2022 Post-Federal Election Pendulum

With 16 members elected to the crossbench in the new House of Representatives, drawing up a new electoral pendulum based on the 2022 Federal election result strains the traditionally used two-sided format.

However, I’ve gone with the traditional format with the non-major party seats separated bottom right on the opposition side of the pendulum. However, the expanded size of the crossbench means this group of seats deserves more attention than its bottom of the table position suggests.

Inside this post I provide a post-election pendulum for the House of Representatives, along with some general comments on the overall result.

General Comments on the Results

Before moving on to the new electoral pendulum, I thought it worthwhile making some general comments.

• The nearly complete two-party preferred count appears to be Labor 52.1% Coalition 47.9%, a swing of 3.6%. This is roughly the swing that Labor needed to win based on the pre-election pendulum. The two-party result hides the importance of both the Greens and Independents to the election outcome, the success of both being responsible for the Coalition doing much worse in seat terms (58) than you would expect from a 47.9% two-party preferred vote.
• There were 84 seats that recorded Labor two-party preferred majorities against 67 with Coalition two-party preferred majorities.
• On first preferences the Coalition polled 35.7%, Labor 32.6%, at 68.3% the lowest combined vote for the major parties since two-party politics became the norm in 1910.
• There were 27 seats that did not finish as traditional two-party contests, 20 that recorded Coalition majorities on the alternative two-party preferred count and seven for Labor.
• Only 15 of the 151 electorates were won by candidates recording a majority on first preference votes, eight Labor, four Liberal, two National and one LNP. 136 electorates required some or all preferences to be distributed before the winning candidate achieved a majority of the vote. It is by far the highest number of seats where preference distributions were required.
• Labor won 77 seats, the Coalition 58, Independents 10, Greens four, one Katter’s Australian Party and one Centre Alliance.
• There were 16 seats won by trailing candidates. Seven were won by Labor (Bennelong, Boothby, Gilmore, Higgins, Lyons, Robertson, Tangney), seven by Independents (Curtin, Fowler, Goldstein, Kooyong, Mackellar, North Sydney, Wentworth), and two by the Greens (Brisbane from 3rd place and Ryan).
• If winners were declared based on first preference simple majority leaders, the Coalition would have won 74 seats and Labor 70 with two Greens, three Independents and one each for Katter’s Australian Party and the Centre Alliance. Of course, had the election been fought under simple majority rules, it is likely that many voters for third parties might have voted differently knowing they did not have the option of preferences.
• The results after preferences again highlight how much the accrued political advantage of preferential voting has shifted from the Coalition to Labor. Preferential voting was introduced in 1917 to allow electoral co-operation between competing non-Labor parties. Until 1990 it worked consistently in favour of the non-Labor parties. But the 2022 result is the latest to highlight that since 1990 preferential voting has worked overwhelmingly in favour of Labor.
• Queensland was the only state to record a Coalition two-party preferred majority with 54.0%. The state also saw the largest swing to Labor, 4.4%, but Labor lost one seat to the Greens (Griffith) along with two LNP seats that recorded Labor two-party majorities in 2022 (Brisbane, Ryan). The swing to Labor was 4.9% in South-east Queensland and 3.3% in the rest of the state.
• Tasmania was the only state to record a swing to the Coalition, a 1.6% swing though no seats changed hands and Labor’s recorded a two-party majority with 54.3%.
• The swings in other states, noting that counting continues in some seats, were 3.2% to Labor in NSW, 1.5% in Victoria, a huge 10.5% in Western Australia, 3.3% in South Australia, 5.3% in the ACT and 1.3% in the Northern Territory.
• In Victoria, the state swing hides a wide variety of results. Labor recorded large swings in its favour in key seats it needed to retain or gain, but suffered significant swings against it in a string of its own safe seats in northern and western Melbourne.
• The Liberal party suffered a massive rejection in Western Australia, losing Swan, Hasluck, Pearce and Tangney to Labor on double digit swings, as well as Curtin to Independent Kate Chaney. Of the 15 seats that recorded the largest swing to Labor, 12 were in Western Australia. The result in Western Australia was the difference between minority and majority government for Labor Party.
• Support for the Greens rose substantially from 10.5% to 12.3%, the party gaining an extra 300,000 votes in the lower house. This is a vastly greater number than reported by Peter Hartcher in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 May. In the same article Hartcher stated that Labor had lost 600,000 votes, but the final results show Labor had roughly an unchanged number of votes, though in percentage terms Labor’s vote fell 0.8%.
• Support for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation rose from 3.1% to 5.0%, but largely due to a near trebling of the number of seats the party contested. In the seats One Nation did not contest in 2019 the party polled 4.0%. In the seats it contested at both elections, the party’s support fell from 8.0% to 6.4%. After Labor, the Coalition and the Greens, One Nation remains the nation’s fourth largest party.

The seats changing party (with margin) were –

• Labor gains from Coalition (10) – Chisholm VIC (0.5), Boothby SA (1.4), Higgins VIC (2.6), Reid NSW (3.2), Swan WA (3.2), Robertson NSW (4.2), Pearce WA (5.2), Hasluck WA (5.9), Bennelong NSW (6.9), Tangney WA (9.5)
• Green gains from Coalition (2) – Brisbane QLD (4.9), Ryan QLD (6.0)
• Green gain from Labor (1) – Griffith QLD (2.9)
• Independent gain from Labor (1) – Fowler NSW (14.0)
• Independent gain from Coalition (6) – Wentworth NSW (1.3), Kooyong VIC (6.4), Goldstein VIC (7.8), North Sydney NSW (9.3), Mackellar NSW (13.2), Curtin WA (13.9) (WA)
• The Coalition lost 18 seats, by state six in NSW, four in Victoria, two in Queensland, five in Western Australia and one in South Australia.

New Electoral Pendulum

The pendulum below sets out the new seats in margin order, the most marginal seats at the top of each list, the safest at the bottom. Labor (Government) seats are shown in the left hand column, Coalition seats at the top of the right-hand column. Independents, Greens and other parties are listed at the bottom of the right hand column, again in ascending margin order.

In 124 electorates the margins are shown in traditional two-party format, either Labor versus Coalition or Coalition versus Labor. The other 27 electorates are shown with a margin for the winning party and the opposing party shown in brackets. (e.g Grayndler is shown with (v GRN) after the name and state indicating a Labor versus Greens margin.) Seats in bold changed party status at the election.

Based on the margins, a swing of around 1% would deprive the Albanese government of its majority.

However, it is almost impossible to calculate a swing needed for the Coalition to return to office. The Coalition needs 18 seats, which assuming all crossbench members are re-elected, means a swing of 6.3%. A gain of 10 seats from Labor on a uniform swing of 3.3% would give the Coalition more seats than Labor though still well short of a majority.

But there are nine crossbench seats on margins under 5%. This includes the six seats the Coaliyion lost to Independents, as well as two seats the Coalition lost to the Greens. Every seat the Coalition wins back from the crossbench is one fewer seats the Coalition needs to win from Labor.

If you follow this link, I’ve also prepared a simpler pdf version that you can print on two-sides of an A4 page.