberal Party would hold onto Ryde. The seat has close to the highest Chinese Australian population in the state (second only to Epping on 2019 boundaries), and is located in the federal seat of Bennelong which was gained by Labor from the Liberal Party at the 2022 federal election less than a year ago.

On federal results, the Liberal Party shouldn’t win Ryde, even under OPV. On 2022 federal booth results, Liberal primary was 40.51% and ALP primary was 39.37%. On 2023 state booth results, Liberal primary was 44.93% and Labor primary was 39.85%. State preference flows were 12.40% to Liberal, 51.73% to Labor and 35.87% exhausted. Applying such rate of preference flow to fedeal primary vote results I get Labor 53.65% vs Liberal 46.35%.

Comparing state and federal results, both major parties’ primary vote received a boost at the state election due to fewer candidates, but the Liberal Party received a much higher boost than Labor. This might be due to the fact that Liberal candidate Jordan Lane is a young (he is only 28 years old) moderate candidate, and the local Ryde Council’s youngest ever Mayor, which might had resonated with some young swinging voters. He probably already had significant personal votes when he was the Mayor of Ryde. These personal votes followed him to the state election, enabling him to narrowly hold on to the seat of Ryde, albeit with the help of OPV.

As for whether Labor will win Ryde at the next NSW state election, I think it’s unlikely. As Yoh An said, popular local MPs, regardless of political persuasion, can make the state seat of Ryde and the overlapping federal seat of Bennelong much safer for the MP’s party than they otherwise would have been. Jordan Lane seems to be popular locally, which means he is probably not going to be defeated at the next state election, unless there is a statewide swing to Labor at the next state election that can overcome this, which is unlikely to happen, considering federal drag is not on state Labor’s side because Labor is now in power at the federal level. As Bajoc said, Labor governments at the state level have a habit of turning small first-term wins into large second, or even third-term wins, but it only happens when the Coalition is in power federally.

However, state Liberal MP Jordan Lane holding Ryde will not prevent federal Labor MP Jerome Laxale from holding the overlapping federal seat of Bennelong. As we have seen in numerous electorates across NSW, including Ryde itself, the personal vote of a popular state MP can make a seat produce dramatically different electoral results between state and federal elections.

@Bajoc – I don’t think the Hills, Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai Council areas will become competitive for Labor in the near future. Although the significant Chinese Australian population have made seats in these areas less safe for the Liberal Party than it used to be, there have not been evidence for large-scale demographic changes that can make seats in these areas competitive for Labor. There were large swings towards Labor in these areas at the state and federal elections, but I have yet to see any long term trends of seats in these areas swinging to Labor. Large swings towards Labor in these areas at the federal and state elections were likely due to the general statewide swing to Labor, the retirement of Liberal MPs at the state election, Liberal factional in-fighting led by some Liberals in the Hills Shire area (in particular Alex Hawke) and ICAC probe into allegations of “impropriety” between Hills Shire Liberal Party councillors and property developers, rather than demographic changes.

I don’t agree with local members making their seats safe. Just ask Maxine McKew in 2010. Was a rising star but lost to a untried tennis player.

Victor mostly held this because State Labor was in crisis. 2015 was never going to see Labor win marginal seats. And 2019, Labor blew this with Michael Daley’s comments. As pointed out, there is a large Chinese community here. Those comments cost Labor a few percentage points here.

If the former member had recontested he would have held, but probably would be sitting on a 2-3% margin and not a safe margin he previously held.

people always use “popular sitting mp’s” as an excuse that they hold on. But as many of us say, “If the swing is on, it’s on” this will be hotly contested next time.

And the “federal drag” is being overstated also. Ask Bob Carr, in 1995 the Keating government was disastrously unpopular, they were looking at a 1975 election rout in 1995, yet NSW Labor managed to win despite the federal drag.

And people ASSUME the Liberal party will be an attractive opposition by then. They won’t be. They aren’t winning the 2028 federal election. They will be out until at least 2031, so 3 terms of Labor government, because this government will be no where near as bad as the previous one. And putting right-wing leaders like Dutton, Hastie, etc, will just be a repellent for ethnic voters in seats like these because of their hawkish stance on China.

And do they seriously expect we young people, to vote for a Liberal party led by someone on the far-right? I compare this to authoritarian Spain and Portugal after the war.

