Victoria is currently governed by the Coalition, a permanent coalition of the centre-right Liberal party and the rural National Party. The opposition is the centre-left Labor party. The Coalition currently command just a 44-43 majority. There is also a single scandal-ridden independent, Geoff Shaw, who resigned from the Liberal party ahead of a vote to expel him six months ago.
The next Victorian state election will be held on the 29th of November and public polling has begun to become more frequent so it's time to unveil my latest model. Venom (Victorian Electoral NOminative Model) is largely based off of my Federal model but has a few additional features to account for a recent redistribution (redistricting) and for polling errors. Like the Federal model Venom takes into consideration the prior voting history of each electorate, incumbent strength (where applicable), and public polling. Venom calculates a predicted two-party preferred vote for each seat 10,000 times.
Voting in Victoria is compulsory and uses a preferential ballot (this means that in certain seats the way parties direct their supporters to allocate their preferences will be crucial) in single-member seats for the Legislative Assembly.
Tables in this diary are colour coded. Shades of red reflect Labor held seats and predictions, shades of blue represent Liberal held seats and predictions and Nationals are dark green. I've elected to colour Geoff Shaw's seat of Frankston Liberal blue despite his current independence as there is a zero chance of his re-election.
The column graph show the number of simulations in which the governing Coalition wins a certain number of seats in the 88 member Victorian Legislative Assembly. Red columns represent and Labor government and blue columns a Coalition government. As Victoria, inconveniently, has chosen to have 88 seats in their Legislative Assembly it is possible for the voters to elect a deadlocked parliament with 44 members from each major party. As Victoria has fixed term elections this could prove to be rather problematic. This column representing this hung parliament situation is grey.
It is possible that not all seats will be won by either Labor or one of the Coalition parties.
The Greens have come very close to winning a number of seats in the past and on current polling would be considered non-zero chances of winning one or more of Brunswick, Melbourne, Northcote, Prahran, and Richmond. The Greens would almost certainly support a Labor government if the later didn't reach 45 seats themselves.
Whilst there are no rural independents at present in the Victorian parliament there is always the possibility of unexpected victories. National held Morwell is perhaps the most likely seat to elect an independent as there is significant local resentment at the government response to a mine fire that burned for 45 days and dumped large amounts of toxic smoke on the town of Morwell.
I'll run a fresh simulation on Venom in the week immediate prior to the election in late November using the final polling data.