LIB 6.0% vs IND
Incumbent MP
Nathaniel Smith, since 2019.
- Geography
- Redistribution
- History
- Candidate summary
- Assessment
- 2019 results
- Booth breakdown
- Results maps
Geography
Wollondilly covers most of Wollondilly Shire, as well as northern parts of the Southern Highlands. Wollondilly particularly covers Bargo, Bowral, Douglas Park, Hill Top, Mittagong, Nattai, Picton, Wilton and Yerrinbool.
Redistribution
Wollondilly lost Appin to Campbelltown. This change increased the Liberal margin from 5.5% to 6.0% against the independent, and increased the margin against Labor from 13.8% to 14.2%.
History
The current electoral district was only created for the most recent election in 2007. A previous electoral district with the name of Wollondilly existed from 1904 to 1981.
The seat existed from 1904 to 1981 covering areas between Campbelltown and Bowral, varying at each redistribution. From 1920 to 1925 the district expanded to be a three-member district elected proportionally. This district, while named Wollondilly, it stretched to the coast, covering Wollongong and surrounding areas.
From 1904 to 1978, the single-member district of Wollondilly was always won by the main conservative party, eventually becoming the Liberal Party.
The seat was won in 1957 by the Liberal Party’s Tom Lewis. He became a minister when the Coalition won power in 1965 led by Robert Askin. Lewis became Premier in early 1975 following Askin’s retirement. He only lasted a year, and was replaced in January 1976 by Eric Willis. The Liberals lost power at the 1976 election, and Lewis retired in 1978.
Wollondilly was gained by the ALP’s Bill Knott in 1978. In 1981, Wollondilly was abolished, with much of the seat’s territory forming part of the new seat of Camden. Knott moved to the new seat of Kiama, and held it until his retirement in 1986.
The seat of Wollondilly was restored as part of the redistribution before the 2007 election as a marginal Labor seat with a 4.6% margin, out of pieces of Camden, a marginal Labor seat, and Southern Highlands, a safer Liberal seat.
The seat was won in 2007 by ALP candidate Phil Costa. Costa was the Mayor of Wollondilly Shire, who had been elected to council as an independent with no links to either major party. He originally threatened to stand as an independent if either party preselected a candidate from the Campbelltown part of the seat, but was persuaded to stand for the ALP. Following his preselection announcement Wollondilly Council passed a motion of no confidence, but he refused to resign, and won the seat with a swing of only 1.3% against the ALP.
In 2011, Costa lost to Liberal candidate Jai Rowell, a councillor in the City of Campbelltown. Rowell was re-elected in 2015, and retired in 2019.
Liberal candidate Nathaniel Smith won the seat in 2019.
Assessment
Wollondilly was won by Labor as recently as 2007, and if there was a big swing it could come into play, but the redistribution prior to the 2015 election made this seat substantially more conservative. More plausibly, independent Judy Hannan could be a serious threat here.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Nathaniel Smith | Liberal | 19,351 | 38.0 | -20.0 | 38.5 |
| Judy Hannan | Independent | 10,258 | 20.1 | +20.1 | 19.8 |
| Jo-Ann Davidson | Labor | 7,723 | 15.1 | -9.1 | 15.1 |
| Charlie Fenton | One Nation | 5,712 | 11.2 | +11.2 | 11.1 |
| Jason Bolwell | Shooters, Fishers & Farmers | 3,235 | 6.3 | +6.3 | 6.3 |
| David Powell | Greens | 2,847 | 5.6 | -2.8 | 5.6 |
| Heather Edwards | Animal Justice | 1,326 | 2.6 | +2.6 | 2.6 |
| Mitchell Black | Liberal Democrats | 537 | 1.1 | +1.1 | 1.0 |
| Informal | 1,934 | 3.7 |
2019 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Redist |
| Nathaniel Smith | Liberal | 21,113 | 55.5 | 56.0 |
| Judy Hannan | Independent | 16,931 | 44.5 | 44.0 |
2019 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Nathaniel Smith | Liberal | 22,925 | 63.8 | -3.5 | 64.2 |
| Jo-Ann Davidson | Labor | 12,988 | 36.2 | +3.5 | 35.8 |
Booths in Wollondilly have been split into three parts. Polling places in Wollondilly Shire were split into “Central” and “North”, while those in Wingecarribee Shire were grouped as “South”. All those booths in the south were previously contained in the seat of Goulburn, while all of those in the centre and north were contained in Wollondilly.
