Vote Compass reveals Australia's most left-leaning and right-leaning seats ahead of 2019 federal election

Updated

A lot has changed since the 2016 federal election — the Prime Minister, for starters — but Australia's most left-leaning and right-leaning electorates remain exactly the same, according to Vote Compass data.

An analysis of where 450,479 Vote Compass respondents sit on economic and social dimensions found:

The most right-leaning, or conservative, electorate in the country is Maranoa in rural Queensland, a very safe seat held by the Liberal National Party.

in rural Queensland, a very safe seat held by the Liberal National Party. The most left-leaning is Cooper, a formerly working-class but now gentrified seat in Melbourne that was formerly known as Batman and is held by Labor.

Vote Compass asks 30 questions to determine where voters sit on two scales — left to right on economics, and socially progressive to socially conservative. It then allows users to see how their views compare to the parties' policies.

Some of the other key findings include:

The top 10 most left-leaning electorates are all in the inner suburbs of our capital cities, with the addition of the NSW electorate of Newcastle .

of our capital cities, with the addition of the NSW electorate of . The top 10 most right-leaning electorates are all rural , with the exception of the seat of Moncrieff , which is centred on Surfers Paradise on Queensland's Gold Coast.

, with the exception of the seat of , which is centred on on Queensland's Gold Coast. Queensland emerges, once again, as Australia's most right-leaning state , accounting for seven of the 10 most right-leaning electorates.

, accounting for seven of the 10 most right-leaning electorates. The top 10 left-leaning electorates are spread across Victoria (5), NSW (4) and Tasmania (1).

Boothby in South Australia is the most left-leaning seat held by the Liberal Party. Nicolle Flint won the seat at the 2016 election and holds it with a margin of only 2.7 per cent.

in South Australia is the most left-leaning seat held by the Liberal Party. Nicolle Flint won the seat at the 2016 election and holds it with a margin of only 2.7 per cent. Longman in Queensland is the most right-leaning seat held by Labor. Susan Lamb won it in 2016 and holds it by only 0.8 per cent, after she won it again in a by-election in 2018.

Explore our interactive chart, which ranks every seat in the country from the most left-leaning to the most right-leaning.

Where elections are won and lost

Okay, if you've made it this far, you must like charts. So, now let's double the dimensions.

Below you can see the same seat-by-seat data split out so you can see each electorate represented across the two individual dimensions — economic and social:

Electorates higher on the chart are more socially progressive while those near the bottom are socially conservative.

Electorates further to the left are economically 'left' and vice versa.

The scatterplot clearly shows the parts of the Australian political landscape where elections are typically decided — the central space where Labor and the Coalition seats are closest together.

A sea of Labor-held seats surround five Coalition-held seats — Robertson, Gilmore, Banks, Cowper and Page. All are marginal and have a social and economic profile more typical of Labor seats.

Similarly, a sea of Coalition-held seats surround Labor-held Cowan, Longman and Herbert, plus Indi, held by outgoing independent Cathy McGowan.

Cowan, Longman and Herbert are in the top four most marginal Labor-held seats and appear to have more socially and economically in common with many Coalition seats.

About the data

Vote Compass responses have been weighted by gender, age, education and electoral district and past vote to match the Australian population, creating a nationally representative sample.

The sample size for this report is 450,479 respondents.

The 'held by' status for each seat takes into account the latest redistributions and in some cases represents the notional status of seats ahead of the 2019 election, rather than who the sitting MP is. See ABC election analyst Antony Green's seat-by-seat guide for more detail.

Find about more about the methodology in this explainer.

Topics: federal-elections, electoral-system, politics-and-government, alp, greens, liberal-national-party, liberals, australia

First posted