Prahran – Victoria 2026

@ Local Hack, interesting intel about the Labor preselection. A little while on here we were saying Fiona McLeod (Higgins candidate in 2019) would have been a strong candidate, I wonder if it’s her?

Either way, both Greens & Labor taking this seat seriously and running strong campaigns & candidates only makes the Liberals’ very slim chances of retaining it even slimmer. Rachel Westaway’s best friend in this campaign would have been Labor writing it off and running dead, just setting up another LIB vs GRN rematch like the byelection. Simply having Labor on the ballot alone would make that contest much, much harder for the Liberals than the byelection, but Labor running dead would have at least toned that difference down a little bit.

A strong Labor campaign and result actually only helps the Greens, since preferences generally flow around 85-15 here. Unless of course Labor surpass the Greens, but I generally agree with the others that 2026 isn’t the year that they’re going to outperform 2018 & 2022, even if they have a stronger candidate.

I still stand by Rachel Westaway needing a minimum 42% primary vote to be competitive in the seat. That represents a +6 primary vote swing from the byelection, and probably very favourable preference flows on top of that. I can’t see any realistic way that Westaway outperforms an extraordinarily favourable byelection (held when the Liberals were polling better than now, too) by +6 on primary votes.

I’ll just note too, Labor have delivered ANZAC Station in this seat which is huge. On top of that, the line which runs through the seat (Sandringham) is taking over the cross-city line and their off-peak services are being doubled next year.

The Pakenham/Cranbourne being taken out of South Yarra Station has minimal impact for residents within this seat, it only impacts people from the other side of Caulfield on those lines getting to South Yarra & Richmond. The only negative impact that has within the seat of Prahran is fewer services at South Yarra Station, but that is offset by:
– Increased frequency on Sandringham Line which cancels it out;
– Frankston line running through the loop still provides loop services from it;
– A whole new station (ANZAC) in the seat providing a third way to get into the CBD

So the impact of Metro Tunnel on Prahran is actually extremely significant. It’s probably one of the seats that benefits the most from it, especially since so many people also commute by St Kilda Road trams.

Rachel Westaway is bizarrely campaigning to have the 58 tram returned to Domain Road from Toorak Road. But I’m not sure if she has looked at a map? Domain Road is north of both the Toorak Rd & ANZAC Station stops, meaning if it ran down Domain Rd instead of Toorak Rd, there would no longer be a direct interchange with any of the other St Kilda Road routes, or with the new ANZAC Station.

In fact when trams were re-routed from Domain to Toorak Rd, the local community were happy with that. Sure some of the businesses along Domain Rd liked having trams running past, but I was in that strip of shops last Saturday morning and it’s hardly struggling. Every cafe was overflowing due to it being opposite ‘The Tan’.

Long story short, the Metro Tunnel will score brownie points for Labor in Prahran due to ANZAC Station being within the seat and the improvements to the Sandringham Line. I don’t think they’ll win Prahran, but I don’t think their vote will tank either, especially with a good candidate and actually putting effort in.

One thing that I think will likely make it harder for Labor to win is, if it ends up as a Labor v Greens contest, I don’t think the Liberal flow of preferences to Labor here will be all that strong, even if the Liberals revert to preference Labor above the Greens. At least nowhere near as strong as in Melbourne at the Federal election. Liberal voters in Victoria seem to absolutely despise the Allan government, perhaps even more so than the Greens who are very quiet in Victorian state politics. Many Liberal voters will put Labor last I feel.

Ultimately Labor and the Greens being at loggerheads in as many seats as possible is probably ideal for the Liberals – forces Labor to not only divert resources but naturally the party is forced to look to the left for their voters in seats like Prahran and it potentially leaves the centre exposed.

For the local campaign though the Labor and Green primary being as close to each other as possible helps the Liberals but I’d be interested to know exactly what kind of voter Labor would target here – disaffected Greens or maybe Hibbins-Westaway voters?

I agree with that Adam, Liberal preferences would probably have a pretty even split even if they put Labor above the Greens.

That said, unlike the overlapping federal result (where the Liberals would have finished a distant third), I can’t see them finishing third here with an incumbent MP and state polling that’s about 6% better than the Victorian federal result.

The overlapping federal result was roughly:
ALP 34
GRN 31
LIB 27

If you applied how current VIC state polling compares to the VIC federal result to these figures, you end up with something like:
LIB 33
GRN 30
ALP 28

That doesn’t even factor in Westaway having incumbency so she could probably do about 2% better than that and I think will almost certainly win the primary vote. So I don’t think there’s much chance of LIB preferences being distributed.

I think the result will look similar to 2018. That might sound weird because 2018 was a Labor landslide and a disaster for the Liberals and the Liberals will certainly outperform that in 2026, but 2018 was the old boundaries that included Toorak, so matching the 2018 result on these boundaries would be a pro-Liberal swing everywhere.

I dont really see this becoming a ALP V GRN seat in 2026 maybe in the future possibly but Labor is still les popular now in 2022/2018 even if they have a stronger candidate.

