Ripon – Victoria 2022

Labor underperformed here in 2018: how much due to Staley’s popularity and how much that Labor’s candidate didn’t seem to have much of a local profile is unknowable. Labor’s new candidate is a former advisor to Andrews Martha Haylett.

Some of it may have been sophomore surge. Louise Staley was elected in 2014 after the retirement of long term Labor MP Jo Helper. The redistribution has not helped her so she may be in for a struggle.

I would say Labor has actually not lost the seat since 1999. In 2014 there was a radical redistribution which turned it into a notional Liberal seat even with a retiring MP Labor managed to get a swing to them. in 2018 Staley should have actually increased her vote as a sitting MP. I concede she managed to mitigate the state-wide swing to Labor but the swing in the regions especially there where there was sitting Coalition MPs was much smaller than in Metro Melbourne. I would say this is a toss up as the boundaries are favourable for Labor and the Libs have not managed to get a positive swing to them despite no sitting Labor MP since 2010 but there is a sitting Coalition MP.

The 3% Labor marginal.seats are likely to stay Labor

I think Louise Staley is gone here. I don’t think the swing against Labor that may occur in the west, north and southeast suburbs will happen in regional areas. They were not affected by the long lockdowns to the same extent and if anything may be thankful that the government implemented the very successful ring of steel around Melbourne to protect them.

Labor should hold this will a small swing to them.

@Adam wasn’t regional Victoria also put in lockdowns at certain stages despite been nowhere near and COVID cases.
@Bob what makes you think Labor will get a swing to them.
Labor have a very good chance of holding here if the Labor vote holds up in Ballarat in both the existing and newly included Ballarat suburbs. Although the Labor margin may be inflated as the newly added suburbs are from Wendouree which swung towards Labor. I’m not sure about how much the newly added suburbs swung but they may not always be that strong for Labor

I don’t really know much about this area, is there much agriculture in the northern part of this seat or a national voting demographic. I’m curious as if the Ballarat suburbs in this seat end up joining the rest of the Ballarat suburbs in Wendouree to make more Ballarat based seats could this be a Nationals target. It would likely have to expand into National territory when it loses these Ballarat suburbs as well.

I’m probably getting ahead of myself but just thought it’s something interesting to consider.

I would be hopeful of an alp win here.. the liberals need to improve their vote by 3% to hold. The swings here after Joe Helper retired have been very small.

@ North East, i would say North west around St Arnaud which is Northern Grampians Shire is agricultural and part of the Wimmera Regions and would be prime Nationals territory. Much of the rest of the seat is part of the Goldfields Region which interestingly retains a Labor tradition more than a century after the Goldrush ended. Also look at Beechworth which is also a Labor leaning town. This is a bit like Wonthaggi which is a Labor town even if Coal mining ended in the 1950s.

The Nats have never been able to do well in this seat for some reason.

Much of the area covered by Ripon swung away from Labor in the most recent federal election. The Nats won Maryborough and Labor only won Carisbrook by a tiny margin.

Federally, there were 2PP swings to the Nats where they are the sitting member (Mallee), 2PP swings to Labor where they are the sitting member (Ballarat), while Wannon saw swings to an independent – away from both Labor and the Liberals. A good chunk of the population of Ripon is the Ballarat commuter belt/acreages/tree-change country, which tends to vote Labor at both State and Federal levels. Federally, the Greens also saw strong swings in some of these booths including Miners Rest, Clunes, Creswick and Linton.

@Nimilan Some regional areas may maintain their Labor voting pattern despite the reason why no longer been there due to things like the socio-economic situation becoming worse due to loss of industry, people moving into other blue-collared unionised work within the area, the union mindset still existing within the area and maybe a bit of ‘i vote Labor because my dad voted Labor and his dad voted Labor’, this could especially be true in a former mining town like Wonthaggi.

Mallee is a safe non Labor seat so no real effort there. Ripon is marginal since 1999 before that was a more pro Labor version of Bolte’s old seat. Joe Helper had a personal vote and if he were the Labor candidate in the last 2 elections he would have won. The swings in those 2 elections were minimal

@ North East, that is a good point. What is interesting is that areas like Ripon where there is a loss of industry including textile manufacturing around Marybrough are often prime areas for populism. Much of this area could have been like the Rust belt (USA) and strong for ONP etc. However, here Labor has remained strong even without a sitting member for almost 8 years. Contrast this with areas around Bathurst-Lithgow (NSW) and La Trobe Valley (VIC) where there has been a long term drift away from Labor both at a state and federal level.

While Ripon doesn’t contain the most popular tree change towns, there is possibly a bit of that phenomenon going on in the electorate and keeping Labor competitive

The three historic townships on the Ballarat-Maryborough railway line (Creswick, Clunes and Talbot) have all been attracting a steady flow of tree-changers since the line re-opened. They also attract tree-changers who have been priced out of Daylesford and Castlemaine. Similar story for the cluster of townships and localities around Smythesdale, without the railway line, but a 20 minute drive into Ballarat CBD makes them a popular tree-change choice for Ballarat workers.

The population change is very interesting…. Bathurst Lithgow used to make a Labor seat at the state level and at a Federal level with majorities in both towns outpoll the 60/40 split in orange. When Labor last won Calare the Lithgow vote used to be 66 to 70% Labor. Now Labor wins Lithgow in parts but not overwhelmingly and Calare is safe lnp over 60%. Mr Tooles vote in Bathurst is much better I think 65%…. wonder why such change.

