Federal elections

Do Green Voters Follow How-to-Votes?

Headline Summary – Strong flows of Green preferences to Labor are often cited as being due to preference “deals”. When you examine the data, the flows are due to the instinctive inclination of Green voters to put Labor second. Even in seats where the Greens recommend preferences to other candidates before Labor, many Green voters still preference Labor. It’s how Labor narrowly defeated Independent challengers in Fremantle (WA) and Bean (ACT) at the 2025 election.

One of the legacies of Senate group voting tickets (GVTs) is that political observers continue to talk about preferences as “deals”. Show and tell preference meetings and parties registering preference tickets at the same time were all part of Senate deal making with GVTs. And those deals stuck as GVTs could deliver preference flows above 90% by taking control of a voter’s ballot paper.

The GVT system was rightly abolished in 2016, ending deals that guaranteed preference flows. The Senate is now like the House where parties can only recommend preference, not direct them. With the exception of one brief experiment in Western Australia (see my previous post on the subject), lower house preferences have always been about recommendation rather than control.

What might be termed a “deal” is no more than agreement on printing preference recommendations. This can occur without an agreement as parties often have mutual self-interest in recommendations. For obvious ideological reasons, parties and candidates tend to recommend preferences within left or right blocks rather then recommend preferences across the political divide.

And whatever negotiations do occur, they have no impact unless most voters receive a party’s how-to-vote, and that voters choose to follow the recommendation. Voters can have their own views on where the preferences of their vote should flow, whatever is on a how-to-vote.

Many voters never see the how-to-vote of their first choice party, especially with minor parties. Without seeing a how-to-vote, a voter’s preferences can only match a how-to-vote by guesswork. Follow rates are always higher with fewer candidates on a ballot paper and when a how-to-vote recommendation follows an understood ideological order.

There are discussions between party representatives about preferences. But even without “deals”, it still makes sense for Labor and the Greens to recommend preferences for each other before parties of the right. It still makes sense for the Coalition and small right-of-centre parties to recommend preferences for each other before the left.

With the Coalition always attacking Labor for working with “radical left-wing Greens”, it also makes sense for the Coalition to recommend preferences for Labor before the Greens. That said, the Coalition has at times been flexible on whether to preference Labor or the Greens.

So what about the Coalition and One Nation? That may be a current hot topic, but it’s not the purpose of this post. All I’ll say for now is that strategy, tactics and practice on Coalition-One Nation preferences have changed depending on political circumstances.

This post looks at data on whether voters follow Green preference recommendations. At the 2025 Federal election, 88% of Greens preferences flowed to Labor before the Coalition. For the past 15 years, the percentage flow of Green preferences to Labor has drifted higher as shown in the chart below.

Increased candidate numbers may have removed some “random” Green votes cast as an objection to the major parties. I believe Coalition attacks on the Greens may have led to a decline in conservative voters giving a first preference to the Greens. Not being Greens helps explain why ‘teal’ Independents have had success attracting former Liberal voters.

The last time the Greens issued open how-to-votes without a recommendation to Labor was in 2010. It made little difference to the flow of preferences to Labor as I wrote about in 2011.

What about if the Greens recommended preferences for the Coalition ahead of Labor? Unfortunately data is very thin on the ground, down to a single case, the 2020 Johnston by-election for a seat in the NT Parliament. Even that was a preference throw between Labor and the short-lived Territory Alliance rather than the Country Liberal Party and was due to NT Labor policy on fracking. Preferences flows were much weaker but still 56% to Labor.

But the Greens putting Labor ahead of the Coalition does not mean Labor is placed second. As I will discuss in this post, there were several examples at the 2025 election which show that strong preference flows from Green candidates is not just a matter of voters following a how-to-vote.

If you look at Coalition-Independent contests, Green preference flows match those seen in Labor-Coalition contests. But the path by which Green preferences reached Independents was not a simple case of following a how-to-vote. And the situation is even more revealing in Labor-Independent contests with Labor retaining two seats in 2025 due to Greens voters making up their own minds on preferences.
Read More »Do Green Voters Follow How-to-Votes?

