Election 2022: Coalition likely to avoid deep strife in WA

Two battleground seats in WA look set to fall to Labor, but the Liberal Party won’t suffer a repeat of the state election wipeout.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese arrives at the Labor Party launch at Optus Stadium in Perth. Picture: Liam Kidston.

Labor is on track to win at least two of the three seats it is targeting in Western Australia, but Scott Morrison looks set to avoid the electoral backlash that decimated the state Liberals last year.

Exclusive seat-by-seat polling by YouGov for The Australian shows Labor well in front in the Liberal-held seat of Swan and ahead in the race for Christian Porter’s old seat of Pearce.

Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt retains a narrow lead in the battle for Hasluck, the third seat in WA Labor has been eyeing at this election.

And the government’s hopes of prying back the Labor seat of Cowan have taken a massive blow, with the seat currently held by Labor on a margin of just 0.9 per cent now poised to ­become one of the party’s safest seats in the state.

The YouGov polling shows Labor’s Zaneta Mascarenhas enjoying a comfortable 57-43 lead over Liberal Kristy McSweeney in Swan. The seat, which has been held for the past 15 years by retiring Liberal MP Steve Irons, was the most marginal Liberal one in the state.

Pearce, which covers the mortgage belt suburbs of Perth’s northern coastal suburbs, also looks likely to fall, with Labor’s Tracey Roberts leading Liberal Linda Aitken 52-48.

Ms Roberts entered the battle with a higher local profile than many first-time candidates, having been the mayor of the City of Wanneroo – which roughly overlaps the Pearce electorate – for more than a decade.

Ms Aitken, a clinical nurse specialist, is also a long-term Wanneroo councillor.

Mr Wyatt’s lead in the seat of Hasluck has narrowed but he is ahead of Labor challenger Tania Lawrence 52-48.

The Liberal campaign had been holding hopes about winning in Cowan, where incumbent MP Anne Aly is up against Vince Connelly, the man who had held the now-abolished seat of Stirling. The Stirling redistribution brought a substantial number of traditionally Liberal voters into the Cowan electorate, but the YouGov polling found Dr Aly leading by a whopping 59-41.

This election has seen a significant shift in Labor’s campaigning approach in the west following a long history of disappointing ­results for the party in the state.

The WA campaign is being ­orchestrated by the state office, rather than the central office, for the first time. Advertising in WA has been custom designed for the state, highlighting the Morrison government’s decision to side with Clive Palmer in the Queensland billionaire’s legal challenge against WA’s hard border.