Category: Western Australian Politics

Western Australian election guide

Introducing the Poll Bludger’s comprehensive guide to a Western Australian election that will be held on March 8, federal circumstances permitting.

The Poll Bludger kicks off what promises to be an action-packed year with a comprehensive guide to a Western Australian state election now 66 days away. As always, this features pages for each of the lower house electorates including historic background and displays of past results in map, table and chart form, a guide to an election for the Legislative Council to be conducted for the first time under a new system that abolishes the old model of six-member regions, and a general overview of the situation. A full accounting of the post-redistribution margins and party vote shares can be found here. If any of this seems of value, a reminder that the bi-monthly Poll Bludger donation drive is also under way.

Some recent election-related developments since I last weighed in on the subject, either new or hitherto unnoticed by me:

• Steve Catania has been confirmed as Labor’s candidate for Midland, to be vacated with the retirement of Michelle Roberts. Catania is a lawyer and former Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union organiser, the brother of Labor-turned-Nationals former MP Vince Catania, and the son of former Labor MP and Vincent mayor Nick Catania.

• Kyran O’Donnell, the Liberal member for Kalgoorlie from 2017 to 2021, announced in August he would run for the seat as an independent. O’Donnell is a former police officer and was elected to Kalgoorlie-Boulder City Council in October 2023. He was initially preselected for an unwinnable position on the Liberal Legislative Council ticket for the coming election.

• Three independents have emerged who can loosely be categorised at teals: Rachel Horncastle in Cottesloe, a general practitioner backed by the Cott Independent group; Lisa Thornton in Churchlands, a Stirling councillor backed by the Churchlands Independent; and Rosemarie de Vries in Nedlands, a Subiaco councillor. Another independent in a normally Liberal-held seat is former Global Lithium director Hayley Lawrance in South Perth, who disavows the teal label.

WA miscellany: state polls, federal polls, Labor candidates

Another poll showing Labor headed for a much reduced but still substantial majority in WA, and holding up relatively well there federally.

DemosAU brings us a poll of 948 respondents in Western Australia, conducted from October 30 to November 4, showing voting intention both federally and for a state election that will be held on March 8 unless a federal election clashes with it. On the latter count, the poll credits state Labor with a two-party lead of 56-44, suggesting a swing against it of 14% from the extraordinary result of 2021. The primary votes are Labor 41%, Liberal 34%, Nationals 4%, Greens 12% and others 9%, with Roger Cook leading Liberal leader Libby Mettam 42-29 as preferred premier.

The federal component of the poll has Labor leading 52-48, a swing against it of 3% compared with 2022, from primary votes of Labor 34%, Coalition 38%, Greens 14%, One Nation 6% and others 8%. Anthony Albanese leads Peter Dutton as preferred prime minister by 40% to 33%. The linked reports for both polls feature breakdowns by gender, age, education, residential tenure and personal income.

Another federal voting intention poll from the state, by RedBridge Group, shows Labor travelling remarkably well with a two-party lead of 54.5-45.5. The poll is related in a report by Katina Curtis of The West Australian, whose Labor sources say the result is consistent with the party’s internal polling.

Further developments relating to the state election:

• Rhys Williams, who has served as the local mayor since 2017, has been confirmed as Labor’s new candidate for Mandurah after David Templeman, the member since 2001, announced his retirement in September. The Liberal Party’s initial nominee for the seat, James Hall, withdrew last month over social media posts from 2017 stating he was “proud to be white”.

• Michelle Roberts has announced she will retire at the election after a parliamentary career going back to 1994, all but the first two years of which have been spent as member for Midland. The West Australian reports her likely successor as Labor candidate is Stephen Catania, a former CFMEU lawyer now with Eureka Lawyers. Catania is the father of Nick Catania and brother of Vince Catania, both former MPs.

Freshwater Strategy: 55-45 to Labor in Western Australia

Multiple polls point to a win for Labor in Western Australia rather more on the scale of 2017 than 2021.

Hot on the heels of the Wolf & Smith national results on state voting intention, The West Australian had its own Freshwater Strategy poll on Monday which matched its headline figure on 55-45 in favour of the state Labor government, as compared with its unrepeatable 70-30 win at the 2021 election. The primary votes are Labor 39%, Liberal 32%, Nationals 6% and Greens 11%, with Roger Cook leading Libby Mettam 46-34 as preferred premier.