FED26 Redistributions – ACT Draft Boundaries

Draft federal electoral boundaries for the ACT’s three House of Representatives’ seats have been released this morning. The redistribution has been required under the Electoral Act’s seven-year rule where boundaries are periodically re-drawn to bring electorate enrolments back within permitted variation from quota.

The draft boundaries have proved to be more complex than expected. Rather than a simple transfer of voters from the southern seat of Bean to central Canberra with the northern seat of Fenner left unchanged, the Redistribution has adopted a more extensive proposal that alters all three electorates. My estimated new margins are shown below with more detail inside the post.

ACT Federal Redistribution (Draft) – Summary of Margin Changes
Old Boundaries New Boundaries Shift
Bean (ALP v LIB) ALP 19.3% ALP 19.4% +0.1 ALP
Bean (ALP v IND) ALP 0.3% ALP 1.4% +1.1 ALP
Canberra (ALP v LIB) ALP 26.4% ALP 26.1% -0.3 ALP
Canberra (ALP v GRN) ALP 19.5% ALP 19.5% No change
Fenner (ALP v LIB) ALP 22.1% ALP 22.3% +0.2 ALP

Note: The Labor versus Independent calculation for Bean has added the vote for the Independent in Canberra to the vote for Jess Price in Bean. This probably underestimates the support Price might have received in the added areas but it is not really possible to estimate how Price might have polled. After transferring the primary votes I’ve applied the preference distribution for Bean. This produces a 1.4% major which I suspect is a little higher than it should be. I’ll have a think if there is a better method for the final boundaries later in the year.

The method I normally use is to use the ratio of Senate to House vote for the larger parties. That method is not possible in the ACT because the success of Independent David Pocock in the Senate means all other parties have a lower Senate vote than House vote.

More detail on the redistribution and much more on the ins and outs of each division inside the post.Read More »FED26 Redistributions – ACT Draft Boundaries

Where are they now? Who now holds the seats of former Liberal Leaders.

The success of Independents at recent elections has cost the Liberal Party some of its safest seats. They are losses that have toughened the Coalition’s path back to office.

The seats lost, Bradfield, Mackellar, Warringah, Wentworth, Goldstein (recovered 2025), Kooyong and Curtin, have long been bastions of the Liberal Party. They are the sort of seats once held by Prime Ministers, Party Leaders and senior Ministers.

And then there are the losses to Labor in 2025 with the Liberal Party suffering its worst ever election defeat. The losses to Labor and Independents and a near wipe out in the state capitals has left Liberal Party with few of the urban seats traditionally occupied by the party’s leadership.

Of the 13 seats held by former Liberal Party Leaders, only two are currently held by the Liberal Party.

Newly elected Leader Angus Taylor is the Liberal party’s 17th leader since Robert Menzies formed the party eight decades ago.

Of the 16 previous leaders, eight won elections – Robert Menzies, Harold Holt, John Gorton, Malcolm Fraser, John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. Of those, four won elections that took the Liberal Party from opposition to government – Menzies, Fraser, Howard and Abbott.

Five led the Liberal Party to an election and lost – William McMahon (who was the 9th leader to serve as Prime Minister), Billy Snedden, Andrew Peacock (twice), John Hewson and Peter Dutton.

Three others lost the leadership before having the chance to fight an election – Alexander Downer, Brendan Nelson and the recently deposed Sussan Ley.

At the next election we will learn which list Angus Taylor’s name will be appended to.

The scale of the Coalition’s defeat in 2025 increased the number of former Leaders’ seats that are no longer held by the Liberal Party. Of the 13 seats once held by former Liberal Leaders –

  • 5 are now held by Independents (including the Centre Alliance in Mayo)
  • 3 are Labor held
  • 2 were lost to Labor and later abolished
  • only 2 are still held by the Liberal Party

The fate of the 13th leadership seat will be decided on 9 May at the by-election in Sussan Ley’s former seat of Farrer. I previously published posts on the Farrer electorate, and also on whether the seat is more naturally a Liberal or National seat.

The Liberal Party will be under threat from Coalition rivals the National Party, 2025’s second placed Independent Michelle Milthorpe, and surging national polls that give One Nation a chance of victory.

