Created 2000 Electors 69,938 (2016) Founded 2000 Member of parliament Luke Gosling Elector 69,938 | MP Luke Gosling Demographic Inner Metropolitan Area 337 km² Party Australian Labor Party Namesake Vaiben Louis Solomon | |
 | ||
The Division of Solomon is an Australian Electoral Division in the Northern Territory. It is largely coextensive with the Darwin/Palmerston metropolitan area. The only other division in the territory, the Division of Lingiari, covers the remainder of the territory.
The division was one of the two established when the former Division of Northern Territory was redistributed on 21 December 2000. It is named for Hon Vaiben Louis Solomon, a Premier of South Australia, a delegate to the second Constitutional convention and member of the first Australian Parliament. He represented the Northern Territory in the South Australian House of Assembly, when it was still part of that state.
The Division was first contested at the 2001 federal election. For most of its history, it has been a marginal seat usually held by the party of government. Although the Darwin/Palmerston area had historically been a stronghold for the Country Liberal Party at the territorial level, recent gains by Labor have made it much more competitive. It has taken on a character similar to mortgage belt seats; it is usually held by the party of government.
The CLP's Dave Tollner held the seat for its first two terms of existence before narrowly losing it to Labor's Damian Hale at the 2007 election. At the 2010 election, the CLP's Natasha Griggs won Solomon with a two-party-preferred margin of 1.75 percent from a 1.94 percent swing. She therefore became the first opposition member in the seat's history. Griggs was re-elected with a reduced two-party margin of 1.4 percent at the 2013 election as the Coalition won government.
A MediaReach seat-level opinion poll in Solomon of 513 voters conducted 22−23 June during the 2016 election campaign unexpectedly found Labor heavily leading the Liberals 61–39 on the two-party vote from a large 12.4 percent swing.
Griggs and the CLP lost Solomon to Labor's Luke Gosling at the 2016 election held on 2 July, with Gosling defeating Griggs on a 56–44 two-party vote from a record 7.4 percent swing--in both cases, the strongest result in the seat's history. Gosling is the second opposition member to hold the seat.