Tradies and well-off voters deliver swing back to Liberals

Tradies and wealthier Dunkley residents who abandoned the Liberals in 2022 appear to have been key to the swing back to the opposition in Saturday’s by-election.

Anthony Albanese and new Dunkley MP Jodie Belyea share a coffee together at a cafe in Frankston a day after Labor retained the seat of Dunkley at a by-election. Picture: Tamati Smith/NCA NewsWire

Tradies and wealthier Dunkley residents who abandoned the Liberals in 2022 appear to have been key to the swing back to the opposition in Saturday’s by-election.

As counting continued on Sunday, Labor’s Jodie Belyea led Liberal Nathan Conroy by 52.71 per cent to 47.29 per cent on two-party-preferred, representing a swing of 3.56 per cent towards the Liberals.

The strongest swing for the Liberal opposition was 11.14 per cent at the Langwarrin booth, in the middle of the outer southeastern Melbourne seat, followed by 9.98 per cent at Mount Eliza North, in a southern pocket of the electorate popular with wealthy retirees.

The Liberals lost key ground in Langwarrin between 2013 and 2022, winning the four booths that cover the area in 2013 but losing all four in 2022.

On Saturday, all four swung back towards the opposition, with swings as high as 5.57 per cent in Langwarrin North. The Liberals finished ahead in two of the four. There were also swings of 5.74 per cent in Karingal and 7.79 per cent in Karingal Central, just to the west of Langwarrin.

The median household weekly income in Langwarrin of $1950 is higher than the seat’s average of $1718, with a high proportion of tradies, at 19 per cent, representing the most common profession in the area.

Mount Eliza is by far the wealthiest part of the electorate, with a median household weekly income of $2547, and falls in the state seat of Mornington, where local Liberal MP and former federal member for Dunkley Chris Crewther only narrowly defeated a teal independent candidate at the November 2022 election.

The result at the Mount Eliza North booth appears to be a rebalancing, with the 9.98 per cent swing following a swing away from the Liberals of 24.65 per cent between 2013 and 2022 – a harder swing away from the party than those seen at any other Dunkley booth over the same period.

More working-class areas of Dunkley with strong swings towards the Liberals included Carrum Downs, and Carrum Downs South, as well as Frankston Heights East, both in the north of the seat, as well as Frankston Heights East and Frankston North, which are more centrally located.

The swings towards the Liberals were 6.88 per cent in Carrum Downs, 6.64 per cent in Carrum Downs South, 5.09 per cent in Frankston Heights East, and 5.11 per cent in Frankston North.

The proportion of tradies in these areas appears to have been key to the opposition’s success, with almost 40 per cent of Carrum Downs residents tradespeople, labourers or machinery workers, compared with the national average of 29 per cent. The household weekly income in Carrum Downs is slightly below the national median, at $1658.