The Poll Bludger

Apologies for the inactivity – been a bit busy lately. Those who are interested will already be aware that Malcolm Mackerras has published his calculations of post-redistribution margins, answering (more or less) many queries raised on this site’s comments threads when the proposals were first made public. His figures offer a few surprises: Labor’s newly acquired seat of Parramatta has moved back into the Liberal column; John Howard has only lost 0.3 per cent from his margin in Bennelong; and Mackerras gives the Nationals a margin of 7.9 per cent in the new Queensland seat of Wright, whereas my own calculation (and reportedly that of the Nationals) had it at about 5.5 per cent. The following tables indicate which seats have shifted in which direction and by how much.

The New South Wales federal electoral redistribution that was unveiled yesterday is of more than usual significance, at least if one school of thought regarding the prime ministerial succession is to be believed. It had been widely surmised that the Prime Minister was awaiting its impact on his precarious electorate of Bennelong, which he carried by an uncomfortable 4.3 per cent in 2004, before deciding whether to lead the party into the next election. Some hypothetical redistribution scenarios had Bennelong either being abolished or shifting westwards into Labor territory as part of a wholesale shake-up of Sydney electorates. The more dramatic of these scenarios were predicated on the assumption that a metropolitan seat would be abolished, but former Nationals leader John Anderson’s electorate of Gwydir has instead been nominated for the chop, cancelling out the good turn done to the Nationals by the Queensland redistribution. This means that adjustments in Sydney have been relatively modest, but they have been sufficient to make life somewhat less comfortable in Bennelong. According to an early estimate by Malcolm Mackerras (cited by Imre Salusinszky in The Australian), the electorate’s absorption of the Ermington area from Labor-held Parramatta will cut Howard’s margin to about 3 per cent.

Another leading Liberal to feel the pinch is Malcolm Turnbull, whose electorate of Wentworth will now extend westwards beyond blue-ribbon beachside suburbs and into the green-and-red inner city, reducing the return on his not inconsiderable investment. Turnbull won the seat with a 5.6 per cent margin in 2004, although the result was distorted by Peter King’s attempt to hold his seat as an independent (King won by 7.9 per cent in 2001). The addition of Woollomooloo and Kings Cross is reckoned by those in the know to have cut his margin to about the same level as Howard’s. It has been a much better redistribution for another Sydney Liberal newcomer, Greenway MP Louise Markus, who trades Labor-leaning outer urban areas for the Shire of Hawkesbury, formerly part of Macquarie. After winning the seat at Labor’s expense in 2004, Markus should now be fairly safe. Jackie Kelly has not done well out of the adjustments to her seat of Lindsay, where a move east into St Marys (formerly in safe Labor Chifley) will bite into her 5.3 per cent margin.

On Labor’s side of the ledger, Parramatta has been substantially redrawn so that the Parramatta town centre is now in neighbouring Reid. Opinion seems divided on who this will benefit, so it seems safe to conclude that Julie Owens’ 0.7 per cent margin will be little changed. Labor should get a boost in its other precarious Sydney seat, the southern suburbs electorate of Banks, which expands northwards to take Bankstown from Blaxland. Their other loseable seat, the inner west electorate of Lowe (3.3 per cent), has undergone a number of adjustments that should largely cancel each other out. Member John Murphy will suffer slightly from the loss of more than 10,000 voters in the Ashfield area to Grayndler to the south-east, and perhaps make a net gain from extensions to the south that add Liberal-voting Strathfield South and Labor-voting Croydon Park.

All of Sydney’s electorates have been altered to some degree, but the decision to abolish Gwydir means that the biggest changes are in country seats that are off Labor’s radar. Most of Gwydir’s geographical area has been absorbed by the already substantial seat of Parkes, which now accounts for about half the state’s territory and has only Dubbo for a large population centre. The most significant knock-on effects are on Calare, which moves inland beyond the Bathurst base of independent member Peter Andren (UPDATE: Andren’s electorate office is in Bathurst, but as Mountainman notes in comments, he is more closely associated with Orange which will remain in the electorate), and Macquarie, which fills Calare’s void by moving west beyond Sydney’s outskirts. Poll Bludger comments regular Geoff Robinson notes on his blog The South Coast that this roughly returns these electorates to the areas they covered before 1977, when Calare was a safe seat for the Nationals and Macquarie mostly held by Labor. Macquarie has since been won by Labor only in 1980, 1983 and 1993 (the current member, Kerry Bartlett, won by 8.9 per cent in 2004), while Calare was held by Labor from 1983 until Andren’s debut in 1996. Robinson notes that Andren must now decide “whether to go for Macquarie and hold it against Labor or to fight the Nationals in the new Calare”. It should not be inferred that Macquarie is out of bounds for the Coalition, but Labor won the corresponding state seat of Bathurst by 6 per cent more than the state average at the 2003 election, and the consensus view is that it’s a Labor-leaning marginal.

