2013 New South Wales Redistribution: Analysis of Final Electoral Boundaries Background Paper No 02/2013 by Antony Green RELATED PUBLICATIONS • 2013 New South Wales Redistribution: Analysis of Draft Electoral Boundaries. Background Paper No 01/2013 by Antony Green • NSW Legislative Assembly Election 2011: Two-party preferred results by polling place. Background Paper No 01/2012 by Antony Green • 2011 New South Wales Election: Analysis of Results. Background Paper No 03/2011 by Antony Green • 2004 NSW Redistribution: Analysis of Final Boundaries. Background Paper No 01/2005 by Antony Green ISSN 1325-4456 ISBN 978-0-7313-1909-1 October 2013 © 2013 Except to the extent of the uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior consent from the Manager, NSW Parliamentary Research Service, other than by Members of the New South Wales Parliament in the course of their official duties. 2013 NSW Redistribution: Analysis of Final Electoral Boundaries by Antony Green NSW PARLIAMENTARY RESEARCH SERVICE Gareth Griffith (BSc (Econ) (Hons), LLB (Hons), PhD), Manager, Politics & Government/Law .......................................... (02) 9230 2356 Lenny Roth (BCom, LLB), Acting Senior Research Officer, Law ............................................ (02) 9230 2768 Lynsey Blayden (BA, LLB (Hons), GradDipLaw), Research Officer, Law ................................................................. (02) 9230 3085 Jack Finegan (BA (Hons), MSc), Research Officer, Environment/Planning ..................................... (02) 9230 2906 Andrew Haylen (BResEc (Hons)), Research Officer, Public Policy/Statistical Indicators .................. (02) 9230 2484 Daniel Montoya (BEnvSc (Hons), PhD), Research Officer, Environment/Planning ..................................... (02) 9230 2003 John Wilkinson (MA, PhD), Research Officer, Economics ...................................................... (02) 9230 2006 Should Members or their staff require further information about this publication please contact the author. Information about Research Publications can be found on the Internet at: http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications.nsf/V3LIstRPSubject Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion. CONTENTS Introduction......................................................................................................... 1 Summary of the Political Impact ......................................................................... 4 New Legislative Assembly Electoral Pendulum .................................................. 5 Summary of Changes to Assembly Districts....................................................... 6 Detail of New Legislative Assembly Districts .................................................... 12 Abolished Electorates ..................................................................................... 107 Transfers of Old Electorate Enrolments ......................................................... 108 i The Author Antony Green is an Election Analyst with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and has worked for the ABC on every federal, state and territory election coverage since 1989. Antony studied at Sydney University, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and computing, and a Bachelor of Economics with Honours in politics. Antony produces regular publications on electoral matters for the New South Wales Parliamentary Library. Party Abbreviations ALP Labor Party CDP Christian Democratic Party GRN The Greens IND Independents LIB Liberal Party NAT The Nationals OTH Others Comments and Feedback This publication has been prepared with reference to the electoral maps made available by the Electoral Districts Commission. However, without access to registered voter lists indicating where people cast their vote, re-allocating polling places to new electorates is an imprecise science, especially when polling places need to be split between electorates. Comments and suggestions on the transfer of polling places is most welcome. Messages can be e-mailed to me at [email protected]. 2013 New South Wales Redistribution: Analysis of Final Electoral Boundaries 1 INTRODUCTION This publication provides an assessment of the political impact for the final determined New South Wales electoral boundaries, proclaimed on 18 September 2013. The final boundaries contained only minor adjustments to the draft boundaries released on 17 June 2013. The new boundaries will apply from the 2015 election. It must be stressed that this publication does not provide predictions for the 2015 election. The estimated margins provided in this publication are best thought of as possible results of the 2011 election had that election been fought on the new boundaries. The estimates cannot take into account the difference in candidate and campaign effort that would have occurred if the 2011 election had been fought on the new boundaries. The difficulty of splitting polling place catchment areas to match new electoral boundaries, as well as allocating declaration votes to new electorates, means the estimated margins should be treated as approximations. CALCULATIONS AND METHODOLOGY To calculate the political impact of the new boundaries, the results of the 2011 election have been re-assigned to match the new electoral boundaries. This requires a series of assumptions to be made as part of the calculations. These assumptions concern whether votes are cast for candidates or parties, how to transfer polling places between old and new electorates, and how to deal with the declaration vote from old electorates. Candidate versus Party Vote An assumption has been made that votes are cast for parties rather than candidates. This is a reasonable assumption, but ignores the importance of popular sitting members. A well-known sitting member may poll higher than his or her party would have with a different candidate. New electoral boundaries can see areas added to an electorate where the party vote was not influenced at the last election by the presence of the sitting member. The role of sitting Independent members is even more difficult to take into account. None of the Independents elected at the 2011 election contested the areas added to their electorates by the redistribution, making it difficult to calculate precise two-candidate preferred margins. Transferring Booths to Match the New Boundaries The Electoral Districts Commission released lists of all transfers of enrolment between old and new electorates. The transfer of polling place results from old to new electorates has been guided by the enrolment transfers as well as the published maps. Where the transfers and maps suggest the catchment area of a polling place should be divided, an estimate has been made to divide the results of a polling place between new electorates. Dealing with the Declaration Vote For calculation purposes, all declaration votes (pre-poll, postal, etc) and votes cast at Sydney Town Hall (except those in the Sydney electorate) have been accumulated into a single total and transferred to new electorates. These accumulated totals have been transferred to new electorates in proportion to the transfer of enrolment from old to new electorates. However, the vote by party in the declaration vote has been weighted to reflect the vote by party in polling places transferred between electorates. As an example, the old electorate of Marrickville has been abolished and divided between the new electorates of Newtown and Summer Hill. The polling places in those parts of Marrickville transferred to Summer Hill voted more strongly for the Labor Party in 2011 than polling places transferred to the new electorate of Newtown. As a result, in dividing the declaration vote between Summer Hill and Newtown, the patterns of polling place results is reflected in the 2 NSW Parliamentary Research Service declaration vote transferred. Summer Hill has been allocated a higher proportion of Labor vote and lower proportion of Green vote from the divided declaration vote than has been transferred to Newtown. Variations from Draft Boundaries Compared to the draft boundaries, changes were minor and confined to changes in five areas between the following electorates. • Goulburn and Monaro • Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury • Kiama and South Coast • Oxley and Myall Lakes • Charlestown, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle and Wallsend. None of these changes had significant impact on estimated margins. By-elections and Changes in Party Membership Calculations in this publication are based on 2011 election results. They do not use the results of the five by-elections held since the 2011 election in the National-held electorate of Clarence (November 2011), Labor-held Heffron (August 2012), Independent held Sydney (October 2012) and Northern Tablelands (May 2013), and Liberal-held Miranda (October 2013). The Northern Tablelands and Miranda by-elections resulted in changes in party status. The calculations for both seats are based on the 2011 results, but the margins shown in the electoral pendulum on page 5 have been calculated in the following manner. The Northern Tablelands by-election was won by the National Party. The electoral pendulum has been adjusted to list the seat as National rather than Independent held. The