2024

NT2024 – Analysis of the Northern Territory Election

Eight years and two terms after Labor defeated the Giles government and reduced the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party to just two seats, the tables were turned on 24 August this year. The Lawler Labor government suffered a massive defeat, swept from government and expelled from the greater Darwin metropolitan area, Labor retaining just four seats, all in the NT’s pastoral and remote regions.

And in another parallel with eight years ago, the 2024 election saw the government swept from office and the Chief Minister lose their seat. In 2016 it was CLP Chief Minister Adam Giles who lost his previously safe seat of Braitling. In 2024 Eva Lawler lost her marginal seat of Drysdale after a massive swing of 20.4%.

Lawler’s predecessor as Labor Chief Minister, Natasha Fyles, was also defeated. Fyles’ seat of Nightcliff had been Labor’s safest seat before the election, but was lost to the Greens who finished third on the primary vote before leap frogging to victory on preferences.

New Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro took office at her second election as leader, having lifted the CLP from two seats to eight in 2020, and going further to win 17 of the 25 seats in the Legislative Assembly at the 2024 election.

For the first time since self-government, Labor won no seats in greater Darwin. The party retained only four seats, Arafura, Arnhem, Daly and Gwoja. All four are rural and remote seats with a much higher than average percentage of Indigenous residents, and all four re-elected Labor members are themselves Indigenous.

The 2024 result is a reversion to Labor’s dire period between 1977 and 2001 when the party mainly held remote districts and struggled to break the CLP’s hold on Darwin seats.

As I wrote in my election preview, Northern Territory elections are won and lost in greater Darwin, and more particularly in Darwin’s northern suburbs. The 2012 election won by the CLP remains the only Northern Territory election where the party forming government did not electorally dominate Darwin. The three elections since, including 2024, have reverted to the long-term trend of Northern Territory politics.

The CLP’s victories in northern Darwin were not as sweeping as elsewhere in the Territory with two of Labor’s losses going to the crossbench, Independent Justine Davis winning Johnston and the Greens Kat McNamara winning Nightcliff. The CLP’s narrow victory over the Greens in Fannie Bay was an oddity with the alternative two-party preferred vote revealing a Labor majority.

I’ve prepared a summary of the results which you can find at this link. The summary also includes alternative two-party preferred counts made available by the NT Electoral Commission.

There is much detail on the results in the results summary, but I’ll go through some of the main points inside this post.Read More »NT2024 – Analysis of the Northern Territory Election

QLD2024 – Initial Analysis of the Queensland Election Result

The Liberal National Party (LNP) led by new Premier David Crisafulli won the Queensland election on 26 October, a result that had been widely expected for more than a year.

The Labor Party under Premier Steven Miles, who had replaced long-serving Annastacia Palaszczuk the previous December, managed to limit the scale of its defeat compared to predictions of a landslide based on polls published earlier in the year.

But the result was a still a comfortable victory for the LNP and clear defeat for Labor. The two parties virtually exchanged places in seats and votes compared to Labor’s last election victory under Annastacia Palaszczuk.

In 2020 Labor won 52 seats with 53.2% of the two-party preferred vote with the LNP winning 34 seats. In 2024 it was the LNP winning 52 seas on a slightly higher 53.8% of the two-party preferred vote, while Labor finished on 36 seats.

The new government has 16 more seats than Labor and a majority of 11 over all other parties in the new Legislative Assembly. That would be at risk if the LNP suffered the same reverses as it did under Campbell Newman between 2012 and 2015, five members lost in total to defections and by-elections. But the smaller number of ‘accidental’ MPs elected compared to 2012, plus the need to keep the team together with a smaller majority, should give greater focus to the new LNP party room.

The LNP gained 18 seats on a state-wide swing of 7.0%, exactly the result you would have predicted applying a uniform swing of 7.0% to the pre-election pendulum. As usually occurs with pendulums, some of the seats on small margins retained by Labor were cancelled out by the LNP achieving larger swings in some safer Labor seats. Especially in the state’s regional cities.

