greens

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?