Chisholm electorate guide: Federal election 2025 candidates, results and margin

While Chisholm was won in 2022 by Labor’s Carina Garland with a seemingly healthy margin of 6.4 per cent, a large redistribution has seen the seat’s notional margin slashed to 3.3 per cent, putting it firmly into the marginal category this election.

The seat has changed dramatically, cutting off suburbs to the north and south, while expanding westward to include suburbs of Ashburton, Glen Iris and Malvern East.

While the seat was a Liberal stronghold for its first three decades, since 1983 the seat has swung between the two major parties.

While Labor held the seat from 1998 until the 2016 election, in 2019, Liberal Gladys Liu won the seat, becoming the first Chinese-Australian woman elected to the House of Representatives.

Ms Liu was unseated by Dr Garland in 2022 following a controversy connecting her to Chinese Communist Party-linked Hong Kong organisation.

Dr Garland, a former union assistant secretary and academic will be looking to be elected to her second term after pulling off an impressive 6.9 per cent swing in 2022.

The seat has a large proportion of Chinese constituents with 28.9 per cent identifying as having Chinese heritage.

The Liberal party have preselected former Higgins MP Katie Allen to contest the seat.

Dr Allen had held the neighbouring seat of Higgens from 2019 and was then ousted by Labor in 2022.

While she was preselected by the Liberal party to contest Higgins, it was then abolished for the 2025 election, pushing many of its suburbs into Chishom.

Despite already having a candidate for Chisholm, the Liberal party reopened its preselection process and ultimately selected Dr Allen.