ziltoid101

WA's biggest local music event for the year. Anyone going? What bands are we keen to see?

Tachikawa, Japan

Hello! Maybe this is the wrong place as I'm sure there are a lot of political aficionados here, but I did a little write-up on the little quirks, key seats, and unexpected results of Saturday's election. I've personally found it kinda annoying to trawl through ABC and Poll Pludger on a seat-by-seat basis, so I thought I'd give more of a state-focused overview on what's happened for those that haven't really looked into the finer details of the results yet.

NSW

• Labor retain all of (and grow their margins in) their marginal seats, and gain marginal seats of Banks, Bennelong, and Hughes (thanks to a big redistribution of the district area) from the Liberal party.
• Independent (and former Nationals member) Andrew Gee has gained Calare from his old party.
• Independent Nicolette Boele is likely to gain the seat of Bradfield from the Liberal party.
• Independent Dai Le retains her marginal seat of Fowler.

VIC

• Labor gains the marginal seats of Deakin and (probably) Menzies from the Liberal party. Labor also have a good chance of winning Melbourne back from The Greens, partially due to a redistribution of the district area.
• Labor risk losing their (formerly) safe seat of Bendigo to the Nationals.
• Another safe Labor seat, Calwell, is challenged by multiple independents (making the count difficult/slower), but Labor are likely to retain.
• Similarly, the Liberal seat of Monash has a close, complicated count, but is likely to remain unchanged.
• Goldstein remains a toss-up between incumbent independent Zoe Daniel and the Liberal party.
• Independent Monique Ryan is fairly likely to retain Kooyong.
• The marginal Liberal seat of Casey has bucked the trend and been retained, with a modest swing away from Labor.

QLD

• Labor has won marginal seats Bonner, Dickson, Leichhardt, Forde, and Petrie from the LNP. Longman may join this list, but still remains a coin toss.
• Labor has gained Brisbane and Griffith from The Greens. Ryan should be retained by The Greens. A lot of these big swings are shaped more so by the 2CP count rather than changes in The Green's primary vote.
• Flynn is the one marginal LNP seat that has bucked the trend, being retained with a strengthened LNP vote.

WA

• Labor has claimed the marginal seat of Moore from the Liberal party. Probably helped by ex-Liberal incumbent MP Ian Goodenough running as an independent against his old party.
• Labor have also held onto (and strengthened their result in) Tangney, a key marginal seat they swung in their favour in 2022.
• The new seat of Bullwinkel is likely to be claimed by Labor in a very close contest (currently only 85 votes difference, out of 89000 votes total!). This seat is perhaps one of the more curious ones in Australia atm, it looks like one of those American gerrymandered districts - the area is largely around the conservative Wheatbelt and Perth Hills region, but contains a thin sliver of Labor's stronghold suburbs to the far east of Perth.
• Forrest will likely be retained by the Liberal party, although independent Sue Chapman has given them a good challenge.
• Regional areas showed very strong swings towards the Liberal party, even in the semi-metropolitan area of Canning. The 'Keep The Sheep' campaign has been very vocal and this likely reflects their efforts (although this is only really relevant to Canning, the only seat possibly within Labor's reach this time).
• Fremantle (one of Labor's safest seats nationally!) looks like it could be lost to independent Kate Hulett. A super thin margin on this, so we'll need to wait and see. I think this would be the first example of a "teal independent" targeting a safe Labor seat - to my knowledge all others have targeted safe LNP seats. If Kate gets in, this could really shape the way people see this political movement going forwards.
• Kate Chaney has held on to retain Curtin as an independent, but only slightly improved her narrow 2022 margin. This seems to be the case with many returning teal independents - a strong Liberal performance in 2028 could see them as some of the first seats to fall.