But enough on Farrer. In this post I list the fate of seats once held by Liberal Leaders. I also have a whimsical trawl through the list of seats named after Prime Ministers but now held by representatives from the other side of politics.Read More »Where are they now? Who now holds the seats of former Liberal Leaders.

FED26 Redistribution – Tasmania Draft Boundaries

Last Friday the Australian Electoral Commission issued draft electoral boundaries for Tasmania. It was the first of this year’s round of federal redistributions.

Draft boundaries for the ACT will be released in a fortnight, South Australia some time after the state election to avoid confusion, and a Queensland federal redistribution will get underway in July.

If the Albanese government goes ahead with rumoured plans to increase the size of the parliament, then all five mainland states will require redistributions before the next election. Tasmania and the two territories would be untouched by an expansion of parliamkent.

But first Tasmania.

Full details of the proposed boundaries can be found at the Australian Electoral Commission’s website. This includes details on how to make comment on or object to the new boundaries.

As I will explain in this post, the Redistribution Committee has abandoned its recent habit of engaging in incremental redistributions, boundaries adjusted at the edges to minimise the number of voters transferred between electorates.

In Tasmania, the proposed boundaries re-arrange the electoral geography of southern Tasmania. Just over a quarter of the state’s electors are moved between seats. The southern seats of Clark and Franklin split in two and re-assembled with a series of rotational swaps through the central seat of Lyons.

The Committee has decided to tackle the state’s most peculiar electoral boundary, the division of the southern seat of Franklin in two by neighbouring Clark. All means of transport between the two ends of Franklin pass through Clark, the seat covering all of central Hobart west of the Derwent River. Franklin covers the eastern shore of Hobart, plus Kingston and all populated parts of the state south of Hobart.

That Franklin has evolved this peculiar geography has roots that go back to Federation. When boundaries were first drawn in 1903, Clark (then known as Denison) covered Hobart on the western shore of the Derwent River at a time when few lived to the east. In 1903 Franklin was the state’s largest electorate in area, extending deep into central Tasmania and completely surrounded Denison. The state’s other three electorates were clustered in northern Tasmania.

Over many decades, as the population of southern Tasmania grew faster than the rest of the state, Franklin contracted south. As Hobart grew in the post-war era, new bridges across the Derwent allowed suburbia to spread to the eastern shore. Areas south of Hobart also grew. Incremental boundary changes turned a Franklin that surrounded Denison into an electorate with two distinct ends.

Federal electorates are so large it is difficult to get a single community of interest that covers an electorate. But no electorate in the country is as geographically divided as Franklin. With Clark (formerly Denison) well under quota, expansion was required with the possibility it would make the boundaries for Franklin even more illogical.

So the Committee has gone for a big bang change more likely to cope with future population shifts. Both Clark and Franklin have been split in two and re-arranged with a rotation of voters through the southern part of the central seat of Lyons.

In terms of two-party politics the new boundaries have little impact. But Clark is held by Independent Andrew Wilkie, and Franklin in 2025 saw a strong challenge from Independent Peter George. He has since gone on to win one of Franklin’s seven seats in state parliament. The proposed boundaries for Clark and Franklin drastically re-arrange Independent support.

It’s best for me to explain the change seat by seat. Note: maps have been taken from the redistribution report and are published by the Australian Electoral Commission.Read More »FED26 Redistribution – Tasmania Draft Boundaries

Farrer – a Liberal or National Seat?

(Update: the date for the by-election has been set for 9 May.)

In a previous post published on Friday, I went through a detailed history of the Farrer electorate.

In short, the seat was created in 1949. Until 1983 the seat was based on the southern NSW rural cities of Albury and Wagga Wagga and was always won by the Liberal Party. Traditionally the Liberal Party has dominated conservative politics in Albury and Wagga Wagga while the Nationals dominated areas further north and west. (In the past decade, the Nationals have supplanted the Liberals in Wagga Wagga though this is not relevant to Farrer.)

When the House of Representatives was expanded in 1984, Albury and Wagga Wagga were divided. Wagga Wagga went in to Hume (it’s now in Riverina) while Farrer retained Albury but was stretched west along the Murray River to the South Australian border. It combined a core Liberal area around Albury with National territory further west.

