Election Summary: Victoria

State of the Parties

	2004 Result
Party	% Vote	Swing	Seats
Labor Party	40.4	-1.2	19
Liberal Party	43.2	+4.2	16
National Party	3.5	+0.4	2
Greens	7.5	+1.6	..
Family First	2.4	+2.4	..
Australian Democrats	1.1	-5.2	..
One Nation	0.1	-1.1	..
Others	1.9	-1.1	..
Seats			37
Two-Party Preferred
Labor	49.0	-3.1
Coalition	51.0	+3.1

The Battleground at a Glance

Labor seats	Bendigo (1.0%), Holt (1.5%), Isaacs (1.5%), Ballarat (2.2%), Chisholm (2.7%), Bruce (3.5%), Melbourne Ports (3.7%)
Liberal Seats	Deakin (5.0%), McMillan (5.0%), Corangamite (5.3%), LaTrobe (5.8%), McEwen (6.4%)
National Seats	Gippsland (7.7%)

Traditionally Victoria has been the Labor Party's weakest and therefore the Liberal Party's strongest state. The local branch of the Labor Party has traditionally been more left-wing than its interstate brethren, leaving the Liberal Party and its Deakinite 'small-L' Liberal traditions to dominate the middle ground of the state's politics. The great Catholic-Labor Party split in the mid 1950s was also much deeper in Victoria, with the preferences of the breakaway Democratic Labor Party responsible for the Labor Party's poor performance for two decades after 1955. At the 1969 federal election, when the failure of Labor to make gains in suburban Melbourne prevented Gough Whitlam leading Labor to victory, Premier Henry Bolte dubbed his state "the jewel in the Liberal crown". It also led to federal intervention in the Victorian branch of the Labor Party in 1970, a move that began to pay dividends for the party later in the decade.

The 1980 Federal election was a turning point for Victorian politics. Labor gained seven seats, winning more than half the seats in Victoria for the first time since the war and pushing into the traditional Liberal Party heartland of Melbourne's eastern suburbs. Under Bob Hawke, Labor dominated Victoria at the 1983, 1984 and 1987 federal elections. However, when the losses associated with the Cain government's Tricontinental Bank debacle were revealed, the Labor vote collapsed. Labor lost 10 seats in Victoria at the 1990 election, winning only 14 of the state's then 38 seats.

Labor was fortunate that the 1993 Federal election took place just six months after Jeff Kennett won office and started wielding his fiscal axe. Labor's state-wide vote reverted almost to the levels of 1987. However, much of this swing was in safe Labor seats, a reaction to Kennett's actions in government, while the middle class electorates of Melbourne's east stayed with the Liberals. Of the 10 seats lost in 1990, Labor recovered only 4 in 1993. Labor's revival in its own heartland was repeated at the 1996 election. As the Keating government was decimated north of the Murray River, Victoria was the only mainland state where Labor recorded a majority of the two-party preferred vote. The problem for Labor was that its support was so concentrated in its northern and western Melbourne heartland that Labor could win only 16 of the 37 seats.

This poor return of seats for vote was repeated in 1998. Labor won 53.5% of the two-party preferred vote, a better result than in 1984. Yet Labor won only 19 out of 37 seats, where in 1984 it had won 25 out of 39 seats. In Melbourne's middle-class east, Labor still appears to be wearing the opprobrium of the early 1990s, the twin sins of high interest rates and financial collapse still haunting the party. Despite a decade of trying, Labor has not been able to win marginal seats like Aston, Deakin, Casey and LaTrobe.

The same problem had applied to Labor at the state level. Even when the Bracks government was elected in 1999, it was on the back of swings in rural and regional Victoria, Labor's vote still well down east of the Yarra compared to the position a decade earlier. That was all reversed on 30 November 2002, when the Bracks government was re-elected as a red tide swept east of the Yarra and up and over the Dandenongs. Only a decade after the Kirner government was dismissed from office by the electorate, the voters of Victoria delivered Steve Bracks a majority in both houses of Parliament, the first time Labor has controlled the Legislative Council in the state's history. Bracks led Labor to a near repeat of his 2002 result in 2006. He has since passed the mantle of office to new Premier John Brumby.

Yet despite Labor being comfortably entrenched in Spring Street, the Federal Liberal Party has managed to retain its eastern suburban heartland for a decade. Labor made no inroads in 2001, and in 2004, the Liberal Party significantly increased its vote. Victorian voters have in the past warmed to larrikin leaders like Henry Bolte and Bob Hawke, but larrikins from Sydney like Paul Keating and Mark Latham are a different matter entirely. In 2004 the Coalition recorded a majority of the two-party vote in Victoria for only the second time since 1980. The Coalition's successful campaign on interest rates showed up in big swings to the Coalition in mortgage belt seats. A more localised campaign in the eastern suburbs against the state government's insistence on a toll for the Scoresby motorway also played a part.