The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 51.4% in the centre to 59.3% in the south.
Labor came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.1% in the north to 16.9% in the south. One Nation came fourth, with a primary vote ranging from 8.6% in the south to 12.5% in the centre.
| Voter group | ON prim | ALP prim | LIB 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Central | 12.5 | 14.3 | 51.4 | 12,299 | 25.0 |
| South | 8.6 | 16.9 | 59.3 | 10,807 | 21.9 |
| North | 11.7 | 10.1 | 52.9 | 6,627 | 13.5 |
| Pre-poll | 10.8 | 15.5 | 56.4 | 11,606 | 23.6 |
| Other votes | 12.2 | 17.2 | 61.5 | 7,913 | 16.1 |
Election results in Wollondilly at the 2019 NSW state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Liberal vs independent), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, independent candidate Judy Hannan, Labor and One Nation.
Nat Smith will retain Labor has no presence here plus Minns campaign on toll roads just not relevant
60/40 split Smith VS everyone else this is a low primary. His
Danger is the extent of a
ABT vote. Or he does not poll
The highest number of primary
Votes
N
One time Mayor Judy Hannan has now officially registered to contest this seat again, and the Labor party has endorsed an 18 year old candidate who just finished his HSC at Bowral High.
Liberal hold, most likely. I sense Labor will get a swing and One Nation and SFF will see a drop in their primary votes.
Question for the brains trust. With Judy Hannan running again on a 6% margin against her and the sitting member is there any chance this seat could actually be in play given the general swing away from the libs some of the polling is showing and or does that not tend to pan out or be a useful data point when it’s a non traditional 2 party contest like this?
With the greens declaring their candidate today Wollondilly currently seems to have the second highest number of candidates in the state after Willoughby.
There is currently:
Labor – Angus Braiden
Liberal – Nathaniel Smith (incumbent)
PHON – Rebecca Thompson
Independent – Judith Hannan
Greens – Jason Webster
I don’t think this is in play Dilly, and I don’t think that the independent will have much of a push this time. She had her chance. Failed independents don’t typically poll well on repeat attempts.
I think Hannan might be a “sleeper independent” this election, she certainly had a good go of it in 2019
This seat is too liberal with none of Campbelltown in it.
The anti liberal candidate is Hannon. And the anti liberal swing will go to her. Unless something have changed in Mr Smith ‘s favour this will be close
Judy Hannan is now officially a “teal” candidate. Is that likely to have much impact on an electorate like this? It’s got a very different set of issues to those in areas where teals have done well federally.
Wollondilly is a long way from a ‘traditional’ teal seat. While I hope Hannan the best, this seat just doesn’t have the large cohort of women, at a certain economic level, that make up the teal’s supporter base. Penny Ackery at the Federal Election came third despite huge $$ spent, much more the Labor. Smith is active and should Lib should retain.
I would say that the Southern Highlands are Teal territory but not Wollondilly Shire which is mortgage belt.
Would say this seat is uncertain. Maybe it will be one of the post count seats. In the couple of weeks after the election
Few rumours going around that current Wollondilly Mayor Matt Gould is strongly considering throwing his hat into the ring as well in this seat as an independent.
He’s certainly been very vocal lately and is a VERY popular Mayor, particularly in the northern half of the shire to the point that he got 2 or 3 of his ticket elected along with him of his vote at the last council election. If he does run he’s likely to either be a serious contender or it will be his preferences that decide the race and if he swapped preferences with Hannan the libs would be very very worried.
