Exclusive YouGov Galaxy poll shows hit to Liberal primary vote in Higgins

The Coalition has suffered a major hit in the blue-riband seat of Higgins in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, with support for the Greens up and Liberal primary vote down. Can the Coalition hang on?

The Coalition has suffered a major hit to its primary vote in the blue-riband seat of Higgins, but may just hang on.

An exclusive YouGov Galaxy poll shows the Liberal Party ahead 52-48 per cent on a two-party preferred basis against the Greens.

The Liberal primary vote has dropped 6.6 per cent since the last election and now sits on 45 per cent.

Support for the Greens has risen five points to 29 per cent, while Labor sits on 18 per cent.

Sitting member Kelly O’Dwyer is retiring at the election, with doctor Katie Allen contesting for the Liberals.

The Greens are running mental health advocate Jason Ball, while high-profile barrister Fiona McLeod is running for the ALP.

Labor sources are quietly confident Ms McLeod will receive a higher primary vote and will finish above the Greens — putting them in a spot to win the seat.

The electorate is held by the Liberals on a 7.4 per cent margin against the Greens and 10.1 per cent buffer against Labor.

The seat is situated in Melbourne’s inner south-eastern suburbs including Prahran, South Yarra, Toorak, Armadale, Malvern, Glen Iris, Ashburton, Carnegie, Ormond, Murrumbeena and Hughesdale.

Climate change and cost of living were the most important issues for Higgins voters, followed by tax cuts and health care.

The survey of 538 voters in Higgins was conducted on Monday and Tuesday night this week.

The Liberals have held the seat since it was founded in 1949 and it has never gone to preferences.

It has previously held by prime ministers Harold Holt and John Gorton and former treasurer Peter Costello.

WHAT IT MEANS: JAMES CAMPBELL

All week the word around the Liberal Party is that something is happening in Higgins, something that is not good for their candidate Katie Allen.

MPs visiting the seat have described “a bad feeling” on the pre-poll.

It is clear from this poll they are right to be worried. But if it is close to the mark it is clear it won’t be the Labor barrister Fiona McLeod who will be going to Canberra if the Liberal citadel falls, but the Greens’ Jason Ball.

Certain seats loom larger than others in political parties’ imaginations because a lot of their members live there.

Over the past decade Labor wasted a huge amount of its precious resources on Melbourne, first on trying to save it and later in quixotic attempts to win it back.

Higgins is turning into the Liberals’ Melbourne with huge amounts of money and manpower are being poured into it. In fact the loss of Higgins would be an even more traumatic event for the Liberal Party in Victoria than the loss of Melbourne was for Labor.

Labor had seen the Greens coming up the road for a long time.

But while the Liberals have always known they were a danger to them in theory, as long as the primary stayed above 50 per cent, it could be dismissed as a problem for tomorrow. Tomorrow has now arrived in the form of a primary vote of 45 per cent.

This is not a good number.

At the 2014 state election, the sitting Liberal MP Clem Newton-Brown got 44.81 per cent in Prahran — which is inside Higgins. He lost to the Greens.

To be fair to Allen, the 6.6 per cent drop in the Liberal primary vote in this poll is not as big as the 10.29 per cent swing against the party she managed to achieve when she stood in Prahran last year. But with one day until polling day, there’s still time.

And as I say, everything Liberals are saying about Higgins suggests they are very worried about it.

Originally published as Exclusive YouGov Galaxy poll shows hit to Liberal primary vote in Higgins