Not Going Green: The Higgins By-Election of 2009

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Notes

¹The notable exception at the 2007 federal election was in the division of Melbourne where the two-candidate-preferred result was: ALP 54.71%; Australian Green 45.29%.

²The Australian Greens won the Cunningham by-election for both sociological and political reasons (see Cahill and Brown 2008, 259–75)

³Of course it is possible that Labor feared that its candidate's preferences may have been distributed leading to the election of the Greens candidate. This thesis gains credibility when one considers the antipathy that former Prime Minister Rudd held towards the Greens generally – for example, his stubborn refusal to negotiate with the Greens' senators over the Emissions Trading Scheme.

⁴Approximately 75% of the population of Prahran is within Higgins' boundaries; 33% of Burwood; 25% of Hawthorn and 15% of Oakleigh.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rob Hoffman

Rob Hoffman and Brian Costar are in the Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology. We thank the journal's two anonymous referees for their insightful and helpful comments.