LABOR CHASING HISTORY IN VICTORIAN POLL

In late September, the Victorian Parliament rose for the final time in the state’s current four-year electoral cycle, ahead of a potentially groundbreaking election.

Groundbreaking, for several reasons.

First, Labor has ruled Victoria for 12 years, its longest stretch in power in Australia’s second-largest state. If it wins the State Election on November 28, it will be for an historic fourth term.

Second, of course, Labor’s 12-year tenure means the Liberal Party has been out of office for the same period. Apart for one term between 2010 and 2014, the Liberals (and their Coalition partners, the Nationals) have been in opposition since 1999.

And finally, the forthcoming state election represents the first time that the One Nation party has contested a Victorian poll from a position of relative strength.

Labor under Daniel Andrews seized back government in 2014, increasing its majority in 2018, and again in 2022, when it won 56 out of the 88 Lower House seats.

Daniel Andrews resigned as Premier in September 2023, replaced by his deputy Jacinta Allan, a then 24-year parliamentary veteran.

But Jacinta Allan herself was replaced by her deputy, Ben Carroll, in late July, following a slump in opinion polls and growing public agitation over the cost and conduct of the Victoria’s civil construction program.

The Liberal Party has also been through its own leadership churn.  John Pesutto, elected to the leadership after regaining the inner Melbourne seat of Hawthorn in 2022, was replaced by Brad Battin in 2024.

But in October 2025, Battin was replaced by first-time MP Jess Wilson, who became the Victorian Liberal Party’s first female leader.

Going into the November election, Labor holds nominally 56 seats, the Greens party three and the Coalition, 29. (Two Labor MPs elected in 2022 now sit as Independents.)

That means the Liberal-Nationals Coalition needs to win a net 16 seats to form majority government in the 88-seat Legislative Assembly.

It’s a tall order.

Labor picked up 12 seats at the 1999 election to form minority government with the support of three Independents, while in 2010, the Coalition won 13 seats to grab a one-seat majority.

In 1992, Jeff Kennett’s Coalition swept up an extra 19 seats to defeat the Kirner Labor government, against the backdrop of the 1990-91 economic recession, double-digit unemployment, and the collapse of the State Bank and the Victorian Economic Development Corporation.

This time, unemployment sits around the five per cent mark, although Victoria is burdened by rising public sector debt approaching $200 billion over the next four years, plus a $7 billion cash deficit.

The Coalition’s hopes of a 1992-scale victory are also tempered by the rise of One Nation.

Some opinion polls have One Nation winning a clutch of seats in both outer-Melbourne and in regional areas.

One Nation won four regional seats off the Liberal Party at the South Australian election in March this year, and also made headway into safe Labor seats in the outer suburbs of Adelaide.

But South Australia did not and does not have the residual strength of the Nationals, who in Victoria increased their representation to nine seats at the 2022 election.

In Victoria, three Nationals seats will particularly be in the sights of One Nation’s focus: Shepparton, Murray Plains and Gippsland East, where sitting MPs are retiring. Another seat likely to be targeted by One Nation is the regional central Victorian seat of Ripon, which Labor seized off the Liberals in 2022.

Shepparton and Murray Plains are across the New South Wales border from the Federal seat of Farrer, which One Nation snatched at a by-election in May.

Over in Western Australia, One Nation in late August picked up a hitherto safe Labor seat south of Perth in a state by-election.

Even if they fail to pick up a seat in the Legislative Assembly, One Nation’s statewide vote could deliver it a handful of seats in the state’s Legislative Council, where candidates are elected via proportional representation.

Immigration – one of One Nation’s key national policy planks – may also be a poll factor in Victoria, where population growth has risen strongly in recent years.

Population growth is changing the profile of several metropolitan and regional seats. In 1999, for example, at the start of the Bracks Labor Government, Victoria’s estimated population was around 4.66 million people.

By September 2022, it was 6.65 million; by last December, 7.12 million. That level of population growth is enlarging constituent numbers in seats, leading to a substantial rebalancing of the electoral map, with more metropolitan seats and fewer regional seats in an 88-seat Lower House.

One Nation presently has a sole member in the current Victorian Upper House.  The addition of a handful of One Nation members in the Legislative Council would give the party a significant blocking stake in the passage of legislation.

Of course, Coalition MPs also have to deal with well-funded Independent campaigns, especially in seats with a Federal Teal or independent presence.

That includes Kew (Jess Wilson’s seat) and Hawthorn (John Pesutto’s) in Melbourne, both within the Federal Teal seat of Kooyong, and Benambra and Ovens Valley in north-east Victoria, where the Federal seat of Indi has voted Independent five times since 2013.

One Nation voters also loom as a significant factor in a swag of Labor regional seats in and around the cities of Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo.

Most of these Labor regional seats were won in 1999 or in 2002, and comfortably retained over more than two decades.

Under siege in regional areas and in outer suburbs, Labor may throw more resources into regaining some of its former inner Melbourne seats now held by The Greens, namely Melbourne, Brunswick and Richmond.

On current polling trends, the electoral landscape is now a lot more complex, less predictable and a little less comfortable for Labor, as it pursues an historic and unprecedented fourth term in Victoria.

Gavin Clancy is a Senior Consultant at Lunik