THE POLL BLUDGER
House of Representatives Election 2007

HINDMARSH
Labor 0.1%

Created when South Australia was first divided into electorates in 1903, Hindmarsh was traditionally a safe Labor seat covers Adelaide's working class north-western suburbs. The creation of Port Adelaide as a separate electorate in 1949 made it somewhat less secure, pushing it south to more conservative Henley Beach, but only in 1966 was long-term Labor member Clyde Cameron seriously threatened. The watershed moment came in 1993 when a redistribution added Liberal-voting Glenelg, producing a notional Labor margin of just 1.2 per cent. The election also saw the retirement of John Scott, who had been the member since 1980. The Liberal candidate was Christine Gallus, who in 1990 became the first Liberal ever to win the Glenelg-based seat of Hawker, which was now being abolished. She duly followed this feat by becoming the first Liberal to win Hindmarsh, defeating future state government minister John Rau with a 2.8 per cent swing. Party hard-heads rated Gallus's vote-pulling power very highly, and were duly dismayed when she decided to retire at the 2004 election. The Liberals were also damaged by a redistribution that added a northern coastal spur through Grange to Labor-voting Semaphore, which cut the margin by 0.8 per cent. It was thus widely expected that the seat would fall to Labor candidate Steve Georganas, a former taxi driver backed by the “soft Left” faction in a deal that saw the Right's Kate Ellis take Adelaide. So it proved, but Georganas was given a run for his money by Liberal candidate Simon Birmingham, who limited the swing to 1.2 per cent and came within 108 votes of victory. Birmingham became a Senator earlier this year when he filled the vacancy created by the death of Jeannie Ferris.

In the second week of the campaign, Adelaide Advertiser newspaper published a poll of 714 respondents which had Steve Georganas leading Rita Bouras by 46 per cent to 32 per cent on the primary vote and 60-40 on two-party preferred. This maintained the Advertiser's recent record of poll results consistent with the conventional wisdom.