page_title: Division of Sturt
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Division of Sturt / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles Sturt, by John Michael Crossland (died 1858), given to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1946. See source website for additional information.
context_page_description: The Division of Sturt is an Australian electoral division in South Australia. It was proclaimed at the South Australian redistribution of 11 May 1949. Sturt was named for Captain Charles Sturt, nineteenth century explorer.
context_section_description: Sturt was first created for the 1949 election as a fairly safe Labor seat with a notional 6.1 percent two-party margin.  However, for all but four of its first 44 years, it was dominated by the Liberal political dynasty of Keith Wilson and his son, Ian.  Keith Wilson won the seat in 1949 with a marginal 2.8 percent two-party vote from an 8.9 percent two-party swing as part of the massive Liberal victory of that year.  He was unseated by Labor challenger Norman Makin at the 1954 election.  However, ahead of the 1955 election, a redistribution transferred most of Sturt's Labor-friendly territory to the newly-created Division of Bonython, turning Sturt from a three percent marginal Labor seat to a 2.4 percent marginal Liberal seat.  Makin opted to transfer to Bonython, and Keith Wilson retook Sturt in 1955 with a healthy 7.9 percent two-party swing, turning it into a safe Liberal seat in one stroke.  He was reelected without serious difficulty until handing Sturt to Ian in 1966.   Norm Foster defeated Ian at the 1969 election, but Ian regained the seat at the 1972 election even as Labor won government.
  Ian was a key early member of the progressive Liberal Movement faction within the Liberal Party. However, he remained with the Liberals when the Liberal Movement became a separate party, and eventually served as a minister in the last term of the Fraser government. The Liberal Movement ran a candidate in Sturt in the 1974 election, polling 7.2 percent, much of which derived from Wilson’s vote. The Wilson dynasty ended at the 1993 election, when Ian was defeated for preselection by  Christopher Pyne.  Sturt was significantly redistributed prior to the 1993 election, reducing the Liberal margin from a fairly safe 7.7 percent two-party margin to a marginal notional 4.7 percent two-party margin.  However, Pyne retained the seat with a small swing in his favour, and has been returned at every election since.
  The Liberal Movement's successor party, the Australian Democrats, traditionally polled well in Sturt, highlighted by 13.5 percent at their first showing in the 1977 election and 15 percent in the 1990 election, the best result by a minor party in Sturt. However, the Democrats vote later dropped sharply, they gained only 2.26 percent in the 2004 election. The party was deregistered in 2015. Additionally, an independent Liberal contested Sturt at the 1993 election, polling a respectable 14.6 percent.
caption: Charles Sturt, the division's namesake
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