South Eastern Metropolitan

South Eastern Metropolitan region covers the bayside from Cheltenham south to Frankston, and extends inland to Lysterfield, Narre Warren and Cranbourne. The redistribution before the 2014 election transferred the Mount Waverley electorate out of the region and added the new seat of Rowville, without having much impact on the balance of support between the parties. The electorate is home to the famously marginal “sandbelt” seats of Carrum, Mordialloc and Frankston, all of which flipped from Liberal to Labor in 2014, leaving Mount Waverley as the only one of the region's eleven lower house seats to be held by the Liberals.

The Greens won a seat in South Eastern Metropolitan for the first time in 2014, reducing to Labor to two after successive results of three Labor, two Liberal in the first two elections after upper house reform in 2006. The first Greens and third Labor candidate began the count process evenly matched, but the Greens had unusually solid sources of preferences in the Sex Party, Animal Justice and, less intuitively, Palmer United. They were very lucky that the Sex Party was excluded before the third Labor candidate, by 28,290 votes to 28,067, as Labor's exclusion at this point would have pushed the Sex Party ahead of the Greens, who would then have been elected on their preferences.

Controversial evangelical pastor Danny Nalliah made it all the way to the final count as the lead candidate of the Rise Up Australia party, absorbing preferences from the DLP, the Liberal Democrats and Australian Christians to get ahead of Family First, then getting their preferences as well. However, Nalliah finished a long way behind the Greens in the race for the fifth and final seat.

Labor candidates

Labor's top order is left unchanged from 2014, with first position remaining with Gavin Jennings, a figure of influence within the Socialist Left. Jennings worked for various unions and as an adviser to premiers John Cain and Joan Kirner before entering parliament in 1999, when he was preselected for the safe Labor upper house province of Melbourne ahead of Dick Wynne, now the member for Richmond. He was promoted to cabinet after the 2002 election, variously serving in environment, community services, aged care and Aboriginal affairs, then served as Shadow Health Minister through the period of opposition from 2010 to 2014. After the 2014 election he became Special Minister of State, and advanced to leader of the goverment in the Legislative Council.

In second place is Adem Somyurek, a Right faction powerbroker of Turkish background who won a seat in Eumemmerring province in 2002, having previously been an adviser to federal Holt MP Anthony Byrne. He went on to secure second position in South Eastern Metropolitan in 2006, which he has retained at three elections since. Somyurek served in shadow cabinet through the period of opposition from 2010 to 2014 and as Minister for Small Business, Innovation and Trade after the 2014 election, but he was forced to resign after the release of a report into allegations of bullying laid against him by his former chief-of-staff, Dimity Paul. However, this has had little impact on his status as a rising party powerbroker, having marshalled support of some Right unions to form an arrangement with the Industrial Left that challenged the party's long-standing “stability pact”.

Liberal candidates

The top two positions on the Liberal ticket are likewise as they were in 2014, and indeed in 2010 and 2006. In first position is Gordon Rich-Phillips, who entered parliament in 1999 at 25 after winning preselection for Eumemmering province ahead of controversial former federal MP Ken Aldred. He served as Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Technology and the Aviation Industry during the Baillieu-Napthine government from 2010 to 2014, and has retained Assistant Treasurer and aviation portfolios in opposition.

Inga Peulich first entered parliament in the lower house seat of Bentleigh in 1992, but was unseated in the landslide defeat of 2002. She returned from second position on the South Eastern Metropolitan ticket in 2006, and went on to serve as parliamentary secretary when the Coalition came to power in 2010, and as Shadow Multicultural Affairs Minister since the 2014 defeat. Peulich was born in Bosnia, and came to Australia in 1967 at the age of eleven.

Other candidates

The successful Greens candidate in 2014 was Nina Springle (left), who described herself as a freelance facilitator and community educator. Springle is the parliamentary party's spokesperson for health, employment, industrial relations and industry.

The candidate for Fiona Patten's Reason Party is Laura Chipp, former legal aid lawyer and the daughter of Australian Democrats founder Don Chipp, who ran as a Patten-aligned independent at the Northcote by-election in November 2017.