The swing to Labor was smaller in Victoria than in most states – but that swing came in unusual places.
At the time of writing, Labor has gained 11 seats – but none of them are in Victoria. Labor has an outside chance of gaining the Victorian seats of Dunkley and La Trobe but is also at risk of losing their own seat of Chisholm. If Labor forms government, it will not be thanks to Victoria.
There are 134 seats where the race is between Labor and the Coalition. In these seats, there was an average swing to Labor of 4.07%. In Victoria, there are 31 Labor-Coalition races and the swing in these seats averaged at only 2.18%. This compares with 4% in New South Wales and Western Australia, 3% in Queensland, 4.7% in South Australia and more than 6% in Tasmania.
There has been a lot of discussion about the effect of campaigning around the Country Fire Authority. The CFA is in the midst of an industrial fight over the role of unions and paid firefighters in the volunteer-dominated organisations. The issue has split the Labor state government, with the responsible minister resigning from cabinet over the issue. People claiming to be CFA volunteers handed out leaflets in a number of key electorates advocating that voters put Labor last.
It seems like a simple answer to blame the CFA dispute for subpar Labor swings in Victoria but the results don’t fit that narrative.
This map shows the swing between Labor and Liberal in the 31 seats where they were the two candidates standing at the end. The map doesn’t show data for four inner city seats where the Greens polled in the top two, or the northern Victorian seats of Murray and Indi, where Labor didn’t make the top two.
If there was a CFA effect, you would expect to see it most strongly on the fringe of Melbourne, in places likely to be affected by bushfires. It just happens that there are a series of marginal seats in these areas.
McEwen covers the northern fringe of Melbourne and stretches further north from there, taking in large parts of central Victoria, including much of the area severely hit by the Black Saturday bushfires. Labor’s Rob Mitchell barely scraped by for a second term in 2013. Rather than being hurt by the CFA dispute, he actually gained a swing of 8.3%, the highest in Victoria (although the poor performance of his Liberal opponent may have also helped).
Labor performed less well in Corangamite, which covers the south side of Geelong and stretches further west. Labor gained a swing of only 1.2%, falling 2.7% short of winning this key seat. It does seem possible that the CFA could have had an effect, although the result would also reflect the new personal vote for Sarah Henderson, who was elected for the first time in 2013.
On the south eastern fringe of Melbourne, Labor gained La Trobe with a 3% swing and are narrowly behind in Dunkley after a swing of 5.25%. Labor also gained big swings in the safe Liberal seats of Flinders and McMillan.
The strangest pattern comes when you get closer to the city centre. Labor actually went backwards in a block of six seats in southern and eastern Melbourne. This doesn’t include Higgins, where Labor fell into third place behind Higgins, or in the three inner-city Labor-Greens marginal seats, where Labor also went backwards.
This swing to the Liberal party put key marginal seat Deakin out of reach and leaves Labor in serious danger of losing Chisholm, which was held by Anna Burke before her retirement at this election.
When you look at the whole map, it doesn’t look like it was the outer fringe of Melbourne which let Labor down: it was the inner city and the eastern suburbs.