Front page of the southern highlands express this week has a story about Judy Hannan and whether or not she’s a teal. SMH had her listed as one in an article early this week and she appears on the list of climate 200 supported candidates (which is what I thought made you a teal) however in the southern highlands express article it says she “insists she’s not a teal but is a true independent”. Is there actually any kind of semi formal or accepted definition of what makes an independent a “teal” or is it just a buzzword at this point?
Dilly, I think ‘teal’ describing independents is just a buzzword used to categorise a group of likeminded independents who receive common funding (typically from climate 200). Then again, often the teals whilst sharing similar views also have conflicting opinions about various issues and won’t necessarily side with Labor/Greens 100% of the time.
I noticed for quite a lot of procedural votes in Federal Parliament, the teals side with the Coalition to oppose so called guillotine or debate management rules. In addition, the teals often have different views for certain issues like workplace relations. With the recent omnibus multi-employer bargaining bill, some teals sided with the Coalition and forced Labor to amend the more controversial aspects/clauses of the bill.
@yoh teals are usually failed Labor candidates or Labor members/voters who can’t get elected on the Labor ticket so the say they are independant to get the sheep to invite the wolves to dinner
Little bit of talk about this seat from both the Labor and Independent camps, could be quite a dark horse if they play there cards right
The Labor candidate Angus Braiden convincingly came out on top during the famous community forum where Nathaniel and Wendy said yes to privatising water. Only entertaining part of the night was his answers
@Jackson Unfortunately I think Labor shot themselves in the foot by choosing an 18 year old candidate. I’m pretty sure he’s the youngest candidate in the whole state. Rightly or wrongly I think a lot of people will discount him just off his age.
“Teal” is just a description of a particular flavour of independent. They are still “true independents”.
without the shooters and lib dems splitting the votethe libs shoud hold on, all the other parties will preference the independant over labor so itl be between the independant and liberals. im writing labor off in this one
@Ben Raue 100% spot on. It’s irrellevant whether people identify as a Teal voter or if a candidate calls themselves “Teal”, and I don’t think this is even a thing in the minds of people who voted IND in 2022 – they just want an option that is not Labor or hard right Liberal, but can’t cross over into being a Green voter, for whatever reason.
The important thing is the campaign infrastructure & resources that comes from being in the Climate 200 group.
The other thing that will be in the minds of Labor and Green voters here and wherever there is a strong IND candidate, is the power of voting tactically to influence the broader election outcome. This is how the entire north shore of Sydney flipped in 2022. If Hannan carves out 5-10% of these voters, plus a chunk of the (generally expected) swing against Nat Smith, she’ll win this seat fairly comfortably in my humble opinion.
@Dilly Dally given you need to be 18 to be a candidate id say 18 is the youngest you can be
Can’t see Labor coming out on top here, or even making second. Problem is they are chasing down an IND that ran in 2019 and I don’t; recall them doing particularly well (improved vote) in the federal election in these parts.
@Darren – because of the above, not sure how tactical voting comes into it, at least in comparison to how people voted in 2019. If 2015 ALP voters went for Hannan in 2019, is it “tactical” for them to do it again? Not sure. All she needs is not to lose 5% primary votes relative to Labor and then get the preferences of the people you mention, and have them not exhaust – doesn’t technically matter if she comes 2nd by 1 vote or 10%.
As to your other comment, I agree that Teal IND are still real IND. But I think it does matter if they are Teal supported or not. If the media thinks someone is a Teal and refers to them as such, but they don’t have the “endorsement” of the leading local IND selection group/s, nor support from Climate200, it’s legitimate for voters to realise that and be made aware of it, because they might wonder “why not??
Darren, the infrastructure and resources is the indication of a political party, at least an American style one.
I would also argue that a lot of the ‘tactical voting’ is because a lot of the ALP/Greens voters in those areas are really not ALP or Greens voters. What they are is old school small ‘l’ liberals. They were really voting against the more conservative outer metro/regional Libs and the Nats, as soon as there was someone ‘like’ them they jumped ship immediately.
@Insider
Idk the issue I see is that this is Judith’s third time running for Wollondilly State seat, Her vote is basically all in the Wollondilly council area and her campaign this time around has been pretty much exclusively focused on the Wollondilly LGA. She has been on the council there for almost two decades so it makes sense.
