The 13 seats to watch – and why they will determine the Victorian election

Premier Ben Carroll calls it the most important election in a generation. Opposition Leader Jess Wilson says it’s Victoria’s chance for a “fresh start” after 12 years of Labor governments. One Nation leader Warren Pickering promises to “shake the established order to its core” by leading his party to being the third major force in Victorian politics.

The verdict of voters will ultimately come on November 28.

The Coalition needs to gain 16 seats to reach the magic number of 45 required to form majority government. While the polls currently point to a Labor defeat, the rise of One Nation – which is polling only 2 percentage points behind Labor – has changed the electoral landscape.

On election night, these are the seats to watch.

Located in Melbourne’s outer west, Sydenham is one of several seats election watchers are calling a genuine three-way contest between Labor, the Liberals and One Nation. Labor’s Natalie Hutchins has held the seat since 2010 but is not standing for re-election.

Jim Reed, founder of the polling company Resolve, says seats in Labor’s western suburbs’ heartland began swinging towards the Coalition in 2022, and there was an even stronger mood for change now.

“They feel Labor have taken them for granted and don’t stand for them any more. Many voters are tossing up whether to change for the first time to the Liberals or One Nation,” Reed says.

Niddrie usually flies under the radar. Wedged between two airports (Tullamarine and Essendon) and the Maribyrnong River, it’s been a safe Labor seat since it was established in 1976.

But Niddrie will be closely watched on election night as the Liberals pour considerable resources into Moonee Valley councillor Samantha Byrne’s attempt to claim the ultimate scalp: unseating the premier.

“It’s a seat that landed in the mid-50s in the two-party preferred last election,” says Kos Samaras, a former Labor Party strategist and now a director at polling and research group RedBridge. “Given the current political environment, Labor should be extremely worried.”

The Liberals have long struggled to gain a foothold north or west of the Yarra and are salivating at the prospect of breaking into Labor heartland.

One senior Liberal figure, who requested anonymity to speak openly about the campaign, says Niddrie is “absolutely up for grabs”. “They [Labor] are obviously nervous,” he says.

Labor’s Emma Vulin won Pakenham in the 2022 election by just 307 votes. That razor-thin margin and One Nation’s rise makes this seat in Melbourne’s outer south-east another three-way contest worth watching. It’s also the seat Pickering hopes will take him to parliament.

Samaras says that earlier this year it looked likely that Pickering would claim the seat in a contest against Labor. But a softening in support for One Nation and a surge in support for the Liberals has made it a possible win for Liberal candidate Radmila Dyson, given she will get Labor voters’ preferences.

“If the Libs get on parity with them [One Nation], they win,” Samaras says. “It’s an illustration of why the Liberal Party could have a very good night because it starts winning these three-way contests.”

Held by Labor on a tiny 0.2 per cent margin, Northcote is a key seat the Greens hope to win to extend their control over the inner city. The Greens already have Melbourne, Brunswick and Richmond, and are also targeting the Labor-held Pascoe Vale, Preston and Footscray.

“It’ll be determined by what the Liberals do with their how-to-vote cards,” says election analyst Antony Green.

“At the last election, seats like Preston and Footscray became marginal because the Liberals recommended preferences to the Greens. So if the Liberals don’t do that, it’ll be hard for the Greens.”

This swanky inner-south seat is an oddity in Australian politics: a Liberal-versus-Greens contest.

The Greens held the electorate from 2014 until 2024, when their co-deputy leader, Sam Hibbins, resigned over a relationship with a staffer, and Liberal Rachel Westaway won the subsequent byelection.

“The statewide polls are picking up a movement to the Greens, who seem to appeal to the ex-Labor voters who simply cannot bring themselves to shift to the right,” says Reed. “This puts a handful of inner-city seats in play, and we might also see Prahran return to them.”

Labor did not run a candidate in the 2025 byelection, and where they direct preferences could be decisive.

The once-safe Labor seat in Melbourne’s north-east is another three-way contest.

Samaras says the contrast of growing pains in outer northern and western suburbs, with their chronically congested roads and poor or nonexistent public transport, compared with the billions Labor has spent on new rail lines in the east and south-east is why Labor is in danger of losing seats like Yan Yean.

