elections

The Coalition Split and the Re-emergence of One Nation

Despite denials, I find it hard to believe that this week’s split in the Coalition doesn’t stem from the reported surge in support for One Nation. Perhaps this week is not all about One Nation, but what has been building for months is about One Nation.

Voting intentions in this week’s Newspoll recorded One Nation on 22% of the national vote, for the first time polling ahead of the Coalition on 21%. Labor’s support slipped to 32% with the Greens on 12% and Others 13%.

Similar results from lesser known pollsters released since the start of January were dismissed. But when Newspoll starts reporting a surge in One Nation support, it gets more attention from the political classes.

Newspoll also reported a two-party preferred figure of Labor 55% to the Coalition 45%. But does a national two-party preferred figure make sense when primary vote support on the conservative side is so fractured?

The 2025 election saw a record 35 seats finish with a contest that was not a traditional Labor-Coalition race. If the Newspoll figure were repeated at a general election, the number of non-traditional contests would shoot through the roof.

And everything we know from past elections tells us that One Nation’s support is strongest outside the nation’s capital cities, precisely where the Coalition’s remaining representation is concentrated after last year’s defeat. One Nation is now polling strongly enough to eat further into Coalition representation, particular National Party representation.

If One Nation is polling 22% in national polls, there are electorates across rural and regional areas where One Nation will be polling above 35%, that is leading on primary votes. The debate about One Nation preferences starts to become irrelevant if the party is topping the poll. We would be back to the 1998 and 2001 Queensland elections when Labor preferences were required to save some of the National Party’s safest seats.

The rise in One Nation support could hurt Labor in some of its own seats, but the record of elections over several decades is that whenever One Nation support surges, it tends to hurt the Coalition. It is too early to make predictions for the next election, but if the trend in this week’s Newspoll continues, Labor could be comfortably re-elected with the biggest change being the Coalition losing seats to One Nation.

Despite endless tweets on X about abolishing preferential voting, the split of support between the Coalition and One Nation suggests that there will be no moves away from the Coalition supporting full preferential voting.

In this post I’m going to dig back to the only election where One Nation polled above 20%, the 1998 Queensland election. I’ll look at where One Nation support was strongest, which opponent the party’s rise hurt most, and how an election with One Nation above 20% produced the least uniform electoral swing in Australian history.
Read More »The Coalition Split and the Re-emergence of One Nation

Background on the Development of the NSW Legislative Council and its Electoral System

One of my post-retirement intentions for this blog is to bring together bits and pieces I’ve published on elections, politics and history over the past three decades.

In my career at the ABC I ran an election blog for around a decade as well as writing and publishing around 25 years worth of election guides.

This is a vast amount of material, a lot of which is no longer publicly available. The internet has undergone vast technical change over the past two decades, and the difficulty of keeping old websites in line with changing web standards has seen a lot of my older material disappear.

This post is the first of what I hope are many where I re-publish useful older material, sometimes with updates. Some of this was previously available through the ABC.

This first post is brief history of the NSW Legislative Council and its changing electoral system. I’m publishing it as background to a post under development setting out some of the stranger Council elections that took place under the indirect electoral system used between 1933 and 1978.
Read More »Background on the Development of the NSW Legislative Council and its Electoral System

Electoral Pendulum for 2026 South Australian Election

(Updated 8 December – Schubert Liberal member Ashton Hurn will be elected new Liberal Leader unopposed. Post has been updated with maps colour coded by holding party.)

South Australian Liberal Leader Vincent Tarzia has today resigned citing the pressure of leading the Liberal Party while trying to raise a young family. He still intends to contest his marginal seat of Hartley at the looming state election.

Given Hartley has a margin of only 3.6%, it is hard to see how Tarzia can retain his seat at the state election in March given polls are predicting a double-digit swing to Labor.

Inside this post I have published an electoral pendulum for the state election to be held on 21 March.

The Labor Party easily won the won the 2022 election, ending the one term government of Liberal Premier Steven Marshall.

Labor won 27 of the 47 seats in the House of Assembly. Labor has since gained two more seats at by-elections, winning Steven Marshall’s former seat of Dunstan in March 2023, and Black formerly held by his successor David Spiers in November 2024.

