Seats in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, including Box Hill, Glen Waverley, Ashwood, Ringwood and Bayswater, could decide whether the Coalition wins next month's Victorian state election, The Guardian Australia reports.
Labor holds all of them on two-party preferred margins of between 3.3% and 7.5%. Pollster Kos Samaras of Redbridge, a former Labor strategist, said demographic change had turned former Liberal strongholds into more diverse marginal seats, but that Labor's unpopularity could bring a swing back.
Almost half of Box Hill residents have Chinese ancestry. Researcher Jing Qi of RMIT University said politicians were courting Chinese-Australian voters, including through the social media platform RedNote. Local business owners told the paper that law and order, rents and labour costs were among their main concerns.
Source: The Guardian Australia
Photo: Melbourne (AU), Northbank — 2019 — 1422-7 by Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Illustrative image of Melbourne.
