National implications of Eden-Monaro by-election

The Eden-Monaro by-election was held on July 4 and won by Labor’s Kristy McBain, despite a small 2PP swing to the Liberal candidate Fiona Kotvojs.

Notwithstanding the small net swing, the range of swings for and against the ALP were 25 percent, which indicated that there was a considerable range of political views about each candidate. Modelling of the booth returns showed strong demographic drivers underlying the swings.

As Eden-Monaro is an excellent representative sample of Australia, demographically, spatially and politically, we profiled the 2PP results by pre-poll and election day booth catchments and projected these onto all Australian federal seats.

We stress that the by-election results are only a snapshot of how individual candidates performed at a certain time and in a specific set of circumstances and these circumstances will have changed significantly between July 4 and the next election.

Click to view demographics for Eden-Monaro by 4th July,2020

The booths swinging to Labor tended to contain higher percentages of lower-income families and retirees, often employed part time in tourism and hospitality jobs which had been heavily impacted by the Covid-related lockdowns impacting this sector.

Those booths swinging to the Coalition tended to contain higher income families in secure white-collar jobs, least impacted by Covid jobs lockdowns.

For seat by seat projections of the Eden-Monaro swings onto all current federal seats, see the attached map.

Comments from John Black, founder of ADS and Education Geographics and map from Dr Jeanine McMullan, CEO of Health Geographics.