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THE POLL BLUDGER DENISON
Denison has covered the better part of Hobart since Tasmania was it was first divided into single-member electorates in 1903. Labor first won the seat with its 1910 election landslide, but lost it when member William Laird Smith joined Billy Hughes in the Nationalist Party following the 1917 split. The seat was hotly contested over subsequent decades, changing hands in 1922, 1925, 1928, 1931, 1934, 1940 and 1943. It thereafter switched along with the changes of government in 1949, 1972 and 1975, the winner on the latter occasion being Michael Hodgman. The mould was finally broken in 1983 when the Franklin dam issue delivered all five Tasmanian seats to the defeated Fraser government. Hodgman was defeated by Labor's Duncan Kerr in 1987, later to return as a long-serving state MP. This proved to be the beginning of a long-term drift to Labor that has delivered Kerr double-digit margins at each election since 1993. Part of Labor's electoral strength comes via preferences from the Greens, who poll around 15 per cent. | |