Albert Park – Victoria 2026

ALP 11.2%

Incumbent MP
Nina Taylor, since 2022.

Geography
Southern Melbourne. Albert Park covers those parts of the City of Melbourne south of the Yarra River, and a majority of the City of Port Phillip. Albert Park covers the suburbs of Albert Park, Middle Park, Port Melbourne and South Melbourne and parts of St Kilda and Southbank.

History
The electoral district of Albert Park has existed since the 1889 election. The seat has been dominated by the ALP for most of the 20th century, who have held the seat continuously since 1950.

The ALP first won the seat in 1902. George Elmslie held the seat until 1918, serving as the first Labor Premier in Victoria for thirteen days in December 1913. The ALP continued to hold the seat except for the 1927-9 period and the period from 1932 to 1945.

In 1945, Albert Park was won by the ALP’s Frank Crean, who lost the seat in 1947 to the Liberal Party’s Roy Schilling. Crean returned to the Victorian parliament at the 1949 Prahran by-election, but moved to federal politics in 1951 and went on to serve as a senior minister in the Whitlam government.

Schilling held the seat for one term, losing to the ALP’s Keith Sutton in 1950. Sutton held the seat until his retirement in 1970.

In 1970, Albert Park was won by the ALP’s Val Doube. He had previously held the seat of Oakleigh from 1950 to 1961, when he was defeated. He held Albert Park from 1970 to 1979.

In 1979, Albert Park was won by the ALP’s Bunna Walsh. He held the seat until the 1992 election, when he attempted to win the overlapping Monash province for the Legislative Council. He had also served as a member for the Legislative Council seat of Melbourne West for two months in 1970 before the election was declared void.

In 1992, John Thwaites, Mayor of South Melbourne, was elected to Albert Park for the ALP. Thwaites became Deputy Leader of the Victorian ALP in 1996. He became Deputy Premier in 1999 following the election of the Bracks government. Thwaites resigned in 2007 following the retirement of Steve Bracks, and by-elections were held in Albert Park and Bracks’ electorate of Williamstown in September 2007.

The 2007 by-election was won by the ALP’s Martin Foley. Foley was elected to three full terms and retired in 2022.

Labor candidate Nina Taylor won Albert Park in 2022.

Candidates

Assessment
Labor could be vulnerable here to either the Liberal Party or the Greens, with Labor’s polling down significantly since 2022.

2022 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Nina Taylor Labor 14,254 36.4 -7.0
Lauren Sherson Liberal 11,659 29.8 -1.6
Kim Samiotis Greens 8,178 20.9 +4.5
Georgie Dragwidge Independent 2,294 5.9 +5.9
Cassandra Westwood Animal Justice 1,207 3.1 -0.9
Lance Smart Liberal Democrats 534 1.4 +1.4
Elizabeth Antunovic Freedom Party 518 1.3 +1.3
Viorel Bradea Family First 466 1.2 +1.2
Informal 1,396 3.4

2022 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Nina Taylor Labor 23,916 61.2 -1.9
Lauren Sherson Liberal 15,194 38.8 +1.9

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into three areas: central, north, south and west.

Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 56.6% in the centre to 72.9% in the south.

The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 17.4% in the west to 30.8% in the south.

Voter group GRN prim ALP 2PP Total votes % of votes
Central 18.8 56.6 4,430 11.3
North 25.6 65.7 4,325 11.0
West 17.4 61.5 2,906 7.4
South 30.8 72.9 2,348 6.0
Pre-poll 20.6 61.2 16,808 42.9
Other votes 18.8 56.4 8,324 21.3

Election results in Albert Park at the 2022 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.

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23 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve always felt that if the Liberals had a moderate leader, a moderate, high-profile candidate, and better boundaries here (remove St Kilda, add in South Yarra), this seat could be a surprise win. This seat has somewhat-winnable demographics closer to the beach, but the Southbank and St Kilda areas tend to be quite unfavourable. There is also the fact that Nina Taylor could get a sophomore surge, unless a local on here has a differing opinion of that.

  3. I’m local in the sense that I’m in St Kilda (but in Prahran electorate) so I see a lot of activity on local Facebook groups and things like that.

    There is some very vocal anti-ALP commentary against Nina Taylor and state Labor in general that seems to be the loudest voice online but it’s just a small, rusted-on minority and mostly people who are aligned with the right-wing ‘Residents of Port Phillip’ (RoPP) group.

    The Albert Park & Port Melbourne areas had above-average (for Victoria) swings to Labor at the federal election, and at least year’s council elections, Port Phillip was one of the few councils where Labor ran fully-branded and officially endorsed candidates.

    So overall I think the Labor brand will hold up pretty well in this seat, although I don’t know how much of a sophomore surge or personal vote Nina Taylor will have. I expect a small swing against Labor but still a comfortable retain (high-50s 2PP).

    The Liberals got very close here in both 2010 (2.1% margin) and 2014 (3% margin).

  4. If the Liberals were more moderate on Social issues they could potentially win this over two elections say they form government narrowly but end up being popular and moderate like the NSW Government focus on sound fiscal management and service delivery but if the Libs end up being like the DLP/Moira Deeming they will be toxic here. People here prefer Tealish Liberals (Economically Right/Socially moderate or atleast Agnostic)

  5. A Teal based Liberal Party would be competitive, both in Albert Park and the overlapping federal seat, and this is perhaps the ultimate irony in the realignment theory, since going right has achieved very little in seats gained, while areas like Albert Park offer a real chance of being won, if only the Liberals could see it.