Of the 16 elections since 1970, Labor has won 12 to the Liberal Party’s four. The electoral geography of South Australia has often delivered government to Labor without the party achieving a majority of the two-party preferred vote.

But that wasn’t a problem in 2022 with Labor recording 54.6% of the state-wide two-party preferred vote. It was Labor’s second best result since 1970, bettered only by Mike Rann’s landslide re-election in 2006.

Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas is immensely popular. October’s Demos opinion poll had him leading Tarzia as preferred Premier 58% to 19%. The poll had Labor on 66% of the two-party preferred vote.

If repeated at the state election on 21 March, Malkinauskas will challenge the greatest landslide election record set by former WA Labor Premier Mark McGowan in 2021.

After gaining the seats of two Liberal leaders since 2022, Labor will be keen to add a third in Tarzia’s seat of Hartley. And maybe go for fourth depending on who emerges as the new leader.

On current polling Labor will win every seat on the plain of Adelaide and could even push up into the Adelaide Hills given Labor’s good result in Mayo at the Federal election.

The Liberal Party will do well if it can retain a handful of rural seats. Even in rural areas, the party is facing serious challenges from Independents, and several former Liberal members already sit on the cross bench.

Already Labor seems to be taking the opportunity for generational change, something the party did very well before losing office for a single term in 2018. Five high profile Labor members including several ministers have announced they will retire. Two decade veteran Tony Piccolo will also shift from his safe seat of Light to try and win the Liberal seat of Ngadjuri (formerly Frome).

Three Liberals have announced their retirement, and all hold seats that Labor is strongly placed to win.

Inside the post I have a new electoral pendulum that takes account of the redistribution completed earlier this year. I also include notes on some of the more complex contests where new boundaries, defections and departures complicate the analysis.
Read More »Electoral Pendulum for 2026 South Australian Election

“Past Present Future” Podcast from the UK on Compulsory Voting

The “Past Present Future” podcast is hosted by David Runciman, former Professor of Politics at Cambridge University and one of the more erudite and readable writers on politics and political philosophy.

In the episode I link to below, published in early October, Runciman is joined by political historian Dr David Klemperer to talk about compulsory voting. Obviously the episode draws deeply on the Australian experience.

It also makes a couple of points about the impact of compulsory voting on the result of the 2025 Australian election. In particular, its role in increasing turnout amongst younger age groups and more marginalised groups in society.

Given post-election discussion on the Liberal Party’s lack of appeal to younger age groups, it is nice to be reminded by overseas commentators that compulsory voting allows Australian political parties to build winning political platforms around appealing to younger and less advantaged groups in society. It is a point that doesn’t get a mention in Australian 2025 post-election analysis because compulsory voting is a given in the conduct of elections in Australia.

The two David’s compare the Albanese victory with UK elections over the last decade where talk of ‘youthquakes’ shaking results have fizzled out due to low turnout by younger age groups.

This is a direct link to the episode at Apple podcasts, but you can also find it amongst many other episodes at “Past Present Future” on Spotify and at the Past Present Future website.

But I do think there is one point they missed on why compulsory voting has worked in Australia and why it would be harder in countries like the UK.Read More »“Past Present Future” Podcast from the UK on Compulsory Voting

Greens Preferences Flow to Labor – 2010 and 2025 Compared

Over the past three decades, the Australian Greens have grown from a collection of state-based parties overshadowed by the centrist Australian Democrats, to being the largest of Australia’s minor parties.

Once minor parties were viewed as bit-players in Australian politics, mere preference conduits for the major parties. Today the Greens are important in their own right electorally, and through elected representation play an important role in Australian Parliaments.

Greens support is now high enough to guarantee the election of a Senator from each state at half-Senate elections. Were it not for party defections, the Greens would have a permanent team of 12 Senators in the 76 seat Senate.

As was highlighted by winning four House seats at the 2022 Federal election, the Greens are now competitive in up to a dozen House seats. Despite being reduced to one House seat in 2025, the Greens remain competitive with Labor and the Coalition.

The Greens won their first general election seat in 2010 on Liberal preferences, and would have won more seats since were it not for the Coalition’s decision since 2013 to put Labor candidates ahead of the Greens on how-to-vote preference recommendations.

In this post I’m comparing two elections 15 years apart, 2010 and 2025, and examining how support for the Greens and the party’s preference flows have changed.