Btw, I never stated the NSW Liberal party was right-wing. I’m saying the federal party is, and it can and will have a drag on their state counterparts.

I remember plenty of cocky Labor supporters bragging about a guaranteed decade of dominance all through 2008-9.

Surely people have learned their lesson by how that all turned out, that such definitive long-term “we’re gonna smash it in for the next 3-4 elections, nothing surer!” statements are ridiculously silly.

Couple of corrections to pull out
1. Daniel T’s mention of 1995: Bob Carr’s Victory in 1995 came down to a combination of the drag-on effects from ICAC as a result from the Metherell Affair and a disjointed allocation of seats, whereby the Coalition narrowly lost the election despite having 51.2% TPP and 44% of the Primary Vote, a result of having too many votes locked up in too few seats. The Coalition had also been in minority government for the entire term, meaning that plenty of legislation was gridlocked. The federal Drag didn’t play a part because of these factors. I think his age and lack of local understanding is showing again.

2. Bajoc’s assertion about the result probably only tells 50% of the story, given that he has ignored the number of localized issues with seats like Epping, Castle Hill and Ryde, coupled with Labor finally coming back to what is expected to be parity within NSW after 2011. The tide in NSW has settled now. As has been stated by others, the federal drag will be on and it looks like that the NSW Coalition will be settling pretty quickly on new leadership. Let’s see what happens over the next couple of years, as there will be another federal election in between.

3. Daniel T’s multiple comments about Ryde continue to demonstrate that he really doesn’t understand the local landscape. His comment about Dominello only holding the Seat because Labor was in disarray ignores the fact that Dominello was considered one of the best performing MPs and Ministers in the Coalition foe the last 12 years and was worthy of building up the personal vote that he had. His claim about this seat being a natural labor seat based off bennelong is wrong as well because he tries to claim the trending of voting towards Ermington which is a very solid Red area but not in the seat of Ryde.

I never said this was ”natural labor territory” I was asking why this leans liberal and I still haven’t got my answer. I also haven’t got an answer as to why Maxine McKew who was supposedly a very popular local MP lost her seat to an unknown inexperienced tennis player.

Plenty of minority governments win re-election so I don’t buy that the coalition was hurt by that in 1995, after Greiner resigned the independents supported the government again, This is why Greiner resigned because the independents threatened to pull support.

I also never mentioned Ermington a single time, Please don’t put words in my mouth thank you.

And I looked at the LC vote in previous elections in this area, Labor didn’t do all that much better than they did against Dominello, If there really was a massive personal vote, why didn’t it show in the LC? Look at 2015 as an example please.

You have to laugh at Daniel T claiming that “federal drag” effects are exaggerated and pointing to Carr’s 1995 win as proof, and then in the next breath proclaiming that the NSW Libs will lose the next two elections because of “federal drag” based on the supposed notion that Dutton and the federal Libs are unpopular in NSW. Talk about a contradiction in terms.

Entrepreneurial, Read my comments properly before you make another statement, I said the FEDERAL coalition will be in opposition until 2031, NOT the NSW Liberals.

Voters are smart enough to differentiate state and federal issues, The QLD and NSW Labor governments trailed massively in the polls LONG before the events of the 2010-2013 parliament, they trailed since Rudd’s first stint as PM when Labor was riding high in the polls nationally.

Why didn’t the ”federal drag” hurt the coalition in 2015 in NSW? Abbott was quite unpopular and Labor was leading the polls 55-45 nationally at the time, yet Baird was returned with a comfortable majority.

Steven Marshall won the 2018 SA elections for the Libs despite them being in power federally and also being unpopular. Labor in SA also wasn’t particularly hated much like the NSW liberal government wasn’t hated this year.

Before you say anything further I suggest you stop dodging my other points and putting false words in my mouth and actually read what I say carefully. And actually respond to my points because if you can’t, it is evident you are just defending a dysfunctional racist, fascist national political party (I’m talking federal here not state!)

The NSW party is popular unlike their federal counterparts.

Daniel T, you do have a habit of incongruously changing the goalposts at the drop of a hat. But I will do my best.

