Melbourne’s political map has been redrawn by rapid demographic change, according to new mapping work by RedBridge. Director Kos Samaras said the analysis by colleague Toby Wooldridge highlights how population shifts are reshaping the city and influencing election outcomes.
“RedBridge’s Toby Wooldridge has mapped the dramatic demographic shifts transforming Melbourne, shifts that are just as profound in Sydney. This work forms part of a larger program our team is undertaking to track how Australia’s changing population is reshaping its politics,” Mr Samaras said.
He noted that the three largest diasporas in Australia today are Indian, Chinese and English, marking a stark departure from earlier decades. “Their rapid growth alone signals how different the political landscape looks compared to a generation ago 2006 to 2021,” he said.
In Melbourne, these changes are already visible in election results. “The scale of this change helps explain why the Liberal Party has lost so many seats in the eastern corridor, not just to Labor, but also to Independents,” Mr Samaras said. “It also stands as a blunt warning: those who persist with racist dog-whistling are going to get fried at the ballot box—by diverse and non-diverse Australians.”
The RedBridge maps chart 15 years of transformation in Victoria’s biggest communities. India has risen from outside the state’s top five diasporas in 2006, with about 60,000 people, to become the largest in 2021 with more than 270,000. The biggest clusters are in Tarneit in the west, Kalkallo in the north and Clyde North in the southeast.
China is now the state’s second largest diaspora, heavily concentrated in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. England, once Victoria’s largest, has fallen to third, with the biggest relative declines across the eastern suburbs and the fast-growing southeast. Italy, which was second in 2006, is now sixth, with less than one per cent of the state’s population. Its presence remains visible in the north and northwest, but it no longer dominates as it once did.
The mapping is based on ABS Census data filtered for Australian citizens, with boundaries aligned to the 2025 federal divisions. Wooldridge, a Liberal Party member, worked on the project alongside the team’s broader demographic research.
Mr Samaras said the findings underline a reality that parties across the spectrum will need to confront as the population continues to change.
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