The state-wide swing masks a big difference between the swing in Greater Brisbane compared to regional cities along the Queensland coast.

I’ve prepared a summary of the results which you can find at this link.

The summary includes two-party preferred analysis of seats and by region, including estimated two-party results for electorates that did not finish as Labor-LNP contests. There’s also a summary of results by region and details of new and departing members by electorate.

Inside this post I’ll augment the results document linked above with some commentary.Read More »QLD2024 – Initial Analysis of the Queensland Election Result

2024 Federal Redistributions – Final Boundaries for NSW Released

(22 November – I’ve been through and finalised the split and merged SA1s to produce my final version of the margins. They have been incorporated into the table inside the post.)

(UPDATE – the final boundaries have been released confirming the abolition of North Sydney. There are some very minor changes of at most 0.1% and these have been updated in the table.)

(UPDATE – Friday 13 September – a discrepancy where the new electorate file coded Mcmahon rather than McMahon caused an error in my calculations. The significant changes are that Blaxland drops back from 13.9% to 13.1% while the new margin for McMahon is now 10.5% as opposed to the original estimate of 13.1%. There is also a minor adjustment for Fowler.

On Thursday 12 September, the Redistribution Committee for New South Wales released the final version of the state’s new Federal electoral boundaries. Draft boundaries were released in June and opened for public comment. This final version will be formally gazetted later this month and used for the first time at next year’s Federal election.

The redistribution has taken place to decrease the number of NSW federal divisions from 47 to 46. The final boundaries have confirmed the abolition of the Independent held seat of North Sydney.

The draft boundaries were released when I was overseas so this post is my first analysis of the draft boundaries. Today’s release includes a string small number of minor adjustments to the draft boundaries, none of which alter the analysis in this post. I will make minor adjustments to this post once the AEC publishes the datafiles required for calculations, sometime next month.

Re-calculating margins is a complex task of processing AEC polling place data files on where people voted in 2022 and comparing them with Bureau of Statistics files listing the low level SA1 (Statistical Area 1) composition of new electorates. Complicating the process is a re-numbering of many SA1s between the 2016 and 2021 Censuses. The 2022 AEC files used the old SA1 identifiers and the new electorate files use the new SA1 identifier. This has required a lot of fiddling with data to resolve inconsistencies between SA1 identifiers. Not all of the SA1 inconsistencies could be resolved but I do not believe they significantly affect any calculations.

The AEC will release its own versions of new margins next year as the election approaches. The AEC has many more resources to resolve SA1 inconsistencies and splits than are available to me.

Change in Seat Numbers

Change in Seats Held by Party
ALP LIB NAT GRN IND Total
Old boundaries 26 9 7 .. 5 47
New boundaries 25 10 7 .. 4 46

Based on traditional two-party preferred results, including for the underlying Labor-Coalition nature of Independent held seats, the changes in two-party preferred holdings are –

  • Old Boundaries 2PP: Labor 27, Coalition 20 (Liberal 13, National 7)
  • New Boundaries 2PP: Labor 26, Coalition 20 (Liberal 13, National 7)

The changes are brought about by the abolition of Independent-held North Sydney, a flow on impact of which is to flip neighbouring Bennelong from being a marginal Labor seat to as very marginal Liberal seat.

The three-way carve up of North Sydney along council boundaries is shown in the map below.