The accompanying reportage says Roger Cook has a plus seven net approval rating and that 37% “have either never heard of him or are unsure”, which presumably means he has 35% approval and 28% disapproval. This compares with plus four for Libby Mettam, minus two for the presumably little-known Nationals leader Shane Love, minus four for ambitious Liberal election candidate Basil Zempilas – and plus 41 for the departed Mark McGowan. The sample for the poll was 1045, with the field work period not identified.

UPDATE: The Freshwater Strategy website has the results, which show Libby Mettam at 21% approval and 17% disapproval (29% had never heard of her, compared with 10% for Roger Cook). The poll was conducted Friday to Sunday.

The voting intention results are little different from those of another Freshwater Strategy poll reported by The West Australian three weeks ago, commissioned in this case by the Liberal Party. Conducted in July from a sample of 1000, it had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%. The primary votes from the Wolf & Smith poll were Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%.

Recent-ish news relevant to the March 8 election:

• Labor determined the order of its Legislative Council ticket in mid-July, with Dylan Caporn of The West Australian helpfully listing all 22 candidates and their union and factional affiliations. With Labor on track for perhaps fourteen seats, nine of the 22 incumbents are in positions of greater or lesser comfort; another, Stephen Pratt, will run for the lower house seat of Jandakot; two (Sandra Carr and Dan Caddy) are on the cusp; and four in positions where they are unlikely to be returned. Four non-incumbents hold competitive or better positions, one being Nedlands MP Katrina Stratton at number ten. Andrew O’Donnell, a staffer for Balcatta MP David Michael, aligned with the Right faction Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA), is at nine; Lauren Cayoun, the party’s assistant state secretary, aligned with the Right faction Australian Workers Union, is at eleven; and Parwinder Kaur, biotechnician and associate professor at the University of Western Australia, aligned with the SDA, is at thirteen.

• One Nation’s sole incumbent, South West region MLC Ben Dawkins, has not won a position on his party’s Legislative Council ticket. Dawkins ran for Labor at the 2021 election, entered parliament as an independent when he filled Alannah MacTiernan’s vacancy on a countback in March 2023, and joined One Nation in February. The ticket will instead be headed by Rod Caddies, the head of the party’s state organisation, who told The West Australian he “would be the one responsible for who is on the ticket”. Caddies expressed the view that Dawkins had not “lived up to the professionalism of what I would expect”. Dawkins will nonetheless remain a member of the party, whose formal registration for the election was confirmed by the Western Australian Electoral Commission a fortnight ago.

• Aswath Chavittupara, whose daughter Aishwarya’s death while awaiting treatment at the Perth Children’s Hospital emergency department in April 2021 was a serious embarrassment for the government, will be the Liberal candidate for Morley, after earlier saying he would run as an independent. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Chavittupara won preselection ahead of Nirmal Singh, owner of a beauty services company.

• The Liberal candidate for Bicton will be Christopher Dowson, a former policy officer at the Department of Premier and Cabinet and current postdoctoral fellow at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. Jack Dietsch of The West Australian reports Dowson won preselection ahead of Bill Koul, owner of an engineering consultancy and an unsuccessful candidate for the federal Tangney preselection.

Polls: Resolve Strategic, RedBridge/Accent MRP poll, Wolf & Smith federal and state (open thread)

One regular and two irregular polls, one projecting a Labor minority government, the other offering a rare read on state voting intention across the land.

A lot going on in the world of polling:

Resolve Strategic

Nine Newspapers has the regular monthly Resolve Strategic poll, which has Labor on 28% (down one), the Coalition on 37% (steady), the Greens on 13% (steady) and One Nation on 6% (steady). My estimate of two-party preferred from these results is 50-50, based on preference flows from the 2022 election. Anthony Albanese holds a 35-34 lead as preferred prime minister, after trailing 36-35 last time. Albanese’s combined very good and good rating is up one to 35%, with poor and very poor at up two 53%, while Peter Dutton is respectively steady at 41% and up four to 42%. The poll was conducted Tuesday to Saturday from a sample of 1614.

