FED2025 – Tasmanian Federal Election Result
This post is the second in my series looking at the results of the 2025 Federal election by state.
In short Tasmania produced an emphatic victory for Labor with a state-wide two-party preferred swing of 9%.
Former state Labor Leader Rebecca White easily retained the central seat of Lyons for labor with a 10.7% swing in her favour. Big swings delivered the state’s two northern seats to Labor, Bass gained on a 9.4% swing and Braddon a massive 15.2% swing.
Given current events that look set to send Tasmania to a state election in July, some have suggested the move by Labor to force an election has been to capitalise on the Liberal Party’s disastrous Federal result.
That suggestion ignores two critical facts. The first is that Tasmania uses the proportional Hare-Clark electoral system to elect the lower house of its Parliament so Labor’s huge two-party preferred result is irrelevant. Second, Labor’s huge two-party preferred result was constructed from a Labor primary result of 36.6% that would not deliver majority government if repeated at a state election.
That the Federal Liberal Party polled a primary vote of only 24.5% suggests that Labor could emerge as the largest party at a state election, but not as a majority government.
The most recent EMRS poll of state voting intentions reported party standings at Liberal 29 per cent (down 5), Labor 31 (up 1), Greens 14 (up 1), Jacqui Lambie Network 6 (down 2) and Independents an impressive 17 (up 5). A significant caveat on the poll is whether is was picking up washover from Federal voting intentions.
The two big Tasmanian issues are the state of the budget, and the related burden of paying to build an expensive AFL stadium at Macquarie Point. There is clear public support for the state to have an AFL team, but support for the proposed stadium is much weaker. Both major parties currently support the stadium, but the majority of cross bench members do not and opposition to the proposal is particularly strong in the state’s north.
I’ll come back to the Federal result inside the post, but first a brief diversion to the events currently unfolding in Hobart.Read More »FED2025 – Tasmanian Federal Election Result