Topic: State and Territory Elections
Victorians will head to the polls on November 28 to decide who will hold the balance of power in the state for the next four years.
While Labor and the Liberals have spent recent days travelling across the state in big campaign buses to critical seats, the parties will pause their travels today out of respect for Remembrance Day.
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Residents in central Victoria say the closure of three local polling booths is a "kick in the teeth" for rural communities, with voters facing longer trips to cast their ballots in the upcoming state election.
An analysis of Victorian Electoral Commission data has revealed 36 regional towns that had a polling booth at the 2022 state election will no longer have one within 5 kilometres .
In nine of those towns, the nearest voting centre is at least 10km away for this election.
The ABC's Nate Woodall and Fiona Parker have this story:
By Casey Briggs, ABC Chief Elections and Data Analyst
Bentleigh has a long history as a bellwether held by the governing party for nearly all of the last 60 years. This means Labor has won it at five of the last six elections this century.
Current MP Nick Staikos has achieved the highest shares of the two-candidate preferred vote in Bentleigh since the seat’s first occupant, Bob Suggett, a Liberal. He has also risen higher in the government than any other member for the seat, serving in the ministry since 2024. He is currently the housing minister and was formerly the minister for the Suburban Rail Loop.
After a tight win in 2014, Staikos secured one of the highest swings in the state towards him in Labor’s 2018 landslide and his vote largely held up in 2022.
But the seats on the Frankston train line, which have had a big role in determining government, have more Liberal-leaning demographic traits the closer they are to the city centre. Bentleigh is the closest of the four and has the 17th-highest personal incomes in the state compared to 56th-ranked Frankston at the end of the line.
Staikos’s ministerial responsibilities overlap with issues that will likely be important in this district: the government’s housing policy in growth corridors like Bentleigh and the Suburban Rail Loop, which sits just outside its boundaries.
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The Victorian Greens have released a scathing rebuke of Labor 's decision to deny the party preferences in the key election seat of Prahran .
Labor had previously given its preferences to the Greens, which helped the party claim the inner south-east Melbourne seat in 2014.
Liberal MP Rachel Westaway now holds the seat, after winning it by a slim margin in a 2024 by-election.
Yesterday, Labor confirmed it would run an open ticket, meaning it would not direct its supporters where to put their remaining votes on the ballot.
Victorian Greens leader Ellen Sandell says the preference arrangement is shocking considering the election could be one of the most consequential in the state's history.
"This is Labor admitting that they have more in common with One Nation and the Liberals than they do with the Greens — because the Greens want real change," she said.
We're bringing you live coverage today from the Victorian state election campaign trail.
While Labor and the Liberals have spent recent days travelling across the state in big campaign buses to critical seats, the parties will pause their travels today out of respect for Remembrance Day.
We'll still be bringing you any new policy announcements, plus coverage from the third day of public hearings in the Big Build royal commission.
