The picture was far bleaker in Barnaby Joyce's New England electorate with a premature death rate 19 per cent above the national average. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited Watsons Bay in his electorate of Wentworth in Sydney. Credit:Andrew Meares The results for each party leader mirror the differences in premature mortality rates across political lines, with the analysis showing that health inequalities were strongly associated with voting preferences. "This data is a way of showing people the divides and reminding them that through their voting they can remind politicians on all sides that there is something here to address," said one of the study co-authors Professor John Glover at Torrens University Public Health Information Development Unit.

Death rates were 1.3 times higher in electorates of lower socioeconomic status compared to well-off seats, the researchers found. Labor tended to be favoured over the Coalition in urban and regional electorates with higher premature mortality rates, according to the data mapped by an online interactive atlas. Liberal Paul Fletcher's seat of Bradfield - one of the country's most affluent electorates on Sydney's upper north shore - boasted the lowest premature mortality, 60 per cent below the national rate. Liberal-held electorates North Sydney, Berowra and Tony Abbott's seat of Warringah, all had some of the lowest premature mortality rates in the country.

Death rates rose in outer metropolitan electorates, with Labor-held seats Chifley, in far western Sydney, one of the highest at 17 per cent above the national average, and Holt, in Melbourne's far south east, climbing eight per cent above the average. "Labor represents urban areas of higher mortality, but they're not as high as rural mortality rates," said lead researcher Professor Philip Clarke in the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Melbourne. "The coalition covers both ends of the spectrum," Professor Clarke said. "Some of the lowest [rates of mortality] were in Liberal seats around Sydney and Melbourne, but they also have the highest mortality, which effectively are all the National party seats," he said.