The main political implications of the changes are –

  • A relative decline in enrolment on Sydney’s lower north shore and northern beaches suburbs required a seat to be abolished north of the harbour, and as predicted before the process began, North Sydney has been abolished and divided between the re-drawn seats of Bennelong, Bradfield and Warringah.
  • There was also a shortfall south of the harbour but this has been fixed by a shift west and south-west of all boundaries to absorb a significant surplus of enrolments in south-west Sydney.
  • The Liberal electorate of Hume has also become an urban seat, shedding almost of all of its rural areas along the Hume Highway north of the ACT. It is now based on Camden in Sydney’s outer south-west fringe, along with western Parts of Liverpool Council and semi-rural Wollondilly Shire to the south. Geographically the changes are massive but the Liberal margin declines only slightly, from 7.7% to 6.9%.
  • The abolition of North Sydney is bad new for Independent Kylea Tink, but neighbouring Independents Sophie Scamps in Mackellar and Zali Staggall in Warringah retain their margins. There are few changes to the boundaries the western Sydney seat of Fowler won by Independent Dai Le in 2022.
  • In Wentworth, Independent Allegra Spender is significantly strengthened. Wentworth is a traditional Liberal seat but surrounding by Labor voting territory. By expanding into neighbouring Sydney and Kingsford Smith, Wentworth’s underlying Liberal 2-party preferred margin declines from 5.9% to 1.2%. Estimating a new Independent margin for the areas added to the seat is difficult, but a best estimate is that the addition of areas with weaker Liberal support boosts the Independent margin from 4.2% to 6.6%.
  • In Bradfield, Liberal MP Paul Fletcher faced a significant Independent challenge in 2022 that reduced his margin to just 4.2% versus an Independent. By shifting south and picking up parts of North Sydney, his margin is reduced to 2.5%. His Independent challenger from 2022, Nicolette Boele, has already announced she will contest the next election. It is unclear whether Kylea Tink will also contest Bradfield if the final boundaries confirm the abolition of her seat.
  • As already mentions, the abolition of North Sydney turns Bennelong from a marginal Labor seat to a very marginal Liberal sea.
  • By losing its Labor-voting southern end and extending north of Windsor Road, Michelle Rowland’s Labor seat of Greenway has its margin cut from 11.5% to an estimated 8.1%. As has been shown in the past, if the Liberal Party can select a good candidate, Greenway is a more marginal seat than it often appears on paper.
  • The Liberal margin for Hughes is cut from 7.0% to 3.6% as it loses Liberal voting areas near Sutherland and is pushed west beyond the Georges River to gain Labor voting territory from Weriwa and Macarthur. (There may changes to the construction of Hughes in the final boundaries.) There were no changes with the final boundaries.
  • In the Hunter valley, the transfer for Kurri Kurri strengthens Labor in Hunter but weakens its position in Paterson.
  • The National margin in Riverina declines from 14.8% to a still safe 9.7% after picking up parts of Eden-Monaro and Hume.

The new margin estimates in this post have not taken into account the adjustments included in the final boundaries. However, the list of adjustments released seem unlikely to change the estimated margins below.

Seat tables can be found inside the post.Read More »2024 Federal Redistributions – Final Boundaries for NSW Released

2024 Federal Redistributions – Final Boundaries for Victoria Released

(20 November – the tables in this post have been updated taking account of the final boundaries and incorporating split and merged SA1s. The complex way that final descriptions are released has made it difficult for me to update the transfers listed in the table but the margins have been updated.)

(Updated Friday 6 September with maps and more details on Chisholm, Deakin, Goldstein, Kooyong, Melbourne, Menzies and Wills. Estimated margins for Independent contests will be added later today..)

On Thursday 5 September the Redistribution Committee for Victoria released the fin al version of the state’s new Federal electoral boundaries. Draft boundaries were released in May and opened for public comment. This final version will be formally gazetted later this month and used for the first time at next year’s Federal election.

The redistribution has taken place to decrease the number of Victorian federal divisions from 39 to 38. The final boundaries have confirmed the abolition of the Labor seat of seat of Higgins in inner-eastern Melbourne.

Today’s release has included a string of minor adjustments to the draft boundaries, none of which appear significant to me. The release does not include the datafiles that permit new margins to be calculated. I won’t update the margins shown inside this post until the datafiles are released.

Re-calculating margins is a complex task of processing AEC polling place data files on where people voted in 2022 and comparing them with Bureau of Statistics files listing the low level SA1 (Statistical Area 1) composition of new electorates. Complicating the process is a re-numbering of many SA1s between the 2016 and 2021 Censuses. The 2022 AEC files used the old SA1 identifiers and the new electorate files use the new SA1 identifier. This has required a lot of fiddling with data to resolve inconsistencies between SA1 identifiers.