The 2004 election has left five Labor seat on margins under 3%. The twin regional seats of Ballarat (ALP 2.2%) and Bendigo (ALP 1.0%) remain vulnerable, but Labor's vote in both cities has improved dramatically over the last decade. In Melbourne's greater east, Chisholm (ALP 2.7%), Isaacs (ALP 1.5%) and Holt (ALP 1.5%) sit on narrow margins, the latter two after seeing big swings to the Liberal Party in 2004.

Going into the 2004 election, the Liberal Party had five seats on margins under 5%. The swing to the Liberal Party has resulted in the Liberal Party now having no seats under 5%. The question at the 2007 election is, are the margins in some Liberal seats inflated? Three factors that worked in the Liberal Party's favour in 2004 were Mark Latham's leadership, the campaign on interest rates, and the campaign against the Scoresby Tollway. Latham is no longer leader, the Scoresby Tollway is unlikely to be re-visited, and interest rates are no longer the massive plus they were for the Howard government in 2004. Could Labor do better in Victoria than a simple examination of the government's marginal seats suggests?

Three Liberal seats to watch are in areas outside of Melbourne. Stretching from Melbourne's northern fringe up into central Victoria is McEwen (LIB 6.4%). Held by Fran Bailey, she knows what it is like to defend a marginal seats, having first won the seat in 1990, been defeated in 1993, and held the seat again since 1996. There was a 4% swing to Bailey at the 2004 election, taking the seat out of its traditional designation as a key marginal seat. Covering southern Geelong and areas south and west along the Great Ocean Road, Corangamite (LIB 5.3%) looks like a traditional western districts Liberal Party seat, and is held by a traditional Western Districts Liberal in Stewart McArthur, but has a surprisingly small margin. Labor did well in the area at the 2002 state election, and it was one of only three seats to record a swing to Labor in 2004. East of Melbourne is McMillan (LIB 5.0%), a seat that has changed party at five of the last six elections. It is currently held by Liberal Russell Broadbent, who has twice before won seats in the House of Representatives, but on both occasions was unable to win re-election.

Other seats to watch lie in Melbourne's outer east. The most marginal is Deakin (LIB 5.0%) held by the Phillip Barresi. It has been a marginal Liberal electorate at just about every election since 1990. LaTrobe (LIB 5.8%) in the Dandenongs was retained by Liberal Jason Wood with a swing to him in 2004, despite the retirement of sittings MP Bob Charles. Labor's increased confidence in Victoria was revealed in August when the National Executive suddenly changed candidate, dropping a union official in favour of a military officer and former Victorian of the Year Rodney Cocks. Most other outer eastern Liberal electorates now look safe for the government, including Dunkley (LIB 9.4%), Aston (LIB 13.2%), Casey (LIB 11.3%) and Flinders (LIB 11.1%). In a sign of the peculiar swings at recent elections, the once marginal electorate of Aston is now held with a safer margin than such long-time Liberal bastions as Kooyong (LIB 9.6%) and the Treasurer's own seat of Higgins (LIB 8.8%).

On the surface, the current seat margins in Victoria indicate it will not be central to the 2007 election. There could be a change of government without a single seat changing hands in Victoria, a situation similar to 1996, when the Keating government was swept away by an electoral tsunami north of the Murray while only one seat changed hands in Victoria. However, if there is a significant swing against the Howard government in 2007, then seats may change hands in Victoria, as the 2004 result is anomalous to the political pattern of Victoria since 1980.

Past Elections Results

	Primary Vote %							2PP %			Seats Won
Election	ALP	LIB	NAT	DEM	GRN	ONP	OTH		ALP		ALP	LIB	NAT	OTH	Total
1975	42.1	42.3	8.9	..	..	..	6.7		43.8		10	19	5	..	34
1977	37.2	39.6	5.6	11.8	..	..	5.8		44.5		10	20	3	..	33
1980	45.5	39.1	4.9	8.2	..	..	2.2		50.7		17	13	3	..	33
1983	50.5	37.1	4.9	5.7	..	..	1.3		54.5		23	7	3	..	33
1984	48.9	36.9	6.4	5.0	..	..	0.6		53.1		25	11	3	..	39
1987	46.9	38.0	6.3	6.7	..	..	1.9		52.3		24	12	3	..	39
1990	37.1	39.7	6.0	12.4	..	..	4.8		47.5		14	21	3	..	38
1993	46.4	40.2	5.0	3.7	0.1	..	4.5		51.8		17	17	3	1	38
1996	42.9	39.9	4.6	7.4	1.9	..	3.3		50.3		16	19	2	..	37
1998	44.4	37.1	2.7	6.0	2.1	3.7	4.0		53.5		19	16	2	..	37
2001	41.7	39.1	3.1	6.2	5.9	1.3	2.8		52.1		20	15	2	..	37
2004	40.4	43.2	3.5	1.1	7.5	0.1	4.2		49.0		19	16	2	..	37

The DLP recorded 4.9% of the vote in 1975, 5.3% in 1977 and 2.2% in 1984, but under 2% at other elections between 1980 and 1990. It has not contested lower house electorates since 1990. Independent Phil Cleary won Wills at the 1993 election.