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.

Coalition-Independent Contests

The table below shows the distribution of Green preferences in all 2025 contests that finished as races between Coalition candidates and an Independent.

As you would expect and as recommended, preference flows to Independents were very high in all seats. The recommendation on how-to-votes and the choices made by voters were strongly aligned.

But pulling apart the data further using the published preference distribution reveals that a third of Green votes passed through Labor as preferences before reaching the Independent. Details for the eight seats are shown below.

To the best of my knowledge, the Greens recommended preferences for Independents before Labor in all these seats. Yet one-third of Greens voters still put Labor before the Independent before preferences flowed to the Independent ahead of the Liberal candidate. Some Greens voters may have done this for ideological reasons. Others may not have not seen a Green how-to-vote and assumed the normal pattern of preferencing Labor.

But it shows that the flow of Green preferences to Labor is not simply about following how-to-votes. In the case of Greens voters, many have a natural inclination to preference Labor whatever the Greens’ recommendation. There were cases such as Independent Sue Chapman in the WA seat of Forrest where stronger Green preference flows would have put the Independent ahead of Labor and changed the result.

Labor versus Independent Contests

That Greens voter preferences do not always align with preference recommendations shows up clearly in the flow of Greens preferences in Labor-Independent contests. There were eight such races in 2025, shown in the table below.

There are a wide variety of outcomes here. The Tasmanian seat of Clark had by far the highest flow of Green preferences to an Independent. In Clark that was towards the well-known Andrew Wilkie, MP for the seat since 2010. Given his profile it is not surprising he attracted so many Greens preferences. But voters in neighbouring Franklin were far less likely to follow a recommendation of preferences for new Independent Peter George. 72.0% of Greens preferences favoured Wilkie but only 53.8% for George.

(Update – someone has pointed out to me the Green HTV in Clark was left open. Without HTV registration this can be hard to verify and Clark was the only seat I didn’t check with the Greens. I think a strong flow of preferences to Wilkie was going to happen whatever was done with the HTV.)

In Fowler the Greens recommended preferences for Independent Dai Le ahead of Labor, but only 40.6% followed the recommendation. In Watson, the Greens favoured a pro-Palestinian Independent but only 41.5% of Greens voters gave the Independent preferences.

In Calwell Green preferences heavily favoured Labor, but it was a complex count involving 13 candidates. The Greens did recommend preferences for another Independent campaigning for action on Gaza, but that candidate was excluded before the Green candidate. After that the Greens recommended preferences for Labor’s Basem Abdo over Independent Carly Moore. Abdo was a new Labor candidate and Palestinian by birth where Moore had expressed the view that Gaza was not an important issue for voters in Calwell. Given the number of candidates, and the position on Gaza for both candidates, the high flow of preferences to Labor is understandable. With 13 candidates in an electorate with a large non-English speaking population, the guidance of how-to-votes would have been helpful for many voters. The rate of informal voting was a high 10.6%.

Green preference leakage stopped Labor losing Bean (ACT)

Labor victories in the ACT’s three House of Representatives seats have been viewed as a lay down misere. Labor traditionally wins all three seats with margins well in excess of 10%. Labor’s grip on the central seat of Canberra has been challenged by the Greens at recent elections, but Labor still wins on Liberal preferences. In 2025, Green preferences across the three ACT seats flowed an incredible 93.4% to Labor.

The decline of Liberal support and the success of Independent Senator David Pocock has changed ACT electoral politics. In 2022 Pocock won the second ACT Senate seat by defeating the Liberal Party on preferences. In 2025 he was elected with more than a quota in his own right, outpolling both the Labor and the Liberal Parties.

That success in part inspired a 2025 Independent challenge in the southern ACT seat of Bean. Held by Labor’s David Smith since its creation in 2019, he was challenged in 2025 by Independent Jessie Price. In a contest with only four candidates, both the Liberal and Green candidates recommended preferences for Price ahead of Labor. Smith’s final majority was 700 votes, a margin of 0.3%.

As the chart below shows, Labor was saved because vast numbers of Green voters did not follow the party’s preferences recommendation. 80% of Liberal voters gave their preferences to Price, but only 50.6% of Green voters. If 55% of Green voters had followed their party’s recommendation, Price would have won.

Which goes to show, Green voters do not automatically follow how-to-votes. Their reflex is to preference Labor, even when there is an alternative.

Green preference leakage stopped Labor losing Fremantle (WA)

Labor was also saved in the WA seat of Fremantle by Green voters not following their party’s preference recommendation.

The port of Fremantle has a long history of left-wing activism. The state seat was once won by the Greens at a by-election. The federal seat has often been named by the Greens as a possible gain from Labor.

At the 2025 election, Labor’s grip on Fremantle came under threat from left-wing independent Kate Hulett who received some Climate 200 backing. Hulett had been narrowly defeated in the state seat of Fremantle at the WA state election two months earlier. Her state defeat was caused by the Liberal Party recommending preferences to Labor due to Hulett’s criticism of the north-west shelf gas project.

But the Liberal Party had a conversion on the road to Canberra and recommended preferences for Hulett ahead of Labor at the federal election.

Labor’s primary vote fell to 38.6%, Hulett polled 23.0%. After preferences, Labor’s Josh Wilson won narrowly with a majority of 1,400 votes, a margin of just 0.7%.

The chart of preferences below shows that Hulett’s failure to win was caused by almost half of Green voters putting Labor ahead of Hulett against the how-to-vote recommendation of the Greens.

The above chart is remarkable given Liberal concerns in March that Hulett was too left-wing for a preference recommendation before Labor.

Hulett’s near victory was boosted by receiving strong flows of preferences from right-of-centre parties, Liberal preferences 76.5%, One Nation 74.7% and the Australian Citizens Party 70.8%.

Yet victory was denied for Hulett by the failure of left-wing preferences to flow to her. Hulett received only 52.9% of preferences from Green voters and 58.6% from Socialist Alliance alliance voters. Just a few extra percent of Green preferences would have seen Labor’s Josh Wilson defeated by Hulett.

When you look at the preference flows above from the three parties of the right, the phrase “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” comes to mind. Hulett came close to victory by preferences from the right, but fell short of victory by the failure to achieve anything like the same flow of preferences from left-wing parties.