An interesting opinion poll. Reachtel poll: Division of Kooyong (held by Josh Frydenberg)

2 Party Preferred: LIB 48 (-14.9 since election) ALP 52 (+14.9)

Source: GhostWhoVotes.

For the Libs to be even close to being in trouble in Kooyong is seismic. This seat has always been held by conservative or centre right parties since it was first contested at the first election in 1901, and has had only four members since 1934 (Robert Menzies, Andrew Peacock, Petro Georgiou and Josh Frydenberg).

I suppose before Malcolm incident it wasn't the case, since internal marginal seat polling was positive for the coalition.

However, if one was a rusted on coalition supporter, one would keep head in the sand and ignore polls.

cods wrote on Dec 16^th, 2018 at 9:49pm:

This thread is discussing Kooyong, not Bennelong.

The Liberals are in some trouble in seats they once considered safe. After the Liberals lost Hawthorn in the Victorian state election, no seat is truly safe. The state seat of Hawthorn overlaps the federal seat of Kooyong.

Just one more sign of the absolute hammering that will  take place next march libbos. 

Its time wrote on Dec 17^th, 2018 at 7:40am:

The Coalition could easily lose six seats or more in Victoria. The Sydney-centric Coalition government has wilfully neglected Victoria and the Victorian voters are fed up and waiting for the election with baseball bats.

Raven wrote on Dec 19^th, 2018 at 10:05pm:

There's so much wrong with the current government that it's easy to overlook their women problem. The voters would be voting them out for other reasons.

cods wrote on Dec 17^th, 2018 at 5:24am:


You certainly raise an interesting point cods regarding how party's approach election campaign funding. As you correctly allude to, the approach taken by both major parties - for decades - has been to focus the vast majority of their campaign finances on a select few key marginals, and this has fostered an unhealthy complacency where the populations in so called 'safe seats' are taken for granted. This is bad for democracy IMO.

Now, since the last 5 years or so, we see this model threatened, where we see grassroots campaigns operating on shoe-string budgets, threatening and even defeating the 'safe' incumbents - particularly the seats held by the coalition. The shock defeat of Sophie Mirabella in 2013 seems to have started this wave - seen most recently with the defeat of the liberals in Wentworth.

What does this mean for campaign funding? Until now, the major parties - particularly the liberal party, have a large, yet finite, war chest that is very rigidly budgeted and allocated to wherever the campaign HQ deems it should be spent. Everything from the structure of the budget right down to the daily campaign itenery is rigidly managed and controlled by campaign HQ. Local candidates are not allowed to make any comments, hold any press conference, hold any door stops without approval from HQ. A great example of how this can hinder a campaign was demonstrated in the recent Wentworth campaign - where Kerryn Phelps was on social media every day, connecting with people, unimpeded, saying exactly what she wanted to. In stark contrast, poor Dave Sharma couldn't even make a tweet without first getting approval from campaign HQ. Voters were complaining about their efforts to engage Sharma on social media and not getting any response - because he couldn't.

This is what the stale, rigid campaign model of the traditional parties is facing - cheaper, more efficient and far more engaging grassroots campaigns. Labor seems to be adapting to this new model far better than the liberals - mostly because they are able to pool resources with experienced grassroots campaigning outfits like getup and the unions. The threat this poses to the liberals especially is on two fronts: 1. simply defeating their opponents with sheer amounts of money in marginals no longer guarantees victory - as their opponents can match, and beat big money campaigning with efficient and engaging grassroots campaigning (Wentworth). and 2. Simply having a seat with a large margin is no longer a criteria for it being "safe", and therefore can be ignored. The libs ignoring Indi, cost them the seat.

What does this all mean? IMO, if the libs are going to survive long term, they need to radically transform their election funding model. The days of rigid, centrally controlled campaigning is coming to an end. No longer can they respond to a strong independent by simply paying for more flyers and bombarding the electorate with robocalls with stale liberal party talking points. They need to actually engage at a grassroots level - and for that, they need to restructure their entire campaigning model so that they can deploy an army of local, in touch campaigners who know the area, and have the authority and independence to fashion their messages to fit the local conditions.