“All you have to do is drive up the Hume. When you near the Donnybrook Road exit, you’ll see why: complete neglect,” Samaras says.

Covering the coal mining and power station communities of the Latrobe Valley, Morwell will be “ground zero” for One Nation according to Samaras, who calls it and Ripon as the seats most likely to go orange.

“It has all the key traits that favour One Nation: a lot older, post-industrial, declining industries, historic job losses,” he says. “Lots of similarities to what we see in Rust Belt states in the US.”

Green agrees that Morwell is One Nation’s best chance for a seat in the lower house.

When Labor swept to power in 1999 under Steve Bracks, it did so by winning Victoria’s regional centres like Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong, where a sense of neglect by the Kennett government had taken root.

Labor has held many of them ever since, including Bendigo East, which has been represented by former premier Jacinta Allan for the past 27 years.

But Samaras says that historic regional realignment could reverse this election.

“The years of basically building a strong Labor constituency in our provincial cities like Bendigo have been all washed away,” he says. “There is a pretty strong sense within regional Victoria that the government has ignored them at the expense of Melbourne.”

With Allan retiring, teacher Tim Rickwood is facing off against pub owner Andrew Lethlean for the Nationals and Cheryl Hawken for One Nation.

Ripon, stretching from the outskirts of Ballarat to take in a huge 14,444-square-kilometre chunk of western Victoria, is another regional Labor electorate to watch.

Labor won the seat in the 1999 regional coup, then lost it to the Liberals in 2014, until incumbent MP Martha Haylett took it back again in 2022 with a slim 3 per cent margin.

“Labor can’t possibly hold it,” says Green. It just a question of whether it could fall to One Nation rather than the Liberals.

Melton is another brick in Labor’s western suburbs “red wall” that could crack. It’s been Labor’s since it was established 34 years ago. Incumbent MP Steve McGhie is retiring, leaving replacement Broden Borg to try to fend off councillor and snake catcher Jarrod Bingham, with One Nation and the West Party also in the mix.

“I think it’s one of the more consequential seats to watch,” says Green. “It’s outer-suburban. It’s an area where voters have criticised the government because they’re still not on the metro rail system. ”

A groundswell of support for One Nation in northern Victoria makes Shepparton another target seat for the populist party. The city of Shepparton is the base of Victoria’s only current One Nation MP, upper house member Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell.

But One Nation will come up against Shane Sali, a former mayor who has stepped in for the Nationals to replace retiring MP Kim O’Keeffe.

Shepparton has been safe Nationals and Country Party territory for its entire history, save for when it turned independent in 2014 and 2018 with the election of Suzanna Sheed.

“The Coalition really need to hold on to the seats they have already if they want to net the 16 they need to reach majority government,” says Reed. “Shepparton is a case in point.”

But a retiring member, a slim margin and an electorate that’s shown itself willing to vote independent make that job harder, he says.

Labor picked up Ringwood and a swag of other Liberal heartland seats in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs during its thumping 2018 “Danslide” win.

But Labor MP Will Fowles resigned from the party in 2023 following sexual assault allegations (which he denied), and has seen out his parliamentary term as an independent.

Upper house Liberal MP Nick McGowan, who is the party’s environment and fire services spokesman, will contest the lower house seat against Labor newcomer and nurse Rachel Halse.

Reed notes that in seats like Ringwood, voters “don’t seem to be quite so viscerally angry at Labor” as in other seats because they haven’t been as exposed to crime and other issues.

But Green is still predicting a wipeout. “All the eastern suburbs will be won by the Liberal Party easily,” he says. “It’s traditional Liberal territory. One Nation does not do well in traditional Liberal seats.”

Melbourne’s marginal sandbelt seats, running down the Frankston train line, have been a bellwether in recent elections. Mordialloc flipped to Labor in 2002, back to the Liberals in 2010, and has been Labor’s since it returned to power under Daniel Andrews in 2014.

Of the sandbelt seats, Samaras says Labor has a better chance of retaining Mordialloc and Bentleigh than it does Carrum and Frankston, given the former are more gentrified and have more people working in health, education and the public service.

“There’s a lot more financial pain down the Frankston line the further south you go,” he says.

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