In my analysis of the draft boundaries in May I had to manually resolve these problems. I’ve managed to code the corrections this time though there are still a few inconsistencies that can’t be resolved by me. A number of the margins in this post have altered since May using the better correction method. The AEC will eventually release their own versions of new margins in the new year and they have a lot more resources than me to resolve SA1 inconsistencies and splits.

What this post does not yet do is take into account the adjustments in the final release of boundaries. I can’t do these calculations until the AEC release the maps and data files.

I have also not added estimated margins for a couple of Independent seats. That requires some manual re-calculations that I will do later today.

Change in Seat Numbers

Change in Seats Held by Party
ALP LIB NAT GRN IND Total
Old boundaries 24 8 3 1 3 39
New boundaries 24 7 3 1 3 38
With by-elections 25 6 3 1 3 38

Note: By-election line takes account of Labor winning Aston from the Liberal Party at an April 2023 by-election. Table does not take account of the decision by Monash MHR Russell Broadbent to resign from the Liberal Party and become an Independent.

Based on the two-party preferred results, including the underlying Labor-Coalition nature of Independent and Greens held seat, the changes in two-party preferred holdings are –

  • Old Boundaries 2PP: Labor 25, Coalition 14 (Liberal 11, National 3)
  • New Boundaries 2PP: Labor 25, Coalition 13 (Liberal 10, National 3)
  • Including by-elections: Labor 26, Coalition 12 (Liberal 9, National 3)

The main political implications of the changes are –

  • The Labor seat of Higgins is abolished.
  • Labor’s position in Wills is significantly weakened with the inclusion of strong Greens voting areas around Brunswick East, Carlton North and Fitzroy North. The Labor margin versus the Greens is reduced from 8.6% to an estimated 4.6%.
  • The transfer of strong Labor voting areas to Menzies, replaced by marginal Liberal country from Higgins and Kooyong, weakens Labor’s position in Chisholm, an estimated halving of the Labor margin from 6.4% to 3.2%.
  • The Liberal marginal seats of Deakin and Menzies in eastern Melbourne become even more marginal with Menzies flipping to become a notional Labor seat.
  • The strongest Liberal voting parts of Higgins have been transferred to Kooyong, held by Independent MP Dr Monique Ryan. Estimating support for an Independent in areas they did not contest at the last election, but my best estimate is that Ryan’s margin is reduced from 2.9% to 1.8%.
  • The boundary changes for Goldstein are estimated to increase the margin of Independent Zoe Daniel from 2.9% to 3.1%.

None of the estimates in this post take account of the changes announced with the release of the final boundaries. I do not believe that any of the final changes have much impact on marginal seats.

Seat tables can be found inside the post.Read More »2024 Federal Redistributions – Final Boundaries for Victoria Released

2024 Federal Redistribution – Final Boundaries for Western Australia Released

Update Tuesday 24 September – the redistribution has been finalised and all maps and data released.

Update Friday 22 November – I took a fine toothed comb to SA1s that were split or merged in the redistribution and have re-calculated margins. No major changes and the final estimates have been included in the table.

On Thursday 5 September, the Redistribution Committee for Western Australia released the state’s new Federal electoral boundaries. Draft boundaries were released in May and opened for public comment. This final version will be formally gazetted later this month and will be used for the first time at next year’s Federal election.

The redistribution has taken place to increase the number of WA federal divisions from 15 to 16.

The original post follows.

A new division called Bullwinkel has been created covering Perth’s outer east and the rural Avon Valley to the east. A map of the new electorate is included in this post. The name Bullwinkel honours Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Bullwinkel AO MBE ARRC ED FNM FRCNA (1915–2000), a civilian and military nurse who was the sole survivor of the 1942 Bangka Island massacre and a prisoner of war. The name recognises her dedication to honouring victims of war crimes, service to nursing, and the community, in both her civilian and military service. This electoral division name also honours the contribution of military medical personnel and recognises those who were prisoners of war.

