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October 24th 2007 10:32
Booth Information
Taking in the Northern Rivers area from Lismore and Ballina south to Grafton, Page has been a reasonably safe National seat since Ian Causley reclaimed it from Labor in 1996. However Causley's retirement, the ALP capture of Richmond to the North in 2004, and the significant swing predicted to the ALP, has made Page a major target for the ALP.
Detailed Results
Since gaining a swing of almost 7% in the 1996 election, the Nationals have seen their margin fluctuate around the 5% mark without their hold on the seat every really being put into question. But within this relative stability have been divergent patterns in the different geographical areas of the seat.
Booth Information
The most heavily populated area of the seat in the North-West have seen the ALP's support increase so that it has moved from the weakest area for the ALP to its strongest in 2004. This area, centred around Ballina and Lismore, has on the whole moved to the ALP at each of the last three federal elections in both absolute terms and relative to the statewide average, with the ALP polling aboving their statewide average in Lismore at the last two federal elections and within 2% of it at Ballina. But while this has seen the ALP win small majorities in a number of Lismore booths they failed to win the city overall at either of the last two polls, which would appear to be crucial for their hopes of winning the seat. The ALP's hopes in this area of the seat may be helped by the Labor candidate, Janelle Saffin, a resident of Lismore.
That the ALP need to gain a majority in the North-East of the seat has become more urgent in recent elections, as the rest of the seat has drifted towards the Coalition. Whereas the Southern booths around Grafton gave the ALP a solid majority in the 1993 election (53.19% TPP), 2004 saw the South give the Coalition a majority of almost 7%, with Grafton itself swinging by 6% at that election. The key factors in this area of the seat appear to be that the South has swung heavily to the Coalition vis-a-vis the state average at two of the five federal elections covered. In 1998 the newly-incumbent Causley was able to hold off a statewide swing of almost 5% to hardly lose a vote in the Grafton area, while in 2004 saw another large movement towards the Coalition. With Causley retiring, new candidate Chris Gulaptis will lose much of the benefits of incumbency, although he is a well known candidate in the Grafton area as a shire councillor. Secondly the ALP will hope that the 2004 swing was caused by Mark Latham's candidacy. If the ALP are on the right side of both of these factors they may be able to reverse the long-term swing in the Grafton area.
Booth Information
The swing to the Nationals in the South of the seat has been mirrored in the North-Western booths which hug the Bruxner Highway and include Kyogle and Casino. With the movement of the heavily ALP (and Green) supporting booth at Nyngan, the ALP only won two small booths in this area at the last federal election and has suffered an even bigger swing at Casino than Grafton since 1993 (almost 12%). Arguably the ALP would see holding their support above 40% in the Bruxner region to be something of a victory, although they would have hopes of regaining support in Casino to something like the almost 54% of the vote they received in 1993.
Interestingly, this area of the seat has given the ALP their strongest support at the state level. However this isn't saying much: as with its northern neighbour Richmond, Page has seen the ALP struggle to even be competitive at state level, with the ALP losing 7% of the TPP vote in the last two state elections. At the 2007 state election the ALP won only one booth, polling over 12% worse in 2007 than in the 2004 federal election in Lismore, and 13% at Ballina. While connections between federal and state elections have to be seen as tenuous at best and it is arguable that the ALP's struggles in state polls are based on their incumbency and therefore a warning to the federal Coalition, the question still needs to be asked as to whether the voters of Page will provide the ALP with than 15% more votes at federal level than in the state poll that they require to seize the seat in 2007.
Booth Information
In many ways, 2007 represents the perfect storm for federal Labor: the combination of a new Nationals candidate, with their surging overall vote means that if they don't win in 2007 they may struggle to win the seat for quite a long time. They will need a couple of factors to work in their favour, such as the failure of the high-profile Gulaptis to gel with voters, to gain a significant swing at the state level. But with much of the seat drifting to the Coalition in the 2004 poll the task may be more difficult than the opinion polls suggest. Overall, the ALP may win Page, but I'd expect the win to come because of a big national swing rather than local factors.
WHAT TO WATCH FOR..
The ALP could win Page if...
- They gain a solid majority (52% TPP) in Lismore - Lismore South booth (46.83% in 2004) may be a good guide.
- They gain a majority in Ballina - winning Ballina East (44.25% in 2004) would be a good result.
- They regain the Grafton booth lost in 2004 - 44.89% TPP in 2004.
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