1. Ryde being a marginal liberal seat – this has been mentioned multiple times before. The east side of this seat is solid liberal, along Lane Cove Road, as there are a lot of old homesteads in the area, similar to Marsfield. These are the two really strong liberal areas. In terms of the demographics in the area, there is a large Chinese and Korean demographic in the area and are socially conservative. However, they are sensitive to racial issues.

2. Your comment about Greiner losing support of the independents is putting the cart before the horse. He lost support because he was found technically corrupt by ICAC over the Metherell Affair (court later found him not guilty fyi).

3. I maintain that comment because you are trying to draw a comparison between bennellong and Ryde, a link that doesn’t entirely work because Ryde doesn’t have the deep red area of bennelong. On top of that, election situations dictate different issues, especially given that Morrison was so on the nose.

4. Simple reason is because Dominello made this a safe seat through how much he maintained his vote in the seat for so long. At such a high margin, the LC vote will always get dragged up naturally. As a result, when you get into safe seat territory, a personal vote will still be indicated by a couple of percentage points.

5. As stated before, Carr’s win was attributed more to the dysfunction and sleaze of the NSW Liberal Party, plus the major issues around the spread of votes. I said it before and I said it again, the Coalition had the higher 2PP at over 51% and had a higher Primary Vote at 44% but lost because of the expanded chamber bottling up their votes.

5. Simple reason is that the NSW Liberal Party, especially Tony Nutt, made a big deal of separating Baird from Abbott and ran a presidential-style campaign focusing on the popularity of Baird. Furthermore, you can’t really use 2015 because it followed on from the annihilation that NSW Labor took in 2011.

There you go. Directly answered. Please don’t try and change the goalposts again

I don’t think I ever said that The Hills, Hornsby or Ryde were going to be majorly competitive in the near future (next decade), I just said they could be if the Liberal Party did not specifically tailor policies to this area.

Before I continue, I’ll just say that I live in The Hills. I also have a slight tendency to vote left; I would class myself as being centre-left. Living in The Hills, maybe it is just a personal bias, but I would like to see the region be competitive, I feel we are very much left out of the state or national political sphere. Now that my biases are out of the way, I will continue.

@Insider, I too predicted a strong result in Lane Cove for the ALP, but a point I will make is this: in many seats in the three aforementioned LGAs, Labor recieved its best result ever, and in many more seats, had a great result, close to its best. It will take a a few more state and federal elections to determine if this trend continues, but currently, seats like Mitchell and Berowra will loose their status as very safe LPA seats.

Democracy thrives when there is competition, and I don’t believe it is good for the Liberal Party to have such safe seats as those in The Hills, but it is also not good for Labor to absolutely dominate in, say, Auburn.

Labor is slowly moving to the right, not greatly, but it is still a shift. That might not be appealing for the federal seats of Sydney and Melbourne, but in Mitchell (I can speak for it as a local), fiscal conservatism from Labor will favour Labor, and I can imagine this would be something similar in Hornsby and Ryde. There is a distinction between federal and state Labor, but voters will appreciate the other when they go to vote.

Speaking from my experience at the state election, people in Castle Hill were much more receptive to the ALP, and they took the HTVs much more that I have certainly previously seen from the booth I voted at. And I can only imagine that in Ryde, just how intense the campaign got. And looking at the Distribution of Preferences in Ryde, Castle Hill, Lane Cove, Hornsby and Epping, many votes from the left, specifically The Greens, actually exhausted, meaning that Labor could have done much better, assuming Greens preferences flowed 85 – 15 to the ALP and LNP. That would have definitely given Ryde to Labor, and made the margins in those seats much smaller.

Speaking to people in Mitchell who are Labor-aligned, they say that getting Castle Hill and Kellyville to 10 or 11% shows that they retained the voters they gained in Mitchell, but in actuality, they did even better. Their primary vote went up, and so did the Greens. In addition to that, Mitchell does not contain Dural and Kenhurst, which voted 70% LNP. On top of that, Mitchell extends south of the M2, into the electoral district of Winston Hills, which saw Labor make significant inroads in Northmead and Winston Hills, and in the Electoral District of Epping, in North Rocks. OPV damages the left; without looking too much at both of the figures, I can say Mitchell and Bennelong at the very least, would swing about 3% to Labor.

