RESULT DECLARED – The Labor Party has elected three Senators for only the second time since 1990. Labor gains a seat from the Liberal Party who are reduced to two seats. The Greens have retained the seat they have elected at every election since 2007.
The Liberal Party elected three Senators in 2019 but in 2025 its vote has slipped under two quotas. Alex Antic and Anne Ruston have been re-elected, but third Senator David Fawcett has been defeated.
Sarah Hanson-Young will be re-elected for the Greens, her party having polled close to a quota.
Labor with 2.66 quotas elect two and after preferences elected a third Senator. Sitting Senators Marielle Smith and Karen Grogan have been re-elected and Charlotte Walker has been elected as Labor’s third Senator. Walker sets a record as the youngest Senator ever elected. She turned 21 on election day.
One Nation’s Jennifer Game polled 0.37 quotas but could not close the gap on preferences. There’s more on vote trends and the distribution of preferences inside the post.
As the chart below shows, there has been a dramatic turnaround in major party support over the last two elections. Labor’s support is at its highest level since the 1980s and Liberal support under 30%. The only time Liberal support has fallen this low was in 2013 when Nick Xenophon swept up a quarter of the state’s vote.
First Preferences
Party totals on first preferences were –
- Labor: 38.06%, +5.80, 2.66 quotas
- Liberal: 27.57%, -6.36%, 1.93 quotas
- Greens: 12.90%, +0.95, 0.91 quotas
- One Nation: 5.34%, +1.33, 0.37 quotas
- Legalise Cannabis: 2.86%, +0.54, 0.20 quotas
- Trumpet of Patriots: 2.84%, -0.19 (compared to UAP), 0.20 quotas
- Jacqui Lambie Network: 2.71%, +2.71, 0.19 quotas
- Family First: 2.02%, +2.02, 0.14 quotas
- Animal Justice: 1.36%, -0.40, 0.10 quotas
- Gerard Rennick People First: 1.16%, +1.16, 0.08 quotas
- Libertarion: 1.02%, -1.18 (compared to Liberal Democrats), 0.07 quotas
- Others: 1.89%, 0.13 quotas
The rate of above-the-line (ATL) voting was 94.2%, below-the-line 5.8%. The ATL rate was 96.6% for Labor, 98.7% Liberal, 90.1% Labor and 93.5% One Nation.
Distribution of Preferences
The chart below removes the three Senators elected on first preferences, two Labor and one Liberal, and plots how the partial quotas for each party changed through the distribution of preferences.
Partial quotas – total quotas by party after the election of three senators. The Liberal Party had 0.93 quotas towards electing a second Senator in Anne Ruston, the Greens 0.90 towards electing Sarah Hanson-Young, Labor 0.66 quotas towards electing a third Senator in Charlotte Walker. One Nation was in fourth place with 0.37 quotas, a long way behind Labor. All other parties added together at this point represented 1.13 quotas worth of votes.
10 candidates left the successive exclusion of low polling candidates has had little impact on party standings. The Liberal quota has risen from 0.93 quotas to 0.97, the Greens 0.90 to 0.95, Labor 0.66 quotas to 0.68 and One Nation from 0.37 quotas to 0.43.
Exclusion of Animal Justice – 19,614 votes distributed. 24.9% to the Greens, 12.4% to Labor, 10.8%. Greens now just ahead of the second Liberal.
Family First excluded – 33,298 votes distributed. 23.6% of preferences to One Nation, 20.8% Liberal, 17.2% Greens (in the next column on the ballot paper) 9.9% to Labor. Both the Liberals and Green reach quota at this count.
Surpluses distributed – The small Liberal and Greens surpluses are distributed at this point. With one seat left to Fill, Labor has 0.73 quotas, One Nation 0.49 quotas with 0.75 quotas worth of votes to be distributed.
Jacqui Lambie Network excluded – lead candidate Rex Patrick excluded with 39,397 votes distributed. 41.4% of preferences flowed to Labor, 25.2% to One Nation with 7.5% exhausting. Labor now has 0.83 quotas, One Nation 0.55 with 0.59 quotas with other parties.
Trumpet of Patriots excluded 48,287 votes (0.29 quotas) distributed. 51.7% with next preference for One Nation, 17.7% of Labor, 13.2% exhausting. Labor now has 0.88 quotas to One Nation 0.70.
Legalise Cannabis excluded – 56,445 votes or 0.34 quotas distributed. 37.1% flow to Labor putting Charlotte Walker over quota and into the third Labor Senate seat. 31.2% flow to One Nation leaving the party on 0.80 quotas at the end of the count. Overall 30, 730 votes have exhausted preferences representing about 0.18 quotas worth of votes.
One Nation was only able to narrow the gap to Labor from 0.29 quotas to 0.20 quotas. The party may do better on preferences in Victoria where the Liberal Party has a surplus and the gap is only 0.12, and also in WA where the gap is also 0.12.
I’d also like to hear where the preferences went from the faith & family friendly parties. Not a mention of Australian Christians that polled well for their first show in NSW.
COMMENT: The Australian Christians only contested NSW and WA. Neither state has had preferences distributed yet.
Non-Aussie here so pardon my ignorance, does the senate count take longer because it requires all of the votes to be counted beforehand? Thanks
COMMENT: It takes longer to count for a variety of reasons. On election night House ballot papers are counted before the Senate in polling places. In the case of pre-poll votes, Senate ballot papers are left sealed in their boxes on election night. The initial count of Senate ballot papers is done as a group total before they are forwarded to a central scrutiny centre where all ballot papers are data entered and scanned into the counting system. This takes time, plus the greater emphasis is given to finalising the House count before the Senate. he AEC has done well this year with the entire Senate count likely to be completed within a month of the election.
I find this graphic very insightful.
Would it be possible to produce it for the other Senate contests? In particular it would be good to compare this with the states where One Nation was successful in NSW, WA and Qld. In the Qld contest I would be particularly interested to see how Larisaa Waters put together her quota. As the newly elected Greens leader she has the lowest votes for them of all the states.
COMMENT: I will get round to the Senate contests at some point. Waters’ victory was greatly assisted by Queensland being the only state where a Labor surplus was distributed.
My thought exactly. It’s a lovely graphic, and I’m really looking forward to seeing this same graphic for NSW and WA.
That graphic showing the results of preference distributions is great! I’d been following the Calwell count from the AEC website, but your presentation of it made it so easy.
I’ll bet you wish you’d had the computer graphics capability available when you first got started in this game.