Mick, I see Bathurst as one of the coal mining regions. Like other areas such as Central Qld, these places are no longer favourable for the modern Labor Party who have lost support amongst blue collar, working class voters.

Yoh An,
You appear to have confused your minerals or your towns.
Bathurst is associated with gold mining not coal mining.
The Big Gold Panner is in Bathurst.
https://bigthingsofaustralia.com/the-big-gold-panner/

Yes think it is near Lithgow which had some coal mines, but most have closed down now

This seat has had very limited swings in the past few elections but the boundaries have changed significantly. Liberals need a fairly decent swing to hold this seat. Staley is also one of the most senior Victorian Liberals, don’t expect them to give this up without a big fight.

Also on paper oddly enough this does not look like a seat Labor would be competitive in.

At the last 2 elections there were 2 one per cent swings here. Now there is a 3% margin with the boundary changes.. it seems this seat does not swing much… so likely alp win

This is a seat that almost seems to swing to its own rhythm, it didn’t really swing at all with the huge swings that occurred in 2018. It’s a big gap Staley needs to close to retain her seat here, but I’m really not sure how this result will play out – no clue who will win here.

Not sure which party would’ve won this seat at the federal election and federal results aren’t always an indication of what will happen at state but i did look at how parts of this seat voted at the federal election.

Labor won Ararat and Maryborough comfortably at the 2018 state election (most likely had a big swing towards them) but the Nationals won all booths in these towns with a swing to them. Talbot was also 50/50 at federal with Labor getting 50.4% compared to 62% at state level and Clunes was 60% at federal compared to 66% at state. I think this shows Staley can win, she just needs to mitigate any swing against her in the Ballarat suburbs and match the federal results of the areas i’ve already mentioned.

Will Labor securing the Commonwealth Games for Victoria’s regional centres like Ballarat, Bendigo & Geelong be a net positive for them in these cities & their suburbs?

I know that getting events like that for Melbourne is always more questionable not necessarily a vote winner as many see it as a large expense; but will bringing tourism, media coverage and new facilities to regional areas broadly be a vote winner?

@Trent I reckon it will be a net positive for Labor. Even people in these regional areas that aren’t into sports may look at it favourably for tourism dollars and if they don’t like the increased number of people coming to their regional area they may make a comment about it but i don’t think it’ll make them change their vote away from Labor, especially if they traditionally vote Labor.

Although if there are other larger factors at play that may see these regional areas swing away from Labor i think that’ll take priority over Labor securing the Commonwealth games and will outweigh any positive views of Labor for doing so.

Thanks! That’s roughly what I expected too. Probably not the priority issue but overall a positive run on the board for Labor.

Anyone got any ideas how this seat might go? Staley is quite a high profile MP so I think she still could hold on here but a decent swing is needed. Labor candidate isn’t anything high profile or notable.

It’s also really confusing to match up federal swings in this electorate because it’s split amongst 3 federal divisions all with different party contests.

This seat kinda reminds me of Bayswater in the sense of a popular local member, the LNP could get a swing to here & Mathew Guy has visited here quite a lot.

I think maybe the seat is seeing limited swings and remaining marginal because different parts of the seat are moving in different directions.

The rural parts of the seat close to Ballarat are seeing the tree-change effect and moving towards Labor, whereas some of the old Labor-voting mining communities are perhaps seeing a move towards the Liberals. So the movements cancel out and keeps the seat very close.

Removing rural area like Donald might bring it towards Labor. Plus Staley being a bit cooker-adjacent.

If Matthew Guy is putting in visits, it suggests they think it’s in play – and if the Libs are trying to hold onto this marginal, they probably aren’t confident of picking up much elsewhere.

I reckon Staley will retain this despite the significant redistribution. The seat isn’t getting nearly as much focus as previous election I feel.

The Coalition need to run the Nats here next time.

Once again barely any swing in this seat, and looks like an easy Labor retain thanks to the redistribution. Hasn’t been a swing here of more than 1% since 2010.

Strangest thing here is how glacially slow the count is – it has been stuck at 62-63% for days. It would be interesting to know what is in those 30% of uncounted votes. I made a rough calculation that Louise Staley would need 55% or so of the remaining. Can’t see that being possible but the margin could come in – or go out!

Redistributed, I read from a post Anthony Green made that there was some issue with VEC posting the check count details. They got muddled/confused between the initial and check count figures and had to supress posting new results.

Alp win because of the boundary change as expected

I know it was mentioned that Ripon was gone on Insiders. There was some mention that Louise Staley may have a been a potential contender for the Liberal leadership if she was able to hold on.

Why hasn’t Staley conceded defeat?

@ Daniel T Maybe now that she has some spare time she has gone to Nepean to stay over Sam Groth’s place and while she is there she is interviewing the stairs at Sorento

usually popular local members can defy a redistribution like Jackson Taylor and Jordan Crugnale she has not even got a swing to her after 8 years.

This election she got a small
I think 0.6% swing to her
Last election 2018 she won
By 20? Votes . In a status quo.election it is hard to improve your vote by almost
3% Joe helper could maybe have managed this but she was
No Joe helper

Staley was touted as a future party leader or a senior shadow minister to broaden the party’s appeal to women.