It’s about as likely as the Liberals winning the seat – ie not very

100% agree with both of the above comments.

Good timing in relation to comments about Resolve’s demographic breakdown showing a 37% LIB primary among the 18-34 cohort in Victoria, Redbridge just released a new VIC poll today for the AFR which also has a demographic breakdown!

Noting that Redbridge does it by generation rather than age bracket, and the 18-34 cohort is made up of roughly 65% Gen Z and 35% Millennials, Redbridge’s breakdown had the LIB primaries at:

Gen Z – 20%
Millennial – 32%

That would put the overall 18-34 cohort’s LIB primary at 28% if you were being kind to the Liberals by considering that 32% to be uniform across Millennial ages, but of course the younger Millennials are likely to skew closer to Gen Z and older Millennials closer to Gen X, so more realistically I’d probably translate that to an 18-34 result of about 26%.

That’s far more in line with other demographic polling where the LIB vote sits around 20% for that cohort, when you factor in the state Libs’ overall support is about +6 compared to federal Libs.

Also I think Redbridge tend to be the leaders in the field when it comes to their demographic analysis. So I would put a lot more trust in their demographic breakdowns than I would those in the Resolve poll. That’s without even factoring in that the Resolve breakdown looked like a massive outlier, while Redbridge’s is almost perfectly in line where it would be if you applied the federal vs state polling variance to federal trends.

Interestingly, Kos’ Facebook post about it states that the Coalition primary is “bolstered by strong numbers in Rural Victoria, but they are under real pressure with an under performing primary vote in provincial city seats, Melbourne’s outer south-east and the Frankston Line where many battleground electorates sit”.

Looks like the polling is supporting the view that the ‘sandbelt’ is no longer the path to victory for the Libs that it was in 2010. Those 8%+ margins will be hard to erase.

Finally, on demographic trends, Kos states that the generation that has inflicted the most damage on Labor is Gen X. That’s where the biggest change/swing is.

Sorry I completely miscalculated something in the above post the wrong way around!!

With a Gen Z primary of 20% and Millennial at 32%, and the 18-34 cohort splitting around 65-35 between Gen Z & Millennials, that would actually equate to an 18-34 primary vote of 24%, not 28%. I accidentally allocated the 65-35 split the wrong way around!

(And then of course the other caveats around younger Millennials being more likely to be on the lower end of the Millennial figure also still applies)

@Trent while there’s still just under a year to go, one does wonder if a possibility like the SA Election 2014 occurs – TPP in favour of the Coalition, but with the largest swings in the wrong areas, and lackluster ones in the ones needed to gain government. Hence also why there’s the speculation about the possibility that Labor could still retain government but lose Bendigo East (if it was to occur, it would be the first time I believe – losing the leader but retaining government).

I don’t think it’s impossible for the Coalition to win the election, but I also think there’s quite a lot of seats among the “must win to form government” that are more like two term strategy seats – those that are reluctant to support a Coalition opposition, but would swing heavily in favour of them only after they win government and prove themselves satisfactory.

short of a landslide the coalition wont win. post redistribution the libs will probably end up just outside the 2cp making it a lab v grn seat.

The pre-christmas polling would probably bolster the Coalition on that front because they’ve began pushing 40% primary since the leadership swap meanwhile a couple of pollsters now have Labor back in the 20s. I think with a primary vote in the 40s for the Coalition they would consider themselves in a good position to win back many eastern suburb seats where they can’t rely much on preferences from minor parties. Sort of gets a narrative going that with Wilson out front they look a bit more ready to govern too

@ WL
I think that is possible. However, i can see a scenario where Libs win with a slightly less than 8% statewide swing. so maybe 7-7.5%
That could occur if the swings in seats like Point Cook, South Barwon, Bellarine etc are won (8-10% seats) but Labor gets some swings to it in the Red Wall working class areas. That could happen in a seat like Greenvale/St Albans/Thomastown/Broadmeadows where the right wing minors such as DLP/Freedom party etc collapse, no real change in Labor PV or even a decrease in Labor PV but a surge in Victorian Socialists/Greens, this will not really change Labor seat count but affect statewide swing. Even in 1992 there were a few seats that had a swing to Labor.

Becoming an increasingly credible outcome that Labor ends up winning this seat quite comfortably on GRN preferences – seems local Stonnington Councillor Meghan Hopper will run a pretty strong campaign and given Labor will almost universally be on the defence elsewhere if current polling holds (it may not of course) this would be a very handy pick-up that they’d be unlikely to lose for quite some time unless there is a significantly disadvantageous boundary redraw

Only Danger with the strategy to win Greens seat is that Greens will support Labor in a minority government while if they loose Sunbury, Niddrie, Yan Yean etc then the Libs could form government so defending seats from Libs is harder.

I agree Maxim, I think this will be a tight race at the 3CP stage now. Labor appear to be taking it more seriously than they have in a long time.