The 2010 election was the first where the Greens passed 10% of the vote. Led by Bob Brown, the Greens were still seen largely as an environment party, and Brown helped Labor and Julia Gillard form government after the election. Adam Bandt won the electorate of Melbourne in 2010, coming from behind to win after receiving three-quarters of Liberal preferences.

As Greens leader at the 2025 election, Adam Bandt lost his seat at an election where the Greens vote was roughly the same as in 2010. But 15 years had seen the development of differences in the geographic pattern of Greens support, and an increase in preference flows to Labor.
Read More »Greens Preferences Flow to Labor – 2010 and 2025 Compared

Time to Change the Electoral Act to Fix Faults in Senate Counting

When NSW Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi reached quota and was declared elected at this year’s Senate election, something very odd happened with her votes.

Faruqi’s total of 761,249 votes on election included 3,145 Coalition first preference votes. These votes had been distributed to Faruqi based on the preferences Coalition voters had written on their ballot papers. These Coalition votes represented just 0.4% of Faruqi’s total vote.

The quota for election was 712,405, so the next step in the count was to distributed Faruqi’s surplus of 48,889 votes.

At which point the count went weird.

Suddenly the number of Coalition first preference votes increased to 7,549, an inflation of 140%. Instead of Coalition votes representing 0.4% of Faruqi’s surplus, they represented 15.9%.

Of Faruqi’s total vote on election, 72.4% were first preference votes. But this was reduced to 61.0% in her surplus. On the distribution of Faruqi’s surplus, Green votes and preferences received from all other candidates were crowded out and replaced by Coalition votes. And those Coalition ballot papers that were worth 3,145 votes on receipt, suddenly became 7,549 votes when distributed as preferences.

Only two candidates remained in the count after Faruqi’s election, One Nation’s Warwick Stacey leading Labor’s Emilija Beljic in the race for the final seat. Preferences split 31,233 to Labor and 4,117 to One Nation with 13,539 votes exhausting. This narrowed Stacey’s eventual margin of victory over Beljic to just 17,326 votes or 0.35%.

The distortion in Faruqi’s surplus was not responsible for Beljic failing to pass Stacey. But everything we know about preference flows for Green and Liberal voters tells us that the final margin would have been narrower without the distortion.

The threat of this problem altering the result in close Senate contests remains. But why does it happen? In this post I’ll try to explain the problem and outline how the Electoral Act should be changed.Read More »Time to Change the Electoral Act to Fix Faults in Senate Counting

FED2025 – Evidence on Labor Supporters Voting Strategically for Independents

It has long been a given of Australian politics that support for the two major parties is higher in the House than the Senate.

But that rule was broken at the 2025 Federal election when Labor polled half a percent higher in the Senate, 35.11% to 34.56% in the House.

The lower rate of informal voting for Senate elections means there were an additional 380,953 formal votes in the Senate. But of those extra votes, Labor recorded more than half, polling 218,890 more Senate votes than House votes.

More telling was where Labor’s Senate vote was stronger.

Labor’s higher Senate vote is down almost entirely to the 14 divisions that finished as contests between Coalition and Independent candidates. In these seats Labor recorded just under 250,000 more Senate votes than House votes.

Compare this to the other 136 divisions where Labor recorded around 31,000 fewer votes in the Senate than the House.

In these 14 contests, Labor’s Senate vote was 2.1 times its House support, Greens support 1.8 times higher. Compare these ratios to the Coalition polling roughly the same vote at both elections in these seats.

There are only two seats in the country where Coalition supporters showed similar rates of split voting. In Independent held Fowler in western Sydney the Coalition’s Senate vote was 1.7 times its House vote. In Calwell where Labor was challenged by an Independent, the Coalition’s chamber ratio was 1.4.

The pattern of support reveals clear evidence of Labor supporters changing their House first preference vote to engage in strategic voting. Labor voters backed Labor in the Senate, but in the House voted for Independents with a better chance of defeating the Coalition.

Strategic voting has long been a feature of simple majority voting elections in countries such as the United Kingdom. At UK elections, in seats where a voter’s preferred party can’t win, voters have learnt to vote strategically. They cast a vote for the candidate most likely to defeat their least preferred candidate rather than vote for their preferred party’s candidate who can’t win.

The UK Conservative Party has at times suffered from UK Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters switching party with the intent of defeating the Conservative candidate.