It was expected that long-time Albury Mayor and Liberal candidate John Roach would win the seat in a contest against state Nationals MLA Tim Fischer. Tony Wright has written a terrific historical piece for the SMH/Age on why Roach lost to Fischer which I recommend if you can access the story. In short it involved Roach travelling to the Netherlands mid-campaign to represent Albury for its part in saving a lost KLM plane in 1934. By the time he returned Fischer had streaked ahead in the battle to win Farrer. (The story also mentions Cleaver Bunton for fans of the Whitlam dismissal saga.)

Having won the seat, Fischer represented Farrer without a Liberal challenger until retiring in 2001. The seat was won that year by current Liberal MP and now recently deposed Liberal leader Sussan Ley. She has represented the seat without a Nationals opponent since.

With her retirement, it seems certain the Liberals and Nationals will face off in a contest also involving One Nation and 2025 Independent challenger Michelle Milthorpe. It looks set to be a remarkable contest.

But the starters gun on calling a by-election must await Ley’s letter of resignation to the Speaker. There is no legislated minimum or maximum period between a vacancy and the Speaker issuing a writ to hold a by-election. Once a writ is issued, the minimum campaign period is 33 days, just under five weeks, with a maximum campaign of nine weeks.

With both Coalition parties having held the seat over the years, which of the two has greater right to claim the seat as its rightful territory?

The answer is that two decades of boundary changes have tilted the playing in favour of the Nationals. But let me start by dissecting the last contest between the parties in 2001.Read More »Farrer – a Liberal or National Seat?

FED2025 – Independent Two-Party Preferred Preference Flow Data

The 2025 House of Representatives election was the first where more than a third of primary votes were cast for ‘Others’.

In total, minor parties and Independents recorded 33.6% of the primary vote. This was more than 31.8% for the Coalition and only one percent short of Labor’s vote.

The rise in support for ‘Others’ has changed the nature of seat contests at House elections. Elections today are far removed from the days when almost all seats finished as two-party preferred contests between Labor and the Coalition.

The word ‘classic’, which I’ve always associated with vintage cars and ice cream marketing, has been adopted by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) to describe traditional Labor versus Coalition contests. Or rather the AEC calls all other combinations of final candidates after preferences as ‘Non-Classic’, which it helpfully provides a list of on its election results website. (2025 list here)

In this post I’m providing information on two-party preferred preference flows in these Non-Classic seats, data that has not previously been available. This includes preference flow splits between Labor and the Coalition from votes cast for Independents in Non-Classic contests.

Until 1983, preferences were only distributed in seats where no candidate reached 50% of the primary vote. The AEC began to conduct distributions in all seats for ‘information purposes’ in 1984. That election saw every seat finish as a two-party preferred race.

Every election since has seen at least one Non-Classic contest. And as the chart below shows, the numbers have ballooned at the last four elections.

The chart above is based on all Non-Classic contests. The last three elections have seen a particular surge in these contests involving Independents. In 2019 there were seven final counts that involved Independents, rising to 16 in 2022 and 20 in 2025.

The AEC continues to do full distributions of preferences to the final pairing of candidates in every seat. Since the 1990s it has also undertaken alternative two-party preferred counts in every seat. (Except in Bradfield in 2025 for reasons explained later.)

The AEC counts preferences in two ways. First is by conducting the legally required full distribution of preferences in every seat to produce a two-candidate preferred count. Second, the AEC tallies what are called ‘preference flows’ in every seat for both two-candidate and two-party preferred finishes. I’ll describe how preference flows are calculated inside the post.Read More »FED2025 – Independent Two-Party Preferred Preference Flow Data

The Coalition to face a messy by-election in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer

(Update: the date for the by-election has been set for 9 May.)

After losing the Liberal leadership this morning, Sussan Ley has announced she will resign as member for her southern NSW seat of Farrer. Ley has held the seat since 2001 when she took it from the National Party after the retirement of Tim Fischer.

In two-party contests, Ley has held the seat with double digit margins since her first victory in a three-cornered contest in 2001. But that margin has been reduced in contests versus Independents at two of the last three elections, to 10.9% in 2019 and only 6.2% in 2025.