Accent Research/RedBridge Group MRP poll

Accent Research and RedBridge Group have published their second multi-level regression with post-stratification (MRP) poll, in what looks like being a regular quarterly series. This aims for a detailed projected election result by surveying a large national sample, in this case of 5976 surveyed from July 10 to August 27, and using demographic modelling to produce results for each electorate. The full report isn’t in the public domain as far as I can tell but it’s been covered on the ABC’s Insiders and in the Financial Review. UPDATE: Full report here.

The results are not encouraging for Labor: where the previous exercise rated Labor a strong chance of retaining majority government, with a floor of 73 seats and a further nine nine too close to call, they are now down to 64 with 14 too close to call, with the Coalition up from 53 to 59. The median prediction from a range of potential outcomes is that Labor will hold 69 seats, the Coalition 68, the Greens three and others ten. This is based on primary vote projections in line with the recent trend of national polling, with Labor on 32%, the Coalition on 38% and the Greens on 12%.

Five seats are rated as Coalition gains that weren’t last time, Gilmore, Lingiari, Lyons and Aston having moved from too-close-to-call and Paterson going from Labor retain to Coalition gain without passing go. Bruce, Dobell, Hunter, Casey, Tangney, McEwen and Bennelong go from Labor retain to too-close-to-call, while Coalition-held Deakin and Moore are no longer on their endangered list. However, the traffic is not all one way, with Casey in Victoria and Forde in Queensland going from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call. So far as the underlying model is concerned, it is presumably not a coincidence that both seats are on the metropolitan fringes.

The results show a mixed picture for the teals, who are reckoned to have gone backwards in the city, such that Curtin goes from too-close-to-call to Coalition retain and Goldstein goes from teal retain to Liberal gain, but forwards in the country, shifting Wannon from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call while maintaining Cowper as a teal gain. For the Greens, Ryan goes from retained to too-close-to-call while Brisbane does the opposite, with Melbourne and Griffith remaining Greens retains.

Whereas the last assessment was based on 2022 election boundaries, the latest one makes use of the redistribution proposals for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Respectively, this takes the teal seat of North Sydney out of contention and moves Hughes from Coalition retain to too-close-to-call; costs Labor Higgins and moves Chisholm from Labor retain to too-close-to-call; and introduces Bullwinkel to the too-close-to-call column.

My routine caveat with MRP is that it handles major parties better than independents and minors, perhaps especially with what by MRP standards is fairly modest sample (a similar exercise before the last election involving some of the same personnel had a sample of 18,923). I am particularly dubious about its projection of a blowout Labor win against the Greens in Wills. There also seems reason to doubt its precision in relation to a demographic wild card like Lingiari.

Wolf & Smith federal and state polling

Also just out is an expansive national poll from a new outfit called Wolf & Smith, a “strategic campaign agency based in Sydney” that appears to involve Jim Reed, principal of Resolve Strategic and alumnus of Liberal Party pollsters Crosby Textor. The poll was conducted from August 6 to 29 through an online panel from a vast sample of 10,239, and includes results federally and for each state government. The federal poll has Labor leading 51-49, from primary votes of Labor 29%, Coalition 36%, Greens 13% and One Nation 6%. At state level:

• The poll joins RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic in recording weak numbers for the Minns government in New South Wales, showing a 50-50 result on two-party preferred from primary votes of Labor 32%, Coalition 38% and Greens 12%, from a sample of 2047.

• The Coalition leads 52-48 in Victoria from primary votes of Labor 28%, Coalition 40% and Greens 14%, from a sample of 2024, which is likewise broadly in line with recent results from RedBridge Group and Resolve Strategic.

• The Liberal National Party leads 57-43 in Queensland from primary votes of Labor 24%, Coalition 42%, Greens 12%, One Nation 8% and Katter’s Australian Party 3%, from a sample of 1724, which lines up well with the most recent YouGov poll.

• Labor leads 55-45 in Western Australia from primary votes of Labor 37%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 3%, Greens 12% and One Nation 4%, from a sample of 878. Again, this sits well with the most recent other poll from the state, conducted for the Liberal Party by Freshwater Strategy in July from a sample of 1000 and published in The West Australian, which had Labor leading 56-44 from primary votes of Labor 39%, Liberal 33%, Nationals 5% and Greens 12%.