SA

• Labor has gained the marginal seat of Sturt from the Liberal party, and strengthened their lead in all other seats.
• The Liberal party holds on to two seats; Barker and Grey (the latter in spite of a strong effort from independent Anita Kuss)

TAS

• Huge swings to the ALP has seen them secure the two Liberal-held seats of Bass and Braddon. Labor will also retain their safe seat of Franklin despite a decent challenge from independent Peter George.
• The only non-Labor-held seat is now Clark, held comfortably by independent Andrew Wilkie.

ACT

• Very likely no changes, with ALP retaining their three seats despite a bit of competition from independent Jessie Price in Bean.

NT

• Labor retain their two seats. There was a considerable swing against them in Solomon (Darwin/Palmerston), but a roughly equal swing towards them in Lingiari (the rest of the NT).

SENATE

• The senate takes longer to count, so this is more of a preliminary analysis. Long story short, nothing too drastic has changed. ALP is likely to gain at least 3 senators; LNP has likely lost 5 senators. One Nation may gain up to 2 of these senator positions lost by the LNP, but Labor are probably front-runners for these spots. The best case scenario for Labor would be that they only have to rely on the Greens (and not other crossbenchers) for a majority.
• In each of the 5 big states, the LNP appear very likely to lose one senator. These spots are likely to be gained by ALP senators, but One Nation could potentially compete for this spot in both WA and SA.
• ACT and NT unsurprisingly remain unchanged. The Liberal party has plummeted to 15-20% of the primary vote in ACT - maybe threatening to sack a large portion of the population of the territory wasn't a great idea.
• Other parties are probably unaffected in the senate (QLD looks like they're going to re-elect Malcolm Roberts for One Nation :/). There's an outside chance that Jacqui Lambie loses her spot to Labor in Tasmania, but it's too early to say.

Summary

• Labor gained a lot of seats from the Liberal party, strengthening their position in the House Of Representatives. The Nationals seemed largely immune to this swing.
• Independents also did fairly well in this election, with incumbents retaining and newcomers gaining several seats, continuing the huge rise of independents we saw in 2022.
• The Greens would be concerned that their primary vote has stagnated following a decent rise in 2022. Their big loss of seats was mostly out of their control (due to changes in 2CP counts, plus the redistribution of Melbourne), although there was still a considerable swing against Bandt.
• One Nation are still a fair ways off having much power, but their primary vote grew in every state, about 1-3% of the total vote. Considering they only have ~6% of the national primary, this is a fairly decent increase for them.
• Australia continues to ignore Clive Palmer. God bless this country.

Let me know your thoughts/insights! I'd love to hear any personal experience/vibes from seats you know about.

Here's a random guy's overview of what to pay attention to for the upcoming federal election, looking at the WA seats for the House Of Representatives. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and insights about these seats.

KEY SEATS

BULLWINKEL: A new seat introduced for this election, covering the extreme eastern suburbs (think High Wycombe) and the communities in the hills out to Northam and York. Based on the results from polling centres within this boundary in the previous election, ABC predicts it's currently "held" by Labor with a margin of 3.3% (largely supported by a strong Labor vote in the suburbs east of Midland). Recent YouGov polling basically shows it as a coin toss between Labor and Liberal. A recurring theme in some of these seats will be the success of the Keep The Sheep campaign, and to what extent it galvanises more rural areas to vote against Labor. For example, a drop in the Labor vote in Northam (which had ~52% 2CP in favour of Labor in 2022) could see the seat 'swing' to the Liberals. The former state opposition leader Mia Davies is also running in this seat for the Nationals as a relatively high-profile candidate, and I imagine most of her votes will preference Liberals also. For these reasons I think the Liberals have the slight edge in Bullwinkel, but it's still anyone's game.