In Ryde, I also think that Labor was somewhat, not overly, but somewhat disadvantaged by their first candidate, and Howison coming onto the scene later than Labor would have liked.

Regardless, if the state Labor government does even just an above average job in the next term, it isn’t hard to see Ryde falling, or other seats like Epping getting even more marginal, or even flipping. Again, maybe I am just being hopeful, but I hope you can understand where I am coming from 🙂.

@DanielT: “Why didn’t the “federal drag” hurt the Coalition in 2015 in NSW? Abbott was quite unpopular and Labor was leading the polls 55-45 nationally at the time, yet Baird was returned with a comfortable majority”: Federal drag DID hurt the Coalition in NSW in 2015, which was why it suffered a 9.9% 2PP swing against it. The reason why the Coalition was re-elected with a comfortable majority was due to the overwhelming majority of seats and the overwhelming majority (64.2%) of the 2PP vote it won in the 2011 state election. With such an overwhelming majority, even a 10% 2PP swing against it would still re-elect the Coalition comfortably. No one should expect that Labor would come close to reversing a 16.5% 2PP swing in one election in a big state like NSW.

“Steven Marshall won the 2018 SA elections for the Libs despite them being in power federally and also being unpopular. Labor in SA also wasn’t particularly hated much like the NSW Liberal government wasn’t hated this year”: The Liberal Party won the 2018 state election because of a favourable redistribution that notionally gave it four seats and the fact that the 2PP swing towards Labor caused by the federal drag was largely cancelled out by the “It’s time” factor after 16 years of Labor Government. The pre-election redistribution made four seats held by Labor notionally Liberal, which gave the Liberal Party a notional majority of 24 seats in the House of Assembly in addition to three seats where the Liberal Party had a notional majority of 2PP vote but were held by independents recontesting their seats. There was a 1.07% 2PP swing TOWARDS Labor in the 2018 SA state election, however the Liberal Party won the 2018 SA election because it was good at sandbagging the four notional Liberal seats and the seats it held pre-redistribution. The Liberals won 3 out of 4 Labor seats with swings towards them that were made notionally Liberal by the redistribution, won the newly created notional Labor seat of King, won the seat of Morphett from the Liberal-turned independent MP Duncan McFetridge, as well as retaining all pre-redistribution Liberal seats. All these helped the Liberals won the 2018 SA state election and majority government.

Joseph while I agree, What about here in QLD? Coalition won an even larger percent of a majority in 2012 than coalition NSW in 2011, yet it was turfed after 1 term, what did NSW coalition do better that QLD LNP did not? Nobody predicted Labor to be 1 seat short of a majority in 2015, I mean nobody. (Perhaps except for Alan Jones and Clive Palmer)

And yes while there was a swing to Labor in SA in 2018, nevertheless the Liberals still won the TPP, Perhaps this was mainly an Xenophon factor? And Turnbull wasn’t seen as toxic as he was still prime minister although (still) trailing Labor nationally.

Seats like Bennelong (which contains this seat at the state level) and Kooyong which were held by long serving Liberal prime ministers are not receptive to a right-wing conservative party and prefer the moderate liberals which dominated the party from 1943-1995, Since 1995 the party has been drifting more right when it elected John Howard.

Many people see John Howards success as a reason to go more to the right, yet people don’t understand the circumstances of a bad opposition Howard faced in both 2001 and especially 2004 (although 2001 wasn’t entirely Labor’s fault)

The reason why the Newman LNP Government in Queensland was turfed out after one term but not the O’Farrell-Baird Liberal-National Government in NSW was because the Newman Government close to the 2015 Queensland election was much more unpopular than the Baird Government close to the 2015 NSW election. Newman’s net satisfaction rating had been negative since Oct–Dec 2012 and even trailed Palaszczuk as preferred Premier in Morgan polls between October 2014 and January 2015. By contrast, Baird consistently enjoyed a preferred Premier lead higher than 20% and net satisfaction rating of greater than 25% before the 2015 NSW election. “And yes while there was a swing to Labor in SA in 2018, nevertheless the Liberals still won the TPP”: As I have said, the 2PP swing towards Labor caused by the federal drag was largely cancelled out by the “It’s time” factor after 16 years of Labor Government, making the 2PP swing to Labor much smaller than it would have been.