Last federal election we saw an Independent in Hume who although way outspent and outcampagined Labor, but Labor consistently beat them in this region, and that was with a Labor candidate that was completely hopeless. In the Whitlam portion the Southern Highlands had massive swings to Labor and basically prevented a noticeable swing in the electorate as the coast swung Liberal, granted there was no independent.
I’m just not sure if Judith can actually win the seat, she is a repeat player, whose base is in an area not really inclined to vote independent on a Federal or State level. Last time she had a good chance with the controversy with the paradrop of Nat Smith, but with Independents underperforming in Victoria, they might not do well in NSW either on the state level, especially since the Morrison factor is mostly gone.
Also on the Teal stuff Judith is on the C200 page as being supported by them, weather that makes them a teal or not is a different question… clearly she doesn’t
There is clearly discontent in the area, people don’t like Nathaniel, he’s a hard right Liberal & Trump adorer and isn’t a local, but Idk if Judith will be the one to do it. She come off at pretentious & overconfident alot of the time I find. I’ve already stated I was impressed with the Labor candidate from the community forum in Bowral and It seems like he is pretty active on the campaign trail, he’s all over the electorate, certainly an enigma but I’ll wait to see what impact he has on the results…
@Jackson given the voting history here I can’t see a world where Labor could ever win it on the current boundaries. If the liberals are going to lose it, they will lose it to an independent imo. If that’s not Judy than who do you see as someone that actually could win it?
The problem most independents would have is the fact that it splits across both Wollondilly and Wingecarribee and I can’t really think of anyone that is very well known/ has a strong base across both sections of the seat and I think it unlikely that someone with no prior profile would be able to win.
Wingecarribee is currently in administration so no one’s likely to emerge from there with a strong pre-existing profile any time soon.
If you look at the Wollondilly end of the electorate what are the options. The obvious contender would be the current Mayor Matt Gould and he’d be really strong in the Wollondilly part of the seat at least, but I’m not sure he has any name recognition in the highlands he would need. and whilst there has been a few rumours going around he might run I saw a comment from him on Facebook the other day saying he had no plan to, which imo is disappointing.
The other choice might be former Mayor and current Deputy Mayor Matthew Deeth who is notionally an independent but by all accounts is now attached to Smith at the hip so I can’t see him running against him anyway.
Councillor Michael Banasik would be the only other name that could possibly have the name recognition but he’s been there for ever and imo it shows. He ran for mayor at the last election and finished close to the bottom which would suggest he’s probably not particularly viable as an option.
Do you think any of those options could actually beat smith if they ran or is there someone else I’m missing?
I’m tipping Liberal holds. Judy Hannan will make the 2PP again but the margin will tighter, but this is on the back of a decline of the Liberal vote.
I think Hannan’s chances of taking the seat have increased considerably over the last week or so off a couple of gaffes/unforced errors from Nathaniel Smith.
Smith was the only candidate contesting this electorate that indicated he wanted to privatise Sydney Water at a recent meet the candidate event and that went down like a lead balloon to the point Perrottet had to come out and say he was wrong.
Following on from that Smith announced money for planning for the Picton bypass which has basically become a running joke at this point and has been promised at every single election since I’ve lived in the seat. From the discussions I’ve had it seems to have been VERY poorly received by everyone as we are sick of hearing the same promises every election and just need to see the thing actually built.
Roadrunner youre right, and this ontop of the Wiltom fastrack which he was rightly slammed on socials for. The issue is no one knows him still and 4 years on its too late.
Apathy is high this election however and thats probably the only thing i Nats favour right now.
Interesting that most candidates are running dead here and those that aren’t are preferencing Hannan. However What Labor are doing seems a little unclear though as they have one htv published on the election site that preferences Hannan and the other that just has them running dead. Is it normal for that kind of thing to happen or are their some sort of games afoot?
Normal for prepoll early to just have vote 1 as it takes the EO time to approve the how to votes. Common with the majors as graphics company might have 60+ to design for ALP and that excludes multi languages etc. The draw happens only a week prior to first prepoll usually.