CANNING: This seat incorporates Mandurah and the surrounding region. This includes some rural-ish areas, so again the Keep The Sheep campaign may have some influence (I'm really not sure if it will prove to be effective for them, or a complete flop!). Liberals won with a 3.6% margin in 2022, but this year's redistribution (now cutting ever so slightly into Labor's Rockingham stronghold) has narrowed the predicted margin to a mere 1.2%. As a ballpark, ThePollBludger is currently showing a statewide 2.2% swing towards Labor since 2022 within WA - obviously different areas will vote differently, but this seat is definitely within Labor's reach now. However, YouGov polling is still showing Liberals maintaining their slight lead, so I'd only expect this seat to flip to Labor if we see a big Labor win on Saturday.

CURTIN: This seat basically covers the Golden Triangle, and is historically one of the safest Liberal seats - but is no more, being currently held by independent Kate Chaney with a slim margin of 1.3%. Liberals have thrown a lot of funding into trying to get this seat back, and it feels like Chaney has been campaigning a bit less actively than in 2022. There's a risk Chaney has alienated some of her voterbase by backflipping on live export (she was initially in support of the ban, but ended up voting against the ban). However, despite ultimately voting against the ban, the Keep The Sheep campaign still seems to be campaigning against her, which seems like the worst outcome for Chaney. But there's still hope for her - incumbent independents generally tend to be more resistant to swings than the major parties, and both YouGov and RedBridge polling predict Chaney to hold her slim margin.

MOORE: This seat includes Joondalup and the nearby coastal suburbs from Trigg to Currambine. Despite being fairly safely held onto by the Liberal party since 1990, the 2022 election saw them only barely hold onto this seat, with a margin of just 0.9%. Again, if ThePollBludger's 2.2% state swing towards Labor holds up, Moore could be theirs for the taking. It gets even more complicated for the Liberals - the previously sitting Liberal MP Ian Goodenough lost preselection, but is still running for the seat (now as an independent), which will pull a chunk of the primary votes away from the Liberal party. I'd expect most of Goodenough's preferences to flow to the Liberal party anyway, but in such a marginal seat it could have a real impact on the outcome! However, current YouGov polling still shows Libs holding onto the majority - this one will go down to the wire.

TANGNEY: This seat covers the area to the south of the Swan and Canning Rivers, from Bicton to Canning Vale. Similar to Moore, it's been held comfortably by the Liberals for most of the past 40 years, but a huge 13.9% swing in 2022 saw Labor claim this seat with a narrow margin of 2.8%. Both parties are throwing everything they have at this seat - the streets are absolutely littered with corflutes. Labor are probably the favourites here; statewide polling would suggest that a 2.8% swing away from Labor is unlikely, and both YouGov and RedBridge polling both predict Labor to hold on.

LESS INTERESTING SEATS

• Brand: Labor stronghold.
• Burt: Labor stronghold.
• Cowan: Safe for Labor.
• Durack: Fairly safe for Liberal, will be a good barometer for the Keep The Sheep campaign.
• Forrest: Liberal probably the favourites, but could end up being one to watch. Liberals currently hold by 4.2%, but their sitting MP is retiring and they now face opposition from a new independent Sue Chapman, who has a chance to make a real splash.
• Fremantle: Labor stronghold. Worth watching the Greens performance here; this is definitely a seat they have their eye on in the future and they're a smokey to make the 2CP count. They're still a good while off genuinely contesting for the seat though.
• Hasluck: Safe for Labor, especially after significant redistribution of the boundaries.
• O'Connor: Safe for Liberal, Nationals might make the 2CP.
• Pearce: Fairly safe for Labor, who received a huge 14% swing in 2022 following a big resdistribution of boundaries.
• Perth: Labor stronghold. Greens best chance of making the 2CP should the Liberal vote collapse further.
• Swan: Safe for Labor.

I think the big stories to look out for will be if the Keep The Sheep campaign hurts Labor much, if we see Labor grow or shrink their margins, if the Liberals can recover any of their 'strongholds', and if the teals are still in fashion. Curious to hear anyone else's thoughts or insights!

Grumpy, dumpy, and gorgeous! I'm so lucky to have these nearby. They spend most of their lives underground but when it rains in October-November you can hear them call as they start to emerge.