• In the first poll result of any substance from the state since the March 2022 election, Labor leads 60-40 in South Australia from primary votes of Labor 41%, Liberal 28%, Greens 11% and One Nation 5%, from a sample of 856. The Liberal leadership change occurred in the first week of the poll’s three-week survey period.

• A Tasmanian sample of 786 finds both major parties down from the March election result, Liberal from 36.7% to 32% and Labor from 29.0% to 23%, with the Greens steady on 14% (13.9% at the election) and the Jacqui Lambie Network up from 6.7% to 11% – though most of the survey period predated the party’s recent implosion.

And the rest

• The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre has results of polling conducted by YouGov in June concerning the US alliance and related matters of regional strategy, conducted in conjunction with polling in the US and Japan. Together with an Essential Research poll in July, it points to a softening in attitudes towards Donald Trump, with 26% now rating that Australia should withdraw from the alliance if he wins, down from 37% last year. However, 46% would be “very concerned about the state of US democracy. Twenty per cent of Australian respondents felt US handling of China was too aggressive, compared with only 9% in Japan and 10% in the US, and 40% agreed Australia should send military forces “to help the United States defend Taiwan … if China attacks”, down six from last year, with 32% disagreeing, up ten. Respondents in all three countries were asked if it were “a good idea for Australia to have nuclear-powered submarines”: 51% of Australians agreed while 19% disagreed, compared with 35% and 16% of Americans daring to venture an opinion one way or the other. The survey was conducted from June 17 to 25, from sample of a little over 1000 in each country.

• JWS Research has the results of its latest quarterly True Issues survey on issue salience. Cost of living remains by far the issue most frequently invoked as being among the “most important issues the Australian government should focus on”, despite a six-point drop since May. The survey also finds a net minus 22 rating for direction of the national economy, down two on May and the equal worst result going back to the series’ inception in 2013.

Western Australian election minus eight months

A small sample WA state poll offers limited but very good news for the Labor government. Also featured: 3500 words of minute detail on six months’ worth of preselections for next year’s election.

State polls from Western Australia these days are few and far between (and rarer still in South Australia, but that’s another story), so I consider it worth observing that The West Australian today reports on a small-sample private poll for the northern suburbs seat of Hillarys by Utting Research, whose principal is former Labor pollster John Utting – and beg the reader’s indulgence for the over-analysis to follow.

Keeping in mind its sample of 350 and error margin of over 5%, its result of 61-39 in favour of Labor suggests a swing to the Liberals of 8% – impressive in normal contexts, but not where the statewide result from the previous election was 70-30. As the report in The West Australian observes, a uniform swing of that size would bag the Liberals only four extra seats on top of their existing three (the two they won in 2021 and the third gained with North West Central MP Merome Beard’s defection from the Nationals, which will only be retained if she can defeat Nationals leader Shane Love in the new seat of Mid West). To this could presumably be added a Nationals gain from Labor in Warren-Blackwood, getting them to four if they win Mid West and three if they don’t. Barring losses to independents or minor parties, Labor would continue to reign supreme with 49 seats out of 59.

The poll nonetheless shows a dive in the Labor vote primary vote to 45%, compared with my own post-redistribution reckoning of 61.3% in 2021. However, none of this goes to the Liberals, who are at 27% as compared with 26.8%. The Greens are at 15%, after managing only 5.2% in 2021. Roger Cook is at 41% approval and 36% approval; the poll didn’t bother with Libby Mettam and skipped straight to Basil Zempilas, on 38% approval and 40% disapproval but with a remarkable 95% name recognition. The news was less happy for federal Labor – whereas 52% expressed approval of the Cook government and 37% disapproval, the result for the Albanese government was almost exactly reversed at 36% and 53%. The poll was conducted June 3 to 14 for the Home Builders Action Group.

Another benefit from the poll is in providing me with an opportunity to unload the gigantic volume of state preselection news I have accumulated since the last such post six month ago. To make things semi-digestible, seats are gathered below by upper house region for the metropolitan seats:

Continue reading “Western Australian election minus eight months”

WA state round-up: RedBridge poll and preselections A-Z

A new poll showing Labor continuing to dominate state politics in WA, plus a vast accumulation of preselection intelligence to have emerged from recent media reportage.