  6. Agree Nimalan/Pencil, moving to a class war rhetoric instead of a traditional economic based narrative has not served the conservative parties (Coalition/Liberals) well for Australia due to a large proportion of voters residing in major cities unlike other western democracies (mainly UK and USA) where old town industrial and rural areas still carry significant weight.

    Voters in the urban areas often work in white collar, service-based industries and these individuals are put off by the class war, anti-woke rhetoric that the right faction of the Liberal Party has embraced.

  7. @Pencil, it’s no coincidence that the Liberals’ best performance in Albert Park was under Ted Baillieu in 2010; and the Liberals’ best ever federal performance in Melbourne Ports / Macnamara was under Malcolm Turnbull in 2016 when the seat actually swung to the Liberals while most of the country swung away.

  8. This was discussed as a potential Greens prospect in recent years.

    The main problem is that Major party votes are too close to each other. I would have traditionally thought the Greens best path up would be to overtake Labor with Liberals out in front, but Liberals were actually the closer 3CP rival last time (and would have preferenced Greens to victory at that particular election).

    Greens also seem to have lost some local strength. They were wiped out from council in 2024 and looking at booths in MacNamara they seemed to lose primary votes to Labor particularly badly here.

    Given they’re now in a fight to win back Prahran that they might not win, and need to sandbag all their other seats, I expect Greens to campaign very little here. The result being a primary vote to drop back to the teens and they could be overtaken by a teal.

  9. The Greens seem to have always really under-performed here at a state level compared to the federal level (or that could be framed at over-performing at the federal level).

    The Greens went backwards significantly at the federal level, but due to the large gap between state & federal here, I don’t necessarily think that will translate to a significant swing against at state level. Their vote might hold up there because the ~20% range they tend to average at state level is probably just a core of rusted on support, and the sometimes-Green swing voters have been more likely to vote Greens federally than at state level.

    In short, no hope in the current environment that they improve to a high-20s primary that would be required to win. They’ll remain in distant third place, probably still with a primary vote around the ~20% mark.

  10. @ Trent
    Macnamara is more winnable at a Federal level because the entire St Kilda-Elwood area is in one seat at at a state level split between (Cauflied, Albert Park, Brighton and Prahran). I think Greens put less effort into Albert Park for that reason

  11. Port Melbourne and South Melbourne are not so favourable to the Greens. Both favour Labor or Liberal. It’s difficult for the Greens to win a bayside seat since St Kilda, St Kilda East and Elwood are all split up.

  12. This could throw up an interesting result now with Wilson as Liberal leader and a Labor government on the nose who are focussing strongly on housing density. I don’t know to what extent to which Labor’s plans for higher density applied to this seat but I do wonder if the Greens have a unique opportunity to re-court the affluent progressives they lost so emphatically in May and make serious inroads into the ALP vote, to the point where this may become a GRN vs LIB contest.

    Gotta be backing Labor to hang on at this stage but if things begin to take a nasty turn and Wilson starts winning over moderates I wouldn’t rule it out entirely

  13. There are many seats which Wilson could help make the Liberals competitive in 2026, Albert Park is not one of them. The Greens vote will be high enough to keep Labor above the 50% mark and the Liberals won’t win over people who are renting and living in high-rises as they’ve been outright opposed to densification in affluent suburbs.

  14. I think here there will be:
    – Moderate primary vote swing against Labor;
    – Small primary vote swing to the Greens (mostly due to Labor being less popular);
    – Small primary vote swing to the Liberals

    The order may flip back to being LIB, ALP, GRN on primary votes again (which had been standard prior to 2018), but the Greens will remain in third place. They are coming from too far behind both of the major parties and St Kilda & Southbank are really the only two Greens strongholds in the seat.

    I’m guessing Labor’s margin will reduce from double-digits to about the 5-7% range but still a comfortable hold.

    The local Liberals – Liberal aligned councillors and the federal candidate – have put quite a focus on “heritage” and opposing development. That will appeal to the cohort most likely to already vote Liberal (home owners in Middle & Albert Park) but not the majority of residents who rent and/or want dense inner-city living and affordable housing to be build.

  15. The Age’s recent seat-by-seat analysis of the results of a Liberal values survey was also pretty bad for the Liberals in Albert Park.

    Not as bad as Prahran whose results were basically the same as the block of inner-north ALP v GRN contests, but about -10 worse for the Liberals than all the nearby Liberal seats like Caulfield, Brighton, Malvern etc.

  16. Prahran is a seat that’s gonna be lost to the libs up till after the next next redistribution (2036) so they might as well write that off

  18. Labor at least know they’re can’t win country seats so that’s why they just dump solar and wind farms there.

  21. Any thoughts from people closer to the seat about how the campaign against the data centre in Port Melbourne will play out here? I can’t imagine the centre will win Labor many votes, but what sort of scale are we looking at?

  22. Greens appear to be campaigning hard on it while Labor and Liberal are more or less silent so I’d guess this would help the Greens improve their primary vote here.

  23. Only just seen that the same IND from last election is running again – wonder if she can pick up some disgruntled Labor voters and further muddy the 3CP in this seat