house

FED2025 – House Results in Victoria

I felt a certain sense of deja vu ahead of the 2025 election when it appeared the fate of the Albanese government could swing on the unpopularity of a Victorian state Labor government.

At the first Federal election I covered in March 1990, Victoria was Labor’s weak state. It was still eight months until Paul Keating uttered his ‘recession we had to have’ line, but already in March the economic failings of the Victorian Labor government had tipped the state’s economy into recession.

In March 1990 the full scale of the Victorian government’s financial disasters were still months from being known, but the souring electoral mood was to cost the Hawke government ten seats south of the Murray. It took gains elsewhere for Labor to win a narrow re-election.

The narrative ahead of the 2025 election had similarities. As I wrote in my election preview, “The question for 2025 is whether the Albanese government can distance itself from the state Labor government, or whether the Liberal Party can successfully tie the two together. Peter Dutton will also need to rally the factionalised and dispirited Victorian branch of the Liberal Party, not an easy task for a Queenslander.”

Yet it was in Victoria that Labor had gained an extra seat at the April 2023 Aston by-election. It was in Victoria that Labor retained the marginal Labor seat of Dunkley at a March 2024 by-election. At both by-elections, Peter Dutton was perceived as a negative for the Liberal Party with Victorian voters, compounded by on-going fratricide within the Liberal Party’s state branch.

Federal Labor’s wariness of its state brethren could be gauged by the scarcity of joint campaign events featuring Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. It contrasted with high rotation appearances with Labor Premiers Roger Cook (WA), Peter Malinauskas (SA) and Chris Minns (NSW).

But as elsewhere in Australia, election night shredded pre-election perceptions. Labor increased its Victorian vote and number of seats held. Labor’s Victorian two-party preferred vote was higher than in NSW, Queensland and Western Australia. Victoria joined Western Australia at the low end of swings to Labor, but both both states started from a high Labor vote in 2022.Read More »FED2025 – House Results in Victoria

FED2025 – Western Australia House Results

In 2022 it was the huge swing to Labor in Western Australia that delivered majority status to the Albanese government.

In 2025 the WA result was less dramatic, more a case of Labor’s position firming as the rest of the nation caught up with the west’s trend.

WA’s 2022 swing to Labor was a whopping 10.5% compared to 2.9% east of the border. Western Australia produced the smallest state swing to Labor in 2025, just 0.9%, but against a larger 3.3% swing in the rest of the nation.

Over two elections since 2019, the two-party preferred swing to Labor in Western Australia has been 11.4% against 6.2% in the rest of Australia. In six years Western Australia has gone from being a bulwark for the Coalition to being a bastion for Labor at both state and federal elections.Read More »FED2025 – Western Australia House Results

FED2025 – South Australia House Results

With a state election due in March 2026, the Liberal Party’s disastrous Federal result in South Australia is bad news for the party’s state prospects.

Since losing state government in March 2022 after just one term in office, the SA Liberal Party has gone on to lose two further state seats to the Labor government of Premier Peter Malinauskas. The by-elections in both seats had been caused by the departure of former Liberal leaders.

And now the party has suffered a 5.2% two-party preferred swing against it at the Federal election, retained just two of the state’s 10 seats, neither in Adelaide, and polled only 28.0% of the first preference vote.Read More »FED2025 – South Australia House Results

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

Proposed Federal Electoral Boundaries Released for Western Australia

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will release draft electoral boundaries for Western Australia on Friday, the time provisionally set for lunchtime AEST. Western Australia will be gaining a seat in the redistribution, the number of members to be elected at the next election increased from 15 to 16 seats.

Once the draft boundaries are released I’ll give a brief comment on the newly created seat, but it will take time and some serious number crunching to work out the full consequences of the new boundaries.

I’ve now double checked every discrepancy and my figures are final.

The major changes are that the new seat of Bullwinkel is a marginal Labor seat, Hasluck is made safer for Labor and Canning is made more marginal for the Liberal Party.

The new electorate is named in honour of 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 table below of seats held by party will be updated during my various parses of the data.

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 are –

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

A seat table comparing margins can be found inside the post.Read More »Proposed Federal Electoral Boundaries Released for Western Australia

Proposed Federal Boundaries Released for Victoria

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will release draft electoral boundaries for Victoria today, the time set as some time between 12:30 and 2:30. Victoria will be losing a seat in the redistribution, the number of members to be elected reduced from 39 to 38 seats.

Once the draft boundaries are released I’ll give a brief comment on which seat has been abolished, but it will take time and some serious number crunching to work out the full consequences of the new boundaries.

Update 7pm Friday After fixing problems with a changed numbering system for SA1s, I’ve tidied all the estimates. The summary is that the Labor seat of Higgins is abolished but the Liberal seat of Menzies becomes a marginal Labor seat. The Liberal seat of Deakin is weakened for the Liberal Party and Wills is weakened for Labor in a contest versus the Greens.

The Greens versus Labor margin for Melbourne is not right but I don’t have time work out the problem tonight. A better estimated margin has now been calculated for Melbourne. Other independent contests now have better estimated margins.

** Sunday update on Kooyong The re-drawn seat of Kooyong includes around 30,000 voters from the abolished seat of Higgins. This is around a quarter of the voters in the re-drawn Kooyong. This is an area where Independent Monique Ryan was not on the ballot paper in 2022 and if you do a straight vote transfer and then apply preferences, you get an Independent v Liberal margin of 0.8%, down from 2.9%. This is not a realistic margin as clearly Monique Ryan will attract votes in the area added from Higgins.

Compared to the 2022 Liberal 2PP margin versus Labor, the new boundaries produces a slight dip in the Liberal margin versus Labor. I suspect that movement slightly improves Ryan’s margin versus the Liberal Party, but there is no way to calculate a margin without coming up with an estimate of how Ryan will poll in the transferred parts of Higgins where she was not on the ballot paper in 2022.

I’ve removed my earlier margin from the table below because it is being quoted as suggesting the Liberal position in Kooyong has been significantly improved. That is not my opinion.

** Sunday update on Goldstein I’ve removed the estimated Independent margin for Goldstein for the same reasons. Transferring votes and re-calculating preferences gives a new Independent v Liberal margin of 2.7%, down from 2.9% on the old boundaries. The changes to Goldstein are smaller than for Kooyong. The Liberal 2PP margin dips on the new boundaries and I think the same may apply to the Independent versus Liberal margin.

Change in Seat Numbers

The table below of seats held by party will be updated during my various parses of the data.

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)

Seat tables can be found inside the post.Read More »Proposed Federal Boundaries Released for Victoria