The final boundaries have been released and involve only minor changes. These are –

  • Waroona Shire remains in Canning where the draft moved it into Forrest.
  • The suburb of Malaga remains in Cowan having originally been proposed for transfer to Hasluck.
  • Part of Kardinya remains in Fremantle after having been proposed for transfer to Tangney.
  • Part of Leeming proposed to be in Fremantle is now in Tangney.

These are very minor changes and the data files required to re-calculate margins will not be available for several weeks. I will update the post when they are available.

At this state the page and its included tables reflect the draft boundaries released earlier this year. I have noted where there are changes but doubt these will have any significant impact on the estimated new margins shown.

The political implications of the boundaries are –

  • The new seat of Bullwinkel is a notional Labor seat using the unusually good Labor results at the 2022 federal election. At a more normal election, and without a sitting member, Bullwinkel will be very difficult seat for Labor to notionally retain.
  • The creation of Bullwinkel results in a significant strengthening of Labor’s position in Hasluck, the Labor margin increasing from 6.0% to 10.0%.
  • Curtin sees only a minor change to boundaries meaning the redistribution has no impact on Liberal attempts to defeat Independent Kate Chaney.
  • Labor’s other marginal seats see only minor changes, Pearce’s Labor margin now 8.8%, Swan 9.4% and Tangney 2.9%.
  • On paper the Liberal margin in Canning is reduced to 1.1% but sitting MP Andrew Hastie would only be in trouble if Labor had an increase in its vote compared to 2022, a scenario that does not seem likely.
  • Moore remains a marginal seat, but less important than the redistribution is Ian Goodenough being replaced as Liberal candidate by Vince Connelly. If Goodenough were to re-contest as an Independent or National Party (one rumour) candidate, it would create a more complex contest.
Change in Seats Held by Party
Labor Liberal Independent Total
Old boundaries 9 5 1 15
New boundaries 10 5 1 16

Based on the two-party preferred results, including the underlying Labor-Coalition nature of the Independent held seat of Curtin, the changes in two-party preferred holdings is –

  • Old Boundaries 2PP: Labor 9, Liberal 6
  • New Boundaries 2PP: Labor 10, Liberal 6

Tables summarising the impact of the redistribution on each seat is included inside the post.
Read More »2024 Federal Redistribution – Final Boundaries for Western Australia Released

NT2024 Election – Post-Election Blog

This post will track counting in the close seats that remain in play after the Country Liberal Party’s landslide victory.

This post is ordered with the most recent updates at the top of the page.

Wednesday 4 September

4:30pm – what happened in Nightcliff shows up strongly in the table below. The table shows preference flows to the Greens by polling place and count centre. It is ordered by ascending preference flows to the Greens. The higher the vote for Independent Mililma May, the stronger the flow of excluded candidate preferences to the Greens, and the stronger the CLP vote, the weaker the flow of preferences to the Greens.

Percentage Preference Flows to the Greens
Polling Place/Count Centre Votes CLP Primary % Ind May Primary % % Preference Flows
Eaton EVC 1,429 29.8 14.7 40.7
Darwin EVC 464 24.6 18.4 63.5
Absent 649 24.1 19.7 66.6
Casuarina 659 20.3 22.0 65.1
Postal 232 21.6 22.0 64.8
Nightcliff School 1,099 18.0 22.7 73.5
Declaration 35 17.1 31.4 79.2
Total 4,567 23.8 19.3 61.5

On the three way flow of preferences from May and Mamouzellos, preferences flowed 72.6% to the Greens, 14.0% to Labor and 13.4% to the CLP. On the exclusion of the CLP, preferences split 51.4% to Labor and 48.6% to the Greens. I had left the seat in doubt despite my assumption that 60% of CLP preferences would flow to Labor. It turns out I was right to leave Nightcliff in doubt as CLP preferences were weaker than I had expected. CLP voters made up their own minds on preferences with close to half ignoring the CLP HTV recommendation to put Labor before the Greens.

