Corangamite - interesting one. This seat is basically a suburban Geelong one at this point with some seachanger influence. Given the demographics I have a hard time seeing this seat flip but supposedly the Liberals are semi-confident. Their candidate is very well-known in the swingier part of the electorate which might help? But I suspect it will stay Labor.
So....can somone explain why the Liberals were confident here? At least some of the visits the Liberals made in some of their possible gains at least made
some sense based on the results (either small swings or swings towards them), here we saw a pretty massive swing that makes the seat safer for Labor than some seats that were hitherto seen as safe Labor seats. This one looks like it might be gone for the Liberals for good.
Dunkley - historically Liberal held, this seat shed a large chunk of Liberal territory before 2019 to become more overtly based on Frankston turning it into a Labor seat. There has been talk that Andrews is on the nose in suburban Melbourne which might cause headaches for Labor given that the seat is still quite marginal. But it doesn't sound like the Libs are too confident here, so I suspect this stays Labor.
The swing was not as big as it was in Corangamite, but I suspect this one would need a Liberal landslide to become interesting again. Looking at the seat demographically though apart from Mount Eliza it voting Liberal was a bit strange anyway, it's not exactly a wealthy area.
McEwen - I think if there is an anti-Andrews backlash in the suburbs, it'll be most keenly felt in the North which seems the most anti-lockdown part of Melbourne. This is the only North/West Melbourne seat that is remotely marginal so it's probably the only seat to watch for that effect, and it does sound like the Liberals are optimistic here. Still, a 5% margin is large....very large when the rest of the country is likely to swing the other way. And the sitting MP is recontesting so there'll be no loss of personal vote to influence a swing here. So even if it swings Liberal, this should stay Labor.
It did at least swing Liberal, and might be close enough for a potential Liberal gain in 2025 if things pan out badly for the Labor government. But it does appear that the Liberals were a bit too excited about this seat.
Jagajaga - this is a strange seat. Some legitimately inner-city areas, some very working-class areas, some wealthy suburbs. Overall this generally balances out to a safe enough Labor seat. Will stay Labor.
And how! A 6% swing makes this a safer seat than much of Labor's fifedoms in the Western Suburbs. I guess the inner city areas revolted hard against the Liberals.
Macnamara - I remember thinking Labor was doomed here once Danby retired after the 2016 results. Strong performances in inner-city areas in 2019 however helped Labor, and it seems likely that this part of the world will continue to trend Labor medium-term. A complicating factor will be the Greens, who were about 7% behind Labor in 2019. If there is a significant leftie backlash towards Labor it could hit here. But it doesn't seem like the Greens are that optimistic of flipping it, and I think Labor's position against the Greens should be safe enough.
The closest thing the election has given to a proper three-way marginal. Labor has the slight edge on the primary vote though, so unless preferences do odd things here they should be safe enough. Still, it's not a seat that I'd be feeling confident about if I were Labor especially if the AEC finally succeed in swapping the Caulfield area for Prahran....
Isaacs - given the election this should be safe Labor, especially as the Liberal candidate has a few problems with lying about residency. In future elections I could see this being tight as much of the territory is classic marginal territory at the state level, but this doesn't apply to 2022 and will obviously be future election dependent.
Status quo kind of result here. Boring.
Bruce - it's crazy to think how much the seat has changed in the last few years. The historic version combined Dandenong with Glen Waverley, then it became a purely Dandenong seat, now it has the Narre Warren area to go with Dandenong. In this time it's gone from a Labor-leaning seat to a very safe Labor one to a fairly safe Labor one. Unless it keeps moving east this should be Labor-held in the long-term.
Another seat where the vote barely budged from 2019. Though the electorate did deliver some odd swings, especially in the more working-class areas of the seat.
Wills - an interestingly balanced seat between traditional working-class areas in the north of the seat and inner-city progressive areas in the south. This should stay Labor for this election but the margin against the Greens will be interesting to watch, especially as Khalil doesn't seem a great fit for the south of the seat.
Actually swung slightly Labor on the 2PP vote, though I expect the Greens will remain competitive here for years to come.
Bendigo - one under-rated factor in Victoria becoming so much harder for the Coalition to win has been the trend in Victoria's provincial cities. This was for many years a classic marginal that flipped lots of different ways. Now it's basically unwinnable for the Liberals unless it's a landslide year in their favour. Which 2022 won't be.
The margin here is safer than in Gorton and Gellibrand, and the same as Calwell. Even a landslide year won't flip this seat at this point I suspect.
Holt - on paper the margin for Labor here is safe. But Byrne is retiring and he seemed to have a very strong personal vote given that the area at the state level is fairly marginal. This won't be competitive this year, but the margin and swing will be interesting to watch.
