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| Adam Carr's Election Archive
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Australian federal election, 2025
Division of Corangamite, Victoria
Named for: Lake Corangamite (Indigenous word meaning "bitter water"), which was in the Division until 2019. (It is not known who named Lake Corangamite: presumably early landholders. The name was in use in its
present form by 1842. In 2018 and again in 2021 the Electoral Commission proposed renaming Corangamite, on the grounds that Lake Corangamite is no longer in the Division. But both times local opposition to renaming the Division prevailed.)
South-western Victoria: Barwon Heads, Grovedale, Leopold, Queenscliff, Torquay
Enrolment at 2019 election: 111,638
Enrolment at 2022 election: 112,645 (+01.0)
1999 republic referendum: No 54.8
2018 same-sex marriage survey: Yes 71.6
2023 Voice referendum: No 52.0
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Sitting member:
Libby Coker (Labor): Elected 2019, 2022
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2007 Labor majority over Liberal: 0.9%
2010 Labor majority over Liberal: 0.4%
2013 Liberal majority over Labor: 3.9%
2016 Liberal majority over Labor: 3.1%
2019 Labor majority over Liberal: 1.1%
2022 Labor majority over Liberal: 7.6%
2025 notional Labor majority over Liberal: 7.8%
Status 2025: Marginal Labor
Labor two-party vote 1983-2022
2022 results
Statistics and history
Division of Corangamite
Corangamite has existed since Federation, and for most of its history was located in south-west Victoria, based on Colac and the
surrounding rural areas. Until 2018 its boundaries had changed very little over the years, but its demographics did change. The outer
suburbs of Geelong spread into the north-east of the seat, and the population of the Surf Coast towns increased greatly. This made what
was once a very safe Liberal seat increasingly marginal. Although the seat has a fairly high income level for a regional seat, it has
the usual low proportion of people born in non English speaking countries. It also has a high level of over-65s, reflecting the growth
of retirement towns along the coast.
The 2018 redistribution changed the seat substantially, removing Colac and most of the rural areas, while adding the fast-growing Bellarine
Peninsula communities of Leopold and Portarlington. The 2021 and 2024 redistributions took the process even further, cutting the seat back to
the Geelong suburbs and the Bellarine towns, and removing all the Surf Coast towns except Torquay. The seat is now a mix of coastal
towns and outer Geelong suburbs, most of it politically marginal. Labor's strongest areas are Geelong suburbs such as Grovedale, and the
remaining Surf Coast towns, notably Torquay. The Liberals dominate the remaining rural areas and some outer Geelong suburbs such as Ceres.
Jim Scullin, later Prime Minister, held Corangamite for one term (1910-13). At a
by-election in 1919 Corangamite elected a Victorian Farmers Union candidate, William Gibson, marking the arrival in federal politics of what soon became the Country Party.
Tony Street, Foreign Minister in the Fraser Government, held the seat from 1966. He
resigned in 1984 and was succeeded by Stewart McArthur. McArthur came from an old
Western District family (his father Sir Gordon was a state MP for many years), but
by 2007, when he was 70, he had been overtaken by the changes in the seat. He was defeated by Labor's
Darren Cheeseman, who was narrowly re-elected in 2010. Cheeseman was defeated in the
strong swing to the Liberals in Victoria in 2013. He later become state member for South Barwon.
Sarah Henderson, a barrister and former TV news reporter, won Corangamite in 2013 and
was re-elected in 2016 with her majority only slightly reduced. In 2018 she was appointed Assistant Minister for Social Services, Housing and
Disability Services. But the 2018 redistribution wiped out her majority, and in 2019 she was defeated - making the seat one of Labor's only two
gains in that election. She was later appointed to a Senate vacancy.
Libby Coker, Labor MP for Corangamite since 2019, is also a former journalist, and was twice Mayor of the Surf Coast Shire. On the new
boundaries, Corangamite is a more compact and more urban seat than previously. This should favour Coker's chances of re-election, but this remains
a highly marginal seat.
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