TAB is offering its second lowest odds on this being the seat with the smallest margin. Looks like this one might end up very close.
What is the estimated TCP between Hannan and Labor? I’m not suggesting the Liberals will come 3rd, just curious.
Daniel T, the Elections NSW website can generate an actual (not estimated) TCP for any pair of candidates in every seat. Click “LA TCP” alongside the relevant electorate:
https://pastvtr.elections.nsw.gov.au/sg1901/la/results
No estimate can be made without knowing how Liberal voters numbered Hannan and Labor, for which there’s no meaningful data available. The vast majority probably didn’t number either of them but the relatively small proportion which did would change any 2CP margin significantly. Still, with Hannan clearly above Labor on primary votes it should be easily won by her in such a contest.
Adda, that data is available. I have published 2pp and 2cp preference flows by primary vote for each seat and booth in my data repository for 2015 and 2019 although it doesn’t include this one. It would be possible to calculate it though.
As David says, you can see the overall 2cp for Hannan vs Labor and it’s about 61.3% for Hannan, but about half of all votes exhaust.
Yes, that’s my error. I wouldn’t have expected it to be available because my understanding of the counting process was that they order by first preferences, then take the preferences of eliminated candidates in turn, and normally don’t bother with calculating full preference flows for one candidate against one of the final two unless they make an exception like with Mulgrave in the Victorian election. Is this specifically a NSW thing or am I missing something that allows the preference distribution to be known?
(I also checked that link and didn’t see it at first but now that I look at it again I realise that the Labor candidate is under CLP.)
NSW data enters every lower house ballot. They are the only jurisdiction in the country that does that with a single-member election.
Alright thanks Ben and David and apologies for the error. Interesting that NSW invests the resources to count preferences of each ballot and not others.
Adda, it probably helps that with OPV there are over 50% of ballot papers with just a single ‘1’ making it easier to handle for data entry.
Voted early today and my feel from watching and listening to people at the polling booth was that Judy Hannan is going to do well. That’s also consistent with what I’m hearing from a lot of my friends and neighbours. There’s also very much a sentiment I’m picking up of “I don’t think she’s great but she’s the least worst option”.
I’m not sure if those sentiments are shared in the highland parts of the seat or the parts of Wollondilly north of the oaks where she’s much more well known but I think there’s a good chance she might just win it, but it will go right to the wire.
ABC says “IND likely”. Hannan is on 51.7% 2CP. There’s prepoll, some postal and absent votes yet to be counted.
ABC has put Wollondilly as an independent gain, no longer “in doubt”. This means that Judy Hannan, if successful, would be the only teal winner, unless Pittwater flips. I say teal because she’s a Climate 200-endorsed candidate.
Labor performed really well despite having an 18 year-old candidate. I think Labor made the right move by not chasing this seat and focused on Goulburn and Camden. If Labor had overtaken Hannan in the 3CP count, they wouldn’t have gotten many preferences (teals don’t preference anyone) and the Liberals would retain.
seems that liberal party kicking out ambitious females like Hannan and Dai Le and backing males on “merit” has cost them a few seats
Nathaniel Smith was always a terrible selection for this seat in the first place. He was parachuted in after his father, Greg Smith, was pushed into retirement to make way for Dom Perrottet to move into Epping from Hawkesbury. The Liberal Party had originally been looking at Penelope Fischer (daughter of Pru Goward and sister of former model Kate Fischer). I think it was a big mistake that they didn’t take Penelope Fischer.
Oh Nathaniel Smith is Greg Smith’s son. I didn’t know that. That explains *a lot*.
Also, preselecting the children of politicians for candidacy is something that should be done with a lot more care than is currently practised.
It didn’t help that he supported privatising Sydney Water or misspoke/misrepresented the LNP.
TBH, he is one of the Liberal MPs I’m happy to see the back of. His campaigning has been terrible and the way he has let the seat slip like this, especially given that this should be a slam-dunk liberal seat, shows how useless he really was.