Prior to its abolition, it was a 3,323 km² part-urban and part-rural electorate covering areas to the east of the regional centre of Ballarat.

It included the Ballarat suburbs of Ballarat East, Bakery Hill, Golden Point, Eureka, Canadian, Mount Pleasant, Mount Clear, Mount Helen and Warrenheip, and the rural towns of Ballan, Buninyong, Bungaree, Creswick, Daylesford, Dunnstown, Hepburn Springs, Kyneton, Lal Lal, Malmsbury, Meredith and Steiglitz.

It was initially a two-member seat, and as with the rest of the Assembly, was largely non-partisan until 1889, when it became a one-member electorate and began to be held by more partisan figures.

It was recreated as a marginal seat in 1992, when it was won by Liberal Barry Traynor, but was regained for Labor by Geoff Howard when the party won office at the 1999 election.

Ballarat East was abolished in 2014 after a redistribution of Victoria's electoral boundaries, with much of its territory going to the new district of Buninyong.