With the Liberal having 18 months of incumbency, being moderate, and Labor being less popular than 2018-22 though, I think it’s safe to say that Rachel Westaway will win the primary vote and the close 3CP race will be between the Greens & Labor again, much like 2018, but similar to 2018 the winner of that 3CP contest should go on to beat Westaway quite comfortably (maybe 55-45 or so).

@Nimalan, I think the bigger risk for Labor would be if they didn’t put any effort into Prahran, ran dead, and then let a repeat of the byelection happen where the Liberals scrape through because the Labor vote tanks and there’s a smaller pool of preferences to help get the Greens over the line. Then you just end up with another seat in the Liberal column.

By running a strong candidate and putting in effort, you increase the combined Labor + Greens vote which makes it harder for the Liberals to retain. I don’t necessarily think that putting effort into Greens contests causes them harm in ALP v LIB seats either, or has to take away from efforts elsewhere.

On a broader note about the Vic Election, I wonder how the absolute collapse of the Coalition federally is going to play out and potentially harm the Liberals throughout the year?

The Victorian Liberals have been making a real effort to finally try to present themselves as somewhat of an electable alternative, trying to focus on the right things for a change, present a unified and moderate leadership, they’re doing more right now than they have in ages and Labor are about the least popular they’ve been in Victoria since the 1990s right now.

Usually you would say state vs federal, different issues, voters are smart enough to distinguish between the two, which they are. However, what’s happening right now with the former Coalition federally is beyond anything I’ve seen before, it’s a full-blown collapse of one of the country’s two major parties that threatens its very existence.

There’s still another 9-10 months until the VIC Election, and there is an SA election in March where they are expected to be wiped out. That could be the final nail in the coffin that accelerates the federal collapse. I suspect the state Libs are very worried about what’s happening at the federal level and how it could impact the state election.

@ Trent
Provided Labor does not loose the eye of the ball in sandbagging seats especially like Sydenham, Point Cook etc as Labor is under pressure in many seats

Regarding state/Federal issues and ONP. Antony Green says he expect rural nats to be fine from ONP challenge in Victoria. However, ONP may pick up dissatisfied voters NW Melbourne instead of Libs.
https://antonygreen.com.au/one-nations-poll-surge-the-first-25-seats-to-watch/

My thoughts on that topic are more about what it would mean for the state party, if for example the federal party were to completely collapse almost beyond existence. That doesn’t really sound so far-fetched with what has happened over recent months, and a near-total wipeout in SA might only accelerate that.

So it’s less about whether One Nation win seats off the Coalition in Victoria, but more about how the absolute collapse of their federal counterparts and the national narrative that One Nation are ‘replacing’ the Liberals might make it harder for the Libs to pick up the 17 seats they need.

The big issue in inner-city seats for the Liberals is if the narrative starts becoming that there’s a likelihood or even possibility that the Liberals would only be able to govern in minority with One Nation, how comfortable would voters even in seats like Hawthorn, Kew, Brighton & Caulfield let alone Prahran or Albert Park feel about placing their vote with the Libs if that’s a possible outcome?

That could revive Teals at a state level and they may challenge for Hawthorn, Kew etc
What Kos Samaras said is a concern is that seats like Melton, Point Cook have large CALD population so a fear of anti-immigrant sentiment may mean that some of these voters may comeback to Labor if Jacinta Allan can associate the State Coalition with Federal Coalition and One Nation.

I think they absolutely will too. The better One Nation keep doing in national polls, and if they poll well & the Liberals collapse in SA and get wiped out (which polling is pointing to), the easier it will be for the Labor campaign to focus on the overall Liberal brand, their national collapse, their replacement by One Nation, and threaten the prospect of the Liberal Party governing in coalition/minority with One Nation.

Wouldn’t be hard to do, and that would benefit Labor pretty much everywhere, from CALD voters in the outer & middle suburbs who fear One Nation’s anti-immigration stances to educated, socially progressive voters in inner suburbs.

VIC Labor have to be looking at what’s unfolding and seeing huge opportunities for their campaign right now, while the VIC Liberals are surely nervous about where the federal Liberals are headed and how it could sabotage their own campaign.

@Trent, Pauline Hanson also said she wouldn’t live on Victoria which Labor could capitalise on this saying that Hanson is anti-Victoria and is lotal towards East of the Barassi Line.

One Nation has candidates in all lower house seats in SA and so potentially they could do the same in Victoria to take advantage of their own growth and popularity as well as Vic Labor’s unpopularity. In Victoria, they have the potential to chip away at both the Labor and Coalition’s votes, more so in the outer suburbs and regional electorates. ONP has a pretty strong anti-major party campaign.

Jess Wilson could be in a precarious position. Adopting ONP policies or being see as too ONP-like would repel moderate Liberals and CALD voters. She’ll have to figure out where to preference ONP.

At the 2025 federal election, the Coalition and One Nation did a preference swap. The Coalition in most states even put One Nation at number 2 for the senate. There were claims that this preference swap annoyed normally moderate Liberals and hurt them in the suburbs.