The redistribution has inevitably brought changes to the state’s rapidly growing and electorally sensitive north coast, though none are headline-grabbers. The northernmost coastal seat, Richmond, was one of three Labor gains at the 2004 election, when Nationals member Larry Anthony was voted out by the narrowest of margins. The redistribution has reunited the electorate with the northern part of the Shire of Lismore, which it last contained before the 1993 election. At the centre of this area is Nimbin, and it is accordingly noted for its strong counter-cultural element. This area has been added in exchange for Wollongbar and Alstonville in the electorate’s south, which split nearly 60-40 in the Nationals’ favour in 2004. While these areas only account for about 7000 voters each out of a total of 94,333, Labor member Justine Elliot will presumably enjoy a slight boost to her margin. However, this is a case of swings and roundabouts for Labor, since both areas have been exchanged with its very marginal neighbour Page, held for the Nationals by Ian Causley on a margin of 4.2 per cent. Page also gains about 5500 voters around Yamba from its southern neighbour Cowper, which is unlikely to make much difference. Cowper itself is potentially winnable for Labor, currently being held for the Nationals by Luke Hartsuyker with a margin of 6.4 per cent, which will not be much changed by its exchange of Yamba in the north for Kempsey in the south. The Hunter region seat of Paterson, where the Liberal margin inflated from 1.5 per cent to 7.0 per cent in 2004, exchanges a Labor area north of Newcastle for an even more Labor area further along the Hunter Valley, which should cut the margin slightly.

In a potentially bad omen for Labor, the famously marginal seat of Eden-Monaro has extended westwards into Farrer in exchange for the loss of its anomalous territory to the north of the Australian Capital Territory, a knock-on effect of Farrer’s gain of Broken Hill at the expense of Parkes. With the addition of the Shires of Tumut and Tumbarumba, Liberal member Gary Nairn should enjoy some extra padding on his current margin of 2.2 per cent.

UPDATE: Malcolm Mackerras has posted his calculations of post-redistribution margins at Crikey.

The Australian Electoral Commission has just released its proposed boundaries for the redistribution of New South Wales federal electorates. The main item is the abolition of former Nationals leader John Anderson’s seat of Gwydir. I’ll be poring through this for the rest of the day and will hopefully have something substantial up early this evening.

Such has been the scale of Queensland’s population explosion in recent years that the state’s share of House of Representatives seats is set to increase for the second election in a row. That means Queensland MPs are once again experiencing the excitement of a redistribution, a process which reached a milestone with yesterday’s release of the Australian Electoral Commission’s preliminary boundaries. Should the proposal proceed without substantial revision there will be a new electorate called Wright (named in honour of poet Judith Wright on the recommendation of the Greens), a peculiar looking beast extending from Winton deep in central Queensland all the way eastwards to Gladstone on the coast. However, the AEC report points out that the redrawn electorate of Hinkler could just as easily be said to be the “new” electorate, as Wright will contain fractionally more voters from the old Hinkler than the new. It was determined that the interior electorate should get the new name on the sensible basis that the name of Hinkler is “intrinsically linked to the City of Bundaberg”, which remains part of Hinkler.

For reasons the Poll Bludger can’t understand, the Nationals don’t sound happy. Maranoa MP Bruce Scott told the ABC the Wright proposal was “crazy”, raising commendable objections about roads and communications, communities of interest and local government linkages. He also said he hadn’t “looked at the political impact”; normally such a claim would have me in hysterics, but I really do think he may be telling the truth. Nationals state director Brad Henderson calls Wright “a classic Nats versus Labor seat” due to Labor’s strength in Gladstone and hinterland mining towns, but it looks very much like a Nationals seat to me. By my count, Labor scored only 51.8 per cent on two-party preferred from the 11,606 votes in Gladstone in 2004, and it seems clear the remaining 76,000 would tip the scales in the Nationals’ favour (UPDATE: See below). Furthermore, the removal of Gladstone has weakened Labor’s position in Hinkler, which Paul Neville held for the Nationals by 4.8 per cent in 2004. Hinkler will be compensated for the loss of Gladstone with Hervey Bay and its surrounds, which split 60-40 in the Coalition’s favour. The resulting electorate is smaller, more coastal and at greater threat from the Liberals in the long term, but that shouldn’t become an issue until Neville retires.