If Ley resigns it will set-up a very messy by-election for new Liberal Leader Angus Taylor.

Under the Coalition agreement, the Nationals did not contest Farrer while Ley was member. With the seat vacant, it is certain that the Nationals will run against the new Liberal candidate.

Given current polling, One Nation would be certain to contest. Two of the last three contests for Farrer have seen Independents reach second place. Labor may contest the by-election, but the party has not reached a quarter of the primary vote since 2007. More likely Labor would sit out the contest and leave the field free for a conservative slugfest.

The last few weeks of Coalition disputes and Liberal leadership rumours could well drag on ahead of a Farrer by-election.
Read More »The Coalition to face a messy by-election in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer

The Success of Local Independents – Kooyong

A key story of the last three federal elections has been the Liberal Party’s loss of once safe heartland seats to ‘teal’ Independents.

The list is a catalogue of seats once held by Prime Ministers and senior Liberal Ministers. In NSW there’s Wentworth, North Sydney (now abolished), Warringah, Mackellar and Bradfield. In Victoria it’s Goldstein (recovered in 2025) and Kooyong, and in Western Australia, Curtin.

These electorates top lists of the most affluent in the country. They encompass some of the most desirable and expensive real estate in each state. As recently as a decade ago, it was unthinkable they could leave the Liberal fold.

There are no Queensland or South Australian seats in the above list, but two could be. The Adelaide Hills seat of Mayo, held by Rebekha Sharkie since 2016, is effectively an independent as the only member of the Centre Alliance. Ryan, Brisbane’s leafiest and once safest Liberal seat, has been held by the Greens since 2022.

As well as being Liberal Party losses, these seats have seen a dramatic decline in their Liberal two-party preferred margins based on alternative preference counts versus Labor.

Indeed, Wentworth, Warringah, Ryan and Mayo recorded Labor two-party preferred majorities by alternative counts in 2025. Had a full two-party preferred count been completed in Bradfield, this once safest of safe Liberal seats could also have turned red.

The paradox is that Labor is achieving record two-party preferred results in these seats despite the party’s primary vote collapsing. The decline in Liberal two-party preferred results in these seats says more about Liberal support in its once safe seats than it says about Labor prospects.

Support for both sides of politics has declined since the high point of two-party politics in 1975. The decline has accelerated in the last two decades. Labor’s support is down sharply from its 2007 victory under Kevin Rudd. The Coalition’s collapse is an even steeper decline from a higher starting point at the 2013 election.

The loss for Labor has been in large part matched by rising support for the Greens. Much of Labor’s fall has also been in seats it doesn’t win, such as rural seats and Coalition seats contested by high profile Independents. This causes Labor’s loss of primary vote to have less impact on the number of seats it wins.

For the Coalition, and more particularly the Liberal Party, the destination of lost primary votes is less obvious. The Liberal Party has lost some support to Labor and to several conservative minor parties. But it is the loss of support in a limited number of seats to ‘teal’ and other centrist Independents that has damaged the Liberal Party by costing it once safe seats.

In this post I’m going to look at the loss of Liberal vote to the centre, to urban Independents. To illustrate the trend, I’m going to analyse one ‘teal’ seat in depth, the inner Melbourne seat of Kooyong.
Read More »The Success of Local Independents – Kooyong

One Nation’s Poll Surge – the first 25 seats to watch

With One Nation surging in the polls, the obvious question is – which seats can the party win.

The first cabs off the rank would be the seats where One Nation polled strongest in 2025.

There were only two seats where One Nation reached the final pairing of candidates after preferences, the Labor seat of Hunter in NSW, and Maranoa in Queensland held by National Party Leader David Littleproud.

In both seats the One Nation candidate finished third on first preferences but reached second place through preferences flowing from other right-of-centre parties. These included Family First, Trumpet of Patriots, Libertarians, Shooters Fishers and Farmers and Gerard Rennick’s People First.

Including Hunter and Maranoa, there were 26 seats overall where One Nation was one of the final three candidates during the distribution of preferences. This point of the count is commonly called the three-candidate preferred count (3CP).

Of these, 25 were Labor-Coalition-One Nation contests. A 26th seat was Indi, held by Independent Helen Haines. I’ve left Indi out of the analysis that follows as I would expect Haines to do well with preference flows from all other candidates in a contest versus One Nation.