RedBridge Group has a rare item of state polling from Western Australia (though not as rare as in South Australia, whose affairs of the past year or so will be covered here soon), and so radically does it differ from the last state poll that it’s hard to say where things stand. This one has Labor with a two-party lead of 59.4-40.6, and while this amounts to a 10% swing from the black swan event of 2021, it is by normal standards a remarkably strong result for a government that has been led since June by Roger Cook. The primary votes are Labor 44%, Liberal 29%, Nationals 4%, Greens 11% and One Nation 3%, which compares with election results of Labor 59.9%, Liberal 21.3%, Nationals 4.0%, Greens 6.9% and One Nation 1.3%. As noted in the post below, the poll also contains federal voting intention numbers that find Labor replicating its 55-45 advantage from the 2022 election. No field work dates at this stage, but the sample was 1200.

The release of the poll is timely from the perspective of this site, as I was about ready to unload a compendium of news relevant to the March 2025 state election. Preselection news exists in particularly abundant degree for the Liberals, who have set nomination deadlines across January and February for their numerous targets of opportunity. Except where otherwise indicated, the information below is derived from two overviews last month from Josh Zimmerman of The West Australian, one concerning the Liberals and the other Labor. Margins identified below are based on my own determinations from the recently finalised redistribution.

Starting with the Liberals:

Continue reading “WA state round-up: RedBridge poll and preselections A-Z”

Western Australian state redistribution finalised

Analysis of the boundaries that will apply at the next Western Australian state election in March 2025.

The Western Australian state redistribution has been finalised, leaving undisturbed the basic scheme from the draft proposal in which the regional seats of Moore and North West Central are merged into Mid-West and a new seat of Oakford is created on Perth’s south-eastern fringe. A geospatial file has not yet been provided, so the analysis below is based on eyeballing the published maps and reports, leaving open the possibility I may have missed a few things.

The main change from the draft is that the commissioners have thought better of their plan to turn the coastal northern suburbs seats of Carine and Hillarys into elongated north-south electorates of Hillarys and Padbury, the former covering the coast and the latter the area further inland. I calculated that the proposed Padbury had a Labor margin of 12.9% while the revised Hillarys had 9.6%, whereas now I get 18.9% for Hillarys (19.0% at the election) and 4.0% for Carine (2.5%).

The West Australian recently reported that Caitlin Collins, Labor’s member for Hillarys, was being tipped for Padbury – presumably she will now be more than happy to stay put. It was also reported in The West that Padbury was of interest to Liam Staltari, who was “viewed as a rising star within the Liberal Party” and had recently moved to Duncraig – now at the heart of the highly tempting prospect of Carine.

Two Liberals were said to be eyeing Hillarys as proposed by the draft boundaries: Tony Krsticevic, who held Carine before 2021 and will surely now wish to do so again, and Scott Edwardes, son of party powerbrokers Colin and Cheryl Edwardes and candidate in 2021 for Kingsley, the seat formerly held by his mother. Krsticevic has been linked with the “Clan” faction, while Edwardes is part of a northern suburbs bloc that includes his parents and upper house aspirant Simon Ehrenfeld.

Other changes from the draft include the reversal of alterations to Balcatta, a marginal seat in normal circumstances, that would have reduced the margin from 25.8% to 24.5%. Balcatta was to gain part of Gwelup from Scarborough and lose part of Westminster to Morley. To balance this revision, Scarborough no longer stands to gain a part of Scarborough and Doubleview from Churchlands – I now have the Labor margin there at 9.3%, hardly changed from 9.4% in the draft, but down from the actual Labor margin of 10.4%. Churchlands will in turn no longer gain part of City Beach from Cottesloe, boosting the Labor margin to 1.6% from 0.8% at the election and 0.1% in the draft. Cottesloe, one of two seats won by the Liberals, will in turn not gain part of Floreat from Nedlands, and thus emerge unchanged.

Further afield, Albany will gain all of the Shire of Plantagenet, which is currently in Warren-Blackwood but stood to be divided between Albany and Roe. Warren-Blackwood will surely return to the conservative fold at the next election come what may, but a further addition of rural territory to Albany is unhelpful for Labor in a seat they have held against the odds since 2001. Labor won the seat by 13.7% at the election, which I had coming down to 11.3% on the draft boundaries, and now to 10.8%.