Elsewhere, no seat has moved from one party’s column to the other, although there are as always a number that have been made more or less interesting. By far the biggest loser from the redistribution is Liberal member for Blair Cameron Thompson, whose win upon the seat’s creation in 1998 put an end to Pauline Hanson’s parliamentary career. Blair is in an interesting position, having originally covered the conservative hinterland of safe Labor Ipswich. Unfortunately for Thompson, the last two redistributions have drawn the seat into Ipswich itself, from which it will now absorb more than 20,000 new voters. The corresponding loss of territory comes in the Kingaroy-Nanango area – Joh country – which split 67-33 in Thompson’s favour in 2004. By my rough reckoning, that could cut his margin from 11.2 per cent to as little as 4 per cent (UPDATE: See below).

The electorates on the Sunshine Coast have been substantially shuffled around, but the only one of interest to non-psephologists (UPDATE: See below) is Mal Brough’s dicey seat of Longman, where the Liberal margin inflated from 2.5 per cent to 7.7 per cent at the 2004 election. Longman has been sucked into Brisbane’s orbit with the loss of its territory in the Glasshouse Mountains and to the west of Caboolture, which it has traded in for the outer Brisbane centre of Kallangur and its surrounds. This area produced more modest Liberal majorities of around 4 per cent, so their addition should add slightly to Brough’s discomfort. The better part of this area from Brough’s perspective, around North Lakes, comes at the expense of party colleague Teresa Gambaro in suburban Petrie to the south. The 11,500 voters Gambaro is losing here split about 59-41 in the Liberals’ favour in 2004, compared with an overall margin that was up from 3.5 per cent to 7.9 per cent. Petrie was over quota going into the redistribution and will only be compensated for its loss with a few thousand voters in the neighbouring Labor-held seats of Lilley and Brisbane, which will have a small but potentially significant drain on her margin.

The Liberals’ other three naturally marginal seats in Brisbane, Bonner (0.5 per cent), Moreton (4.2 per cent) and Dickson (7.8 per cent), are a mixed bag. Bonner will be wholly unchanged, while Dickson will be made safe by the addition of the safely conservative Shire of Esk, a development which has made the seat largely rural. However, it has not been a good redistribution for Gary Hardgrave in Moreton, who is set to trade more than 12,000 voters in one of his best areas, Algester in the south-west, for 4000 voters in inner-city Annerley to the north and 5000 around Karawatha to the south-east. Given that the respective two-party Liberal vote in the three areas in 2004 was about 57 per cent, 38 per cent and 47 per cent, my rough estimate is that his margin will be cut to 2.5 per cent.

In terms of the Labor-versus-Coalition contest the only electorate of interest in the remainder of Queensland is the Townsville-based seat of Herbert, held for the Liberals by Peter Lindsay on a margin of 6.2 per cent (up from 1.5 per cent in 2001). The electorate has undergone small changes with the addition of just under 3000 voters in Thuringowa and the loss of about 5500 in Townsville, which I do not believe are likely to affect the margin much. Labor’s only seat outside of the Brisbane area, Capricornia, has undergone significant changes, providing Wright with 17,000 of its voters and gaining 14,000 new voters just outside of Mackay. These changes are a mixed bag and are unlikely to account for Labor’s 5.1 per cent margin, in a seat where Rockhampton remains the decisive factor.

UPDATE (25/6/06): I may have spoken too soon when I said the Sunshine Coast boundary changes were unlikely to matter: according to the ABC, Fairfax MP Alex Somlyay is suggesting the Liberals might run a candidate against senior Nationals MP Warren Truss in Wide Bay now that it’s moving into Noosa. Also, earlier generalisations about likely margins can now be clarified. Sacha in comments, who has done the numbers properly, says the new Liberal margin in Blair is 6.4 per cent. I have now crunched the numbers in the booths that will make up the new electorate of Wright and concluded that the Nationals margin from 2004 would have been 5.2 per cent, which compares with a statewide result of 7.1 per cent. Labor could therefore be expected to win the seat if the statewide result was 50-50, although as this graph at Mumble makes clear, that doesn’t happen very often. Other things being equal, there would have been 15 wins for the Coalition since 1949, six for Labor and two cliffhangers. I hope you enjoy the following figures, because they did not come easily. Bear in mind that this does not include pre-polls, postals and the like (not that this should make too much difference), and no doubt contains a few errors.

UPDATE (26/6/06): Turns out I’m not totally stupid after all. According to Mark Vaile, "early indications suggested (Wright) would, based on the last election, deliver a Nationals candidate about 55 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, compared to 45 per cent for a Labor candidate".