, the division's namesake The division was one of the
original 65 divisions contested at the
first federal election in 1901. It was one of five electorates created by the
Federal House of Representatives Western Australian Electorates Act 1900, an act of the
parliament of Western Australia. The original bill introduced by Premier
John Forrest provided for the seat to be named "Occidental" rather than Swan. Forrest himself would become the first member for Swan. Historically, the electorate was a country seat extending north to
Dongara, east to
Merredin and south to the coast. It contracted to an area east of the
Darling Range and became a safe
Country Party seat. Prior to the
1949 election, its old area became the new seat of
Moore, while Swan moved into approximately its present position, although initially extending as far north-east as
Midland. For several decades, Swan has continually been a marginal seat, extending along the Swan and
Canning Rivers from the affluent suburbs in the
City of South Perth to the west, which typically vote for the
Liberal Party, to the
City of Belmont to the east and parts of the
City of Canning to the south-east, which are more working-class in orientation and typically vote for the
Labor Party. From 2004 to 2007 it was the third most marginal electorate in Australia, after
Hindmarsh and
Kingston, with the ALP incumbent
Kim Wilkie winning 50.08 percent of the two-party-preferred vote in
2004. A redistribution ahead of the
2010 election added the strongly Labor-voting suburb of
Langford, which was previously within
Tangney, which made it a notionally Labor seat. Langford was redistributed to
Burt in 2016. At the
2007 election, Liberal candidate
Steve Irons won the seat with a swing of 0.19 percent. Irons was the only
Coalition challenger to unseat a Labor incumbent at the 2007 election. However, the election came at a very bad time for the state Labor government, which was only polling at 49 percent support at the time the writs were dropped. Irons was re-elected with a slightly increased majority in
2010, making it a fairly safe Liberal seat. Following the
2016 election Labor candidate Tammy Solonec managed to return Swan to marginal status. Steve Irons retained the seat in the
2019 election.
Hannah Beazley contested the seat for Labor but ultimately conceded defeat. ==Geography==