There are many other seats beyond these 25 where One Nation’s poll surge will put the party into the three-candidate count. And some of these may be more winnable than those I list inside the post. In some of the seats I list, Burt being a good example, it may not be possible for One Nation to win given how strong Labor’s primary vote was in 2025.

Of the 25 seats I list, 12 are in Queensland, six in New South Wales, three in Victoria, two in WA and one each in South Australia and Tasmania.

Splitting the LNP into Liberal and National holdings, 12 of the seats are National held, seven Liberal held, and six held by Labor.

Two-thirds of the seats are outside the capital cities, the rest generally in outer parts of capitals.

The table is inside the post.
Read More »One Nation’s Poll Surge – the first 25 seats to watch

Here we go again – the Future of the National Party

In my 36 years working at the ABC, the background brief I was asked to prepare more than any other was about the future of the National Party.

The first time I was asked was after my first federal election in 1990. The National (formerly Country) Party recorded its worst ever federal result that year. It was the worst on three separate measures – share of vote, share of seats won, and share of Coalition seats.

In looking back through my notes, I found this well written introduction.

“From its inception, the Country (now National) Party has faced the challenge of being a rural party in a predominantly urban nation. Predictions of its demise have been consistent both in their regularity and their incorrectness. It has withstood the battles of government and the futility of opposition. It has weathered with difficulty the remorseless decline in the proportion of non-urban Australians, and has managed to survive relatively amicably with its urban coalition partner, while at the same time demurely rejecting propositions to merge.”

“Yet at the end of the twentieth century, as the National Party celebrates its 80th birthday, it also faces its greatest test. Having in the past withstood attacks from without by both its Coalition partner and the Labor Party, its now faces the greater challenge of decay from within. For the first time its position as the party best able to represent the interests of rural and regional voters has been seriously questioned by the voters themselves.” (See end of post for reference)

I wrote the above in the year 2000 for a book chapter on rural politics. Twenty five year later only the references to years needs updating. And maybe a reference to the currently suspended Coalition agreement.

In 2000 the continuing challenge to the Nationals was rural Independents, though the chapter also covered the spectacular early rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation before the new entrant’s support faded.

Twenty five years later the challenge of Independents has migrated to cities to haunt the Liberals. But One Nation, the ghost of elections past, has returned with full force and is rocking the foundations of the National Party and the federal Coalition.

Since the Coalition lost office in 2022, the National Party has several times pre-empted its Coalition partner by announcing more conservative positions on contentious policies. The Nationals moved first in opposition to The Voice referendum. The party pushed the Coalition on adopting nuclear power, and since the 2025 defeat, has dragged the Liberals to a position opposing net-zero carbon emissions.

The Nationals and Leader David Littleproud have argued their party has retained its support and seats over the last two elections and it is the Liberals that have haemorrhaged support by going ‘Labor-lite’.

But is moving to be ‘One Nation-lite’ the best answer to successive defeats?

At the 2025 election, the Nationals were returned with 35.9% of the Coalition’s seats. This is the party’s highest proportion since the Second World War and an argument that the Nationals should have a bigger say on Coalition policy.

But the chart below, plotting the Nationals’ percentage of Coalition seats at elections since 1922, shows the Country/National Party always records a higher share of Coalition seats in parliaments where the Coalition is on the opposition benches. When the Coalition is in government, the Nationals’ share of seats is always lower.

The reason the Nationals share has surged at the last two elections is because the Liberal Party’s result has been so bad. The National percentage of Coalition seats has risen only because the number of Liberal seats plummeted while the National Party has avoided losing many seats.

When the Coalition loses government, it is always due to Liberal Party losing seats. And victory for the Coalition is always built on the back of the Liberal Party gaining seats, not the Nationals.

It strikes me that the best way for the Coalition to win government is to work out how the Liberal Party can win metropolitan seats. At the moment the advice on how to do this seems to be coming from the National Party who have never held metropolitan seats. And conservative Liberals, most of whom also do not hold metropolitan seats.

But let me look at other measures of National Party support.Read More »Here we go again – the Future of the National Party