There was a slight swing against Labor here, but it wasn't anywhere near enough to threaten the seat and the seat still looks reasonably secure going forward.
Hawke - new seat based on Melbourne's satellite cities (Sunbury, Melton, Bacchus Marsh). Margin is safely Labor, and it would've comfortably voted Labor in past elections too so this should be an easy win for Labor. But could there be an above-average anti-Andrews backlash given the lack of a sitting MP?
There was a reasonable swing against Labor here, though again it wasn't anywhere near enough to threaten Labor. It wasn't even that big compared to a few other Western Suburbs seats either!
Ballarat - it's crazy to think that this was won by the Liberals as recently as 1998. Labor have done an excellent job in turning what was previously a marginal seat into safe territory.
The seat just keeps getting safer.
Maribyrnong - Bill Shorten's seat. This seat does have more genuinely marginal territory than is average for Western Melbourne so the margin could be interesting in the right circumstances. But there's no question about who wins this.
The inner-city trends saw this swing Labor even as much of the Western Suburbs swung away from them.
Corio - Geelong was competitive once upon a time, but it has since solidfied for Labor to go with the working-class north which has long been Labor. Fun fact - I know the Lib Dem candidate for the seat.
Another regional seat that is now safer than much of the Western Suburbs.
Hotham - on the 2019 boundaries, this could have been somewhat competitive in a better election for the Liberals. On the current ones.....
Decent sized Labor swing, which perhaps isn't surprising given the large Chinese population here.
Lalor - safe Labor seat despite the dud local MP. Margin might be interesting to watch for any populist right backlash.
The UAP did do reasonably OK here, but unlike a few other seats there wasn't much of a populist right presence otherwise, hence the slight Labor swing rather than solid Liberal swing.
Gellibrand - as above (ignorning the dud local MP factor). The Point Cook area could be interesting as the area becomes more mature and desirable, but that's quite long-term.
Point Cook stayed pretty stable this election. The area did trend slightly right but there wasn't a particularly significant populist right vote here.
Gorton - another safe Labor seat in the Western Suburbs. I feel like this seat could be prone to a high UAP vote, so the swing could be interesting.
Labor's margin falls below 10%, which isn't ideal and was probably a sign of both One Nation and the UAP polling well. Still a long way away from being vulnerable though.
Cooper - looks very safe, but the Greens candidate at the last election kind of imploded and the new one seems to be very strong so I would expect them to improve on 2019. But without Feeney I don't think the Greens can get as close as they did in 2016.
Liddle did a pretty fantastic job to get a reasonably sized swing in her favour, but absent Labor giving them a gift of a candidate to run against they likely won't go
that close to winning the seat in the short-term.
Fraser - safe Labor. The Footscray area is getting more Greeny so I think they could get some strong numbers there, but the rest of the seat is very working-class so it's unlikely to matter much.
Interesting to look at the booth results here - the left held up very well in the Footscray area but the more diverse parts of the seat did see quite a significant backlash against Labor. Although the Trots still managed to outpoll Clive....
Caldwell - very safe Labor. The area seems cooker friendly so the UAP vote here will be one to watch.
This produced the biggest pro-Liberal swing on 2PP in the country, and was best symbolised by the UAP nearly outpolling the Greens. Still, I'm sure if Labor could choose a seat to get big swings against them, it might well be in seats they polled 70% in the past election...
Scullin - the safest Labor seat full stop (though Cooper, Wills and Grayndler beat it if Labor vs. Liberal is used)
Still Labor's safest in Victoria on raw 2PP vote (though I suspect Cooper and Wills would beat it on a Lab/Lib basis), but this was another seat where the populist right vote was large enough to dent the margin quite significant. Still, see what I said about Calwell.
Indi - Helen Haines's seat. Her win was extremely rare as she was replacing another Independent under a similar movement (centrist-style politics with environmental concerns). Usually Independents improve their vote upon re-election quite significantly so I would expect a significant swing towards Haines....but her margin might come down to whether she gets smeared as a Labor stalking horse by the Coalition. Can't see her losing, though.
Fairly robust sophmore surge for Helen Haines, although the margin here is under 60%. Still, she's probably safe enough here for as long as she wants.
Melbourne - Bandt has this seat for as long as he wants. Were Bandt to retire the seat will likely be very close, but that won't come for a while and by that point who knows what the Labor party will look like.
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Bandt actually did get a decent sized swing against him on the 2PP vote, perhaps because it was Labor rather than the Liberals that finished second this time. But given he won a majority on first preferences.