As the result is so close, the NT Electoral Commission will undertake a full re-count of all Nightcliff votes tomorrow. After the cut off for postal votes at midday on Friday, the final handful of postal votes will also be added to the count.

Nightcliff Update 3:45pm: The Labor versus Greens preference count has been released and the Greens are 42 votes ahead. There cannot be many votes left to count so this is bad news for Labor’s Natasha Fyles and the Greens must now be favoured to win.

If the Greens are confirmed as winning Nightcliff, Labor will be left with four seats, Arafura, Arnhem, Daly and Gwoja. Labor will be left with no urban seats, losing all seats they previously held in Darwin and Palmerston.

Nightcliff Update: The Labor-CLP two-party preferred count has disappeared from the NTEC results feed so I presume a re-throw of preferences is underway.
Read More »NT2024 Election – Post-Election Blog

2024 Northern Territory Election

This is my obligatory election night post, put here because thousands of people end up on my blog site on election night courtesy of Google.

I will not be publishing anything here tonight as I am working on the ABC’s live election coverage of the results, which you can see live in the Northern Territory from 6pm Central time on the ABC’s main channel.

If you are somewhere else in Australia, the coverage will be carried live on the ABC News Channel from 6:30pm eastern time.

Now a few links if you are after information on the election.Read More »2024 Northern Territory Election

NT2024 Election – Tracking the Early Vote

Update at the end of early voting on Friday 23 August.

(A note on terminology – I will use ‘Early’ voting as an overall term for three separate categories of vote, Pre-Poll in person, voting by Mobile teams, and Postal voting.)

This post will track the number of Pre-Poll and Mobile votes taken during the campaign and the number of Postal Vote packs dispatched.

Final figures on Friday 23 August at the end of early voting. Note that it is possible some final mobile voting numbers from remote areas may not be added until tomorrow morning.

  • 61,055 pre-poll votes have been taken representing 39.8% of enrolment. This is higher in votes but lower in percentage than 2020 when 60,295 pre-poll votes were taken representing 42.7% of enrolment.
  • 8,316 postal vote packs have been dispatched representing 5.4% of enrolment. This is down on 10,241 packs dispatched in 2020 or 7.3% of enrolment.
  • A total of 3,815 postal votes have been returned representing 45.9% of dispatched postal vote packs and 2.5% of enrolment.
  • 13,074 mobile polling team votes have been collected representing 8.5% of enrolment, or 25.7% in the eight districts where mobile polling is used. This is down on 12,877 votes or 9.1% in 2020. At this stage it looks like the turnout for mobile polling is low. Some final reports of pre-polling may arrive on Saturday.
  • In total 82,455 ballot papers have been issued or dispatched representing 53.8% of enrolment, down on 83,414 ballot papers or 59.1% in 2020. One difference is that fewer postal votes have been requested, the rate having been particularly high in 2020 due to Covid.

Note that in 2020 out of 141,225 enrolled voters, only 105,833 cast votes that were included in the count. The figure for 2024 may be around 110,000 votes, which suggests that 60% of votes have already been cast.

Based on campaign reporting, the final numbers for 2020 were –

  • 60,295 pre-poll votes were taken taken representing 42.7% of enrolment.
  • 10,242 postal vote packs were dispatched representing 7.3% of enrolment.
  • 12,877 mobile polling team votes were collected representing 9.1% of enrolment.

The breakdown of these categories in the final results was slightly different. Some early and mobile votes cast out of district ended up reported as Absent votes for other districts. Not all postal votes were returned, others were cancelled out by the voter having cast an ordinary vote, and others were rejected because the paperwork was incorrect.

The final category totals reported as part of the 2020 NT election result were –

  • 56,387 pre-poll votes were reported in results as pre-polls representing 39.9% of enrolment or 53.3% of total votes.
  • 6,790 postal votes made the final count representing 4.8% of enrolment or 6.4% of all votes.
  • 11,936 mobile polling team votes made it into the count reported as mobile team results and represented 8.5% of enrolment or 11.3% of all votes.

Read More »NT2024 Election – Tracking the Early Vote