Yan Yean

Yan Yean covers 611.01 square kilometres on Melbourne's northern edge, from the Plenty Valley to the forest around Mount Disappointment. Mernda and Doreen lie at its southern end with Plenty and Yarrambat to their south-east, Whittlesea, Eden Park and Humevale in the centre, and Donnybrook, Woodstock, Upper Plenty, Wandong and Heathcote Junction run north along the Hume corridor. The district holds 91.1 per cent of the gazetted locality of Yan Yean and 50.9 per cent of Wandong.

Enrolment stood at 56,321 in September 2026, up 8,994, or 19.0 per cent, on the 47,327 electors at the close of rolls in 2022. The district adjoins Euroa to the north, Eildon to the east, Eltham to the south-east, Bundoora and Mill Park to the south, Thomastown to the south-west and Kalkallo to the west. At the 2021 Census its localities held 77,559 people on an area-weighted estimate, 25.1 per cent of them aged under 15 and 9.7 per cent aged 65 and over, and 21.2 per cent of occupied dwellings were rented.

Lauren Kathage has been the member for Yan Yean since 26 November 2022, when she won the seat for Labor. She has been an Acting Speaker of the Legislative Assembly since 6 February 2024 and a member of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee since 23 February 2023. Her inaugural speech was on 8 February 2023. There has been no change of party and no vacancy since the 2022 election. Her record is on her Parliament of Victoria profile, as at 26 October 2026; the hub lists her as the member as at 17 October 2026.

Nine candidates stood on 26 November 2022. Kathage polled 16,328 first preferences, 41.4 per cent, and Richard Welch of the Liberal Party 13,361, 33.9 per cent. Samantha Mason of the Greens polled 2,537, 6.4 per cent. Of 41,894 votes cast by 88.5 per cent of the 47,327 electors enrolled, 2,475 were informal, 5.9 per cent.

The official distribution of preferences stopped after six exclusions. James Hall of Family First Victoria took 505 of Con Bouroutzis's 1,088 at the second exclusion, 46.4 per cent, and 894 of Jack Wooldridge's 2,370 at the fifth, and so passed Mason. Mason was excluded sixth with 3,530 votes: 2,183 of them, 61.8 per cent, went to Kathage, 910 to Hall and 437 to Welch. That left Kathage on 19,771 of the 39,419 formal votes, an absolute majority, with Welch on 15,059 and Hall on 4,589, and the count ended there. The two-party figure for the district is therefore the Commission's two-candidate-preferred count, in which Kathage's 21,521 votes to Welch's 18,003 are 54.5 to 45.5 per cent, a Labor margin of 4.5 points; a shift of 1,760 votes would have reversed it. Against the Commission's estimate of the 2018 vote on the 2022 boundaries, Labor 66.9 per cent, the result was a swing of 12.4 points to the Liberal Party; against the 2018 result on the old boundaries, Labor 67.0, it was 12.6 points.

Labor led the early, election-day, postal and absent votes. Of the 41,857 votes in the Commission's two-candidate count, 19,507, or 46.6 per cent, were cast at the district's early voting centre, and they split 54.5 to 45.5 for Labor, a lead of 1,671 of its 3,518. The 14,088 election-day votes split 54.5 per cent to Labor, a lead of 1,189; postal votes, 12.5 per cent of the total, split 53.4 to Labor, a lead of 348, and absent votes, 6.6 per cent, split 55.4, a lead of 276.

Labor led at nine of the eleven voting centres, with Mernda Central at 61.5 per cent of the two-candidate vote, Mernda Park at 61.0 and Ashley Park at 60.0 its strongest. The Liberal Party led at two, with Plenty, where Labor polled 37.5 per cent, and Yarrambat at 45.2. Labor's booths are Mernda, Mernda Central, Mernda Park, Doreen, Laurimar, Ashley Park and Morang South in the south of the district, with Whittlesea, which split 50.8 to 49.2, in the centre and Wandong in the north; Plenty and Yarrambat lie in the south-east.

The Commission's profile records Yan Yean as Labor-held at every election since 1992. Danielle Green won the seat for Labor in 2010, 2014 and 2018 and was not a candidate in 2022. In 2010 the distribution gave her 54.1 per cent, a margin of 4.1 points. After the Electoral Boundaries Commission redrew the district in 2013, Green held it in 2014 with 53.7 per cent, a margin of 3.7 points. In 2018 Green won 54.3 per cent of first preferences, an absolute majority, and the indicative two-candidate count gave her 67.0 per cent, a margin of 17.0 points.

The 2021 redivision cut a district that had grown to 30.86 per cent above the average district enrolment by 30 November 2020, with 63,631 electors against an average of 48,625. The Commission moved the Wallan–Kalkallo corridor, 10,041 electors, into the new Kalkallo District, Diamond Creek and Wattle Glen, 9,910 electors, into Eltham, and 3,049 electors, among them Hurstbridge and Nutfield, into Eildon. It brought in Wandong and Heathcote Junction, 1,370 electors, from Euroa, part of South Morang, 1,835 electors, from Mill Park, and 37 electors in eastern Wollert from Thomastown, where the boundary moved to Epping Road. Between the proposed and final boundaries the whole of Diamond Creek went to Eltham, and Wallan East, 1,237 electors, came back from Kalkallo with the boundary moved to the Hume Freeway. The new district held 43,873 electors, 9.77 per cent below the average. The Commission estimated the 2018 vote on the 2022 boundaries at 66.9 per cent to Labor and 33.1 to the Liberal and National parties, a notional Labor margin of 16.9 points. There has been no by-election since 2022.

Yan Yean is the seventh rung on the Labor side of the Assembly pendulum, with the seventh-smallest margin of the 52 seats Labor holds against the Coalition, 4.5 points, in the 2 to 6 band. A uniform two-party swing to the Coalition of more than 4.5 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 Labor's 2022 share in Yan Yean falls from 54.5 to 45.5 per cent, and Yan Yean is one of the 25 Labor-held Labor–Coalition seats the average reaches. 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.

The electorate that votes on 28 November 2026 is larger than in 2022, with 56,321 electors in September 2026 against 47,327.

Yan Yean is one of the eleven districts of Northern Victoria Region, which elects five members of the Legislative Council. In 2022 the quota was 77,465 votes, and the members elected, in order, were Wendy Lovell (Liberal), Jaclyn Symes (Labor), Gaelle Broad (The Nationals), Georgie Purcell (Animal Justice Party) and Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell (One Nation). 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 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.