The Victorian independent candidate Kate Lardner is in a strong position to win the seat of Mornington at the upcoming state election, according to a new poll which predicts a 10% swing away from the Liberal party in the once-safe electorate.
Polling conducted in August just after Lardner, a doctor at Frankston hospital and mother-of-two, announced her candidacy shows she is in a similar position to the “teal” MPs Zoe Daniel, Monique Ryan and Allegra Spender at the same time in their campaigns.
The poll of 797 voters in the electorate was commissioned by Climate 200, which is supporting Lardner’s campaign, and conducted by RedBridge. It found 43.2% intend to give the Liberal party their first-preference vote, while 28.9% plan to vote for Labor, 11.4% for an independent and 5.9% the Greens.
When asked who they would support if given a choice of an “independent candidate like Monique Ryan”, 20.3% of respondents said they would support the independent, 39.3% said the Liberals, 19.2% Labor and 6.5% the Greens.
The RedBridge director Kos Samaras calculated these results would lead to a 53-47 two-party-preferred win to an independent, given they were likely to receive the preferences of Labor and Greens voters.
“It is about the same as what we were seeing in Goldstein, Kooyong and Wentworth,” he told Guardian Australia.
“It was the same trend. The independents started slightly behind but then there is a snowball effect.”
The Liberal candidate and former federal MP Chris Crewther is hoping to keep the seat in Liberal party hands after defeating the long-serving MP David Morris at preselection in December last year.
The seat – which takes in the suburbs of Mount Eliza, Mount Martha, Moorooduc and Mornington – is currently held a 5% margin, but the RedBridge polling shows the Liberals could suffer a 10% swing.
“The Liberal primary in this sample is unusually low,” Samaras said. “At the last election, the Liberal won the seat on primary votes, so it’s a drastic change.
“It’ll be a seat that the independent can secure.”
The Labor vote was also expected to take a hit – with a 7% swing against the party, according to the polling.
Samaras said the swing in Mornington was being driven by a slight demographic change since the 2018 election, with younger more progressive voters entering the seat, as well as a wave of voter interest in independents.
“The larger impact is voters opting for independent options,” Samaras said. “They are looking for something different, they’re not happy with the major parties. A teal offers a genuine alternative.”
Lardner, 35, was a member of the Greens for a year before leaving the party in 2020. She helped found the Voices of Mornington Peninsula before the recent election.
“For a long time things have been neglected and forgotten,” Lardner said. “The hospital situation, housing, public transport – I think people are fed up and want to see change.”
She said there was “a strong appetite” for a new independent candidate and was expecting more than 80 people to attend the official launch of her campaign on Saturday.
Lardner is receiving guidance and financial support from Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 group, whose coffers bankrolled the teal candidates in the federal election.
Laws in Victoria prohibit donations larger than $4,320. Despite this Lardner has received more than $47,000 in donations so far. Crewther has received none, according to the Victorian electoral commission donations register, though he will be financially backed by the Liberal party.
Larder said she “is not focused on Chris at all” and was concentrating on keeping her head down and building community support for her campaign.
In a statement, Crewther likened voting for a teal to voting for Labor.
“The Teal Party just means more Daniel Andrews and more of the same,” Crewther said.
He said he was not focused on polls, but on the issues in his electorate, including protecting the environment, upgrading local schools and roads, improving bus and rail services and sport and community infrastructure.
“People in Mornington want real solutions to the real problems we face as a community,” he said.
