The Melbourne seat of Wills has emerged as Australia's most left-leaning, while the sprawling Queensland electorate Maranoa is the country's most conservative, according to Vote Compass.
It is the fourth consecutive election where Maranoa — which covers 42 per cent of Queensland and takes in Charleville, Cunnamulla, Dalby, Roma, Kingaroy, Stanthorpe, Winton and Warwick — has been named Australia's most right-leaning seat.
It is held by Liberal-National Party MP David Littleproud on a margin of more than 25 per cent.
Wills — which encompasses many of the suburbs in the City of Moreland in Melbourne's north, including Brunswick, Coburg, Pascoe Vale, Fawkner, Glenroy and Essendon Airport — has overtaken neighbour Cooper as the nation's most left and is held by Labor's Peter Khalil on an 8.2 per cent margin.
The results come from an analysis of where 334,411 Vote Compass participants sit on economic and social dimensions.
Other findings include:
- Eight of the top 10 most left-leaning electorates are in capital cities, excluding Cunningham and Newcastle in New South Wales
- Five of the 10 most left-leaning electorates are in Melbourne
- Six of the top 10 most right-leaning electorates are in rural areas, excluding Mitchell in New South Wales, Moncrieff and Fadden in Queensland and Curtin in Western Australia
- The most right-leaning state is Queensland, which accounts for half of the right-leaning seats
Unsurprisingly, ABC election analyst Antony Green said the data showed Labor and Green seats were more left-leaning, and seats held by the Liberal and National Party were more right-leaning.
"You see a lot of inner-city electorates where Greens poll very strongly … have the most left-wing position on nearly every issue in Vote Compass, then you've got outback rural electorates like Maranoa in Queensland which are down on the other end of the scale as the most socially conservative and most economically conservative," he said.
Green said it was helpful to look at the data across two 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.
Green said, "what's interesting is the way they cluster away from the line joining those two points".
"If you look at the Labor seats that drift over to the left on economics, some of them are more conservative socially than others."
Coalition-held seats Page, Robertson, Bass and Caset stick out among a sea of red Labor seats.
Labor seats Lilley, Oxley, Blair and Rankin cluster among Coalition-held seats.
About the data
- Vote Compass responses have been weighted by gender, age, education, language, religion, place of residence and past vote to match the Australian population, creating a nationally representative sample
- Find out more about the methodology in this explainer