Similarly, Geraldton will now gain Kalbarri and the rest of the northern end of the Shire of Northampton, which the draft had in Mid-West. Labor won the seat by 11.7% at the election, which I had down to 10.0% on the draft boundaries and 9.2% on the final ones. The Shire of Victoria Plains will be entirely within Central Wheatbelt and not split between it and Mid-West as proposed in the draft, which is unlikely to factor into anyone’s calculations. Last and probably least, the commissioners have thought better of renaming Swan Hills as Walyunga.

My two-party preferred estimates of the final boundaries are as follows:

UPDATE: My full final accounting of the new party votes shares and margins can be found here. I land within 0.3% of Antony Green’s two-party preferred estimates in 53 of 59 seats, the biggest imbalance being Kalgoorlie with 0.8%. Ben Raue has two-party and primary vote estimates at The Tally Room.

Weekend miscellany: Liberal preselection argybargy and by-election results (open thread)

Liberal preselection turbulence across four states, and a look at the final results from Fadden and Rockingham.

It’s been three weeks since Newspoll, which more often than not means another one should be along tonight. On that note, academic Murray Goot writes in Inside Story that there has been an “unreported upheaval” at YouGov’s Australian operation, which conducts the poll, in which “virtually all of those working in the public affairs and polling unit” have left – including Campbell White, who had been its head since it took over Newspoll in the wake of the 2019 election.

Until then, here’s the usual weekly assembly of federally relevant preselection news:

• Paul Karp of The Guardian reports factional conservatives consider their preselection challengers “likely” to defeat Melissa McIntosh in Lindsay and a “good chance” against Sussan Ley in Farrer. Alex Hawke “may require support from moderate Liberals” in Mitchell, and the move against Paul Fletcher in Bradfield is “considered unlikely to succeed”.

• Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports Brendan Blomeley’s bid for the state presidency of the Tasmanian Liberal Party marks part of an effort by Eric Abetz’s conservative faction to gain control of the state executive with a view to placing Blomeley on the Senate ticket at the expense of Richard Colbeck, securing a political comeback for Abetz in state parliament, and potentially undermining the preselection of arch-moderate Bass MP Bridget Archer.

• Eli Greenblat of The Australian reports the front-runners for Liberal preselection in Higgins are William Stoltz, senior manager at cybersecurity firm CyberCX and associate at the Australian National University’s National Security College, and Marcus Pearl, Port Phillip councillor and former mayor and chief executive of financial advisory and consulting services firm QMV. Katie Allen, who lost the seat to Labor’s Michelle Ananda-Rajah last year, is reportedly keen to run again, but faces resistance because she crossed the floor to oppose the Morrison government’s amendments to religious discrimination laws.

• Party sources cited by The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column report that a disputes committee of the Liberal National Party in Queensland is likely to rule in favour of Senator Gerard Rennick’s challenge to his narrow preselection defeat last month, resulting in the process being repeated.

By-election latest:

• Quicker than I would have expected, the Western Australian Electoral Commission has conducted its full preference count from last Saturday’s Rockingham by-election. This showed Liberal candidate Peter Hudson finished third behind independent Hayley Edwards, the latter overcoming a primary vote deficit of 17.7% to 15.9% on preferences to lead by 22.1% to 21.0% at the final exclusion. Labor’s Magenta Marshall went on to win at the final count with 13,412 votes (61.4%) to Edwards’ 8443 (38.6%).

• While the preference distribution is still to be conducted, the last remaining postal votes have been added for the Fadden by-election, confirming a two-party swing to the LNP of 2.72%. On Thursday, Phillip Coorey of the Financial Review related a bullish take on the result presented to the Coalition party room by Senator James McGrath, which noted an elevated swing of 9% in “booths where there was a high rate of mortgages”. However, this was selectively based on the LNP primary vote in two booths – taking the newly developed Coomera and Pimpama area in total, the two-party swing was 5.5%. Further, the suburbs in question are dominated not so much by mortgage payers (32.8% of private dwellings as of the 2021 census, compared with 35.0% nationwide) as renters (55.5% compared with 30.6%). McGrath also claimed a 3.5% drop in independent Stewart Brooker’s vote was a measure of how much Labor benefited from top position on the ballot paper, which at least triples more judicious estimates of the donkey vote effect. Overlooked was the fact that Brooker was part of a field of thirteen this time and seven last time, and went from being the only independent to one of three.

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