Brighton

Brighton covers 20.12 square kilometres on the eastern shore of Port Phillip Bay. Elwood lies at its northern end, Brighton along the coast at its centre with Brighton East inland, and the district ends in the south with 60.6 per cent of the gazetted locality of Hampton and 51.5 per cent of Hampton East, both shared with Sandringham.

Enrolment stood at 50,457 in September 2026, up 2,197, or 4.6 per cent, on the 48,260 electors at the close of rolls in 2022. The district adjoins Albert Park to the north-west, Caulfield to the north-east, Bentleigh to the east and Sandringham to the south. At the 2021 Census its localities held 65,140 people on an area-weighted estimate, 19.7 per cent of them aged 65 and over and 27.9 per cent born outside Australia; 30.7 per cent of occupied dwellings were rented.

James Newbury has been the member for Brighton since 24 November 2018, when he won the seat for the Liberal Party; Louise Asher had held it for the same party at the 2010 and 2014 elections. He has been Manager of Opposition Business and Shadow Attorney-General since 13 October 2025, Shadow Special Minister of State since 30 November 2025 and Shadow Minister for Equality since 12 September 2021, and he was Shadow Treasurer from 7 January 2025 to 13 October 2025. He has been Deputy Chair of the Legislative Assembly Privileges Committee since 10 September 2025. His inaugural speech was on 19 December 2018. There has been no change of party and no vacancy since the 2022 election. He is the member and party of record as at 17 October 2026, and his record is on his Parliament of Victoria profile, read on 26 October 2026.

Nine candidates stood on 26 November 2022. Newbury polled 18,791 first preferences, 45.6 per cent, and Louise Crawford of Labor 10,164, 24.7 per cent. Sarah Dekiere of the Greens polled 5,680, 13.8 per cent, and the independent Felicity Frederico 3,749, 9.1 per cent. Of 42,982 votes cast by 89.1 per cent of the 48,260 electors enrolled, 1,786 were informal, 4.2 per cent.

The official distribution ran to six exclusions and stopped there. Frederico was excluded sixth with 4,427 votes: 1,804 of them, 40.7 per cent, went to Dekiere, 1,348, 30.4 per cent, to Crawford and 1,275, 28.8 per cent, to Newbury. That left Newbury on 20,730 of the 41,196 formal votes, an absolute majority, with Crawford on 11,850 and Dekiere on 8,616. The two-party figure for the district is therefore the Commission's two-candidate-preferred count, in which Newbury's 22,460 votes to Crawford's 18,970 are 54.2 to 45.8 per cent, a Liberal margin of 4.2 points; a shift of 1,746 votes would have reversed it. Against the Commission's estimate of the 2018 vote on the 2021 boundaries, Labor 49.5 per cent, the result was a swing of 3.7 points to the Liberal Party; against the 2018 result on the old boundaries, Labor 48.9 per cent, it was 3.1 points to the Liberal Party.

The Commission's indicative two-candidate count by voting centre is the count of record here, and its formal total of 41,430 differs from the 41,196 formal votes of the first-preference count. Of the 42,975 votes in that count, 21,762, or 50.6 per cent, were early votes, and they split 54.8 to 45.2 for the Liberal Party, a lead of 1,999 votes. Postal votes, 12.1 per cent of the total, split 61.3 to the Liberal Party, a lead of 1,137. The 13,500 election-day votes split 51.2 per cent to the Liberal Party, a lead of 323, and absent votes split 50.2 per cent to the Liberal Party, a lead of 8.

The Liberal Party led at eleven of the 16 voting centres, with Middle Brighton at 62.8 per cent of the two-candidate vote, Brighton at 62.7 and Brighton Beach at 61.6 its strongest. Labor led at five, with Elwood North at 69.9 per cent, Elwood at 64.2 and Hampton East at 61.9 its strongest. The geography runs north to south along the bay: Labor's booths are Elwood North, Elwood and Elsternwick South at the northern end and Hampton East and Berendale in the south-eastern corner, and the Liberal booths run from Gardenvale through Middle Brighton and Brighton Beach to Hampton along the coast. Elwood North is the largest booth, with 1,774 two-candidate votes.

The Commission's profile records Brighton as held by the Liberal and Country Party and then the Liberal Party at every election since 1955. In 2010 Louise Asher won 62.5 per cent of first preferences, an absolute majority, and 67.6 per cent on the indicative two-candidate count, a margin of 17.6 points. The Electoral Boundaries Commission redrew the district in 2013, moving Elwood into Brighton, and in 2014 Asher again won on first preferences, 55.5 per cent, a margin of 9.8 points on the indicative count. In 2018 Newbury polled 45.4 per cent of first preferences and the distribution gave him 51.1 per cent, a margin of 1.1 points.

The 2021 redivision made one change. Brighton stood 6.10 per cent below the average district enrolment on 30 November 2020, with 45,658 electors against an average of 48,625. The Commission kept the southern boundary with Sandringham and most of the eastern boundary, and brought 2,644 electors in from Bentleigh by running the eastern boundary further along the Nepean Highway; the transfer divided Hampton East between Brighton and Sandringham and united Brighton East in the district apart from some properties on Thomas Street. Nothing moved out, and the new district held 48,302 electors, 0.66 per cent below the average. The Commission estimated the 2018 vote on the new boundaries at 50.5 per cent to the Liberal and National parties and 49.5 to Labor, a notional Liberal margin of 0.5 points. There has been no by-election since 2022.

Brighton is the eighth rung on the Coalition side of the Assembly pendulum, among the 23 seats the Coalition holds against Labor, with a margin of 4.2 points in the 2 to 6 band. A uniform two-party swing to Labor of more than 4.2 points changes the seat. The polls' average since the change of Premier stood at 54.0 to 46.0 to the Coalition on 26 October 2026, from ten polls, against a 2022 statewide result of 55.0 to 45.0 to Labor, so the implied uniform swing is 9.0 points to the Coalition. At that swing the Liberal share in Brighton rises from 54.2 to 63.2 per cent, and the 25 seats the average reaches are all Labor-held, so Brighton is not among them. Every poll in the average is on the Victorian election polls tracker, and the leaders' ratings are on the pages for Ben Carroll's approval rating and Jess Wilson's approval rating.

Brighton is one of the eleven districts of Southern Metropolitan Region, which elects five members of the Legislative Council. In 2022 the quota was 78,309 votes, and the members elected, in order, were David Davis (Liberal), John Berger (Labor), Georgie Crozier (Liberal), Katherine Copsey (Greens) and Ryan Batchelor (Labor). All five sit as at 17 October 2026. The region and its members are set out in the Council section of the hub.

Results, enrolment, boundaries and the timetable are from the Victorian Electoral Commission; the 2022 result and the booth shares are its two-candidate-preferred count by voting centre, and the exclusion figures are from its distribution of preferences. Members and parties are of record as at 17 October 2026, from the Parliament of Victoria, whose member profiles were read on 26 October 2026; enrolment is as at September 2026. Boundaries, localities and postcodes are Vicmap Admin, © State of Victoria, CC BY 4.0, matched to the district by area. Population figures are the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2021 Census, area-weighted by locality. The polls' average is the Victorian election 2026 hub's register, updated 26 October 2026.