Blog CemeteryKooyong
October 18th 2007 14:11
Booth Information
Taking in some of Melbourne’s richest suburbs, the electorate of Kooyong is the quintessential blue-blooded Liberal seat. Represented by Liberal leaders Robert Menzies and Andrew Peacock prior to current member Petro Georgiou, the seat has elected a mere six, non-Labor members since federation. But small swings towards the ALP in recent elections, combined with recent strong opinion poll performances for Labor, have had some pondering whether 2007 will see the ALP win Kooyong.
Detailed Results
But for a minor swing to the newly-elected Liberals in 1996, Kooyong has swung towards the ALP at each of the last four federal elections. Because the Coalition have improved their state-wide TPP over the same time this has seen their TPP in Kooyong fall from 15% above the state average as late as 1998 to 8.3% in the 2004 federal election. Combined with large swings to the Coalition in the 2004 election this saw the seat plummet from its consistent place among the top four seats for the Coalition to be their 10th-safest Victorian seat going into the 2007 poll.
Booth Information
Among Victorian seats Kooyong has swung to the ALP further than any other seat since 1993, while it is also one of only five Victorian seats to have moved to the ALP since 1998. The swing to the ALP has generally been strongest in those areas which were the strongest supporters of the Coalition in 1993, focused most on the booths in the central suburbs of Canterbury (6.7% since 1993), Balwyn North (6%) and Kew East (5.4%). In total, only three booths have swung to the Coalition since 1993 – Hyde Park in the far north-west (which had been the sole booth carried by the ALP in 1993), Canterbury North in Surrey Hills, and Glenferrie in Hawthorn.
Booth Information
Interestingly this trend has not been reciprocated at the state level. Whereas the 1999 state poll almost mirrors the 1998 federal election, recent state polls have seen the Coalition maintain a TPP vote in Kooyong around 13% above the state average, while also retaining a comfortable position among the top 5 safest Coalition seats. In 2006, Kooyong proved to be the only metropolitan seat where the ALP performed better in absolute terms than in the 2004 federal election. While the Coalition suffered a landslide defeat in 2002 the seat would still have been comfortably held with only a handful of booths falling to the ALP.
Booth Information
The decoupling of federal and state results has not been consistent across the seat. Firstly, there is a relatively high difference between individual booths within the same suburbs within Kooyong. But this can’t take away from two clear trends which have occurred. As this map shows, three blocks have emerged which have had differing levels of difference between federal and state election results. The ALP has both gained at the federal level and gained above the state average in state elections in most booths in Kew and Balwyn North in the seat’s North-West, and in Camberwell in the seat’s South-East.
These areas look the most likely to be undergoing a more long-term shift to the ALP, although Camberwell differs from the North-West in that the swing there is strongest at the state level. In most of Balwyn, the ALP has gained in both federal and state elections, although in recent state polls the swing to the ALP has been below the state average. Finally, the Hawthorn booths have swung to the ALP in federal elections while also swinging to the Liberals in both relative and absolute terms at the state level. This may be connected to the fact that state Liberal leader Ted Baillieu is also the member for Hawthorn.
Secondly, the relatively strong performance by the Baillieu-led Liberals in Kooyong meant that, as mentioned above, the Coalition achieved a higher TPP performance in the 2006 state election than in the 2004 federal election. As this map shows, a swing to federal Labor has been combined by a higher TPP vote in 2006 than 2004 in the western booths around Kew and Hawthorn into the western booths of Camberwell (marked in red), while the rest of Camberwell, as well as Surrey Hills and Balwyn have provided a swing to federal Labor but still gave the Howard government a higher TPP vote than the Baillieu campaign last year. Contradicting what appeared above, this factor suggests that a general trend in favour of the ALP has been focused more on the eastern half of the seat from Balwyn North down to Camberwell rather than the North-Eastern areas.
In all likelihood, any chance the ALP has will depend on both sections of the seat turning sharply to them. They have not won a booth at any of the last four federal elections and as such do not have a solid, large support base of votes. While their federal performances have been strong in recent elections it is difficult to envisage the gap between state and federal results relative to the statewide averages to grow wider than it already is in a seat which has been loyal to the state party despite their poor recent results. The ALP may make gains based on a strong statewide performance, but it is unlikely they will get much of a swing above the state average.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR
For The ALP to win they would (at least) need to…
- Win the Balwyn North booth (41.46% in 2004)
- Win the Hawthorn booth (46.99% in 2004)
- Win the Kew, Kew East and Kew North booths (49.69%, 47.97% and 48.21% respectively)
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