How Deakin could spell trouble for marginal seats
A traditional Liberal stronghold in Melbourne is set to suffer a more than 6 per cent swing, spelling trouble for a raft of marginal Victorian seats on election night.
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A traditional Liberal stronghold in Melbourne is set to suffer a more than 6 per cent swing, spelling trouble for a raft of marginal Victorian seats on election night.
An exclusive YouGov Galaxy poll today shows Liberal MP Michael Sukkar is only set to narrowly win back the electorate of Deakin despite his 6.5 per cent margin.
The Liberals’ primary vote has crashed to 44 per cent - a 6.3 per cent swing on its 2016 result.
Mr Sukkar is now only slightly ahead of Labor’s Shireen Morrison on a two-party preferred vote of 51-49 per cent.
That’s more than 5 per cent down on the Liberals’ result at the last election, spelling trouble for Liberal MP Tony Smith in the neighbouring seat of Casey.
The Speaker’s 4.5 per cent margin wouldn’t be enough to withstand a similar swing.
Labor could ultimately pick up four or five seats in Victoria, if the YouGov Galaxy polls across the key marginal seats of Higgins, Deakin and LaTrobe are an indication of sentiment within the state.
Dunkley, Coragamite, Chisholm, Casey and La Trobe could all potentially turn red on Saturday night.
Chris Crewther’s seat of Dunkley became notionally a Labor marginal seat in a redistribution last year, as did Sarah Henderson’s Geelong-centric seat of Corangamite.
Chisholm, on a margin of just 2.9 per cent, is also likely to fall to Labor if the swings in other seats are repeated.
The Liberals are also under threat in the traditional stronghold seat of Higgins where today’s YouGov Galaxy poll shows the Greens are within striking distance.
Kelly O’Dwyer’s replacement Katie Allen remains ahead of Greens candidate Jason Ball, but only just, on a two-party preferred vote of 52-48 per cent.
Both major party leaders are zigzagging across the nation in a last-ditch pitch to voters before Saturday’s poll.
In his final major speech of the campaign today, the PM told voters now is “not the time to turn back”.
But the Opposition Leader urged Australians to “vote for change”.
The seat of Deakin — held by Mr Sukkar by a margin of 6.5 per cent — runs along the Maroondah Highway and Canterbury Rd and includes the suburbs of Mitcham, Vermont, Vermont South, Ringwood, Heathmont, Croydon and Bayswater North.
The poll shows the Liberals are facing a swing of 5.4 per cent from their 2016 election result in the seat.
Labor’s primary vote has increased seven points to 37 per cent, according to the survey of 540 voters on Monday and Tuesday this week.
The vote for the Greens was at 9 per cent, while the vote for the United Australia Party, despite a huge advertising spend, was at just 4 per cent.
In Victoria, five Coalition-held seats are on margins of less than 5 per cent.
Though Mr Shorten launched his campaign in Deakin, Labor insiders had thought they were only an “outside chance” to win the seat, and instead focused on Corangamite and La Trobe as well as Dunkley and Chisholm.
Voters in Deakin prefer Mr Morrison to Mr Shorten as PM by 45 per cent to 40 per cent.
The result suggests climate change could be a major factor in Deakin: 34 per cent of voters said it was the most important issue influencing their vote.
This was followed by cost of living, health care and tax cuts.
Mr Morrison yesterday visited the Victorian seat of Indi, the recovery of which is critical to the Coalition’s hopes of holding on to power, and also battleground electorates in Tasmania and in Sydney.
In a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra today, the PM will say: “Now is the time to get on and keep on with the work of building our economy by backing in the choices Australians are wanting to make every day, and to enable them to plan for their future with confidence.
Labor are proposing a big-taxing, big-spending agenda, once again at a time when Australians can least afford the bill that they will be forced to pay — not just over the next three years, but at least the next decade.
“This week is about focusing Australians on that choice and the price of that choice.”
Mr Shorten will spend today in Sydney, visiting the place where the late Gough Whitlam made his first major policy speech of the successful 1972 election campaign in order to emphasise the “generational decision for voters”.
Mr Shorten will argue that a new generation in a new decade has a new decision, and “the door stands ajar”.
This profile is a part of an exclusive series of YouGov Galaxy polls taken in 10 marginal seats. Every hour, on the hour from 10am, the Herald Sun will publish the latest polling from nine crucial seats across the country.
Originally published as How Deakin could spell trouble for marginal seats
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