Croydon

Croydon covers 41.99 square kilometres. Croydon, Croydon Hills, Croydon North, Croydon South, Bayswater North and Kilsyth South are whole localities in the district, with 96.7 to 100.0 per cent of their area inside it. The district holds 68.7 per cent of the gazetted locality of Kilsyth, shared with Monbulk, and 17.2 per cent of Mooroolbark, shared with Evelyn.

Enrolment stood at 55,065 in September 2026, up 2,521, or 4.8 per cent, on the 52,544 electors enrolled in 2022. The district adjoins Evelyn to the north and east, Warrandyte to the north-west, Ringwood to the west, Bayswater across Dandenong Creek to the south and Monbulk to the south-east. At the 2021 Census its localities held 69,868 people on an area-weighted estimate, 18.1 per cent of them aged 65 and over, and 21.9 per cent of occupied dwellings were rented.

David Hodgett has been the member for Croydon since 29 November 2014. He was first elected on 25 November 2006 as the member for Kilsyth, which he held until 1 November 2014, sitting for the Liberal Party throughout. He was Minister for Ports, Major Projects and Manufacturing from 13 March 2013 to 4 December 2014 and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party from 4 December 2014 to 18 December 2018. He has been a member of the Assembly's Environment and Planning Committee since 23 February 2023. His inaugural speech was on 20 December 2006, and his profile lists a valedictory speech on 8 September 2026. There has been no change of party and no vacancy in Croydon since the 2022 election. His record is on his Parliament of Victoria profile, read 26 October 2026.

Six candidates stood on 26 November 2022. Hodgett polled 19,605 first preferences, 43.0 per cent, and Sorina Grasso of Labor 15,564, 34.1 per cent. Brendan Powell of the Greens polled 4,940, 10.8 per cent, and the three other candidates between 3.3 and 4.5 per cent each; the Nationals did not stand. Of 47,693 votes cast by 90.8 per cent of the 52,544 electors enrolled, 2,054 were informal, 4.3 per cent.

The count ran to four exclusions. McDonald-Eckersall's 1,501 votes went 522 to Powell, 34.8 per cent, and de Wit's 2,117 went 942 to Grasso, 44.5 per cent. Nebauer's 2,891 went 1,606 to Hodgett, 55.6 per cent. Powell was excluded last with 6,580 votes: 5,019 of them, 76.3 per cent, went to Grasso and 1,561, 23.7 per cent, to Hodgett. The final count was 23,446 to 22,193, 51.4 to 48.6 per cent, a Liberal margin of 1.4 points; a shift of 627 votes at that last exclusion would have reversed it. Against the Commission's estimate of the 2018 vote on the 2021 boundaries, Labor 49.0 per cent, the result was a swing of 0.4 points to the Liberal Party; against the 2018 result on the old boundaries, Labor 47.9 per cent, it was 0.7 points to Labor.

Booth shares come from the Commission's indicative two-candidate count by voting centre, 23,391 to 22,183, which differs from the distribution of preferences by a few votes. Of the 47,550 votes in that count, 16,121, or 33.9 per cent, were cast at the 19 ordinary voting centres, and they split 52.3 to 47.7 for Labor, a Labor lead of 699 votes. The 22,463 early votes, 47.2 per cent of the total, split 52.0 per cent to the Liberal Party, a lead of 862; postal votes, 13.2 per cent, split 59.4 to the Liberal Party, a lead of 1,144; absent votes, 5.3 per cent, split 52.5 to Labor, a lead of 118.

Labor led at fifteen of the 19 voting centres, with Glen Park at 61.0 per cent, Croydon at 59.3 and Croydon North at 57.2 its strongest. The Liberal Party led at four, with Yarra Road at 55.4 per cent, Croydon Hills at 54.1, Mooroolbark South at 50.8 and Kalinda at 50.6. Yarra Road, the northernmost centre, and Croydon Hills gave the Liberal Party its strongest results, while Croydon North and Manchester, between them in the north, were Labor-led. The six southernmost centres, from Glen Park and Bayswater North to Dorset and Kilsyth, were all Labor-led, and so was the Mooroolbark centre, at 53.8 per cent.

The Victorian Electoral Commission's historical pattern for Croydon begins with the district's first election in 2014, and there is no result under its name for 2010. In 2014 Hodgett won 53.7 per cent of first preferences, an absolute majority, with 19,797 votes, and the indicative two-candidate count gave him 59.3 per cent, a margin of 9.3 points. Enrolment grew from 40,730 in 2014 to 42,995 in 2018, when his first-preference share fell to 48.0 per cent and the distribution of preferences gave him 52.1 per cent, a margin of 2.1 points.

The 2021 redivision enlarged a district that had fallen to 10.44 per cent below the enrolment quota by 30 November 2020. The Electoral Boundaries Commission moved the southern boundary to Dandenong Creek, which brought 8,434 electors in Kilsyth South and Bayswater North across from Bayswater. It added 3,649 electors from Monbulk, which placed most of Kilsyth in Croydon, and 986 from Ringwood, which united Croydon South, and it moved 4,241 electors in Ringwood North and the remainder of Park Orchards out to Warrandyte. The redrawn district held 52,376 electors, 7.71 per cent above the average. The Victorian Electoral Commission estimated the 2018 vote on the new boundaries at 51.0 per cent to the Liberal and National parties and 49.0 to Labor, a notional Liberal margin of 1.0 point. There has been no by-election since 2022.

Croydon is the first rung on the Coalition side of the Assembly pendulum. Of the 23 seats the Coalition holds against Labor, it has the smallest margin, 1.4 points, in the under-2 band. A uniform two-party swing to Labor of more than 1.4 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, an implied uniform swing of 9.0 points to the Coalition. At that swing the Liberal share in Croydon rises from 51.4 to 60.4 per cent, and the 25 seats the average reaches are all Labor-held, so Croydon 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.

In 2022 the count turned on the Greens' 6,580 last-exclusion votes, which went 76.3 per cent to Labor, and on the postal and early votes, where the Liberal Party led by 1,144 and 862.

Croydon is one of the eleven districts of North-Eastern Metropolitan Region, which elects five members of the Legislative Council. In 2022 the quota was 80,147 votes, and the members elected, in order, were Shaun Leane (Labor), Matthew Bach (Liberal), Sonja Terpstra (Labor), Nick McGowan (Liberal) and Aiv Puglielli (Greens). Richard Welch (Liberal) filled the casual vacancy left by Bach during the term, and the 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 is its distribution of preferences and the booth shares its two-candidate-preferred count by voting centre. Members are from the Parliament of Victoria as at 17 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.