Now that the dust has settled after the 2010 federal election (sort of), attention can turn to another impending electoral contest – in this case, the Victorian state election due on November 27.

The biggest anti-Labor swing was over 10 percent and this occurred in the seat of Melbourne to the advantage of the Greens.

Just to remind: at this election Labor will be seeking a fourth term in government, although the Labor leader, John Brumby, will be facing his first election as premier (he has led Labor once before, of course, back in 1996 when the ALP was thrashed by the Liberal-National coalition headed by Jeff Kennett).

There are great dangers in trying to predict outcomes so far from polling day.

There are also dangers associated with extrapolating state trends from federal election results, not least because it is possible to mount a strong argument that Australian voters do make a distinction between state and federal politics.

With those caveats in place, reflection on the Victorian manifestation of the federal election result is interesting partly because of the way the outcome confirmed yet again just how strong the Labor party is in this state, and partly because of what the federal trends might suggest about state voting patterns.

Labor’s two-party vote, when calculated as a contest between Labor and the Liberal and National party, was 55.3 percent – a swing to the ALP of 1 percent.

Put another way, the federal result in Victoria was particularly poor for the Liberals (not so much for the Nationals – they actually increased their vote in both Mallee and Gippsland and, thanks to the coalition agreement, the Nationals have a new additional representative from Victoria in the Senate).

At 44.7 percent, this was the lowest coalition two party vote in Victoria since two party votes were first counted back in 1984.

It gets worse for the Liberals.

The 34.4 percent polled in the Senate was also an historic low, and meant that only two candidates on the Liberal-National ticket got elected instead of the usual three.

The Liberals have lost a Senate seat to the DLP.

The news doesn’t get any better when regional patterns to the swing are observed.

To win the state election, the Victorian Liberals will have to win lower house seats covering the regional cities of Bendigo, Ballarat and Geelong.

The federal result is good news for Labor, however.

In the federal seat of Ballarat, Labor achieved a two-party swing of 3.5 percent.

In the seat of Bendigo the swing to Labor was also 3.4 percent, and in the Geelong and Bellarine peninsula-based seat of Corio, the two party swing to Labor was 5.3 percent.

These figures seem to confirm the notion that the regional cities west of Melbourne have become Labor strong-holds.

What the federal contest in Victoria also indicated was that the threat to Labor comes not from the Liberal party but, rather, from the Greens.

The biggest anti-Labor swing was over 10 percent and this occurred in the seat of Melbourne to the advantage of the Greens.

The Greens also polled very well in the seat of Batman to the extent where it displaced the Liberals as the second-preferred party to Labor.

The weakness of the Liberal vote in inner Melbourne is quite extraordinary, and could have implications for the how the party performs in the state election for the Legislative Council.

The march of the Greens, meanwhile, suggests that four inner city state seats – Melbourne, Richmond, Brunswick and Northcote – currently held by Labor are vulnerable.

Would Labor losing these four inner city seats be a disaster for Mr Brumby?

Not necessarily, especially if Labor could hold its marginal outer suburban seats (Forest Hill, Gembrook, Mount Waverley and Mitcham) and maintain its strong grip of the regional cities and their surrounds.

Some commentators are talking about hung parliaments, and, if this were to pass, expect Labor, rather than the coalition, to be best placed to work out an agreement with the Greens if they were to end up holding the balance of power in the lower house.

Admittedly, there is a long way to go until polling day and the election campaigns have not yet got underway.

On the basis of what was observable of Victorian voting behaviour in the Federal election, however, it is Liberal leader Ted Baillieu who has got more to be concerned about than either John Brumby, or, indeed, National party leader Peter Ryan.

Dr Nick Economou is a senior lecturer in Politics at Monash University.