Blog CemeteryHiggins
October 6th 2007 23:19
Booth Information
Currently held by the highest-ranking Victorian Liberal, and previously held by two Liberal Prime Ministers, Higgins incorporates real blue-blood Liberal territory. But the seat has defied the strong recent swing to the Howard government and in 2004 Costello narrowly avoided the ignominy of swings against him at three straight federal elections.
Detailed Results
Booth Information
While in absolute terms the swing against the Coalition has been less than 2% since 1996, against the Coalitions surging Victorian TPP it has constituted a swing of around 6% at the last two federal elections. Overall this makes the seat the Coalition’s third worst performer in the state since 1998, while in ranking terms, the Coalition’s TPP in Higgins is now only its 12th highest at the state level as opposed to 5th after the 1998 election. Worth noting is that two of the other five Victorian seats to swing to Labor since 1998 are two neighbouring seats to Higgins; Chisholm to the East and Kooyong to the North. The swing in Higgins has been largest in the areas which have traditionally supported the Coalition the strongest; in Toorak (from 81.5% in 1996 to 75.5% in 2004), Armadale (71.8% to 67.1%), Camberwell (65.6% to 62.2%) and Glen Iris (64.3% to 59.3%). Of course not too much can be read into these figures as they do show that these areas are still voting very heavily for the Coalition.
Booth Information
Interestingly, the state results have mirrored those at the federal level. Once again, Higgins has dropped from 5th place at the end of the last decade, this time to 11th place for the Legislative Assembly. Against the Coalition’s state average TPP, Higgins has fallen from 13% above in 1999 to 8.9% at the state level. This has meant that Higgins has performed relatively better at the state level than federal level but in its willingness to swing to the Bracks Government it is showing tendencies similar to more outer suburban areas than the strongly loyal Liberal areas in Kooyong and Goldstein to the north and south. However this figure may have been slightly skewed as Jeff Kennett had been the member for Burwood until 1999 and would have had a strong personal vote, although this does not explain why the major centre of ALP support in the seat around Prahran has swung stronger to the Bracks Government since 1999 than the Glen Iris area largely included in Burwood. In both cases state Labor have achieved their best results compared with the federal party, with Ashburton in the seat’s far East voting 56% ALP in 2006 compared with 48% in 2004.
Booth Information
But should the coalition be worried? On the whole, probably not. The ALP would have their best hopes in the seat’s East, but they are still only achieving a little more than 40% of the federal TPP. While they have clawed the area below the seat average at both state and federal level and managed to gain a 10% swing across the greater Glen Iris area in the 2002 state election, much of this was wiped out last November as the area voted almost 10% above the state average. The next couple of elections will show whether the slight shift across this area was similar to many other inner city suburban swings to the ALP or the result of demographic change that will see a strong shift to Labor if they perform stronger across the state. Based on what evidence state election results provide it is more likely than not that it is a case of the former. The key here is Ashburton, which seemingly must lead the trend if there is to be a swing through this part of the seat.
What is likely to make much of this discussion marginal is the strong Liberal block that dominates the centre of the seat. From Toorak to Malvern, this area is one of the Liberal’s strongest in Melbourne, and while it did prove somewhat susceptible to the swing towards Bracks in 2002, even at its recent worst it still would have provided the Liberals with a 4500 vote majority. Based on current vote volumes, this would mean that the ALP would have to achieve 57% of the vote in the rest of the seat even if it was assumed to gain half of the pre-poll votes – a figure it has not come close to achieving.
The last significant area in the seat is the western section around Prahran and Windsor. This area has closely followed the voting pattern of the adjacent areas of Melbourne Ports and has provided the greens with their strongest area of support. Unfortunately for the ALP this support has been largely made up of ALP voters rather than Coalition voters and has not helped at a TPP level. Regardless, the smaller population size of this area means it can only partially offset the large Liberal rump of the seat around Malvern.
Booth Information
The federal swing towards Labor in Higgins could be a product of the inner-city drift that has occurred among socially-liberal inner city voters in strong Liberal seats, or the result of a slow demographic change undergoing the seat. I expect that it is more of a case of the former, although there the swing in the areas around Glen Iris look more sustainable, especially in conjunction with the drift to Labor in neighbouring Chisholm. While the federal government is likely to sustain a nationwide swing I would expect Higgins to at least avoid much of it and possibly move back to the Coalition slightly as some voters drift back to a Government that they conceive as under threat.
What to Watch for (besides the size of Peter Costello’s smirk)
Labor could win if…
- Glen Iris area swings to the ALP (currently 58.4% Lib) - extremely unlikely but is generally a good indicator of seatwide performance.
On a smaller scale, it could be significant if…
- The ALP wins the Ashburton booths (currently 51.8% Lib) – another sign of a shift to Labor creeping from the East.
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