In Australia, preferential voting has allowed parties to compete against each other without splitting the vote. Liberal and National candidates, and Labor and Greens candidates, can compete for votes with preferences then reducing the contest to a left versus right contest.

But the emergence of Independent candidates, especially so-called ‘Teal’ candidates, has created a different dynamic. Independents have shown an ability to poll well and defeat Coalition candidates on strong flows of Labor and Green preferences.

But to do so, Independents must first outpoll the Labor candidate on primary votes. Which is where strategic House voting by Labor and Greens supporters in voting Independent is flipping contests against the Coalition.

The seat-by-seat difference in Labor and Green support in the two house is clear evidence that strategic voting exists in Australia, and it is becoming a major problem for the Coalition, in particular the Liberal Party.Read More »FED2025 – Evidence on Labor Supporters Voting Strategically for Independents

Background on One Nation’s Impact on Elections and Politics

Earlier this week I appeared on the ABC’s ‘Politics Now’ podcast with Patricia Karvelas talking about the history and electoral performance of One Nation. I discussed how it burst on to the political scene initially before fading away until Pauline Hanson returned to the party a decade ago.

You can find the podcast at this link.

For the podcast I compiled a briefing note on One Nation’s emergence, early spectacular performance, its disappearance in the early 2000s, and how its has performed since re-entering national politics a decade ago. This post adds some additional detail to the original brief. I have written this post largely from my memory of covering these elections and have verified most of the numbers used.

In my opinion, One Nation has seen off most other political rivals to the right of the Coalition and has established itself as the fourth force of Australian politics. The big three are Labor and the Coalition dominating the centre ground of Australian politics, while the Greens having established themselves as a competitor to Labor on the left of politics.

Having doubled its Senate numbers in 2025 courtesy of Coalition preferences, One Nation now appears established to the right of the Coalition on the political spectrum. Is it a threat to the Coalition electorally? Will One Nation become a permanent fixture in the Senate? Will the next Coalition government find One Nation a force it must accommodate in the Senate, as Labor has learned to do with the Greens?

With One Nation now polling double digit support since the 2025 election, does One Nation provide an electoral opportunity for the Coalition? Or as often happened in One Nation’s early years, is it a threat to the Coalition, and in particular the National Party?Read More »Background on One Nation’s Impact on Elections and Politics

FED2025 – Four Graphs on Labor’s Landslide Victory

The ‘L’ word hasn’t featured much in post-election coverage, but it’s time to be clear about the result. The re-election of the Albanese government has been a landslide victory for Labor.

The size of the swing, the national two-party preferred vote and the number of House seats won by Labor add up to make the 2025 election one of the more one-sided results in Federal election history.

In the post-mortems, much of the attention has been devoted to what the Coalition got wrong rather than what Labor got right. That is not surprising given the Coalition had led the two-party preferred vote in most opinion polls in late 2024 and early 2025.

But only two polls in that time ever reported the Coalition on more than 52% two-party preferred. A Morgan poll in the first week of January reported the Coalition on 53%, and a Resolve Strategic poll in mid-February reported 55%. Apart from those two polls, few other polls if replicated on election day would have produced a majority Coalition government.

Polls were largely in agreement before the campaign in reporting Labor’s two-party preferred vote down since 2022. The polls before the campaign were pointing to Labor losing its majority but probably retaining government.

It is clear there was a mood shift as election day approached. The final week’s polls by a range of different polling organisations reporting Labor two-party preferred results between 51% and 53%. While the final polls varied in value, every company reporting in the last week had detected a shift towards Labor in the campaign. And given the final result, the shift in opinion may have continued through to polling day.

Whether this was down to Labor’s campaign being brilliant, the Coalition’s a dud, or concern over instability created by the peculiarly chaotic governing style of President Trump, is hard to disaggregate. In my opinion it is a combination of all three.

But I’m not writing this post to to dissect the rights and wrongs of the campaign. Nor to get into the extensive analysis since election day about where the Coalition went wrong.

This post is about adding historical context to the scale of of Labor’s landslide victory and comment on the breakdown of two-party politics.Read More »FED2025 – Four Graphs on Labor’s Landslide Victory

FED2025 – South Australia Senate Preference Distribution

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.Read More »FED2025 – South Australia Senate Preference Distribution